I dont consider myself a journalist, and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Pres. Trump mad dog plays no games, right . David most of the people that i have interviewed in this series are people i have known quite some time. In the case of jim mattis, i had never met the man before. Because of his nickname, mad dog, i thought uhoh, i better be careful when i shake his hand. He might be growling or mad at me or Something Like that, but it was the opposite. I recognized quickly he has a certain reserve and a manner that would make a person want to follow him as a leader in the military, and also i suspect that had he never gone into the military, had he been in business or politics, he would have been successful there as well. Although i only spent this one hour with him in the interview, i really think he is a person who has Great Potential to again be a great leader in our country. And i dont think we have heard the last of jim mattis. David you are minding your own business after having spent 40plus years in the marines. You are out in your native state, washington, and you get a call from Vice President elect pence to come and meet donald trump, whom you had never met before. What did you think that meeting was about, and do you have any regrets about going to the meeting or [laughter] david your decision to actually become secretary of defense . Gen. Mattis i dont live a life with regrets. I would tell you that if you are enjoying life, and it is shortly after an election and the phone rings, dont answer the phone, obviously. [laughter] gen. Mattis but on a more serious note, i was brought up by the greatest generation, and i was brought up to believe that Government Service is an honor, it is a privilege, but it is a duty. Whether it is the president of the United States asking you, and they are a republican or a democrat, it doesnt matter, as long as you are prepared to do it, as long as you know you can do it, then the response is affirmative. David ok, so you took the job, but you resigned after a few years over a policy disagreement. Any regrets about having resigned . Gen. Mattis as you will all understand, ladies and gentlemen, these are the finest young patriots in our country signing that blank check payable to all of us with their lives. The men and women of our military. And i loved being back around them. It is probably the best job i could have imagined. I only miss being around those people. There just comes a time i dont live a life of regrets there comes a time when you know what youve got to do. David so you dont ever look back . Gen. Mattis no, i look forward. I am like dallas. [applause] david i wish i could do that. I always look back at the deals i should have done and i missed. I wish i had that same ability. But, ok. [laughter] david so, you disagreed with President Trump on syria. Let me ask you, i realize you have been very, very careful about not criticizing President Trump at all since you have left, in any public forum, so i am not probably going to persuade you to do so here, not that you want to do so. But the reason that you want to be not commenting on your service as secretary of defense or saying anything negative about President Trump is what . Is it because you are a former cabinet officer, former military person, or just generally think its just not a good policy to do that . Gen. Mattis i resigned over a policy disagreement, you are right. I put that disagreement in a pageandahalf letter. The letter has been released, that is all the more i need to say about it. Say about it. The french call it a devoir de reserve, a duty of reserve, a duty of quiet. You dont need to have a former secretary of defense talking about the current policies in a way that is injurious to the country. And i would point out that secretary ash carter, my predecessor under the obama administration, said the same thing when he would respond to a congressional question that he considered political, even while he was there. So it is not unique to me, is my point. It is not some protective effort around President Trump. David do you feel, lets say years down the road, you might feel better about commenting on this . Gen. Mattis it is a good question, david, but like most of us in this room, i am from the west as well, and there is something we call your ride for the brand. I could always come out and say on this policy or strategy, this is where i come down. That is not meant as personal or political attack, and i dont feel i need to be silent about those things after that president leaves office. But while the president is there, the last thing we want to do is to have the former secretary of defense coming out, saying, i disagree with a certain policy. Guess what . The president is still the commanderinchief, as elected by the american people, and the troops have to obey him. The last thing you want to do is you have the troops saying, well, the former secretary of defense does not agree with that policy. Thats why i dont talk about it while they are in office. David so does President Trump call you for advice anymore or not so much . Gen. Mattis no, the phone has not rang on that one. [laughter] david alright. Now, you have recently come out with a book, call sign chaos with bing west, and it is a terrific book. I highly recommend it. So explain what call sign chaos means, for those who have not read the book. What does chaos mean there . Gen. Mattis so i was a colonel out in the mojave desert, and i had an Operations Officer from brooklyn with a rather droll sense of humor. One day, i was done with one of my Brilliant Ideas talking to my Operations Officer of this regiment of about 7000 sailors and marines out in the mojave desert, and i saw on his whiteboard chaos written, and i said, what is that about . He said oh, dont worry about that, you dont need to know about that. So i say, oh, yes, i do. [laughter] gen. Mattis i used some of my powers of persuasion. I waterboarded him. [laughter] gen. Mattis and i found out my irreverent subordinates had decided that my call sign should be chaos. Colonel has another outstanding suggestion. [laughter] gen. Mattis it was rather tongueincheek. They did not see the brilliance of all of my ideas that i identified. So i adopted that as my call sign. Any time you hear about this mad dog thing, my troops all laughed at it, knowing my call sign was chaos. That was never my favorite nickname that the press assigned me on a slow news day. David well, lets talk about that. Gen. Mattis no, id rather not, actually. [laughter] david in this book, you never used the expression mad dog, you never described how you got that. You obviously dont like it. I would think that being mad dog shows that you are tough and so forth. Why dont you like it or use it . Is that right . Gen. Mattis first, the marines teach you to be tough in other ways than selfaggrandizing and stuff like that. [applause] but i think too one thing that i have had to do, and you will all understand this, is sign a lot of nextofkin letters, and the last thing they need is to think there is someone with some selfimage of mad dog up there with their sons lives, basically, in his hands. So i shy away from those words very much. David you signed more than 800 of those letters . Gen. Mattis i have. David that must be the most difficult thing to do, to write to the nextofkin that their son or daughter has been killed. Gen. Mattis its difficult to me. It is nowhere near what the families go through. David so you have been very involved in meeting with gold star families since you retired, and that must be an Emotional Experience to do that. Gen. Mattis i think it is necessary that we pay our respects and we never forget the sacrifices of those families. When you think this great big experiment that we have, that you and i call america, it will need to be defended, and we will continue to need this sort of commitment, this devotion to our country. David your first time in real combat is when Saddam Hussein invades kuwait. When you got into kuwait, relatively quickly, were you surprised at how, relatively speaking, it was easy to get there . Gen. Mattis it was a lot of training and a lot of fire support. And it was i am very proud of that campaign, because it was the last time i brought everyone home alive. David so when you started your life, you started in the northwest, washington state. And you were a great athlete or a great student, or which would you say . Gen. Mattis none of the above. [laughter] david neither. But you were a little bit wild. And you would do things that today i would think parents would not let kids do. When you were 13 years old, your parents would let you hitchhike around the west, is that right . Gen. Mattis well, i maintained a degree of silence about some of my activities, around my parents. [laughter] but yeah, i did start hitchhiking. I think it was a more trusting nation in those days. And my parents were rather adventurous. They were not irresponsible, and had they known some of this, they probably wouldve put the kabosh on it. David how did you actually come to the marines . Did you say, im going to be drafted. Id rather be in the marines than the army . Or did you, like my father, my father went in the marines and he said, i like the uniform. Its a great uniform. Im going to go in the marines. What appealed to you . Gen. Mattis one thing was, i probably would have been drafted. It was during that era. But it was almost, a little bit unexamined. It was more or less assumed that if you went into the military, a lot of the guys in my neighborhood, my older brother was in vietnam as a marine. It was just kind of a natural thing. It wasnt a very reflective or examined decision. David ok, so, you go into the marines. What was your first assignment after you left officer training . Gen. Mattis it was the best assignment i had in the military. It was Second Lieutenant in the infantry. You have about 40 sailors and marines, and theres nobody between you and your troops. You are living right amongst them. You know them as well as you know your brothers. You can spot them 200 yards away by their walk. You know who they are. It is just a great, tightknit crew. David ok, so your first time in real combat is when Saddam Hussein invades kuwait, and president bush 41, decides the United States is going to have a response. Pres. Bush now the 28 countries have no choice but to drive saddam from kuwait by force. We will not fail. [video] david what was your involvement, and what did you do in that war . Gen. Mattis i commanded an infantry battalion. I was in the first marine division. Those of you who remember the war, you remember the big minefields and the trenches of oil and all that sort of stuff, barbed wire. My battalion job was to open two of the routes through for the marines to follow. David did you think at the time, there were predictions there would be tens of thousands of american troops killed. When you got into kuwait relatively quickly, were you surprised at how, relatively speaking, it was easy to get in there . Gen. Mattis it was a lot of training and a lot of fire support. And i am very proud of that campaign, because it was the last time i brought everyone home alive. David ok. You were an officer when that occurred. When you are an officer, you get special treatment in that kind of combat . Did you sleep in the same places as the troops . Or do you get a better place to sleep or better food . Gen. Mattis in the infantry, you always eat last, you never live better than the troops. Matter of fact, even when i was a twostar general, we established what is called the level of comfort for a 23,000 man division, which is whatever an infantry lance corporal, which is what a very young troop has, if he has nothing but a blanket to lay in, nobody has anything but a blanket except the wounded and the sick. And those, we do everything we can for. But everybody lives like a lance corporal. David so the food that you eat, mre food, is it any good, or not so great when you are in combat . Gen. Mattis lets just say it is not quite as good as the meal we had today, david. [laughter] david eventually, you got back into combat again because 9 11 occurs. So, your next assignment is to go into afghanistan and try to capture, i assume, Osama Bin Laden, is that right . More or less . So, in the end, you go over there, you have all the troops. And why did you not capture Osama Bin Laden . Gen. Mattis i had an admiral who had read a lot of history. And he said, no one has held kabul in 500 years. They will fall back to kandahar, their spiritual home, and dig in. Can you get the marines from the mediterranean fleet and Pacific Fleet together, this threestar admiral asked me. I was a one star marine. And move against kandahar. I say yeah, i can do that. So we got the troops in. And then the Intelligence Agency said Osama Bin Laden was in one of two valleys. They were very sure of this. They had him pinpointed. So i had a quick computer study, and i knew what mountains on the pakistan border, if you put troops on them, they could see each other and block the two valleys. Then i was going to move my troops up the two valleys, but i had changed from navy commandandcontrol to army commandandcontrol, and i had not spent the time getting to know my boss 900 miles away, and we missed the opportunity. And the person who made the mistake was me. For not i just assumed, because we were there to go after this guy, that everybody was tuned into the intel. You should not make assumptions like that when your organization is shifting and adapting. David they told you to pull back . Gen. Mattis they did not tell me to go. We did not pull back, but we did not go in. David ultimately you leave afghanistan and come back to the United States again. Gen. Mattis right. David but then you are asked to go into another war in iraq. Gen. Mattis right. David so you get in there, and then ultimately the fights between the sunnis and the shiites turned out to be much more than anybody anticipated. As you look back on the political problems that arose in iraq, subsequent to Saddam Hussein having been captured, what do you think was the mistake that was made, or what could have been done better in hindsight . Gen. Mattis it is interesting to get the question, look back in hindsight, but let me tell you what it looked like in foresight. We are in, basically, a very hot summer of 2003, and iraq has fallen. And in one of my briefs one day, a young officer who was briefing said, by the way, the enemy is picking this up that somehow we are going to disband the iraqi army. That we were just bringing the army, the iraqis back into the barracks, we were starting to pay them, trying to talk with them that we were not here to occupy or humiliate you. You worked for a jerk, he is gone, you are going to be the new iraqi army. And i dismissed it as idle gossip and said forget that. Lets get on with the brief. The next day i walk in, and everybody is quiet in this great big cavernous palace we had taken over. The lieutenant down there had a piece of paper for me and it had three sentences, the iraqi army is hereby disbanded. The first lieutenant, fresh out of his undergraduate days, said, general, we just started an insurgency. Thats what it looked like in foresight. Foresight. It did not take hindsight to see the problem. David ultimately, when the insurgency occurred, you were trying to at one point capture falujah, among other things, but you found there was not enough Political Support to go and do the tough things you thought the military needed to do, is that right . Gen. Mattis well, we had a troop cap put on us, so we did not have enough troops. For example, i was responsible for an area about the size of north carolina, and i had about 15,000, 16,000 troops to try to control it. Just do the math on the geography, you can see the problem. Then we had four contractors who were misguided. They drove into falujah without checking in with the marines who were in the area. And these guys, unfortunately, drove into town, right into the heart of town, and they were murdered by some of the tribes there, by the terrorists. And their bodies were desecrated, and it was not pretty. We were ordered to go in. I said, i have got a better idea. We were told no, after a couple of days you will assault the city. So we had to move the innocent people out and then go after the terrorists, and i did not have many troops i could throw into the attack. I said ok, we are going to do it, but dont stop me now that we are going to do it. Unfortunately, they stopped us while we were deep in the city and housetohouse fighting, so it was a very difficult time for the marines. David would you go back into government again, or are you done with Government Service . Gen. Mattis i mean, i grew up in a country that when the country calls, you do it. David as being former secretary of defense and more than 40 years in the marine corps, today, what do you think are the one or two most Important NationalSecurity Issues this country faces, leaving aside whoever is president . What do you think are the most Important NationalSecurity Issues and challenges . Gen. Mattis when i came into office, i was working alongside a son of texas, secretary rex tillerson. Together, we determined that we needed to rework the strategy. In my case, it was the National Defense strategy. That strategy basically said, we are going to have to continue to deal with the terrorist threat. It is an ambient threat. It is just going to be out there. But, the primary threats to the country, to go to your question, david, are clearly authoritarian regimes that are acting badly. In terms of urgency, it would be north korea. In terms of power, it would be russia. And in terms of political will, it would be china. We are going to have to address those. So we wrote a strategy accordingly. David when do you think the u. S. Will be able to, if at all, get out of afghanistan with our military . Gen. Mattis the point i would make is you can want a war over, you can even declare a war over, and you can even order troops home. And then there is something the military says, the enemy gets a vote. The idea that you can declare the war over, you can say it is not going to bother me anymore, the problems dont stay over there. You are going to have to deal with the world as it is, not the way you want it to be. David do you think iraq is a situation where we dont have to worry about what is going on there, or syria . Gen. Mattis we have to be engaged everywhere in the world. I think we need to intervene militarily with large forces less. But it doesnt mean you can disengage. The greatest generation came home from world war ii and said, it is a crummy world, and whether you like it or not, we are part of it. So the bottom line is, we are going to have to get together with our allies and stick together with our allies, because we need every one of them right now, and make certain we address these issues. It doesnt mean we have to do it all ourselves, but we are going to have to stick together. David have you ever thought of running for office, maybe president of United States, yourself . Gen. Mattis you are a very bad man. [laughter] david because you dont want to do it . Why wouldnt you be a perfect person to be a candidate someday . Gen. Mattis there are a lot of great americans. I have great confidence in the american people. I have never lost that confidence. We will find our way through rough patches, and we will have great leaders. David suppose someone is elected, whoever is the next president , President Trump, or whoever might be the next president , and that person calls you and says, duty calls again, can you come back and serve your country one more time. Would you go back into government again, or are you done with Government Service . Gen. Mattis well, you can never say you are done because when the country calls i mean, i grew up in a country that when the country calls, you do it. But i would tell you that i think it is also time for a lot younger people with fresh ideas good listeners, they have got to study history, listen to those who have been there before, but it is time for young people to step forward. David but compared to people running for president , you are still very young. [laughter] gen. Mattis and i am still at the top of my game, david. [applause] david all right. So for somebody looking to you, what are the attributes you think are most important for somebody to be a leader . What would you say some of those attributes are, to be an effective leader . Gen. Mattis i followed George Washingtons example of listen to others, listen really well, learn from them. Then you help them, and then you lead. You dont just start off yelling at people or telling them what to do. And, i think, trust. You have to be able to build trust. If you can build trust, then you will delegate Decision Authority down below, and at that point, you start winning, because everybody feels like they own it. They are making decisions. You have made it clear what you want. But youve got to be able to build trust. Trust is the coin of the realm. That would be the key thing, can you build trust . David you have obviously given your life to the country in this sense and committed an enormous amount of time, most of your life to this. Any regrets about not getting married or having children . None of that. If you had been married, do you think you could have done what you have done . Gen. Mattis i always had the idea, im getting out of the marine corps next year and then i am getting me a dog and going to get married and lived happily ever after. I had my whole life planned, for you young people in the audience. I knew i was going to do my patriotic chore in the marines for my three years, then i was going to get out and go back to my hometown, teach physics and history in high school, and coach football and go fishing. I had it all figured out, and along comes life, right . I always thought, next year im getting out of the marines. So i never made the decision not to get married. It just happened that way. But i am still looking, if you know anybody. [laughter] david hey, i think you would be a pretty good catch. A pretty good catch for some people, or anybody. So if i was a 17yearold or 18yearold and i wanted to go into the military, why should i go into the marines over the army or the air force or the navy . Why would the marines be better for me . Gen. Mattis [laughs] i spent too many years fighting alongside soldiers, living under air cover by the air force, being carried on navy ships. I truly love all the services. Obviously, you grow very fond of your own, but i would just tell you that after the military, no matter which one you go into, coast guard included here, you come out with a from that formative experience, with a much more sense of gratitude for everything you have in this country. The following is a paid program. The opinions and views expressed do not reflect those of bloomberg lp, its affiliates, or its employees. The following is a paid advertisement for the bissell cordless max, sponsored by bissell. It vacuums and washes at the same time. Can it clean this . Yes. How about this . Yes. How about this . Yes