An hour with Bob Woodward

today on tv are present a man who's been called one of the best investigative reporters of our time bob woodward i'm kate mcintyre bob woodward is perhaps best known for his work on covering the watergate scandal which eventually led to president nixon's resignation that reporting won a pulitzer prize for the washington post in nineteen seventy three woodward was also the lead reporter for the post on the aftermath of the september eleventh terrorist attacks winning the post a pulitzer prize for national affairs in two thousand to he's won almost every major american journalism awards including the william allen white citation from the university of kansas in two thousand woodward has authored or co authored sixteen bestselling nonfiction books including all the president's men the reverend and his latest obama's wars spoke with delays the director of the film institute of politics at the university of kansas it may fifteenth two thousand eleven bob glad you could join us to saturn and we do appreciate

very much walking the university of dayton is great to go with two let's start today tell us a little bit about how you got started in reporting and tell us take a long time to describe your craft how you get inside access to so many remarkable sources i think in a sense of reporting started when i was the janitor in my father's law firm end of illinois on a place called wieden and that i would go cleanup and then there'd be these interesting papers on the desk and when people think the janitor doesn't get re are naive and then i guess i would say the tv you know that's an interesting case let's pursue it further in find things in the files and then go to edit and checked the disposed files which were happily in alphabetical order and i would take classmates and their last name and see if there was a file on the case either

and god i mean to summarize everyone has a secret and it's often in the warrior's files and so that calmed presented itself is this kind of everything is perfect in there are there's no controversy there's no crime there's no fraud and then you look into disposed files in an iris case of a divorce case or something and it was the wearing that what was hidden and so that's kind of the beginning of the process quite honestly i you get such great access i have time to time it's a big big difference and we were talking at once you know you take people as seriously as they take themselves you and i've worked up when i did the book the choice on the dole clinton campaign and i came to you and said

you know i want to see how you do your job who you are how you think and i think i interviewed you eleven hundred and twenty two times it's something a meeting that that many but you know why did you talk you can answer better than i was the reporter i think i think the campaign made a conscious decision to do it and i think that we felt because in your credibility as someone who always got inside things now we were given that access that you went more than just you know we would talk for hours and go through specifically what the strategy was what you thought was occurring in the polling the advertising that you know the behind the scenes jockeying and so for us an extra mile walk i enjoyed talk now on the interview yeah and i think i got turned around rehab know why why why because ob first what we want a prison as thorough

a portrait of the campaigns we could transfer the object so that our ideas are in the world though the part of him and you took your work seriously and let's face it people like the top i think there is this secret part of even people with a lot the high that they believe in the first amendment and that the whole idea of what's the way about and my worry about this country and now in twenty eleven is audible get secret government this is what we had more delegates in that secret government will do a scene and i think people either consciously or unconsciously understand that and they will open up the process and that leads me to my next question which is on the watergate is the most important political story of our lifetimes how to baton route out in human core of all the unraveling well what we were we live in a bubble where really young

reporters working on it and it started on june seventeen seventy two when the burglary into the democratic headquarters of the watergate office building occurred it was and that was at two am in the morning and in that on the police water early saturday morning in the editor's that was a day i was supposed to be off the editor said or it had such a nice day who would be dumb enough to come to work that day and my name immediately sprung to their legs and that i worked on that list story that first day in the five burglars were brought in for an arraignment mccourt woman and the burglars had colds sometimes business suits that your average particular and that hundred dollar bills in their pockets and that would end the judge asked the head of the team james mccord where did you work anywhere

in the judge said speak up and he said see and the judge said let me here is that cia and i was sitting in the front row and i heard that and this is in the book and in the movie man whoa verbatim holy i'm an md and you know it was it was incremental coverage and it was a commitment by the publisher katharine graham in the editor of an interview red katharine graham's a book personal history it really is a marvelous memoir and she was a marvelous publisher and she was taking a risk we were young we could have it if it turned out what we'd written about nixon watergate was not true i could have a ben carro could've gone to be a rock n roll critic something he was thinking of doing i could've done something

distasteful like going to law school with her daughter doing and the kids are great took the rings and if i can tell a story about her art she died in two thousand won before nine eleven and we wrote these stories with her approval and support and editing a bradley and his team and there was a problem and the problem was most people didn't believe that in fact our colleagues at the post didn't believe and it just seemed incredible that mix of the conventional wisdom was nixon is too smart to be involved in something like that so i'm in january seventeenth read nixon and one of an astonishing landslide reelection don't believe this will later learn one of the secrets strategies of the knicks and game was to that challenge the fcc tv licenses that the post company had which were very valuable and so

fair realistically the reputation was on the rim of the toilet is a business the stock had been driven down because of these license challenges to the stock was in the toilet and graham invited me for a lot and a member of going in she'd we sat down and she just started asking me questions about watergate and really blew my mind about how much detail thea and i later described this is the perfect management style which is mined on hansel i'm being intellectually engaged what your organization is doing but letting other people executed are some people are from presidential campaigns in with a different style right a few years ago the dole campaign was notorious and the goal was always like the trail of facts and he was always getting his hands on the steering wheel given grim

state and her mind on it but didn't say this is loud ended with this is how the report and then and so she asked if the end the killer question which a great ceo finance which is when we get to find out all the truth about watergate and i said because it was a criminal conspiracy because they compartmentalize information because when we went to talk to people they were frightened and often slammed the door and our faces the stakes were so high odds that the answer to when we were going to find out the whole story was never been a member looking across the table and katharine graham had this pain wounded stricken look on her face you know that the hanging out forever and when i said it she just looked at me and said i'll remember this all my life

she said never don't tell me that i want the launch a highly motivated but the never don't tell me never was not a threat it was a statement of purpose she knew what our job was and what she said is look use all the resources all the resources of this newspaper we have an obligation to get to the bottom of this that's what we do in this business i don't care what the risk is it and if it's a provable we believe it's true if it's a provable we have a criminal president of the united states and so we are we have a triple obligation and if so if i can say it's a wonderful atmosphere worked in when you know the boss is baking you all the way gets what you do are realizes that in this case

and lots of storage unit than usernames and i have to check and be careful that you're not going to have video were audio to prove what you've written and someday we're going to put a plaque in the lobby of the washington post and a drill at an oregon a bold advance an orphan taken now and it simply can't be beginning quote were never don't tell me that her ankle get grey and january nineteen seventy three tell us a little bit about how critical mark felt who turned out to be the throat was it's in the idea of the book all the president's men in the movie and he confirmed he provided lots of insight we've set him in the movie in cities says follow the money actually i don't have in my notes and literally saying that but it was get look at this secret file and see who controlled and in how the money was there

but we had lots of other sources he gave his call for particularly me knowing you have somebody who is number two in the fbi at that point who was really kind of the content point for everyone in the fbi doing investigation saying this is much more serious since its darker higher ups are involved there's a massive cover up going on but you know that was a secret for thirty three years until he revealed himself and that one of the russian novelist says there's no way the only way to treat people can keep a secret is the two of them are dead but we kept it secret and it obviously helped the reporting a lot of the clothes are not just the watergate that any of these folks are

projects that you go see somebody we're going to see you and i said look i'm not going in a news source in you know and until fifteen years later when word the dole institute added about you is yellow throw in india knew i would protect him that opens up the system because people in campaigns are in the cia in the supreme court are not going to talk with your name attached and give full truthful accounts of what happens what are the lessons that all americans need always remember about working well that's really into heaven the first lesson is and during watergate senator dole was also republican national committee chairman and when we get some of this recording he was part of the group that was trotted out to denounce us and he did if you

go look at his speech and seventy two he roundly denounced as he was told to do that by the white house to his credit he later apologized to get the ram into office saying you know i was republican national committee chairman i'd second i think one of the lessons is odd dont always do what you're told in politics it particularly when you're going up criticizing her denouncing somebody in such a detroit vitriolic way as they were doing the other lesson is i think that you could argue the system worked on nixon was held accountable but nixon resigned not because of the democrats or the press he resigned because the republican party was barry goldwater and republicans who went to nixon and said it was cold water once told me too many lies to winning crime and nixon said to

goldwater said well if i'm in peach is was almost certain by the house and a trial in the senate i've i figure i've got about twenty votes and that goldwater look them in the eye and said you have for that means ninety six and get in and next day nixon announced he was resigning the republican party said this nixon's behavior is an acceptable and that's what drove me to know quite frankly the republican party rally behind him and said oh no this is not fair this is not approvable but we have the tapes which are so you know it's amazing he taped himself when i was four my last book obama's wars i was interviewing president obama last summer and pointed out to him and his aides say in the waiters in the oval office where they get the nixon microphone and i think they've added a check

elected are the nixon library recently completely remove revamp their watergate exhibit and brought you out ugly ben bradlee going out the talk was that was well i was that was really something the crows are in the last poll in it and we were not on nixon's trip christmas card list and up for his library and home and he's got the house where he was born his grave is there the helicopter that he left the white house when he made the famous you know victory sign paradoxically is all wear and all of those tapes and records are there and go see it and realize that the record is kind of solidified and dave

that you know this is in the middle of orange county which is in the arab world will overflow audience of people willing to look less and awesomeness questions though was it was in a sense bearing the issue of nixon and watergate was it so clear now and then when you do these up boxer projects are investigations he rarely achieve cloture inquirer and in the case of nixon because of his tapes and his resignation was closer and clarity and so no i think that reaches a point where you can look at nixon in full it's really accomplish some very important things and foreign policy and so once you know the debate about watergate is put aside because the record so complete i think in a sense it it opens for a fuller discussion of

nixon as president because like all presidencies multi dimensional the same time listen to his tapes and it's always he's ordering something illegal or used this abuse of power what horrifying about the nixon tapes to sit around for hours and hours and hours talking about let's groove so and so let's get the iraqis and this person would still have the fbi do that nixon ordered the secret service to get the telephone of his renegade brother reviews the secret service an institution set up to protect is used for wired and there was no one of an the dog that never barks on the nixon tapes are you know whenever says what will to my knowledge what would be good what does the country need it was always using the presidency in its power as an instrument of personal right then a

lost opportunity for a president to use friendship presidents nixon when he was elected first took office and sixty members a wave of goodwill the democrats republicans were wanting to succeed we wanted to get it out of the vietnam war and he he never looked at it still was a war with enemies and predicts and was driven why he and others went to not the labor the answer here the day nixon resigned he out the night before i'd gone on television said he was going to resign and then the date of the actual resignation in the white house east room he called all of his friends and cabinet members the family at his farewell address and you made some of the va was five the national television and he was sweating and you

know tex is wife two daughters to son in laws were there and it was your mother father was almost a psychiatric now one of them or most bizarre speeches and people on his staff close to him were used to be the first person to go over the edge psychologically on live national television and just wound up with them and this is the interesting thing about nixon he can regroup and waved his hand like here's why called you all year and he said the following always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself i think of the wisdom of that statement he'd realized that he was what did they mean that in heeding others even destroy himself in his presidency and so at that moment

there was this self revelation now it was too late he couldn't say i get what happened so i'm going to stay but i mean he did resign but at that moment of intense paint your proposal of leaving and he realized that the piston driving him in his presidency was the state but the lesson is you know you know politics it gets rough and ugly a name but never reached that level of the hate that nixon and for the others we first met has as you mentioned before in nineteen ninety five and you know you're doing the book the choice on the dole clinton campaign now when we first started meeting president clinton had just had a devastating midterm election is job rating was in the low to mid forties it reinvent itself yeah it's a good and i'm sure you've stay awake at night thinking about how did that happen how did he

reinvents himself i'll i did that book in it came out in june of making ninety six before the election what i wanted to do is say this is who dollars an hour we operate in this is how this is who clinton is about the average give people information before the election and then after rob clinton won i've spent some time in rodin if true and the republicans and i read it on the plane coming out you hear a knight because it came right in europe goes right how did this happen what clinton did first of all and i say in the this if it were which was written well after clinton took office for the second term so it's nineteen ninety seven that i underestimated the power of money that clinton had a fundraising operation which made you

republicans look incompetent and terry mcauliffe is fundraiser chief fundraiser went to court in nineteen ninety four and said i can raise the money and need but we need to get folks in here to see you and they use the white house is a fundraising apparatus you remember the lincoln bedroom you know you could stay in the lincoln bedroom for twenty five thousand dollars it was for sale and clinton of course denied this and then in the investigations it later came out there was a memo in his own hand right saying you know will give the lincoln bedroom twenty five thousand two hundred thousand i said that was really important they'd been realized with a donation restrictions they could raise this what's called soft money through the democratic national committee ngo get hundreds of thousands of dollars for people with a re re in an advertising campaign that was directed right at the

heart of bob dole and third the advertising campaign said it you know the clock is running against the gingrich dole republican party they always point gingrich with him they said the dole had a plan to cut medicare a two hundred and seventy billion dollars now who wrote the senate's bill clinton participated in the white house i'm writing these sands and he went through a process and this has to do with the re invention or refocus bill clinton that i call self hearing he would write at sony realize ok this is what i'm running for reelection on i need to incorporate that in what i say and do is president so that was the whole goal odd convergence of his campaign and it his message is president and so we became he was very very formidable and you know he was a guy

what forty nine percent of the vote a goal that forty one percent we forgotten this parole that eight percent but it was a money driven disappointing eight clinton knew to be eager to appear to be a successful presidency he had to win reelection absolutely critical now i don't want to do because this is relevant here at the dole institute i went to see senator dole after last year's no longer senator corzine resigned from the senate to be a fulltime him think this was an interview for a couple of hours in march of ninety seven a couple of months after clinton's second inauguration and some of you may recall after the old lost his first media appearances anyone remember

where they were leno letterman and saturday night live a perfect poll maneuver and i asked him what to do this and he said well the people thirty eight million people the ones who voted for him didn't want a sore loser and then i say whoa what what happened why did you lose and he said well to a certain extent in nineteen ninety four clinton elected a republican congress which is true this was when gingrich and republicans took over the house in the senate and he said in a way republican congress which kind of scared some people re elected clinton and one of the balance government that then i'm sorry to dwell on this but this was fabulous to read this as it gets its goal it is best says so what you think of what you said all likable rogues

it was always on the edge he lived on the edge he was always pushing the envelope it was almost this is all talking so it was almost as if he was saying to the world no one will ever catch me i'll never slip off and you i read that and then you know the monica lewinsky history which followed an old lu is when nine one one was sound when the most terrible days in american history flight your assessment of how president bush and his administration campbell leave their immediate response i did for books and bush and his response to nine eleven and i get criticized because the first book field actually they did a very good job and went into afghanistan very aggressively drove al qaeda out of afghanistan course we now

know knew for many years that what pakistan and the taliban was overthrown i think the big problem is in which will be debated in history is the iraq war because it was a response to nine eleven iraq had nothing to do with nine eleven as we know they knew that i am is it a mistake it invasion you know that that's one of the great questions and i tried it i just don't know i don't do not know and let me tell you about interviewing bush on this the second book i did was planted but they're about how we went to war and i gather information for about a year for a book like this and then i sent george w bush a twenty page memo aligning the chronology of his decision making as i understood it and my colleagues at the post said you

sent george w bush a twenty page memo you finally have lost your mind i mean i there's no evidence in all of his years in andover yale or harvard business school or the ever read anything that law what makes you think he'll he's going to start now and i said i'm an optimist you get the memo credit condie rice who was the national security advisor called me in and said you have a lot of information about this and you're going to write this book in these articles for the washington post with you talk to butcher knife and i said of course and she said he'll see you tomorrow so now for three and a half hours and that book i interviewed him head to head like this what happened here with dick cheney say what was your attitude toward pollitz an excavation of his decision making in it i think when i published that transcript i used the

highlights in the book of course you really will see exactly what bush was doing now in these books you're asking you know what happened when you you're pushing at the larger question which is complex whose george w bush so i'm interviewing him in the oval office and not in response to my question is that out of the blue one point he says i believe we have a duty to free people to liberate and i couldn't go wittman isn't that dangerously paternalistic it's not the constitution it's not in any law and i remember thinking duty you know is there a bigger worked for president of the united states the figure out what his duty is you really know what's driving him and then he really got upset when i challenged him and

started swiping your own not physically but for police if you don't get it during the leaders imagine being called an elitist by george bush it does sometimes if this offer and my business and and then he said and he's jumping in his chair and this is not you know this is the real inner gorge and he said look those of us who took our country to war interact tony blair great britain and leaders in australia and in spain and so what we have a ceo to free people and our duties eel i'd really and you look at the record he thought it was going to be easy it thought paul wolfowitz who was the deputy defense secretary told rumsfeld the war would last seven days now what you know what are we out two thousand days you know i mean to get

in you know it's like remodeling a house if somebody comes in and says it'll take a year and still cost two hundred thousand dollars and then you go through iterations of the witches with him and that the iraq war plan and at the end if they say you know we're going to do the remodeling in five days and it's going to cost a hundred and fifty dollars you think well that's how do that because you think that you know it's going to be the same as the big complex operation they were talking about at the beginning i think that draw bush i think he really thought it was going to be easy and it was going to be the big liberate europe and there were put up george w bush there to send downtown baghdad to replace those of saddam hussein and the big mistake he may be at all meetings about how they're doing ever had a meeting at the nsc about whether to do there was a momentum now how do you look at this in history

book of the year in the west dave interviews for that but just that book he's standing in the oval office with his hands in his pocket the casual bush and finally that the interrogation is over and i'm going to get this guy out of here and just i said how do you think iraq how do you think history will view iraq war and took his hands out of his pockets as a live with him even an assurance that history we want no wall the debt comforting thought and they were going home and my wife elsa kast hours the university he answered all the questions but the truly good and important news is i had the ending that the ball and these are hard to find i think about history we won't know war began stuffing the question that he's right you know in twenty five fifty years this maybe historians may be armed connect what

happened in iraq to this arab spring i don't know i don't think there's a connection but there maybe so history always looks very differently and things and it isn't a reporter i would say you get some pretty substantial reporting for the post on the operation to kill them on talk a little bit about that and talk about the difficult year or on the ease with which the president had to make that decision yeah this job of what i wrote in the post you're always looking for the moment where does the movie star and some people told me that last year are they want above see that it totally lost the bailout and trio they had no idea where it was that they knew from interrogations and other intelligence that the real group of couriers

who acted for bin ladin carrying messages back and forth and that was the main carrier named al kuwaiti and in the exhaustive reporting it and listening they do they discovered that somebody called al kuwaiti before it and it was just kind of you know what you might call a friend hey how you do alone haven't heard from you for a while i'll catch up phone call and al kuwaiti and it turned out the rule was you left the compound where bin laden was you had to drive ninety minutes before you put the battery in your cell phone and music for fear you could be tracked them ina mentioned i mean i think of my daughter was fourteen having to go ninety minutes with voters soulful i think you guys but that's what helped to add an end and then he said to his friend

who says what you're doing he said this is a great life i'm with the people i used to be with and that a light went on in the intel world said let's find this guy lets tracking them they trekked into the compound they set up a safe house cia did watching it from a distance they didn't want to work anymore and so they didn't really get a whole lot they had over the satellite surveillance and this guy would come out of the house into the corner every day and walk around for an hour to call them the pieces and they could never get a look at his face and he seemed to have the gate of a tall man but they didn't know while calling was the experts tried to figure out is it's at how tall is this guy and they said how well is between five eighty six eight yeah i think that's

most people is made and they did it so that they didn't know and this went on for their was watching this compound three months and those you know we should do something we're not sure people told me it was the best circumstantial case they ever have one of the intel people i said well it's a forty percent chance it's been long and some would say well that's not very good you know we shouldn't go in like we think it is an empty any said that it's thirty eight percent better than anything we've ever had before and out they went and finally obama okay the operation gates is on television tonight and sixty minutes saying it's one of the cup's hughes calls he's ever seen a president make i mean it certainly there was an element of guts and all of

this is you weren't sure a whistle you know in the world of journalism you live in politics you live in the world about and this was certainly an unusual amount of bell but when they shot bin ladin in the lady's corpse out and that was one of the seal team members the news exactly six feet in his job was to lie down next to the corpse and see if the corpse was taller name was several inches taller and then they did face identification and eventually dna but obama saw this in the situation room and after the helicopters that album the seal team he turned to his advisors this one may recall in the accounts one of the helicopters malfunctioned and they destroyed it rather than leave it there and so then the president turned everyone in a moment of and the

kind of racy humor he said well we donated a sixty million dollar helicopter to this operation couldn't somebody of for a tape measure the company's president the president faces a pretty tough reelection campaign what has he got to do to be successful they think to get reelected how important is it that he be reelected for the less well for him as far as he's concerned it's pretty important died i know what i know when i get up in the morning at the first thing i think of is getting to the bathroom and sixty eight the us the second thing is one of the best or typing because they're all republicans democrats everyone so assigning something i think when obama gets up in the morning he thinks about will i win reelection political survival he's shown a lot of nerve in the nationals security field the book i did obama's wars recounts in

detail exactly what how immediate afghan decisions were decisions the war on terror the book the secret war in pakistan in fact he says one of these top secret meetings the poisonous and pakistan with idiots and they've known that for long and you know this so well and maybe even you taught me this that in politics you do one thing well and the major often it's can you get can you take the nerve that obama has displayed in national security and pivot to the issues of the economy and make people feel that he's put his arms around them and really cares about their economic well being in their struggle and somebody was talking about latino economic anxiety and it's more than anxiety in this country it's

this people are struggling in her name and discover cool demeanor it may not work and election and if you're a republican come since and makes the case that this is my program this is what we're going to do if you go back and i think this really news cole so much in ninety two clinton versus bush sr now what clemens said is i'm going to use the power of the presidency to fix the economy and his economic manifesto was putting people first james carville said it's the economy stupid clinton went out i feel your pain in bush was distant from that i think republicans liberals conservatives democrats want one thing particularly right now from a president they want somebody who's going to say better use these

this incredible concentration of power i got in this office to fix that the thing that needs fixing need to improve the conditions of the economy can grow in advance and so that's a question i think the other question is why doesn't have the recall is about the birth certificate why why was that an issue you know i don't understand i have you know republicans have a number of reasons to disagree with the president there is substance i don't understand where ok but it grew and i did a little you know there really wasn't the short four form birth certificate that city was born an ally the republican governor of hawaii said this was a legitimate birth certificate the head of the vital records office said it was also republican said it was legitimate there were two newspapers

in hawaii who publish birth announcements that he was a rock hussein obama was born august fourth nineteen sixty one i mean he really have to be a wacko conspiracy theorist who think somebody could go play of that in the newspapers of fifty years ago and then he releases the long forum and so forth and i've been thinking you know this is kind of obvious this is a non issue i am you know what if it's about in this is going to be a big test of this paints a matter of trust and what people are that people were using the birth certificate issue is a way of saying i'm not he hasn't closed the trust gap with me and that's an abuse of their jail can he do that in a way that people say you know what i trust that and you

i just i found during the clinton bowled book i go talk to a goal for our workers sit down there on saturday afternoon and just talk and talk so they wouldn't have to go home and that there was a a sense in there let's criticisms of dole is a manager and so when he would say something trust and with clinton there's always a dance and bob you have to see if you can close that that's going to be obama's big jump into long an answer but i think the trust issue and i think it the pivot the issue and convincing people that he's going to use the extraordinary power the office of president united states to do something every day to try to improve economic well being for that for the people in this country which i think is the majority are struggling my final question that today bob bob relates

to your book about bob dylan bill clinton and the work that you've done yet you've had the opportunity to basically view virtually all of senator cole's career around and the work he's done as a senior statesman over the many years since he left the senate and ran for president what is your assessment of his legacy well you know i think it's straight talk kind of the end you know we need more of that in politics and a kind of decency that radiates i always found him and minutes they are when you know he's he's done doing the leno show in the end the letterman show in the sense that you know he likes doing things like that but he he knew we still have a constituency those thirty eight million people if not then i know thirty eight million people ever vote for you for anything and then they're also not even for me i end up

even realize that that constituency is there in the deal them to a certain extent and so we've is he said you know he wanted to send a message and not a sore loser in that that's a really important message so it gets straight talk decency on even you know what i found when i did the book he was that a management was then it was always no in authorizing who wrote you know very very involved that you know that that's who he was and i i've always i've always thought the missing quality in american politics is stripped off ok will open up or questions from the audience please ask a question asked by gordon liddy who supplied the microphone

remember he was for the view that he was involved in watergate up there was rather interesting but to help track the issue time the navy and foolish a reporting job my time in the navy i serve on ships for four years including one off the coast of vietnam i was not in combat the amount and i saw war and realize what a calamity war can be and i saw that in a way that and i also saw when i worked in the pentagon the last year that the public message wasn't exactly straight talk about what was going on in vietnam and i acted as a courier for the chief of naval operations from the pentagon to the white house and that's when i met mark felt at the accident of sitting out there and they're and then i'd pursue that

relationship and when i became a reporter it paid off me this is the same answer that thank you for coming out what is the relationship between president obama and the top military leaders like admiral mullen and the top generals in afghanistan but that's a good question and i insert it into obama's wars and it still look it's unsettled they the military and obama have not seen don't see the war pod don't see things exactly alike when i interviewed go president obama last summer for obama's wars one of the things that came through it was very powerful he just does not like war and i cited his famous speech and two thousand

and two before the iraq war wouldn't then state senator obama nine years ago he was an obscure illinois state senator amazing there's hope for you a law that he and he said and this is a much much remembered is that when we if we go to war in iraq it will be indeterminate consequence cost and time commitment and so i just as i said isn't that the way all war is any kind of came alive and he said exactly and quoted some cliches about war in the civil war as the process of managing chaos and i had saved i have a quote from a world war two book that i gave him and the hand and he read it in the quotes from rick atkinson's book be a battle and which atkins

and talks about warren says more corruption everywhere from the private to the general to the commander in chief to the leader of the country and war is such it is the organized killing with other humans and denied it leaves no heart and spain and president obama read that said i'm sympathetic to this go read my nobel prize acceptance speech and i heard it read it and went back and dump it out there it was and he said look the war is never glorious that sometimes necessary but always a manifestation of human folly and he wants out ailes called the obamas towards the divided van and on the other hand he realizes he's commander in chief he promised he would ad resources in afghanistan we can't walk away from them or so you know in a way i think a lot of the military people think

rightly his heart is not in it at these secret meetings he would say enough to spend a trillion dollars on this war i want a plan to get out and they came in and said i quit when a train to four hundred thousand afghans in the afghan army and police force and yes for plans about how they were going to do that he said it's not credible he rejected that there is aid to this day and unsettled relationship between him and the military and it's going be most interesting in a couple of months to see you would force he withdraws from afghanistan but it in that boy you can see exactly his language his frustration it is uncertainty the heat george bush always told me he said i'm a better player not a textbook where obama's the opposite result textbook

and not a lot of that time one last question could you please tell us about their feelings offer young journalist world war when she was writing about watergate thank you for her thoughts or while you're writing about watergate a younger one that it was just the story but it was you know it was a very interesting story and it is a sin we were protected but there was no sense of where it was going and was incremental covering lots of stories hundreds of stories and you just kind of do it in you know you're in a bubble quite frankly and you know it's so i was twenty nine years old at the time and it gets your attention when the as ron ziegler who was white house spokesman gets up every day and announces you by name and you can either go through it with

journalism is about and but you know you just you you keep at it but again it's a new ebook com evidence through it as a reporter what is the evidence what they are you know and it and sometimes it takes a long time to get to the evidence the last story i wanna tell it was it after the book plan of attack about worth and the decision to go into a raft came out i was giving a talk in washington one night the other speaker was hillary clinton in the senate are gearing up to run for president and after the talk she came over and she said i quote from your book when the apple a time in fact i quote soften i think i should pay you royalties mm i stupidly said no rather than how much and on what you call so they indeed were

voices about history we will know will be dead why do you quote that and she got leigh actress as edie ever seen hillary clinton really exercise and he was in a way a growing and she's pounding of this interesting you can't talk like that be present united states as the winds that will george bush's a fatal was somebody who's just kind of it does what he thinks is right then than it gives up and doesn't pursue it and you can't be fatalistic be president united states and i said well you know i think some presidents have been fatal was like lincoln mr nixon said no no you cannot talk like that and be president of the united states john woodward we didn't know that he didn't say that but that was the tone and end she got really worked up and i'm pushing back and she said law

george washington would never talk like that ms ginni thomas jefferson would never talk like that now whitman was thinking the new mount rushmore and i was going to say something and then i thought we won't know will all the data that was a pulitzer prize winning journalist bob woodward speaking with bill lacy director of the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas woodward gave the two thousand eleven door lecture on may fifteenth two thousand eleven i'm kate mcintyre if you have questions or comments about this or any other k pr prisons i'd love to hear from you leave your comments on kansas public radio's facebook page or send me an email my address

is k m c i n t y r e at keio dot edu katie are present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas