In washington over several decades he wrote about National Security and foreignpolicy on both the pentagon and state department and he held other important assignments for the times before leaving the paper about four years ago. Paul was seen as one of the journalistic prose in this cityy on the National Security affairs and in his new book he applies his Extensive Knowledge of americas National Security establishment to highlight the valuable role played by some veteran diplomats. He singles out for in particular, ryan crocker, and patterson and Chris Stevens. How significant officers these days folks work with our military and intelligence communities in such countries of afghanistan, iraq, serious, pakistan and libya to combat terrorism and manage the challenging situations. At a time when the u. S. Diplomatic corps is being downsized and disparaged, pauls book is a reminder of the vital contributions made by some of the state departments finest, the risks they sometimes had to take and the courage theyve often shown. The professionalism and highmindedness of our diplomats were of course on display during the days of the impeachment hearings in th the house and the Senior State Department officials stepped forward to tell what they saw, thought and heard while the political bosses have declined so far to testify. Paul will be in conversation here with someone else who knows his way around both the pentagon and state department but as an insider john kirby spent 29 years in the navy specializing in Public Affairs and to become the top spokesman then the chief spokesman for the department of defense. 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, join me in welcoming paul richter and john kirby. [applause] thanks for coming out on a cold night here in dc. I dont think there could be a better time for a book like paul because the Career Foreign Service has been brought to the floor of americas imagination in light of the impeachment inquiry and it doesnt matter where you are on the political side or you are for or against what they are doing. You can see just by watching any little bit of the testimony the last couple of weeks how professional and skilled peace men and women are in the ride from that some of the attributes they bring to the effort and they bring this going to professionalism to what they do, so id like to start because i know this was a bit long in the making but what gave you the idea for the topic, and by those Foreign Service officers . I started thinking about this when i started working the state department i was covering right after 9 11 and i noticed pretty soon but every time there was a new crisis in some part of the world, usually the middle east or south asia the Senior Management turned to one of the small groups of the same trusted veterans to be ambassadors. They rotated from crisis to crisis for years to all these places where there was always extra pay for danger or always risks to them, but somehow they were trusted and i thought if i could get to these people, i bet they would have a terrific story and it would help me understand more about what to think about the middle east and all these adventures that we have had many of which seems to go so wrong. I settled on four. These are not the only people in the category, but i thought they were especially good examples and we kind of told the story in the same 15 year period so the first one i chose was ryan crocker is a six time ambassador and in the period that im writing about come he went to afghanistan twice and led embassy in iraq once the kind of height of the civil war. I also chose and patterson whos had just about every bad job in the state department. During the period that im writing about, she was the ambassador to pakistan and then the ambassador to egypt and went on later to become the state Top Department official for the middle east as well. I also chose robert ford who was in this period political counselor for nn number two in the embassy in iraq. He took five tours in iraq, think about that. He had doubts about the war all along and yet he volunteered five times to go. I think he had more times in iraq in this period than any other Foreign Service officer. After it was over he sent him to syria which sounded like it was going to be a home or maybe boring gauge and then immediately the war broke out and then the last person that i decided to focus on those Chris Stevens. You all probably know of him, he was the number two in the Libya 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 the kind of washingtons eyes and ears on the ground, somebody that would figure out who the rebels were and try to find out who was important and what they needed to know about him. There is a lot o a lot of foreiy in the book but its mostly about these four people and their struggles against the bad guys and their struggles against different local leaders and countries and some struggled with washington as you could imagine especially those of you that have been in government service, you know all about that. So these were ambassadors kind of in a different mold from most ambassadors and in calm places they functioned largely to pass on messages between washington and foreign leaders but these were all situations where there was chaos, violence, everything was uncertain and in a number of the situations the bosses in washington had to send them in and ask them to kind of improvised to figure out what needed to be done and with whom and make it up as they went along. To give you one 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 a new government and the interim leader was hamid karzai who had been a schoolteacher and publicist but had no experience running a country and so he and crocker got together every morning at the palace and the first question always would be what the hell do we do now. So, together they picked a cabinet and tried to settle on an agenda for this new states that have almost no money. They had to try to make peace before the warlords who were feuding and tried to kill each other. It was a long struggle. I spoke to a cia officer who was there at the time and the cia was in first in afghanistan and he said that sometimes karzai needed to be given a little kick. He didnt know what he was doing, he was a little passive but if he needed a little kick, crocker was according to the cia official. All these people faced a love of danger. Robert ford when he went to iraq at first, they sent him down to be the one man occupation government for the province and there was nobody there. There was a battalion of marines that there was no government. There was nobody in charge. The utilities were broken down, the employers in the province had stopped operating so it was just a vacuum and the shia militia were getting organized to take over and assert their authority so for granted them immediately and it became attached because the authorities in baghdad could allow alternate governments to take hold so one day forward was on a trip to a village to speak to a religious leader. He sat down with the leader, had a few cups of tea and suddenly the shia militia broke him, broke the door down, grabbed his translator who was a young iraqi dental student, took him outside and began beating him and had announced to crocker and his military aid they were holding them indefinitely if i said crocker i. Meant for. It looked like they might be stuck there for who knows how long until ford realized he had a meeting later that day with an official of the same militia so he talked these militiamen into releasing them but it was a close call. Afterwards, he said to the military aid i want to go on and have that meeting with their boss later on tonight and the military aide said o are you cry if my car we are going back to the base. Later on during the tour he got crossed up with the militia of another leader who became a big danger to the u. S. And ford was getting death threats. He realized that he was on the list for assassination by the time he left in december of that year. So, later on when ford got to syria, as i said, he expected it to be called and then the civil war broke out immediately. For decided that he was going to protest the fact that the regime was shooting of unarmed demonstrators in the street so that madstreets sothat made himr with the regime. If they attack to the embassy finally and tried to break in through the roof and he had to order the marine guards to shoot at them. There was never really a time that they were safe in these posts. There is a great adage that i love of a diplomat that says yes means maybe. A diplomat says maybe means no in a diplomat that says no is no diplomat. [laughter] but actually, when you look out the story of them, they were not afraid to offer dissenting views in spite of their government, and of course to the leaders that they were working with and i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that strain in the Foreign Service and the dissent channel and what that means a. How each of them were able to use that authority and power and the credibility of the dissent to move the policy forward. The diplomats carryout the Administration Policies without a peep no matter what they think of it. That is what they are supposed to do. They are part of a professional nonpartisan body and that is the way that its supposed to be. They are supposed to be independent that help implement the policy. But they all have their red wines, the personal red wines which sometimes they never meet during the course of a whole for fear but at other times they come out and over the last couple of decades, there has been more because of policy differences and then now with the Trump Administration as you see in the impeachmen impeachmey is the diplomats feel that theres been also abusive powers, so occasionally they do run up against them. If they feel seriously enough about it, they can believe this or they can finally descend through this channel called the dissent channel of the state department that theyve had for a very long time. But, all of the four in my book kind of struggled with this issue at times because they felt strongly about our policy in the middle east in various ways. There wasnt any issue as there is now, but for example, try and crocker strongly disagreed with the decision to go into iraq and they wrote a famous memo that laid out everything that could go wrong and he hoped to pass up the chain and hoped that it would change some minds. It got partway up the chains but it didnt really change their mind because the people wanted to go ahead with the invasion anyway. Ask a point with his staff he said this is going to happen and its going to be the biggest mistake you see outdoor 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 did. He went to baghdad and helped out right after the invasion. He went back again in 2007 to help out as ambassador but he had enough of doubts and misgivings and he said after he retired that they followed all of the Administration Policies and was a lot harder than it sounds as. They sometimes their arguments continued and had an effect over a long period when crocker was in afghanistan in 2011 and the Obama Administration wanted to pull out the troops and basically everybody in the administration were arguing for going slow and the argument was kind of never fully resolved. It just kept going on. That i that is a great segue to my next question. The story of the diplomats is also the story of American Intervention in the middle east and South Central asia to be sure. Were their views of these over the role of america in this part of the world or did they have great differences among them . There were differences but also a lot of commonalities. Most of these Foreign Service people are traditionalists. They believe in the foreignpolicy views they believe they should have a leading role in the world and that our influence is underwritten by force. They are slow to get into conflicts and also slow to get out of them because crocker always says americans are convinced with our influence and military and economic tools we can get in and reshape parts of the world so we try to exert our will but then pretty soon we discover things are not changing as fast as we like and we get discouraged and want to leave so theres a lot of political pressure to move quickly. They understand having the facts in the foreignpolicy take a long time. There was a german sociologist says its like driving a nail slowly through a hard piece of wood, and i think that is the kind of consensus view. People take time and they need more effort than the americans realize. Its often something the military doesnt have some of the themes of the book is the relationship that all if they had relationship that all if they had with their military counterparts. Can you talk about the importance of the relationship in the conflicts and how they were able to manage that maybe some better than others. Through the military and diplomatic corps together in a way they hadnt been thrown together since vietnam and so they had to get along and they often have different agendas and orders from washington and they couldnt always see eye to eye. I remember robert ford telling me that he understood the iraqis better than the american military. So, you know, there are cultural differences that run deep. In the beginning of the iraq period especially, the also in afghanistan there were a lot of conflicts that have been written a lot about between the diplomats and the generals. There were times they went their own way and they were not even communicating with each other. I talked with the junior Foreign Service officers that have seen the generals and ambassadors yelling at each other in front of the iraqis and it was not good. But the problem with all of that granger is that things just dont get it done. So after a while, it became apparent things were not in concert as the Bush Administration became increasingly visible and a disruptive problem. So, by that time David Petraeus and ryan crocker went to iraq during that period where bush was sending more troops to try to calm the civil war, crocker and petraeus realized they needed to get along and work in harmony to get things done otherwise they could kind of divide and conquer. Crocker and petraeus went for long runs and david q. Over issues. Petraeus put a Satellite Office next to crockers office and they would talk about almost everything. He would go and meet with Prime MinisterNouri Al Maliki and they would know their lines should be. They do without promptin knew wt he would talk about. It wasnt a state and when crocker left afghanistan and iraq in 2009, immediately they began having disagreements with general ray odierno who was in charge of the military. It just wasnt a natural state. One more and then we will start taking questions from you all. All. Theres a microphone over here to the right. Just please queue up and then we will let you have that. Actually, two questions. In the writing of the book, did you learn or stumble across more junior or midlevel officers that you think somebody might be writing a book about in the years to come in terms of their performance and then what would you say to people that are considering the career and who might be a little intimidated and put off . I did come across some who rose quickly through the ranks and had incredible talent. When Chris Stevens was in israel in about 2000 to 2002, he worked for some really talented guys that worked for him. Stevens was then number two in the part of the embassy that dealt with the palestinians. He had working for him a young man and another named Jeffrey Beall for both went on to be outstanding u. S. Officials. He had been a cia officer and had come over as a specialist that worked for the state department and was an outstanding performer in iraq and ran for Congress Last year in Hudson Valley of new york and did not make it. It was a hotly contested seat. He ended up being president obamas top adviser on i think much of the middle east at one point in the second term. In terms of the future for the young Service Officers, its been difficult because they watched how the Trump Administration reduced the size of the Foreign Service and number of applicants for the Foreign Service fell for the peak of 20,000 a year to 8,000 so a lot of people have been discouraged but i know a lot of people, Foreign Service officers to teach young people and i have a friend at Johns Hopkins and they say there is still a huge demand for these jobs. I think that the testimony that we have seen in the impeachment inquiry is going to increase the demand because they see that they are consequential to interesting and they can really be fun, so i think that we are going to find there is still going to be a demand. You wrote about an interesting moment related to this because the book is about going to the worst places and doing the hardest jobs where they are trying to get the state department and congress to build up the embassy and staff it up with a lot more Foreign Service officers. Have you had trouble g