Extended Interview: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates
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Hi, this is Margaret Brennan, moderator of Face the Nation and chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News. Last week, we interviewed former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He's now the chancellor of William & Mary, and we went to Williamsburg to speak with him on graduation weekend. Here's the extended cut of our conversation. Well, if you're ready, we'll dig in. Okay. And there's a lot to ask you about, sir.

So President Trump just concluded this week-long trip through the Middle East. He's lifted sanctions on Syria and its interim new government. He is trying to get some kind of diplomatic deal with Iran. He's courting a lot of Gulf money. So far, no success in getting Israel to stop its war in Gaza. But how would you judge his foreign policy focus to date?

What's interesting to me is that we're back in the Middle East. After all the talk about the pivot to Asia and China and so on, we have two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Middle East. We have the president in the Middle East. I have to say this, though, Margaret. I think, ironically, the Middle East may be one place...

where there are some real opportunities and possibilities. I think that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE are all so focused on diversifying their economies, reforming, modernizing, bringing their populations into the 21st century. It's a place to do business for China, for the United States, for everybody else.

The actions of Israel post the October 7th massacre by Hamas.

has really changed the strategic equation in the Middle East because Iran has been dramatically weakened, mainly by Israel's attacks on Hamas, our attacks on the Houthis, but also and especially Hezbollah and the weakening of Hezbollah. And with the fall of Assad, Syria is no longer a conduit for Iranian weapons to get to Hezbollah.

And then you add to that the Israeli air attack on the Iranian nuclear facility that basically wiped out their air defenses. Iran's in a very weak place now. And if there is an opportunity to do a deal on nuclear, this is it.

So when it comes to that nuclear program, you didn't really like the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran. President Trump is trying something that may be somewhat similar. What do you think has to be in it for it to really be a success? Well, I think I would agree with those in the Senate and elsewhere that

Iran really has to stop their nuclear program. They have to stop their enrichment entirely. And they have to give up... Entirely. Not just highly enriched. All enrichment. Entirely. And if they want to have a civil nuclear program, they need to import the uranium, the enriched uranium to do that. But they need to get rid of the stockpile. They were supposed to get rid of a big part of the stockpile earlier, but I think...

I think just given the nature of their program and the secretiveness of the whole thing, I think in terms of monitoring compliance,

you really have to get rid of their program in a way that it can be monitored by international experts from the IAEA or whoever. But one of my concerns, and that's not going with the earlier agreement, that's apparently not going to be addressed and won't be in this,

was the need for them to get rid of their ballistic missile programs. And I think that's not going to be, if there is an agreement, it doesn't look to me like that's going to be a part of it. So you said no enrichment.

It's not clear what the president's policy is because he has different advisors who say different things about what the end state is. And some of that, according to our reporting, is because the president has to make some of those very central policy decisions still. That's a different approach, I'm sure, from White House as you worked in, where you went in with a goal, a strategy, and you worked back from there, not let's talk and then figure out the strategy.

Well, I have the impression, and I don't talk to anybody in the administration, so it's just what I hear and what I read, but

I think that his approach is let's pursue these different avenues and see how far we can get. And if we can get a deal that includes getting rid of the entire entirely of the enrichment, then that's what we ought to strive for. But if we can't, maybe we settle for something short of that. And I think it's basically just.

playing it tactically, if you will, in terms of seeing what's possible, but with the overall objective of getting some kind of an agreement, and I would hope one that can be monitored by the U.S. or by others to make sure the Iranians aren't cheating. Would you oppose an Israeli strike with U.S. support on Iran's nuclear program? The problem that I've had with a strike on the Iranian nuclear program

from the time I was secretary, is that it buys you a year or two. You're not going to be able to destroy short of, as long as you're using conventional weapons, you cannot get at the very deeply buried parts of the Iranian nuclear program. That's why on-site inspection is so important.

because you really can't, there's no kind of ordinance, even our massive ordinance penetrator won't get that far down. So my argument is if you attack their nuclear program in a way designed to try and destroy it, you will simply make the Iranians more determined to have a nuclear weapon and to bury the whole program even deeper. It buys you a little time.

but it doesn't solve the problem. The president seems to be saying the threat of military force exists, but he really wants a diplomatic deal. That's certainly my impression. So you have a history with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. You're smiling. His government, you've said, acts like an ungrateful ally.

— We're starting to see some points of friction with the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government in particular. Are we at the point now where President Trump needs to publicly be clear that the war in Gaza has to end and withhold U.S. support if it doesn't? — I think it would be a very heavy political lift for the president to say he's going to cut off military supplies to Israel.

unless they stop in Gaza. I think he can say a lot of things in terms of putting pressure on Netanyahu to stop the war. He can put forward proposals on how humanitarian assistance and other things might go forward. But I would...

It would be very difficult for any U.S. president, I think, to say we're just going to cut Israel off from military supplies. But you did support, I remember President Biden's decision to withhold very specific, actually just delay delivery of very specific weapons. Well, over time, and including when I was secretary, I opposed providing Israel with certain kinds of ordnance.

mainly because what they wanted was the kind of ordinance that would allow them to attack the Iranian nuclear program. Is there a cost to this ongoing support of such a bloody war, given the projections from U.S. intelligence about the long-term recruitment among terror groups around the world because of the devastation?

I think there is a cost. I think it does provide a basis for radicalization in the region. But it is interesting to me that you're not hearing much out of the Gulf Arabs and others in terms of decrying the ongoing operations and so on. I think

I mean, what has been the case to date is that the Saudis have really insisted that there be something for the Palestinian people before they would establish diplomatic relations with Israel. I don't know as a result of this week's talks whether that may have shifted in some way, but

But clearly they are worried about the feelings of their own people in their countries about what has happened to the Palestinians and what is continuing to happen to the Palestinians. And I think they are worried that there could be some protests and strong feelings on the part of their populations.

The governments, I think, are all for establishing relationships with Israel, as the UAE and others have done. But I think that it's still a problem for the Saudis. You may get a little excited when you shop at Burlington. Oh, the price! Did you see that? They have my face! It's like a whole new item! I like to! I'm saving so much!

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I want to move to another part of the world, and that is Ukraine. Secretary of State Rubio said he believes that there won't be a clear read on Vladimir Putin's intentions until he sits down with President Donald Trump. You've met Putin before. What would you advise for that one-on-one? And does it really take a face-to-face to judge Putin's intentions?

I'm not sure even in a face-to-face that you can judge Putin's intentions. My own view, having dealt with him and having spent most of my life working on Russia and the Soviet Union, is Putin feels that he has a destiny to recreate the Russian Empire. And as my old mentor Spignev Brzezinski once said, "Without Ukraine, there can be no Russian Empire."

So I think the president is, based on what I've read, is getting the sense that, as he put it, that Putin is tapping him along. And that, you know, Putin hasn't given up on any of his original goals in Ukraine. He's going to insist on occupying all four of the eastern provinces of the Donbass.

perpetual recognition of Russian ownership of Crimea, a pro-Russian government in Kyiv, and a Ukrainian military that looks a lot like an enhanced police force, and no membership in NATO and probably no membership in the EU. He wants Ukraine basically to be a client state of Russia.

And I don't see what it would take to get him to walk away from any of those goals in the foreseeable future. I mean, when you look at 900,000 or so Russian soldiers that have been killed or wounded, he's paid a huge price, the Russian economy and so on. It hasn't deterred him in the slightest.

Has he paid a price, though? Because there are analysts who look at the way he's reoriented that economy around his military, the fact that he gets that lifeline from China, and say sanctions haven't made him buckle one bit in his desire to continue this war. No, that's absolutely correct. And he has militarized the economy. And absolutely, there has been a cost, a long-term cost for the Russian people.

You know, you've had upwards of a million young Russian, mainly men, flee the country, young tech guys, entrepreneurs and others who thought they had a future in Russia and when the war started decided they didn't. And the complete reorientation of the economy for the military-industrial complex, as you will, is very much what the Soviets did in many respects.

And I think he's got 21% interest rates. I mean, the economy is chugging along. It's got positive growth, but it's artificial. The only source of income or revenue for the Russian government is oil and gas. The problem that Putin has is over time,

Those are old oil and gas fields. And what was enabling the Russians to extract from those fields was Western technology. The Exxons, the Chevrons, the other big oil companies from the West that had the technology. That's all gone. So over time, the revenue stream from oil and gas from Russia is going to diminish, and probably fairly dramatically. But it'll take time.

So long term, he has, I think, cost Russia enormously. But that doesn't mean that in the short to near term, it's going to force him to change any of his policies. Would you advise President Trump not to take that face to face, even if Vladimir Putin was willing to do it? I would like to see, if I were ever asked, I would say, you need to figure out some leverage that you have going into that meeting with Putin.

What can you do that puts more pressure to bear on Putin to make him believe his interests are served by not just a ceasefire, but basically at least freezing things in place? We've seen a very different approach to this diplomacy, too. The president has been relying on his close friend Steve Witkoff, this former real estate developer, to really be the face of

with some of the most thorny issues we have in the national security portfolio, including meeting with the Iranian negotiator over a nuclear program, including getting face-to-face with Vladimir Putin. There is a value in having a fresh set of eyes, but is it advisable to put aside the experts, including American translators,

and not include them in those meetings? Well, I've always believed that it's a mistake not to have an American interpreter in meetings. The President and Mr. Witkoff are not the first Americans to believe, and he's not the first President to believe, he doesn't need an American interpreter in the room. I think it's always a mistake because...

you never know that what you're saying is in fact being interpreted to Putin or whoever exactly as you said it. And so I think that's a mistake. On the other hand, you know, bringing fresh eyes and fresh blood to some of these problems, you know, I know people who've been involved in the Middle East negotiations for peace for 30 years, you know, and

have not much to show for it. And then all of a sudden you bring in somebody else and things happen like the Abraham Accords. So I'm not willing to say that you shouldn't bring in some people that have not got a lot of experience. In fact, one of the reasons in 2016 I recommended Rex Tillerson

to President Trump for his first Secretary of State was precisely because as a businessman, not a diplomat, but as a businessman, Tillerson had negotiated with tough guys all over the world for most of his career. So I think bringing somebody with business background in who's done this kind of thing, it may make a lot of sense. Even when they're sitting across from someone who has spent decades facing off with Americans?

Or in the case of the Iranian nuclear negotiations, someone who negotiated the last nuclear accord. I think just because the guy on the other side of the table has been doing it for a long time doesn't mean you can't bring in somebody fresh, somebody new. How sustainable do you think it is for the Secretary of State to also be the National Security Advisor, the Acting Archivist, and the Acting Director of USAID?

It's interesting, a lot of people point to the precedent of when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State and National Security Advisor from 1973 to 1975. I was at the NSC during most of that period, and all I can tell you is Henry Kissinger was an absentee landlord. I mean, what made it work in that time

was that Henry had a very experienced and wise deputy in General Brent Scowcroft. And Scowcroft essentially ran the NSC day to day. And Henry would appear now and then, but mainly did his Secretary of State job. He still had the title, and a lot of papers going to the presidents from the NSC still went through him.

But day to day, the NSC and the whole interagency process was really managed by Scowcroft. So whether or not this will work, I think, depends on whether the Secretary of State has a deputy at the NSC who is very experienced, knows the interagency, and is respected and trusted by the president. She's made up her mind, pretty smart.

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There is a unique challenge with the NSC, with this president, I've heard, from officials, which is he does not trust National Security Council because of the history with the first impeachment. So he is suspect of a lot of people who sit there. What's the danger of that when you don't trust the people who are briefing you on some of the most sensitive national security issues or advising you? I think it's important for people to remember, and I've tried to observe this myself, that

since I worked on the NSC under four presidents, the NSC is the president's personal foreign policy staff. So I think if people on the NSC, and I don't care whether they come from the State Department or CIA or the military or anyplace else or from the outside, if you can't, on that staff, if you can't be loyal to the president, then you should leave. What do you mean loyal?

I mean embrace his policies and do what you can to implement those policies and to ensure that the other agencies are implementing the President's policies. And when the time comes, if the time comes, that you disagree with those policies, then it seems to me it's incumbent on you to return to your agency or to leave the government. I can't – this is really an important point.

This is his personal staff. This is the staff that drafts his letters going back to other leaders. This is the staff that does his talking points for meetings with foreign leaders and provides background information for him. So I think he has a right.

to expect loyalty. My line when I was at the NSC was, be loyal or be gone. Including when it means having a different view of the last election, or having family members who work in the Justice Department. I mean, there are some different definitions of loyalty. Absolutely. And again, if your views are

if you hold views that are unacceptable to the president on things like that, like the election and so on, then you probably don't belong in his NSC staff. Maybe you belong at the State Department or at CIA or someplace, but you don't belong inside the White House complex. I mean, I know that's a hard thing to say, but I've watched this and I've seen, you know, if you go back to the Nixon days,

A number of NSC staffers resigned from the NSC over Vietnam because of the bombing campaigns and so on. So those are the kinds of issues, it seems to me, where you need to be loyal. I think you need to give the president your honest views on things, on the subjects that you're in charge of. And it may be unwelcome to him.

But he needs to hear different perspectives and different points of view. So being loyal doesn't mean not it doesn't mean pulling your punches in terms of the policy debate. But once the president's made a decision, then you have to salute. On the point of honestly briefing and giving sometimes hard to deliver information that's necessary.

You were not just a director at the CIA, you were a long time CIA person yourself. The president gets that daily briefing. A lot of that intel comes from the agency. The current director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, CBS is reporting she's really trying to exert more control over that daily brief. Pull it away from the agency. Does that concern you?

She's not the first to try and do that. There were moves in that direction, actually, during the Reagan administration. And we started including in the president's daily brief contributions from, say, the Defense Intelligence Agency that had not been done before. But I think that having the Director of National Intelligence, I think, was not expected to sort of take a daily approach

supervisory role over the content of the information flowing to the president.

I think, you know, we would get information from NSA, from DIA, from all these different agencies. CIA did put together the president's brief, but my understanding is in recent years there's been more and more of a move to have other members of the intelligence community collaborate on putting together the president's daily brief. So I'm not really aware of the details right now, but it seems to me that

I remember when I was head of the analytical side of CIA, probably the director of central intelligence who took the greatest day-to-day interest in the PDB was Jimmy Carter's director of central intelligence, Admiral Stansfield Turner, who would literally edit the PDB before it was put to bed.

Most DCIs have not touched the PDP. They have let the professionals put in there what they needed to put in there, and then they got the fury of the president when he disagreed with something that was in the PDP. Do you have any concerns when you look at some of the reshaping, some of the firings within intelligence? The two heads, for example, of the National Intelligence Council were just dismissed by Gabbard.

I mean, I don't know enough about the details to be able to comment. The one thing that I would say concerns me, both at CIA and at the Defense Department, are the firings of probationary employees. The new blood. This is the future of these organizations. These are the young people dedicated to public service who bring in

skills such as data analytics and so on that older people don't have and they're the future of the agency. There are ways to reduce the manpower, reduce the number of people at these agencies and most agencies should be reformed and should be made more lean and more efficient. But there's a way to do it that doesn't shortcut the future

and also doesn't end up firing people that actually are really needed. Do you think that's what Elon Musk and the Doge effort did? I think so. That America lost new talent. I think there has been a cost in talent with the categorization of the people. And I think the reason that probationaries were put at the top was because they're easier to fire. But that doesn't mean that was the right thing to do.

When we look around the world right now, there are a lot of hot spots. Not just this land war in Ukraine in the middle of Europe. You have missile attacks between two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. You have China's increased aggression in Asia. The ongoing Israeli wars we talked about. Two years ago, I reread this essay that you wrote two years ago, and you said, "The U.S. confronts graver threats to its security than it ever has."

Two years later, what does the playing field look like to you? I think that, if anything, the peril has gotten greater simply because both Russia and especially China have significantly increased their arsenals and their military power.

And particularly, as I say, in the case of China, China's been much more aggressive in the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea than they were two years ago. I think they've put themselves in a position, if they chose to do so, to put essentially a stranglehold around Taiwan in terms of shipping and so on.

And what we've never faced before is large, aggressive nuclear powers, both in Europe and in Asia, collaborating. And what we are facing today, we've never faced as a country, is a country that's almost as rich as we are, that is technologically advanced, competing with us in many areas of technology, technology advances.

and one that has unanswered ambitions, unfulfilled ambitions. You're talking about China. In the neighborhood, all China. And so, you know, China is the bigger threat by far, but it doesn't negate the 1,500 nuclear weapons that the Russians have either. Yet. I'm sorry? Yet. They're expanding, right? Yes. So you've said, though, of China, I mean, you look at what's happening with their expansion.

There was this trade war that on Monday was paused in some way in terms of the tariffs. There are some that are still in place, but some delayed for at least 90 days. Was there a point, was there a win that came out of this confrontation? My view is that if China is your primary competitor, your primary rival, your primary adversary, and we can avoid a military confrontation with China,

then the outcome is going to be settled by non-military instruments of power, above all economics. And you would think that if we were going to put significant additional economic pressure on China, we would want all the other countries around the world to be on our side of the table.

and willing to collaborate with us in putting those pressures on China and saying, you can't behave the way you have been. You can't dump. You can't steal intellectual property. You can't do these things. And to have most of the developed countries in the world, in essence, echoing each other and on the same page.

declaring trade wars on all of them did not, shall we say, enhance their willingness to collaborate with us against China. So who's the main enemy? And I think that's always the key question. I understand the imbalance in trade and that other countries, the Europeans, have never done as much since the end of the Cold War on defense as they should. I bellowed about it like a lot of other American officials.

But the question is, what's the main strategic threat? And what's the best strategy for dealing with that threat? So having a tariff war with Europe, Japan, South Korea, all the allies at once, you're saying is self-defeating. I think it doesn't make strategic sense. Now, others look at it from a more purely economic standpoint, and I understand that. But I think...

We have to decide, you know, is more revenue and reshoring of manufacturing balance off against what many in this administration consider, and both Republicans and Democrats on the Hill consider to be the main threat? And are there ways that you apply those tariffs?

in ways that maybe accomplish both goals. You wrote in Foreign Affairs, President Trump's disdain for U.S. allies, his fondness for authoritarian leaders, his willingness to sow doubt about the United States' commitment to NATO allies, and his generally erratic behavior undermined U.S. credibility and respect across the globe. That was about his first term. He's back. Are you seeing a repeat of those behaviors now?

I think that he has been more cautious about the language that he has used. He has not talked about not fighting for other countries. He hasn't said, well, I'm not going to participate in an Article 5. We're not going to go to war for Europe. I mean, there's been some tough language toward the Europeans, the vice president in Munich and so on. He's said things again about, oh, if they don't pay up. Yeah.

it's clear take it seriously it's clear he does not c_v_ allies c_r_ allies as as an important asset for america's national interest uh... has a lot of us do i think and europeans have given him ammunition by not being willing to uh... provide for their own defense uh... and even the most modest way

But I think he has avoided some of the more inflammatory language toward NATO that he used in the first term. I want to ask about the Pentagon, which you ran for a while. You hear a lot these days about identity politics, including when the Secretary of Defense addresses troops. "Warrior and warfighting ethos" is the mantra. You used to go out and speak to troops, including those serving overseas.

What do you think that kind of message is doing? Is that the right tone? Well, I think that, I mean, as I understand it, it derives from a belief that in the Biden administration that the leadership of the Pentagon was distracted by the need to pursue diversity and initiatives and so on. Do you think they were?

You know, I live a long way from the Pentagon. I don't know. I think that, you know, if you look at what some of the military leaders have said, the amount of time that soldiers and leaders actually spent on those issues was pretty small. But it may have been more the focus of public remarks and things like that. I don't know whether it distracted people or not, but I know, I mean, my view is that

that a big part of the warrior ethos is taking care of your people. Every second lieutenant learns that first thing. And so I think having a focus on being combat ready, on fitness, on those kinds of things absolutely makes sense. And I think making sure, and when we talked about various things,

changes such as the decision made that I made in terms of women serving on submarines and women going into the special forces and so on. The line always was you can't compromise the standards. The expectations for women need to be exactly the same as they are for men. And so a focus on that kind of meritocracy I think also makes sense. But I think you also have to remember that

The military needs to look like the American people, and it does. And you can call it whatever you want, but we are better served, in my view, by a military that reflects the American people. And I think it does at this point. Get ready to laugh until it hurts. You're going to love this. Hey!

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The last two national defense strategies said the U.S. military is not postured or equipped to fight wars against two major rivals at the same time. You've talked about the need to fund defense more right now.

Even the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee says the White House isn't doing enough. If the focus is on war fighting and a warrior ethos, isn't that contradictory? I think there is a general understanding about two things. One is the Pentagon needs to get much more efficient and needs to be reformed, especially when it comes to acquisitions and the integration of new technologies. The second is that it needs more money to do those things.

and to fund new capabilities. The Department of Defense has not had a budget going into the fiscal year for 15 years. If that isn't a dereliction of duty by the Congress, I don't know what is.

Because when you have a continuing resolution, you can't start anything new. You can't add to anything. People talk about expanding the shipbuilding capabilities, about expanding our defense industrial capability, and so on. And for all the speeches they make, nothing's happening because they haven't voted a single dollar to do any of those things. So there is this, and I don't understand under these circumstances why the administration's budget...

puts forward a budget for the Pentagon that, as I understand it, is basically flat, which given some inflation means a cut. That's exactly what the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee, he said, is going to shred to the bone our military capabilities and support to service members. He said it amounts to a cut and that it contradicts what the president had promised.

There has to be an agreement between the president and the Congress on actually what has to be done to recapture our military industrial capabilities and then for Congress to vote the money in a timely way. Let me give you one example of how big the gap is with China. Between 2017 and 2024,

The number of warships in our Navy stayed essentially flat. During that same period, China launched 150 warships. They have 250 times the shipbuilding capability we do. This was us in World War II, and now the tables have been turned. We represent kind of one-tenth of one percent of global shipbuilding capability. They've got over half. So if we're going to fix that, somebody's got to get off the dime.

So then in that context, is it worth to spend as much as $45 million on a military parade on June the 14th, which happens to be the president's birthday? Well, I'll leave that up to the gurus in Washington. In my career, we had one military parade in Washington, and that was after the Gulf War. And I think we had to do some repair work on the streets in D.C. after that.

So I won't ask what that cost, the repairing the street work. We're speaking right now at a university and you served in public service for nearly 50 years. What is your advice to graduates who are looking at the administration's message that the private sector is more productive than the public one? And when they look at all the cuts that are happening to federal agencies, is it worth it to go into public service?

Well, I totally believe it's worth it to go into public service. There are a few things you can do that are more gratifying and more satisfying. And when you look back, being able to say that maybe you made a difference in keeping the nation safer or the nation better off. The reality is government, government, the American government has generally been an enabler of the American people.

in terms of education, in terms of opportunities and so on, and in protecting opportunities. People make government work and you want the best people you can get in those jobs. For all the rhetoric, the American Civil Service is the most honest and efficient anywhere in the world and has been for a very long time. Does that mean it can't be improved? Absolutely not. Every organization needs to be reformed and improved.

But these young people and their dedication and their possession of skills that older people don't have, data analytics and so on, they're crucial to the future of these agencies. And they shouldn't be daunted. We've been through bad times before. I joined CIA at the height of Vietnam.

Those were pretty rough days. 1968 was as bad a year as the United States maybe has had since the Civil War internally. And with deep divisions and distrust of government, and believe me, distrust of government didn't begin recently. It began with Watergate and Vietnam. And so young people need to understand there are great opportunities to serve. And I would argue if you're unhappy about things at the federal level,

Go into local government or state government. There are lots of different places where you can serve. It doesn't have to be a CIA or the State Department. It can be in a local NGO of some kind or charity. There are lots of ways to do public service. And

Young people who feel motivated to do that, this university has a lot of them. Texas A&M, where I was president, has the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service. Lots of universities have these schools, and they've got a lot of kids who are eager to be helpful and help make the country better. My view is they ought to go for it.

You talked about loss of confidence. Wall Street Journalist Peggy Noonan recently wrote about the broken windows theory in law enforcement, where you go after the small crimes to dissuade bigger ones. But she was arguing basically that we need to apply that in politics right now. Are you concerned that even the appearance of corruption, foreign influence peddling, wears away at that and that

perhaps, as she calls for in this piece, that our parties, the Republican Democratic parties, need to be a little bit more honest and explicit in policing themselves? Well, I think so. Absolutely. I mean, you can't even get legislation on the Hill about insider trading. And so I think appearances do matter. And

I remember how strict the rules were when I was in government. If I got a gift when I was traveling from a foreign government, if it was valued at over $300 and I wanted it, I had to pay for it. Including a Boeing plane from a Gulf country? Over $300. All right. We are out of time. We've covered a lot. There's more to talk about, but I will leave it there, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Margaret. Thank you.

9-1-1, say to emergency. See you.

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