a leadership issue. you are a veteran, a marine. your new memoir is about your service to your country. you served as secretary to the navy. what does the v.a. need to do to fix this backlog problem? >> first of all, this isn't a political memoir. >> no. it's about your service. we'll get to it in a moment. >> in terms of the veterans administration, when i was mentored many years ago by the world war ii veterans as a young council, we learned all the mechanics, had to learn all about the v.a. bureaucracy and those sorts of things. i was really surprised when i got to the senate in '07 when we saw the backlog in resolution of claims, not the medical side but just claims, was 600,000. by the time i left the senate in 2013 it was 900,000. that's a leadership issue. it's a very complicated issue because part of it is the post-9/11 veterans coming into the system, the afghanistan and