John Negroponte

We're just starting the second day, and I am absolutely delighted to have two guests today.

So Ambassador John Negroponte, you're someone who truly needs no introduction, but I will just share some very quick highlights.

So the first Director of National Intelligence, former Deputy Secretary of State, and I think most relevant for today's discussion, or especially relevant, you were former ambassador to the Philippines, and you're now the co-chair of the US-Philippines Society.

So it is an honor to have you.

And I don't know.

I mean, I was able in the US to study with some of the kind of architects of even Bush era policies, John Negroponte.

I took grand strategy with real believers in the US system.

It's staggering how it recreates and reproduces these patterns in people generation to generation.

The potato factory became actually a morgue.

It became a morgue for the... mostly i would argue insurgents we thought but eventually became whichever people were unlucky enough to face the united states marine corps or had perhaps been killed and you know some of the firing outside into the city needed to be um safely i would for lack of a better word processed and in the muslim faith there's a clock that ticks very quickly we also had senior Iraqi leaders engage my boss, the ambassador, the political counselor in Baghdad saying, you know, what are you doing in order to honor our Muslim burial customs in Fallujah? So in the process of writing the book, I knew that I needed to bring the reader as best I could into what is it like when a foreign occupying power, which is the role we had under international law, is now charged with doing as best we could.

And this is really where the Marine Corps, I think, deserves a lot of credit to bury bodies.

It's an ugly side of war, but I think it's an important window into war.

So this is my view about what we should do.

So I had a lot of latitude.

And my boss, Ambassador Negroponte, said, you know, was a mentor and really supported me.

So I think that at that point I could focus on while I was against the Iraq war and I was in New York seeing, you know, the ambassadors who, I mean, Lavrov, the current foreign minister of Russia was the perm rep, the ambassador in New York, as was Sir Jeremy Greenstock.

I mean, I worked with a guy named Mac McLarty, who was Clinton's chief of staff.

John Negroponte, who was first director of national intelligence.

I learned an enormous amount from them.

But all the startups, I mean, Trey and Stack at Andral, I've had the fortune of working with.

They ruled their independent cities with moderation and justice, but in pushing their boundary westward they came into conflict with Milan and were drawn into the rivalries of the Italian states.

The war between Venice and Turkey, 1463-79, deprived the former of Scutari, Negroponte, and part of the Morea, but the treaty which ended the war secured her commerce.

The other Christian states of Europe left Venice to fight unaided, but they cried shame upon her when she made peace with the infidel.

Florence was nominally a republic whose constitution was based on a system of trade guilds.

So, um, you know, I'm not ...

Uh, I mean, Negroponte, the big insider thing that most of the people in the intel community used to know is Negroponte would go out, the first guy that ran that office, he'd go to these three-hour lunches and get a massage.

[laughs]

I mean, it was unbelievable how little time that guy was actually in the office, and it kinda gives you a, a hint as to how important was it in a lot of agencies, and I'm sure Buck knows this as well, have some, uh, put some good people there, but it's also a graveyard where they also stick some people that aren't so good, that they don't want in headquarters, and, and shove them over there.

But like any bureaucracy, it just has continued to grow and grow and grow and grow.

When the first DNI was named, it was John Negroponte, the former career ambassador.

There were 14 employees in the office of the DNI.

Now it's something like 20,000 employees.

They ruled their independent cities with moderation and justice, but in pushing their boundary westward they came into conflict with Milan, and were drawn into the rivalries of the Italian states.

The war between Venice and Turkey, 1463-79, deprived the former of Scutari, Negroponte, and part of the Morea, but the treaty which ended the war secured her commerce.

The other Christian states of Europe left Venice to fight unaided, but they cried shame upon her when she made peace with the infidel.

Florence was nominally a republic whose constitution was based on a system of trade guilds.