-Welcome back.
-As I live and breathe, I'm back.
-And congratulations on a Pulitzer!
-Thank you.
-You did not have one of those last time you were here.
-I did not. I do not take that lightly.
A lot of very brave sources did some very tough stuff, so...
-And I want to talk about the work
you did to win the Pulitzer, but I also want to talk about
this book that is separate from that.
And I know -- We do a show about breaking news.
we have to scramble and cover things last minute.
-You do an incredible job. -Well, thank you.
-I love a fake press briefing, right?
-But you --
-You ask harder questions than the actual press pool.
-I know. Thank you very much. Thanks for pointing that out.
But this is a book. This is a book.
And books have to be done a lot longer in advance
than something that I would do.
And you actually, in real time,
sort of had to cover the Tillerson firing
because this is about Secretaries of State and diplomacy.
And did you interview Tillerson
after he was fired, for the book, or before?
-Tillerson, if he had any logic,
knew that he was going to be fired on some level.
Maybe that's why he's so frank in this book.
I mean, he basically says "I didn't know what I was doing.
I wasn't experienced enough for it."
Yeah, I set out to interview every living Secretary of State.
I got there in the end, but the problem with
writing about this administration
is people are fired every five minutes.
-Yeah.
-So it's, like, rolling off the presses,
and I'm like, "Wait! Wait! Stop the machines!
I need to add Mike Pompeo to this book!"
-And you managed to. -And I did.
-And that's interesting.
Again, it is very forthright and frank,
the way Tillerson talks about --
It's almost like an exit interview
where he admits he deserved to get fired.
Were you surprised?
-He lays a lot of blame on this White House.
I was not surprised because it is apparent
to anyone looking at the State Department,
which I was for this book,
that it's become something of a Dumpster fire,
which is sad
because there are brave men and women serving there.
And, you know, what I lay out in this book
is it's unglamorous work.
It's not work that people always understand
as much as what the military does, but it really saves lives.
-And I do want to point out
that you do not lay all of the blame
on the feet of Republicans
insofar of the State Department right now,
that both Republicans and Democrats have a problem
talking about the importance of the diplomacy
vis-àà-vis the importance of the military.
-Yeah, so, you know, these are the people
that, yes, stamp passports and stuff
but also screen dangerous people and prevent them from coming into the country.
They are the people who save you if you're kidnapped abroad.
They're the people who cut the high-level political deals
that keep our servicemen and women out of the line of fire.
They're really important.
But because, you know, they're not on the front lines
with guns making things go boom,
people on campaign trails invariably kind of decry them
as dusty bureaucrats who don't get anything done,
and that is true of both Democrats And Republicans.
The Clinton administration was terrible on this.
They slashed and burned spending on diplomacy.
It was really bad for us around the world.
It is happening now to a new extreme.
But, yeah, this is about both parties.
And a lot of Republicans are in this book saying
this is a huge problem.
Colin Powell's saying
we're mortgaging our future right now with this.
-You went and interviewed an Afghani general.
Is that Dostum?
-General Dostum,
who is typically described as a warlord,
although in this book he says he is a peace lord...
-Oh, nice rebranding.
-...shortly before admitting to dumping
hundreds, maybe thousands, of Taliban prisoners
into a mass grave. -Oh, my goodness.
-I don't know how that squares with the peace-lord thing.
-And what was your takeaway insofar as how his rise to power
in Afghanistan reflects on U.S. diplomacy?
-So, one of the interesting consequences
of kicking the diplomats and the negotiators and the peacemakers
out of the room is you end up with policy
that's made much more out of the Pentagon and the CIA.
And there are great people there,
and that's an important part of how we do business,
but when it's the only part of how we do business,
you end up with relationships
like the one we have with General Dostum.
Which is we gave him a ton of guns after 9/11.
He went after the Taliban.
But then we're kind of stuck with him.
And now he's the Vice President of Afghanistan.
And I chronicle how multiple administrations
covered up for his human-rights abuses,
including this mass grave, which he kind of admits to,
that his commanders did it.
And, you know, you meet him,
and it's pretty quickly apparent that he's not necessarily
the kind of guy you want to be lying down with.
-Yet when you met him, he had a reindeer.
-He did have a reindeer. -Yeah, okay.
You gonna explain how an Afghani warlord
ends up with a reindeer?
-So, I don't know if you can see in this picture,
but there's, like, kind of flashing
Christmas tree lights everywhere.
There's tchotchkes around.
Like, porcelain figurines of horseback fighters,
which is what he does.
He has a sword, and he's on horseback,
like cutting heads off and stuff.
And, you know, this is like his warlord sheik thing,
and I guess it fits that he comes in with a reindeer,
and he sort of -- He gestures to it like Vanna White
or something, like, "Here's the reindeer."
You know, there's guys with guns behind him,
so you don't want to offend him.
And it is -- It's a very nice reindeer.
-Yeah. And it's not the reindeer's fault.
I mean, he didn't choose the --
But very sharp antlers thrashing around.
So I'm, like, you know, dodging the antlers and saying,
"Well, General, what a lovely deer that is."
-Yeah. Do you think he was --
Because you were an American he's like,
'Oh, I know how I'll put him at ease.
I'll show him the reindeer."
-Yeah. I think that's right.
It worked. I felt very soothed.
-You were like, "Oh. This is home."