♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein and I'm gonna be in conversation today with Ambassador Susan Rice, who served in the Obama Administration first as Ambassador to the UN, as our permanent representative, and secondly as National Security Advisor.

Uh, Susan, welcome to the show.

RICE: It's great to be with you, David.

RUBENSTEIN: So, I wanna talk about a book you've written, a very revealing book, called "Tough Love".

And your book is unusually frank, I would say.

Nothing wrong with that, but very often, government officials aren't quite as frank as you.

Did you realize how frank you were being compared to other government officials?

And was that part of what you wanted to do, or you just came out that way?

RICE: It's what I wanted to do, uh, both for my own sake and, and for the reader's sake, because David, to me, if you're going to write a, a memoir that's taken seriously and that is an honest reflection of who you are and where you come from, you've gotta be honest.

You've gotta be frank, uh, and you've gotta be willing to share some things that, that are personal and painful.

And I think also, because my parents have passed in, in the last decade or so, um...

It gave me a bit of space to say some things about their relationship in particular, their divorce, um, as well as, you know, my upbringing, that I might have been a bit more circumspect about had they still been alive.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Let's talk about your parents.

Uh, your...

Both of your parents were fairly prominent people in, in Washington DC and I think you could say around the country, as well.

Can you tell us what your father's background was and your mother's background?

RICE: Well, my father, uh, came from South Carolina.

He was born around 1920, in the heart of segregation and Jim Crow and lynching.

And interestingly, he was the grandson of slaves who, my great-grandfather, um, fought in the Union Army in South Carolina.

And then after, uh, the Civil War, got a, a primary education.

He came back to South Carolina, uh, taught public school during Reconstruction, and then he got driven out of South Carolina by the Ku Klux Klan.

He escaped to, uh, the North in New Jersey, and ended up getting a college degree in Divinity.

And uh, he was an AME Minister and a teacher, and he founded a school in New Jersey called the Bordentown School, that for 70 years educated generations of African Americans.

My dad, when he came along, his grandson therefore was third generation college educated, which in itself was quite unusual.

Um, and he, my dad, Emmett Rice, um, served with, uh, the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, and then went on to get his PhD in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley.

And he became a professor a Cornell of Economics and he served in the Treasury Department and the World Bank, and ultimately, uh, David, he was a Governor of the Federal Reserve System, appointed by President Carter.

RUBENSTEIN: And your mother?

RICE: My mother came from Portland, Maine.

She was, uh, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica.

So, my grandfather and, uh, grandmother Dixon on my mother's side came from Jamaica to Portland, Maine on banana boats in 1912.

Neither of them had any education.

My grandfather was a janitor, my grandmother was a maid.

And like so many immigrants, they came to give their kids a better future.

They had five children.

They sent all five of their kids to college, uh, by saving and borrowing and, and scraping.

My mother's four uncles went on to be successful professionals; two doctors, one optometrist, one university president.

And my mom, the baby and the only girl, was valedictorian of her high school class in Portland, Maine, a champion debater, and she went on to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, and was the president of her student body, uh, in her senior year, uh, as the Class of 1954.

Um, and a, and a great student there, but only one of three African American women, uh, in her class.

And her career went in a different direction.

She was very involved in higher education policy.

She was known as the mother of the Pell Grant Program, which has enabled 80 million Americans to reach, uh, college.

And then late in her career, she went into the corporate world and was a corporate executive and sat on the board of 11 publicly traded companies.

RUBENSTEIN: So, you went to a well-known school, uh, in the Washington area for high school.

Um, is that right?

You went to... RICE: Yes, the National Cathedral School for Girls.

RUBENSTEIN: National Cathedral School.

And I guess you were a, a star student and you were a star athlete.

Is that right?

RICE: I was a, I was a good student.

I was, uh, one of...

I shared the, the valedictorian award.

I was not a star athlete.

I did play varsity basketball and varsity tennis all the way through high school.

I was a solid athlete, but not a, not a superstar.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, you had a choice of going essentially wherever you wanted to go.

I, I guess you applied to your mother's, uh, alma mater Harvard, and you decided to go another place, uh, well-known called Stanford.

RUBENSTEIN: And when you went to Stanford, you did reasonably well there and you won a Rhodes Scholarship.

RICE: That's correct, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, there are 32 Rhodes Scholars every year in the United States.

So, you went to Oxford, and did you get a degree there?

RICE: I got two degrees.

I got a masters degree, a two year masters degree, and then ultimately my doctorate degree in International Relations.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, after you got your doctorate degree, you came back to the United States and said, "The highest priority is doing what?"

Uh, consulting with McKinsey or something like that?

RICE: Well, that wasn't the highest priority, but it was an opportunity, at the time I felt, for me to learn some news skills and to stretch myself.

You know, I'd...

I was never particularly quantitative.

I never had, prior to that, much experience in the private sector.

Most of the work that I had done had been in the nonprofit world and in government.

Uh, even up until, uh, finishing my PhD.

And so, I, I wanted to learn something new and different, and I wanted to push myself.

But those two years, uh, were, were very useful in terms of building skills.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, so he obviously valued Rhodes Scholars, but how did he know of a McKinsey associate in Canada... (Rice laughs).

Uh, who was just, uh, you know, a couple years out of being a Rhodes Scholar?

How did you get this job?

RICE: Good question.

So, uh, Bill Clinton had, didn't know me from a hole in the wall when I joined his administration.

Um, I had worked four years earlier on the 1988 Democratic Presidential Campaign, one, one that has lo- lo-been long forgotten, for Michael Dukakis and, uh, Lloyd Benson.

And I worked for, uh, that campaign as a foreign policy aid.

And many of the people that I ended up working with, people like Gene Sperling and Nancy Soderberg and Jim Steinberg and others, worked on the Clinton Campaign in 1992, uh, in Little Rock while I was up in Toronto as a management consultant.

And when, uh, President Clinton won, they found me in Canada and called me and asked me if I would be interested in being considered for a job in the White House.

And I flew down and was honored to be interviewed, both by the National Security Council, uh, and the National Economic Council, which was newly created.

I got two offers and I decided after agonizing a bit over it, to, to join the National Security Council Staff.

I was offered a job as one of two special assistants to the National Security Advisor, which would have been sort of perfect.

And then I got a midnight phone call from Sandy Berger, who was gonna be the Deputy National Security Advisor, who said, "Sorry, uh, we, we can't offer you that job anymore.

We don't have money for two special assistants.

We only can hire one and we're gonna stick with the guy who worked with us on the campaign.

So, do you wanna come and be a, a, a Director, uh, for African Affairs on the NSC Staff?"

RICE: And in the middle of the night when asked this, I said, "N-No, thank you."

And I can explain why I said that, but he I think was like, thought I was the most arrogant, ridiculous person he'd ever talked to.

Uh, but I was concerned, David, that as a very young African American woman, who while I had some background in Africa's, uh, policy issues, um, not at... not really great depth at that point, I was concerned that if I took that job coming fresh out of, you know, the private sector, that I would get pigeonholed as somebody who only worked on African issues.

And as an African American, I thought that would be, un, you know, constraining at the time.

Long story short is, they came back a couple weeks later and said, "How about being the Director for UN Affairs and Peacekeeping?"

Which was obviously a global portfolio, but Africa had an important component to it, and I said, "Yes."

And then two years later, after I'd been in that role for a couple of years and, and, you know, gotten my sort of sea legs, uh, and earned some chops, uh, the National Security Advisor, Tony Lake, asked me if I would run the Africa Office at the NSC.

And at that point I said, "Yes."

And then I spent the next six years working on Africa policy.

But uh, I was very happy to do that.

I love Africa and I love the issues, but I didn't wanna get defined in, in a, in a, in a narrow way before I could... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

RICE: Uh, prove that I could do a wider range of things.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, President Clinton is reelected and then you have an opportunity to go to the State Department as the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, among other responsibilities.

Um, how old were you when you got that job offer?

RICE: I was 32.

I'd started at the White House at 28.

So, four years in I was just 32 and I'd just had our first child, David.

So, I was not only young, frighteningly young, uh, I was also, uh, a brand new mother.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, you took the job and you did it through the end of the Clinton Administration, is that right?

RICE: That's correct, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And then when the Clinton Administration ended, um, what did you do next?

RICE: Uh, I worked at the Brookings Institution for most of the, uh, the Bush Administration, as a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies.

RUBENSTEIN: And after Bush was President.

Um, uh, there's two candidates... Hillary Clinton, um, who you knew presumably from the Clinton Administration and Barack Obama.

Um, had you known Barack Obama very much before you actually left Brookings to work for him?

RICE: I got to know, uh, Barack Obama, uh, starting in 2004, when he was running for the Senate.

And at that point, David, I took, had taken a brief leave from Brookings for about six months, to work on the John Kerry Presidential Campaign, after he became the nominee.

And it was in that context, uh, working for Kerry as a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor, that I started to interact with Obama.

Because Obama would call up and sugg, you know, say, you know, "What are you all thinking on X, Y, or Z policy issue?

Here's this position I'm gonna take."

RICE: And he was just trying to consult on, uh, on foreign policy issues.

So, that's where I first engaged with him.

And then when he won, uh, the Senate seat and came to Washington, I got to know him quite a bit better, uh, as he served on the Foreign Relations Committee.

And I was a sort of informal outside advisor to him.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, he didn't say, "Well, you've worked on the, uh, Michael Dukakis Campaign... (laughs).

And you worked on the John Kerry Campaign."

Did he really want you to work in his Presidential Campaign?

RICE: Well, I think if he'd been focused on my record, he might not have wanted me to.

But, uh, David, he asked me and, uh, former National Security Advisor, Tony Lake, in, uh, January of 2007, before he'd announced his candidacy, if we would, uh, serve as, uh, sort co-leads to help him build a team of National Security and Foreign Policy Advisors and advise him on the campaign.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, you point out in your book, and this was kind of an awkward situation, because you had been the youngest Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration.

And I think the Clinton Administration, people thought, uh, Hillary Clinton, that you maybe had some loyalty obligation to them.

So, when did you tell, uh, Hillary Clinton or somebody associated with her that you couldn't do that campaign, you were gonna do Barack Obama's campaign?

RICE: Well, I didn't actually know, David, that they were gonna ask me to play a leadership role on the Clinton Campaign.

But I actually got a phone call two or three weeks after Obama had asked me to, uh, to, to play the role in his campaign and I'd accepted, from, uh, my good friend and former boss, Sandy Berger, who was Adv- Senior Advisor to, to Secretary Clinton.

And he asked me...

It was Senator Clinton at the time.

He asked me if I would come onto the campaign staff and run her Foreign Policy National Security Operation, which was completely unexpected.

And I had to explain to him and, and her through him at that point, that I had decided to, to support Barack Obama.

And as much as I admired Senator Clinton and, and was grateful for the offer, and more grateful even still obviously to President Clinton, uh, I'd made this choice.

And you can imagine that, that there was a bit of consternation on the other end of the line.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, you went to work for, um, Senator Obama.

He gets elected President of the United States and usually if you work in a campaign in Foreign Policy area and your candidate wins, you have a reasonable expectation that you might get some offer to do something.

Did you have any expectation or did you wanna be Ambassador to the UN?

RICE: Well, uh, that wasn't what I had in mind initially.

But uh, he, he called me up, uh, and he asked me if I'd like to be his UN Ambassador, and I was very flattered and, and, uh, appreciative.

But I actually asked him if there was any possibility that he would consider me for National Security Advisor.

And uh, he very politely said, "No, uh, not now.

Uh, I have in mind, uh, somebody else, General Jim Jones, who's a, a, was our commander at NATO and a Four Star General."

Uh, and he said, "But I'd really like you to be the UN Ambassador, and, you know, that could potentially lead to something else down the road.

Um, but I think that'd be a great opportunity.

Why don't you go talk to your mentor, Madeline Albright," who had been of course UN Ambassador before she was Secretary of State.

"She what she thinks and call me back tomorrow."

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, you took it.

And uh, for people that are skeptical, Americans, that the UN actually does something useful... What is the UN's greatest, uh, utility, would you say, to, to the United States?

I mean, is it really anything other than a debating society?

Or do things really get done there that are useful?

RICE: It is more than a debating society, often, but not always.

Uh, but it is an imperfect institution.

And there's a lot of, uh, political BS that goes on there, as well.

And, but the good thing that, that it does is, one, one, it is a place where we can, uh, share the burden for, uh, promoting peace, conflict resolution, uh, security in parts of the world where we need it, but where it would not be economical for us to send our own forces or fund an operation all by ourselves.

So, the UN's role in brokering peace deals, sending, sending in peacekeeping forces, that's very valuable to our security interests.

And rather than foot the entire bill, we foot a fraction of the bill.

The other thing that's good about the United Nations is that, you know, it lends legal authority and legitimacy to international actions and decisions.

And finally, David, the UN does all kinds of life saving, uh, stuff around the world.

UNICEF feeds and supports children.

The World Health Organization helps to stamp out disease.

The World Food Program, which just recently won the Nobel Peace Process, feeds starving people and, and, and hungry everywhere.

The Refugee Organization takes care of the displaced and refugees.

So, these are very important functions that if, if somebody weren't doing, uh, we'd all be worse off.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, one of the crazy things that happened to you is that one time, uh, they needed somebody to go on the Sunday talk shows, to talk about something that happened in Libya.

And as I recall, uh, there were some American Foreign Service Officers, and I guess maybe, uh, a CIA Agent, I'm not sure, uh, were killed in a, uh, as the Libyan Government was falling and it was having its internal disputes.

So, you went on TV, at, at the request of, uh, the Administration, and, uh, you said certain things that later, uh, were turned, turned out not to be exactly true.

So, what was... What happened?

How did you get invited to do that?

Did you wanna do that?

And what did you say that later turned out to cause a problem for you and others?

RICE: So, I, uh, was not as- wanting to go on the Sunday shows that, uh, that particular Sunday.

This, by the way, just to put it in context for our, our listeners, this was September, uh, 16th, I believe, of 2012.

So, President Obama's running for reelection.

Days before, uh, a terrorist attack took the lives of four Americans, including our Ambassador, in Benghazi, uh, Libya.

And it was a terrible tragedy, and it came in the context of, uh, uh, violence that had been perpetrated against a number of our diplomatic facilities throughout the Arab and Muslim world, all in that one week.

And it came on the eve of President Obama's annual trip to the United Nations for the General Assembly.

Uh, I think the White House had originally asked Secretary Clinton if she would go on the shows, uh, and a couple of other, uh, senior, uh, uh, people, and for various reasons they apparently turned it down.

Uh, when the White House asked me, I reluctantly agreed.

That was not what I was planning to, to do for my weekend.

In fact, I'd committed to taking my kids to Columbus, Ohio for the Ohio State football game, which I did do on the Saturday.

But then came back and went on the Sunday shows, uh, against my mother's best advice, um, because I'd been asked and I wanted to, to be supportive of the Administration, supportive of the team.

Uh, and I really wasn't thinking about what the implications might be for myself.

I then, uh, was asked about what had happened in Benghazi.

I, I, uh, shared the information that had been provided to me by the intelligence community, the so-called talking points, uh, that had been cleared by all of the intelligence agencies.

It was our best current understanding of what had happened.

I caveated it.

I said, "This could change.

This is what we understand to be the case now.

There's an investigation underway, so we might learn more."

Um, but it turned out... And it's, it's a long, convoluted, uh, story, as I write in the book.

But the bottom line is that one critical piece of information that I provided, uh, that there had been demonstrations outside of our, uh, diplomatic compound in Benghazi, turned out to be wrong.

And as...

Shortly after I went on the Sunday shows in the hothouse of the political campaign, um, uh, Republican members of Congress in particular, Fox News as well, the whole sort of right wing, uh, uh, communications universe, lit up and accused me of misleading the American People; of telling lies about what had happened in Benghazi.

Um, and, you know, they then villainized me, uh, for months thereafter, uh, and some would argue still to this day.

Um, and I was accused of, you know, falsely accused of, of lying deliberately to the American People.

8 Congressional committees, David, have investigated Benghazi, ad nauseam, Republican led.

And not one of them concluded that I had deliberately misled the American People.

But it was nonetheless a pretty brutalizing experience, uh, in 2012.

RUBENSTEIN: So, President Obama runs for reelection and he wins.

RICE: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he calls you up and he says, um, "You've done a great job as UN Ambassador.

I'd like you to be considered for Secretary of State."

Um, you were interested in that, I guess, right?

RICE: Well, I had been asked before the election, uh, if I would, again, agree to be vetted for Secretary of State.

And I knew at the time that I was at least one of two people that he was seriously considering.

Um, and then the election happens, he's reelected, um, and, you know, there's a lot of consideration, speculation about who he's gonna pick.

Um, I was, I think, uh, under very serious consideration until early December, when I concluded that, you know, the, the attacks on me were not going to go away, even though the election was over.

And there were many uh, uh, a handful of, of prominent Republican Senators who'd come out and said they were gonna oppose my potential nomination, if I were nominated.

The Democrats still controlled the Senate, so it wasn't a case that I thought it was impossible to get confirmed.

But what I thought was that my...

If he were to nominate me, it would be a long and protracted and costly, uh, expenditure of the President's political capital, uh, to get me through.

And I decided to take my name out of consideration for Secretary of State.

RUBENSTEIN: But he subsequently offered you the job of being the National Security Advisor?

RICE: That's correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And you accepted that.

That doesn't require Senate confirmation.

RICE: I did.

Exactly.

RUBENSTEIN: So in the, in the four years of the second term of the Administration, you served as National Security Advisor.

And what would you say was the highlight of that four year period of time; the thing that you're most proud of and the thing that was the biggest, uh, trouble?

RICE: Well, you know, uh, to be honest, David, there were many things that we did that I look back on with pride.

Uh, from negotiating the Paris Climate Agreement, uh, to, uh, opening, uh, relations with Cuba after years of failed policy.

Um, the Iran Nuclear Deal, um, you know, the, the, uh, relationships that we repaired and strengthened with our European partners.

Um, our successful efforts to stamp out the Ebola Epidemic so that it didn't become a global pandemic, as, as threatened.

So, there are a number of things that, that I look back on and I think, you know, that we did that well.

Um, in terms of things that I, that I wish had turned out differently or better, I continue, as I write in the book, to... As, as I think many of us feel, that, you know, that, that as bad, um, and, and, and difficult as what transpired in Syria was, I think we all wish that there could have been a better outcome, both from a humanitarian point of view and from a, a National Security point of view.

I think it was the most difficult policy issue we wrestled with.

And I think we probably landed, uh, in many instances on what I would call the least bad option.

But none of them were good or satisfactory options.

RUBENSTEIN: Your career has been incredible, in terms of rising from somebody who, um, came from not a modest background, but you obviously rose up to some of the highest levels in our government.

Do you think that the discrimination you faced was greater because you were a woman and rising up, or because you're an African American, or a combination of it?

Or do you think there wasn't any discrimination against you?

RICE: Well, I'd, I'd, I'd be naïve to, to tell, sit here and say I don't think I've faced any, uh, forms of, uh, bias or discrimination.

Of, of course I did.

Um, and it's hard to, to parse, you know, to what exactly to attribute it.

I think being an African American woman in a predominantly white male field, uh, where I was able to, to, to be quite successful, uh, over the course of my career, um, but not without challenges.

And not without, uh, encountering those who I think, um, found the idea of me as, as well as the reality of me, in, in some way, objectionable.

Now, that could also be, David, it could have been my youth as well, uh, particularly in my- in, in... As I went to the State Department, uh, during the Clinton Administration.

Uh, it also could be attributed to the fact that, as you know, I, I tend to speak my mind.

Uh, and what you see is what you get.

I'm direct and, and I'm, uh, confident in, in my persona and presentation.

And I think there's some people who find all of that taken together, uh, to be, um, maybe uppity or off putting or, or something of that sort.

RICE: But my dad taught me, my dad who grew up in segregation and fought in a segregated military during World War II, and yet was able to rise to the top of his field as an economist, that you can't let other people's bigotry become your own burden.

He had a saying, David, which is, "If my being black is gonna be a problem, it's gonna be a problem for somebody else.

Not for me."

In other words, if you don't like it, uh, that's probably a function of your own insecurity.

And I'm not gonna let your insecurity become my own.

RUBENSTEIN: Susan, I wanna thank you for a very interesting conversation about a very interesting book and your life story.

And uh, thank you for doing this.

RICE: Thank you very much, David.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for your time.

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