All right i think well get started, i know there is a quick lunch but we have a very fall day. So great that was a great introduction and now we have a interesting discussion that we can turn to and for me this is a real honor and a personal privilege to introduce our lunch and guest. Susan is no stranger to the womens Foreign Policy group and throughout her career she has represented the best of the values that we promote at the womens Foreign Policy group. We all know are from her public life in the Clinton Administration and. She served as one of the youngest secretaries of state and then went on to service the u. S. Ambassador to the United States and then a National Security adviser to president obama. And her terrific new book and susan takes us behind the scenes of u. S. Foreign policy making from the rwanda and genocide the bombing of two she gives a clear insight into these and other tough National Security moments. Susan it was in the room at the table and even in the crosshairs of american political discourse and what i like most about her book is not just the Foreign Policy discussions. Its also her personal story which is really just as fascinating and captivating as the key moments in the situation room. I think susan is sums it up best, she says they aim to share what ive learned along the way the importance of always doing youre best picking yourself up dusting yourself off driving down the court to the bucket all while maintaining grace under fire. Thats a reason, thats for sure of course theres no one better to interview her and susan page, we have a lot of citizens here today the Award Winning washington pirro chief, she is covered six administrations and reported from Six Continents in dozens of Foreign Countries and author of herself she is working on a biography of nancy pelosi entitled madam speaker. During meanwhile coming ambassadors usain rice and susan page on. Think you kathy of never been in a room with so many women that have name card to the ambassador before their names, that is really remarkable when its an honor to be here with this group and have the opportunity to talk such a ground breaker who herself has an ambassador in front of her name. I am going to pose some questions please feel free to have cards with your questions ill try to catch up with a couple of those, she is of course the author of this new book tough love and im not gonna criticize the fact that this subtitles seems to enter the proposition. I mean im saying wait my stories of things worth fighting for at least understandable. It couldve been my understanding of the things are worth fighting law. You think that wouldve sold . I dont know possibly not you know one of the also before we go to questions i just like to know that this would make an excellent Christmas Gift and i think theyre going to be for sale so feel free to buy for your friends and family. You know they would be appropriate for people who care about Foreign Policy or care about politics, he would be appropriate for democrats, possibly also republicans, for women maybe also men and you know if you get them autographed by the author when you give them away as a gift will make you look important. Shell inscribed with whatever you want to say, to my best friend janet or whatever you want. So i would definitely recommend this book and congratulations on the book and on your remarkable career. Thank you so, much really appreciate it. Thank you kathy for the introduction and just want to say thank you to all of the folks its an honor to be back here and im very excited to be able to share this occasion with you. You know kathy is it something i thought was important about your book, its not only about Foreign Policy its also about you and i have read a lot of washington memories where you dont ever get a sense of the person behind the policy maker any personal struggles. In your book you are candid about your parents divorce the custody battle that follow that shape to you in various ways what is it difficult to write about some of that personal stuff . Well it was important for me not to raid a traditional washington memo or, wind there are into the seem to be quite self serving and three that is not what i was sitting out to do. I want to share as best i could end with a lot of candor who i am and where i came from and what ive learned with the hopes that it could be he used to other people and there is no point ensuring what you learned here only prepare to share the good stuff, that happy stuff, so i actually go back this is very much a personal story and you have to wait before you get the policy stuff. Its a personal story that goes back to my parents and grandparents, even extreme a great grandparents. My mothers family were immigrants from jamaica who went to Portland Maine in 1912 and my parents my grandparents had nothing, no education and they sent all five of their kids to college, two of my uncles were uncles since he was a doctor and one elicited optometrist and my mother who had a career in Higher Education was instrumental in establishing the program and sat on 11 corporate boards and under corporate leader. My dad side and a top of his background going up in segregated South Carolina born in 1920 the grandson of a slave that sleigh found it is school in new jersey calls the boarding town school in the late 18 eighties that went on for 70 years to educate generations of African Americans in technical and in vocational skills and also in College Preparatory skills. So this is the family i came from and i want to share that, i wanted to share what i learned from my parents and grandparents such powerful knowledge and i want to talk about the forces that shaped me and that includes what it was like to grow up in washington d. C. In the sixties and seventies, early eighties, i had the great privilege of attending some of the best private schools in the city as a Young AfricanAmerican Woman and i learned a lot from that i learned from my parents ugly and painful divorce and i couldnt be honest who i am without sharing what that was about and how it affected me because among the many forces that was as instrumental as ever in shaping me. Whether talking about my childhood or my struggles as a mother and my marriage. Being the daughter of ailing parents while im serving as un ambassador a National Security adviser. All those personal elevations, elements are critical to who i am and i think to how and why i perform in the ways that i did. Sometimes when you go back and look at things in detail in your life you understand things you can understand at the time. You figure out things even never figured out before, any of that to happen to you and writing the book, is there anything you found illuminating to yourself . Yes i mentioned already my childhood but i feel like i really since high school had been sprinting through my life through college and my graduate school and i never really had time to process and digest how my experience is particularly with my family and their breakup had affected me, i will is charging to keep going so i learned a lot about myself and about my family and even in the process uncovered some really difficult documents and depositions from my parents custody battle and they gave me insight into what i was seeing from a childs perspective but now could appreciate from an adult perspective the other big learning was how much my time in the Clinton Administration particularly my experience as assistant secretary of state for African Affairs was also a critical learning experience i was 32 years old when i was named assistant secretary of state and i had started in government as a junior staffer director on the and i see, you in affairs and peacekeeping. Iran the Africa Office and then i was nominated to go to the state department and i dont think i appreciate it at the time the extent of the challenges i face as that 32yearold African American mother of a three month old child breastfeeding in the state department trying to win the trust and confidence of career ambassador aerial core that was 20 to 30 years my senior and then predominately white and male korean officials. I struggled in that period and i made some significant mistakes that i read about in the book and i had friends and mentors who were kind enough to take me inside and say youre gonna screw this up unless you make some significant course corrections. I talk about with great affection and somebody who may be known to some of you. Late congressman howard who is the second term of the Clinton Administration worked with me in the African Bureau but he was president clintons special envoy for the Great Lakes Region of central africa. Hello political appointee but one with and more miss knowledge and experience and he hasnt read in the book took me out to lunch about a year into the job, the magic gore the you all want to know as a really shiny grab the Chinese Restaurant and he sat me down and he said look, you are smarter and, you have vision you have the support of the secretary and the president but youre about to fail because you to impeach and. You are too hard charging and youre not taking enough of the input and the experience in the knowledge of those on this team and i want to see you succeed but this is what you will have to do and that was an extraordinary gift, it was tough love in the purest form he didnt have to take me out, he didnt have to share what he thought, he couldve let me fail but he did end and others did end and i learned from those experiences so as i went back to reflect on my personal professional development that time are you wrote particularly the latter four were really incredibly important and valuable learning experiences. So there were a fair number of women who had positions on National Security. President obama i gather what did he call the three of you. He called us the fureys, very privately and i reveal this in the book, we were paranoid that that was going to leak. I put it out so thats not a lead but with all their knowledge and permission he called it is the fear ease and joked as i described in the book that it was the perfect moniker for us because we were fighting on behalf of the moral good and would end suffer anyone who got in our way. We protested saying this is sexist, the fury was far smelling hags an. He said you have to understand how perfect it is and he went about explaining how perfect he thought it fit, and many ways it did. There is a funny story because one saturday afternoon alicia came and the three of us went into the oval and its saturday so its a little more relaxed and we have a little bit more time and more casual and she brings for the president a cartoon from the new yorker which i reproduce in the book and its called fisheries to point oh and it shows the furious with their nicknames and lisa had modified one which was passive aggressive and she crossed out passive a and there is a famous photograph of the three of us laughing hysterically with the president leaning over his desk and pizza caption that he put the photograph said there are laughing about a cartoon in the new yorker that resembles the three of them without explaining the resemblance so it was a huge privilege to be able to serve a president who greatly appreciated a strong woman and their willingness to give them their best unvarnished. So what difference does it make a how is policy different in different, or the policy different because of the several women involved in doing it. Well its different its not different, its different in the sense that we really felt that we were a team, the team also not be on the three of us sues each orange who was the and i see chief of staff, Ben Rhodes Deputy security adviser and wylie who is Deputy National economic adviser and so it wasnt all of us but the three most senior were. We disagreed off and on substance but we knew that we had each others backs and whoa onto anybody who try to drive a wedge between us particularly from the outside and i hope and believe that we also lead in a fashion that was supportive of the human beings on the team. And other were as, i think all of us tried very hard to lead people with an appreciation and for their needs whether they were mothers or fathers or wives of ill husbands or children that were struggling. Family came first event in the hothouse of the white house and president obama underscore that from the top so whether it was me with my mother in the hospital and she was dying or whether you is a colleague whose husband had a stroke the message from the top down that we tried to underscore was go do what you have to do to be as hole as you can as a human being and we did have will fill in behind you, its simple logic if youre struggling and here in a horrible moment in your personal life youre not gonna perform well anyway. If you have bosses and colleagues who you know value you as a human being and will be there for you you are going to perform optimally. If you get the impression they dont care than why should you care and so that kind of leadership commitment. That collegiality and compassion and that thing colleague from the top down i think we as a team we really able to impart the core value of how we lead. So great question from gordon who i think has left you can tell or a gave her credit for this in the Obama Administration. You know the best day of the Obama Administration for me, there were many but the happiest day for me had nothing to do with Foreign Policy, who is the day that the Supreme Court affirmed the right of game marriage and that was such a happy day because one who was so right and two it was so joyful and mattered in the most profound way to so many of her colleagues and i still get choked up thinking about it but we lit up the white house and rainbow colors and everybody celebrated regardless of who you know when their Sexual Orientation are who they love to use a moment of pure joy. So i wouldnt have guessed that, worse day for you. Too many to count. I write about in the book some of the worst days differently, sorry susan hearing to see this. Revolved around the snowden experience an. Some tough days around russian interference in the election but honestly i cant name all of them. There also a lot of good days you know the opening to cuba and the fact that as a right in the book we really stuck the landing on that, we had two years of secret negotiations that never leaked and we were able to unveil all of the elements of those changes simultaneously and effectively. You know the iran deal, and many other days worthy of celebration but pure joy. Lets talk about President Trump youre an, old man you go from President Trump, pure joy to President Trump. You are on bug has an, well you introduce in your book, you tell that anecdote about your first and last meeting with President Trump, tell us about that. So to speak on. My first and only encounter with donald trump occurred at the 2015 white house Correspondents Dinner which you all will now on is an odious affair but an important one man. Its a symbol of a free press. Im all for that and by the way i think the president should pretend that and respect the press. But i digress, but im sitting at one of these round tables almost like you are kathy anne facing forward and it was one of these breaks in the program where people were up in about milling and mixing and i sensed from behind law this president s and literally this president presence is grabbing me by the shoulders and lifting me out of my chair and a turn around and its donald trump and he hugs me cant. I have never met it before so i was kind of freaked out again. He holds me, by the way this was not a touchyfeely, physically uncomfortable hug, theres just uncomfortable because i dont know you when youre big, and youre not letting me go any whisper is in my ear, you have been very unfairly treated over benghazi and youre doing a great job for the country. I was like wow, im not sure what to do with this on so we were asked to pose for a couple of photos that are in the public domain, both of us i think are smiling more than we would wish in retrospect. And that was my only encounter with donald trump. So from that first and only experience given how harshly he had criticized my boss and me and many of my colleagues, this is only a few weeks before he announced his run for the presidency i was made aware with firsthand experience the gap between what he is prepared to say in public and what he might say and private anywhere. We heard how President Trump uses intelligence and how is it different from previous president s you have the law firsthand knowledge of how President Trump uses his intelligence, view of observed him and you have a lot of experience of seeing this. How would you characterize how he is similar to were different from previous president s and his attitude and his use of intelligence. Well i do want to be careful about answering that im really not in the room so to make an apple step apples comparison its quite difficult. From the outside on he seems not to either have confidence and what hes learning from the Intelligence Community or not necessarily have the capacity, or maybe the patience to absorb it fully. So israe