Thank you very much for coming. We are very pleased to have paul with us here this evening and was reported from the Los Angeles Times and writing about Foreign Policy with the pentagon and the state department and other important assignment along assignments it with that paper four years ago. As one of those journalistic pros on National Security affairs. To have that knowledge of National Security. And then ryan crocker. Of how senior skills state Department Officers and those intelligence communities like iraq and syria and pakistan olivia one libya to combat terrorism. Have declineo testify. We will be in conversation here with someone else who knows the way around atheir way around thn and state department but as an insider. He spent 29 years in the navy specializing in Public Affairs and rose to become the navys top spokesman and chief spokesman for the department of defense. After retiring from the military in 2015 with the rank of rear admiral, he shifted to the state department where he served as the spokesman and assistant secretary for Public Affairs during the final year and a half or so of the Obama Administration. He now appears on cnn as an analyst of military and diplomatic issues. Ladies and gentlemen, pleaseat help me in welcoming john richter paul richter and john kirby. [applause] good evening everybody. Thanks for coming out on a cold wet tonight in dc. I dont think there could be a better time for a book like this because theyve are they been brought to theethenbrought to tf americas imagination in light of the impeachment inquiry and it doesnt matter where you are on the political side or if you are for or against what they are doingu you can see by watching any little bit of the testimony of the last couple of weeks how professional and how skilled these men and women are and sort of derived from that of the core attributes favoring the effort which present unlike the way the military brings the skilled professionalism to what they do. I would like to start because i know that this was a look long in the making, bu, but what gavu a good idea for the topic, what gave you the idea and why goes for . When i was covering it right after 9 11, i noticed pretty soon there was a new crisis in the middle east or m south asia they would turn to one of the small groups of the trusted veterans to be ambassadors out there and they have rotated from crisis to crisis for years to all these places where there was extra pay and risks to them. It seems to go so wrong so i settled on the only people in this category but i thought it was especially good examples of it and told the same 15 year period in the period that im writing about he went to afghanistan twice and led at the embassy in iraq wants that kind of height of the civil war and they chose Anne Patterson who sat about every bad job in the stateha department. Then i also chose robert ford who was in this period the political counselor and number two in the embassy and in iraq he took five tours in iraq and he volunteered five times and had more time in iraq during this period and any other Foreign Service officer and then after iraq was over, they sent him to syria which sounded like it was going to be a calm or boring theyd. You probably know of stevens she was the number two in the embassy before the civil war and then when the civil war broke out in 2011, washington needed somebody to go into libya to sneak into libya to be the sorto of washingtons eyes and ears on the ground to figure out who the rebels were and then try to find out who was important and what they needed to knowha about the. Theres a lot of Foreign Policy in the book but its mostly about these four people and the struggles again the bad guys and difficult local theaters in the countries and sometimes there are struggles with washington, edtoo you can imagine especially those of you that have been in the Government Service you know all about that. So they were ambassadors kind of in a different mold from post. The function between washington and foreign leaders but these were all situations where there was chaos and violence and everything was uncertain if the bosses in washington hav had tod them in and ask them to improvise to figure out what needed to be done and with whom and to make it up as they went along. To give you an example of that, ryan crocker in early 2002 after the taliban government had fallen, crocker went into afghanistan to try to help the formation of the new government andd the interim leader was hamd karzai who had been a schoolteacher and a publicist but had no experience running a country. The question is what do wee do now is that together they pickd a cabinet and tried to settle on an agenda to further new state that had almost no money. They tried to make peace between the warlords and try to kill each other but it was a long struggle. I spoke to a cia officer who was there at the time and you know the cia was first in afghanistan and he said sometimes he needed to be given a little kick. All of these people faced a lot of danger. Robert ford when he went to iraq at first they send him down to be the oneman occupation government and there was nobody there. There was the marines but there was no government. The militia is getting organized to try to take over and assert their authority is and became in a testament to the will and the authorities in baghdad could allow alternate governments to take hold so oneday ford was on a o trip to a village to speak o a religious leader. There was the young iraqi dental student taken outside and began beating him and announced to crocker into the military aid they were holding them indefinitely, so it looks like device a crocker, i meant for it looked like they might be stuck there for who knows how long until he realized he had a meeting later that day with an official from the same militia so he talked them into releasing him that it was a close call. They went ahead and had a meeting with their boss that night and the military aid if my car we are going back to the base so there was no meeting that night. Later on that night during the tour, he got crossed up with the militia who became a big danger to the u. S. And for was getting Death Threats and he realized he was on the list for assassination. When the civil war broke out immediately, ford decided he was going to protest the regime was otooting the demonstrators in the streets of may 10 unpopular with other regime in the regimn he was being chased through the streets a plain clothed security men that were sticking out of his house and there was a big attack on the embassy finally tried to break in through the roof and forward almost had to order a green guards to shoot at them so there was ever never ae that they were safe. Hispanic there is a great adage that i love this as a diplomat says maybe means no and a diplomat says no isma no diplom. But when you look at the story of these four, they were not afraid to offer dissenting views in spite t of their government d to the leaders that they were working with. And what that means and how they would move the policy forward. Most of the time, these diplomats carry out Administration Policies without a peep no matter what they think of it, but they are supposed to do and they are part of a professional nonpartisan body and thats the way that its supposed to be. They sometimes never meet or they are in the whole course ofa a career but at other times there is then different policy differences into the impeachment testimony into the abuse of power. So occasionally they do run up against them. If they feel seriously enough about it the if they could leave Foreign Service. In the dissent channel that they have had for a veryy long time that all of the four in my book struggled with this issue in various ways. There wasnt any issue as there is now a bit for example ryan crocker struggled on the decision to go to iraq they wrote a famous memo called the perfect storm memo that wrote everything that could go wrong in iraq and he hoped to pass it up the chain. It got part way up the chain they didnt really change minds because they wanted to go ahead with the invasion anyway. They said its going to be the biggest mistake that you ever see in your life, but you have to make a decision about whether you want to go forward and support this president and for myself im going to go forward and support him so crocker went to baghdad and helped out after the invasion and he went back again in 2007 to help out as ambassador to the tea had a lot of doubts and misgivings and said after he retired he was following all Administration Policies with harder than it sounds. Sometimes the argument that an effective for long periods. When crocker was in afghanistan in 2011, the Obama Administration wanted to pull out troops fairly abruptly and everybody in the administration and a lot of other people in the state department and the military were arguing for going slow and the argument was never goingresolve to just kept on. That i that is a great segue to my next question. The story of these diplomats is also the story of American Intervention in thema middle eat particularly the last 20 years or so. Were. There commonalities of thesehe over the role of america in this part of the world where did they have great differences among them . There were some differences but there were a lot of commonalities, too. Most were foreignpolicy traditionalists that believe in a common Foreign Policy views that have been worked out over the last 75 years since world war ii. They are internationalists and believe the u. S. Should have a leading role in the world and that our influence is underwritten by force, but they shouldnt use it too much. One thing they also believe is that the u. S. Should be slow to get into conflicts and then also slow to get out of them because crocker always said americans convinced that with our influence, military andnd econoc tools we can get in and reshape parts of the world and so we go off and we try to exert our will but then pretty soon we discover things are not changing as fast as we lik wed like and we get discouraged so there is a lot of political pressure to pull out quickly into the Foreign Service people always despair at this because they understand that having effects on foreignpolicy take a long time. There was a german sociologist who said the foreignpolicy is like driving a nail slowly through a hard piece of wood. Things take time. They need a lot of effort, more than the americans usually relies. And its something that they dont realize. One of the themes in the book but i found fascinating is the relationship that all four of these diplomats have with their military counterparts and the waxing and training of the relationships. Can you talk about the importance off the military stae relationships in the conflicts in how these diplomats were sort of able to manage that maybe some better than others. It really threw the military and diplomatic corps together in a way that they havent been thrown together since vietnam. And they often have different agendas and different orders asfrom washington they couldnt always see eye to eye. I remember robert ford he understood the iraqis better than they understood that the american military. So you know, there are cultural differences that run deep. In the beginning of the iraq period especially, but in afghanistan, there was a lot of conflict that had been written about 1 in the diplomatsot and generals and there were just periods when theyth went their n way and they were not even communicating with each other. They have seen generals and ambassadors yelling at each other in front of the iraqis which wasnt good. But the problem is that things just dont get done and so after a while it became apparent things were not in concert and it became increasingly visible and a disruptive problem. So at the time, David Petraeus and ryan crocker went to iraq during the period sold the surge which was sending more troops to try to calm the civil war, crocker and petraeus realized they needed to get along otherwise the iraqis could divide and conquer so there was a lot of reason for them to harmonize, and debated. They went for long runs and they put a satellite fix to his would talk about almost everything. They would go in and meet with the Prime MinisterNouri Almaliki i and he knew without prompting that he would talk it out. Later, crocker went to afghanistan and it was the same way with john allen, a harmonized closely and agreed on everything. But it wasnt a natural state and when crocker left afghanistan, with iraq in 2009, his successor immediately began havingin disagreements with generall odierno who was in charge of th the military is tht it requires constant attention. Its just not a natural state. We have one more and then we will start taking questions. Please come up when you are ready and we will let you have it. In the writing of the book did you learn or stumble across more oborder that you think somebody might be writing aht book aboutn the years to come in terms of their performance atf the level they were and what would you say to people that are considering a careerns in the Foreign Service and who might be a little intimidated in off by what they are seeing at this right now . There were some that rose quickly to the ranks and had incredible talent. When Chris Stevens was in isra israel. Stevens was number two and a part of the embassy that have dealt with the palestinians and he had working for him a young man andnd another named jeffrey who went on to become very outstanding u. S. Officials. He had come over as an arab specialist to work for the state department and was an outstanding performer in iraq and ran for Congress Last year in the Hudson Valley of new york and did notey make it it was a hotly contested seat. Kunar ended up being president obamas to top advisor on much f the middle east at one point in the second term. Is in terms of the future of a young Foreign Service officers, its been difficult because theyve watched the way that the Trump Administration has reduced the size of the Foreign Service and a number of for the Foreign Service exam has fallen to the peak of 20,000 a year to 8,000 so a lot of people have been discouraged that i happen to know some who teach young people and i have a friend at Johns Hopkins and they say theres still a hugeay demand fr these jobs and i think the testimony we have seen in the impeachment inquiry is going to increase that they banned because people see these charts are consequential and they are interesting in that they can be fun so i think we will see there is still a demand. You wrote about an interesting moment going to the worst places and doing the hardest jobs where they are trying to get the state department to build up the embassy and staff it up with a lot more Foreign Service officers and hes having trouble getting people to sign up to goo sohe they have a town hall in te state department where they are encouraging people to go into was and wasa bit of a dustup. Can you maybe describe that and the aftereffects of the mission in iraq there was a period during that time i spoke about when Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state and people in the white house wanted to put a lot more officers into iraq and they were saying we need volunteers for these jobs and your career is going to depend on it so they began pressuring people. A lot of the Foreign Service officers hadnt gone into the career expecting that they would be exposed to a lot of danger so there was a meeting in the state department for some disgruntled bployees complained to who was then the director general and one guy that spent his career in europe got out and said if i get killed there, are you going to take care of my children, so they got quite angry and had to close the meeting down abruptly and this didnt help the image of the Foreign Service. A lot of people thought that they were shirking while they were out there risking their lives. Nick burns was the number three in the department went to thanksgiving with his sister in virginia this month and she said why isnt the Foreign Service stepping up when a the troops ae at risk, so it was painful for him to do that but it was painted the impression that was left. However, after all of this, it turned out that eventually theyy got all the volunteers they need to get all the jobs were filled and nobody had to be penalized for not going. Feel free to step up to the microphone if you have questions we are happy to take them. I wanted to pull in another string in the book which is the tensions that diplomats out with their own sense of values in. They were honest men and women but they struggled sometimes with having to deal with people that had character issues. Karzai in afghanistan, a they found themselves able to reconcile working with leaders they didnt like and they were not convinced were necessarily serving Thee National interest. How did they work their way through those sort of moral dilemmas and is there a way today that we are seeing going on in the world and the way that the administration is executing Foreign Policy with authoritarian leaders. A lot of the Foreign Service officers in afghanistan for example fought so much as corrupt people that didnt have an interest in afghanistan and the u. S. Was pouring all this money into the. That is just the way it is but part of the job especially for the ambassadors is focused on these individual leaders and the ambassadors have to go every day they have to g