Hillary Rodham Clinton - Hard Choices: A Memoir [Excerpts]

I had thought my speech to the convention would be my only role there, but a determined group of my delegates still intended to vote for me during the roll call of the states. The Obama campaign asked if I would go to the convention the next day and interrupt the roll call and instead move for an immediate declaration that Barack Obama was our party's nominee. I agreed but understood why more than a few of my friends, supporters, and delegates begged me not to do it. They wanted to finish what they had started. They also wanted history to record that a woman had won nearly two dozen primaries and caucuses and close to one thousand nine hundred delegates, something that had never happened before. They argued that if the roll call was cut short, our efforts would never be properly recognized. I couldn't help but be moved by their fierce loyalty, but I thought it was more important to show that we were completely united.

Some of my supporters were also upset that Barack had chosen Biden to be his running mate instead of me. But I was never interested in being Vice President. I was looking forward to returning to the Senate, where I hoped to help lead the charge on health care reform, job creation, and other urgent challenges. I heartily approved of Barack's choice and knew Joe would be an asset in the election and in the White House.

We kept my going to the floor a secret, so it caused quite a stir among the delegates and reporters when I suddenly appeared among the thousands of excited Democrats just as New York was called to announce its votes. Surrounded by friends and colleagues, I declared, "With eyes firmly fixed on the future, in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country, let's declare together in one voice right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our President." Then I moved to suspend the roll call and nominate Barack by acclamation. Up at the podium, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asked if there was a second for my motion, and the whole convention roared its approval. The atmosphere crackled with energy and history in the making as we rallied together behind the first African American nominee of a major party.

There was one more big surprise that week. The morning after Barack addressed the convention, Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, announced that Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska was his choice for running mate. A resounding "Who?" echoed across the nation. We would all get to know her in the coming months, but at that point she was a near-complete unknown, even to political junkies. The Obama campaign suspected that her nomination was a blatant attempt to scuttle their hope of welcoming the women who had vigorously supported me. They immediately issued a dismissive statement and reached out to me in the hopes I would follow suit. But I wouldn't. I was not going to attack Palin just for being a woman appealing for support from other women. I didn't think that made political sense, and it didn't feel right. So I said no, telling them there'd be plenty of time for criticism. A few hours later, the Obama campaign reversed itself and congratulated Governor Palin.

Over the following weeks, Bill and I attended more than one hundred events and fund-raisers in which we spoke with supporters and undecided voters and advocated for Barack and Joe. On the morning of November 4--Election Day--we went to a local elementary school near our home in Chappaqua, New York, to cast our votes. It was the end of an unbelievably long journey. That night Bill was glued to the television, doing what he always does on election nights: analyzing all the data he could find on turnout and early exit polls. Now that there was nothing more we could do to help, I tried to stay busy with other things until there was a result. It turned out to be a decisive victory, without the drawn-out waiting game we had seen in 2004 or, famously, in 2000. Huma called Reggie Love, and soon I was congratulating the President-elect. (That's how I started thinking of him, referring to him, and addressing him the moment the election was over, just as after the inauguration he would become "Mr. President.") I was elated, proud, and, frankly, relieved. It was time to exhale, and I was looking forward to getting back to the life and work I loved.
      
Five days after the election was a quiet Sunday afternoon, offering the perfect chance to decompress. The autumn air was crisp, and Bill and I decided to go to Mianus River Gorge, one of the many trails near where we live in Westchester County. With our hectic lives, we often seek to clear our minds with long walks together. I remember that one as particularly liberating. The election was over, and I could get back to my job in the Senate. I loved representing the people of New York, and the campaign had left me with a full agenda that I was eager to push forward. I was brimming with ideas, all of which I hoped would be strengthened by a close relationship with the incoming President.

Little did I know how close that relationship would become. In the middle of our walk, Bill's cell phone rang. When he answered he heard the voice of the President-elect, who told him he wanted to talk to both of us. Bill explained that we were in the middle of a nature preserve and needed to call back when we got home. Why was he calling? Maybe he wanted our input on the team he was putting together. Or to strategize about a major policy challenge, like economic recovery or health care reform. Or perhaps he simply wanted to line up our help for a quick burst of legislative activity in the spring. Bill, remembering his own hectic transition, guessed that he wanted to run names by us for White House and Cabinet positions.
     When we got back to our house, Bill's prediction about the call proved to be accurate--for him. The President-elect picked his brain about possible members of the economic team he was assembling to tackle the financial crisis facing the country. Then he told Bill that he was looking forward to getting together with me sometime soon. I assumed he wanted to talk about working closely together on his legislative package in the Senate.

But I was curious, so I called a few members of my Senate staff to see what they thought, including my spokesman, Philippe Reines. Philippe is passionate, loyal, and shrewd. He usually knows what Washington's movers and shakers are thinking even before they do. And I can always trust him to speak his mind. This time was no different. Philippe had told me two days earlier about rumors that I would be named everything from Secretary of Defense to Postmaster General, but he had confidently predicted, "He's going to offer you Secretary of State." "That's ridiculous!" I responded immediately. "Not for a million reasons!" I thought, not for the first time, that Philippe was delusional. And frankly I was not interested in serving in the Cabinet. I wanted to go back to the Senate and my work for New York. From 9/11 to the financial crash of 2008, it had been a rough eight years for New Yorkers. They had taken a chance on me back in 2000, and now they needed a strong and committed advocate in Washington. And I liked being my own boss and setting my own schedule and agenda. Joining the Cabinet would mean giving up some of that autonomy.

When I called Philippe on Sunday, he informed me that the media had started its cycle of speculation. ABC's This Week mentioned rumors that President-elect Obama was considering me for the position of Secretary of State. The program added that he was attracted by the idea of having a "team of rivals" in the Cabinet, an allusion to the 2005 best-selling history by Doris Kearns Goodwin, recounting Abraham Lincoln's choice in 1860 of William Henry Seward, a Senator from New York, to be his Secretary of State after defeating him for the Republican nomination.

Over time I had become a big fan of Seward's, so this parallel was particularly intriguing to me. He was one of the leading lights of his day, a principled reformer, a strong critic of slavery, Governor and Senator from New York, and ultimately Secretary of State. He also helped President Lincoln draft the Proclamation of Thanksgiving, marking the day as an American holiday. He was described by a contemporary as "ruffled or excited never, astute, keen to perceive a joke, appreciative of a good thing, and fond of 'good victuals.' " I could relate to that.

Seward had been a well-regarded Senator from New York when he tried to get the presidential nomination, before running into a versatile, up-and-coming politician from Illinois. The parallel was not perfect; I hope no one ever describes me as a "wise macaw," which is how Seward appeared to the historian Henry Adams. And I was privately amused that the man who did more than anyone to thwart Seward's chances for President was the journalist Horace Greeley, who has a prominent statue in Chappaqua.

Seward also appealed to me for reasons that went deeper than historical coincidences. I had been to his house in Auburn, New York, a stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing to freedom from the South. It was filled with mementos of an extraordinary career and his fourteen-month trip around the world after leaving office. The diplomatic gallery includes tributes from nearly all of the world's leaders, most of whom were crowned monarchs, paying tribute to a humble servant of democracy.

For all his worldliness, Seward was deeply devoted to his constituents, and they to him. He spoke eloquently about the inclusive country America could be. And he followed up his words with actions. Harriet Tubman, the heroic conductor of the Underground Railroad, settled in a house in Seward's hometown, on land purchased from Seward himself. His friendship with Lincoln was especially moving. After conceding defeat in their contest for the nomination, Seward worked hard for Lincoln's election, crossing the country by rail and giving speeches. He soon became one of Lincoln's trusted advisors. He was there at the beginning, suggesting the breathtaking final paragraph of Lincoln's first inaugural address, which Lincoln turned into an appeal to "the better angels of our nature." And he was there at the end; the plot to kill Lincoln included a coordinated attack on Seward as well, though he survived. Lincoln and Seward traveled a great distance together, and their friendship and hard work helped save the Union.

Seward's work was not quite done when the Civil War ended. In 1867, in a final burst of statesmanship, he engineered the purchase of Alaska from Russia. The price, $7.2 million, was considered so extravagant that the deal was called "Seward's Folly," although we now realize it was one of the great land transactions in American history (and a steal at 2 cents an acre). Right after graduating from college, I spent a memorable few months in Alaska, gutting fish and washing dishes. Now, as my name began to be referenced more often in connection with the job at State, I started to wonder if Seward's ghost was following me. Still, I had to ask myself, if the President-elect asked me to serve, was it pure folly to abandon the Senate and my entire domestic agenda for a short-term assignment at State?
      
The night after President-elect Obama's phone call with Bill, a reporter at Glamour's Women of the Year awards ceremony in New York City asked me on my way into the event whether I would consider accepting a position in the Obama Administration. I expressed what I was feeling at the time: "I am happy being a Senator from New York." That was true. But I was also enough of a realist to know that anything can happen in politics.

The morning of Thursday, November 13, I flew to Chicago with Huma to meet with the President-elect, and made it there uneventfully. When we arrived at the transition headquarters, I was ushered into a large wood-paneled room furnished with a few chairs and one folding table, where I would meet alone with the President-elect.

He looked more relaxed and rested than he had for months. Even though he faced the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, he appeared confident. As I later saw him do often, he went straight to the point by skipping the small talk and asking me to serve as his Secretary of State. He told me he had been thinking of me for the position for a while and believed I was the best person--in his words, the only person--who could serve in that role at this moment in time, with the unique challenges America faced at home and abroad.

Despite all the whispers, rumors, and point-blank questions, I was still floored. Only months before, Barack Obama and I had been locked in one of the hardest-fought primary campaigns in history. Now he was asking me to join his administration, in the most senior Cabinet post, fourth in the line of succession to the presidency. This was like a rerun of the final season of The West Wing; there, too, the new President-elect offers his defeated opponent the job of Secretary of State. In the TV version, the rival turns down the job at first, but the President-elect refuses to take no for an answer.

In real life, President-elect Obama presented a well-considered argument, explaining that he would have to concentrate most of his time and attention on the economic crisis and needed someone of stature to represent him abroad. I listened carefully and then respectfully declined his offer. Of course I was honored to be asked. I cared deeply about foreign policy and believed that it was essential to restore our country's damaged standing in the world. There were two wars to wind down, emerging threats to counter, and new opportunities to seize. But I also felt passionately invested in reversing the massive job losses we were seeing at home, fixing our broken health care system, and creating new opportunities for working families in America. People were hurting and needed a champion to fight for them. All of that and more was waiting for me in the Senate. Plus there were so many seasoned diplomats who I thought could also be great Secretaries. "What about Richard Holbrooke?" I suggested. "Or George Mitchell?" But the President-elect would not be put off, and I left saying that I would think about it. On the flight back to New York, I thought about nothing else.

Before I even landed back in New York, press speculation was intense. Two days later, "Obama's Talk with Clinton Creates Buzz" ran on the front page of the New York Times, noting that the prospect of my nomination as the nation's top diplomat could provide a "surprise ending" to the "Obama-Clinton drama" of the Presidential campaign. Out of respect for the President-elect, I avoided confirming that an offer had even been made.

I had promised to think it over, so I did. Over the course of the next week, I talked extensively with family, friends, and colleagues. Bill and Chelsea were patient listeners and urged me to carefully weigh the offer. My friends were evenly divided between enthusiasm and skepticism. I had a lot to think about and only a few days to make up my mind. The job was tantalizing, and I was confident I could do it well. I'd been grappling for years with the challenges facing the United States around the world, as both First Lady and Senator, and I already had relationships with many key leaders, from Angela Merkel in Germany to Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

John Podesta, a valued friend, the cochair of the Obama Transition Team, and a former Chief of Staff for my husband in the White House, called me on November 16 to talk over a few issues and to reinforce how much the President-elect wanted me to accept. We discussed some of the more practical concerns, like how I would pay off more than $6 million remaining from my campaign debt if I became Secretary of State and therefore would have to stay out of partisan politics. I also did not want to do anything that would limit the life-saving work Bill was doing around the world through the Clinton Foundation. Much was made in the press about possible conflicts of interest between his philanthropic efforts and my potential new position. That problem was quickly dispatched after the Presidential Transition Team vetted the Foundation's donors and Bill agreed to disclose all their names. Bill also had to give up holding overseas versions of the innovative philanthropy conference he had started, the Clinton Global Initiative, to avoid any perceived conflict. "The good you can do as Secretary of State will more than outweigh whatever work I have to cut back on," Bill assured me.

Throughout this process, and for the next four years, Bill was, as he had been for decades, my essential support and sounding board. He reminded me to focus on the "trendlines," not just the headlines, and to relish the experiences.

I sought the advice of a few of my trusted colleagues. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Mikulski and Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher encouraged me to accept, as did my fellow Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. While many enjoyed pointing out how different Chuck and I were and how competitive we were at times, the truth is that he and I were a great team, and I respected his instincts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid surprised me when he told me the President-elect had asked him what he thought of the idea earlier in the fall, during a campaign stop in Las Vegas. He said that although he didn't want to lose me in the Senate, he didn't see how I could refuse the request.

And so my deliberations continued. One hour I leaned toward accepting; the next I was making plans for legislation I would introduce in the new session of Congress. I didn't know it then, but I later learned of the shenanigans my team and the President-elect's were playing to make it tough for me to say no. My staff told me it was Joe Biden's birthday so that I would call him two days earlier than the real date, giving Joe the opportunity to add to the cajoling. Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel pretended the President-elect was indisposed when I tried to call to say no.

Finally, the President-elect and I spoke on the phone in the wee hours of November 20. He was attentive to my concerns, answered my questions, and was enthusiastic about the work we might do together. I told him that although Bill's charitable work and my campaign debt weighed on me, I was most worried about whether my highest and best use was serving in the Senate rather than the Cabinet. And, to be honest, I was looking for a more regular schedule after the long campaign. I laid all this out, and he listened patiently--and then assured me all my concerns could be addressed.

Shrewdly, the President-elect also steered the conversation away from the job offer and toward the job itself. We talked about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the perpetual challenges posed by Iran and North Korea, and how the United States might emerge swiftly and confidently from the recession. It was great to exchange ideas in a comfortable private conversation after a year spent hammering away at each other under the hot lights of televised campaign debates. In retrospect, this conversation was even more important than it seemed at the time. We were laying the groundwork for a shared agenda that would guide American foreign policy for years to come.

Yet my answer was still no. The President-elect again refused to accept that. "I want to get to yes," he told me. "You're the best person for the job." He would not take no for an answer. That impressed me.

After I hung up, I stayed up most of the night. What would I expect if the tables were turned? Suppose I had been elected President and wanted Barack Obama to serve as my Secretary of State? Suppose I had inherited the challenges facing him? Of course I would want him to say yes--and quickly, so we could move on to other problems. I would want the most talented public servants to come together and work hard, for the good of the nation. The more I thought about it, the more I knew the President-elect was right. The country was in trouble, both at home and abroad. He needed a Secretary of State who could step immediately onto the global stage and begin repairing the damage we had inherited.

Finally, I kept returning to a simple idea: When your President asks you to serve, you should say yes. As much as I loved my work in the Senate and believed I had more to contribute there, he said he needed me in the State Department. My father served in the Navy in World War II, training young sailors to go off to fight in the Pacific. And although he often grumbled about the decisions various Presidents made in Washington, he and my mother instilled in me a deep sense of duty and service. It was reinforced by my family's Methodist faith, which taught us, "Do all the good you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." The call to service had helped me decide to take the plunge into elected office when I launched my first Senate campaign in 2000, and now it helped me make the hard choice to leave the Senate and accept the position of Secretary of State.
      
By the morning I had reached my decision, and I asked to speak to the President-elect one more time. He was delighted that I had come around. He guaranteed that I would have direct access to him and could see him alone whenever I needed to. He said I could choose my own team, though he would have some suggestions. As someone who had been in the White House, I knew how important both of those promises were. History had shown time and again that the State Department could be neglected by the White House, usually with negative results. The President-elect assured me that this time would be different: "I want to be sure you're successful." He went on to say that he knew our foreign policy partnership would not be without mistakes and turbulence, but that we would strive to make the best decisions possible for our country. We had not yet developed the close relationship that would follow, but I was touched when he said, "Contrary to reports, I think we can become good friends." That comment stuck with me in the years to come.

The President fully lived up to his promises. He gave me free rein to choose my team, relied on my advice as his chief foreign policy advisor on the major decisions on his desk, and insisted on meeting often so we could speak candidly. He and I generally sat down together at least once a week when we weren't traveling. Then there were full Cabinet meetings, National Security Council meetings, and bilateral meetings with visiting foreign leaders--and those were just the meetings with the President in attendance. I also met regularly at the White House with the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor. If you add it all up, despite my vigorous travel schedule, I was at the White House more than seven hundred times during my four years. After losing the election, I never expected to spend so much time there.

In the years to come, I wouldn't always agree with the President and other members of his team; some of those times you'll read about in this book, but others will remain private to honor the cone of confidentiality that should exist between a President and his Secretary of State, especially while he is still in office. But he and I developed a strong professional relationship and, over time, forged the personal friendship he had predicted and that I came to value deeply. Not too many weeks into the new administration, on a mild April afternoon, the President suggested we finish one of our weekly meetings at the picnic table outside the Oval Office on the South Lawn, right next to Malia and Sasha's new playground. That suited me perfectly. The press called it our "picnic table strategy session." I'd call it "Two folks having a good conversation."

On Monday, December 1, President-elect Obama announced me as his choice to serve as the sixty-seventh Secretary of State. As I stood next to him, he reiterated publicly what he had told me privately: "Hillary's appointment is a sign to friend and foe of the seriousness of my commitment to renew American diplomacy."

The next month, on January 20, 2009, I watched with my husband in the biting cold as Barack Obama took the oath of office. Our rivalry, once fierce, was over. Now we were partners.
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I quickly learned that being Secretary of State is really three jobs in one: the country's chief diplomat, the President's principal advisor on foreign policy, and the CEO of a sprawling Department.
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Every time we've faced a challenge, whether war or depression or global competition, Americans have risen to meet it, with hard work and creativity.

I thought these pessimistic analyses undervalued many of America's strengths, including our capacity for resilience and reinvention. Our military was by far the most powerful in the world, our economy was still the biggest, our diplomatic influence was unrivaled, our universities set the global standard, and our values of freedom, equality, and opportunity still drew people from everywhere to our shores. When we needed to solve a problem anywhere in the world, we could call on dozens of friends and allies.

I believed that what happened to America was still largely up to Americans, as had always been the case. We just needed to sharpen our tools and put them to their best use. But all this talk of decline did underscore the scope of the challenges we faced. It reconfirmed my determination to take a page from Steve Jobs and "think different" about the role of the State Department in the 21st century.
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I thought this was short-sighted [Capricia Marshall] but understood that some friction and growing pains were inevitable as we worked to merge the sprawling entities known as Obamaworld and Hillaryland.
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Marshall and Truman launched an ambitious plan to rebuild Europe's shattered countries and ward off the spread of Communism using every element of American power: military, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and moral. They reached across the aisle to build bipartisan support for their efforts and enlisted business leaders, labor organizers, and academics to help explain their goals to the American people.

Sixty years later, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, our country once again found itself navigating a rapidly changing world. Technology and globalization had made the world more interconnected and interdependent than ever, and we were grappling with drones, cyber warfare, and social media. More countries--including China, India, Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa--had influence in global debates, while nonstate actors such as civil society activists, multinational corporations, and terrorist networks were playing greater roles in international affairs, for good and ill.

Although some may have yearned for an Obama Doctrine--a grand unified theory that would provide a simple and elegant road map for foreign policy in this new era, like "containment" did during the Cold War--there was nothing simple or elegant about the problems we faced. Unlike the Cold War days, when we faced a single adversary in the Soviet Union, we now had to contend with many opposing forces. So like our predecessors after World War II, we had to update our thinking to match the changes we were seeing all around us.

Foreign policy experts often refer to the system of institutions, alliances, and norms built up after World War II as "architecture." We still needed a rules-based global order that could manage interactions between states, protect fundamental freedoms, and mobilize common action. But it would have to be more flexible and inclusive than before. I came to liken the old architecture to the Parthenon in Greece, with clean lines and clear rules. The pillars holding it up--a handful of big institutions, alliances, and treaties--were remarkably sturdy. But time takes its toll, even on the greatest of edifices, and now we needed a new architecture for a new world, more in the spirit of Frank Gehry than formal Greek classicism. Where once a few strong columns could hold up the weight of the world, now a dynamic mix of materials, shapes, and structures was needed.

For decades foreign policy tools had been categorized as either the "hard power" of military force or the "soft power" of diplomatic, economic, humanitarian, and cultural influence. I wanted to break the hold of this outdated paradigm and think broadly about where and how we could use all the elements of American foreign policy in concert.

Beyond the traditional work of negotiating treaties and attending diplomatic conferences, we had to--among other tasks--engage activists on social media, help determine energy pipeline routes, limit carbon emissions, encourage marginalized groups to participate in politics, stand up for universal human rights, and defend common economic rules of the road. Our ability to do these things would be crucial measures of our national power.

This analysis led me to embrace a concept known as smart power, which had been kicking around Washington for a few years. Harvard's Joseph Nye, Suzanne Nossel of Human Rights Watch, and a few others had used the term, although we all had in mind slightly different meanings. For me, smart power meant choosing the right combination of tools--diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural--for each situation.

The goal of smart power and our expanded focus on technology, public-private partnerships, energy, economics, and other areas beyond the State Department's standard portfolio was to complement more traditional diplomatic tools and priorities, not replace them. We wanted to bring every resource to bear on the biggest and toughest national security challenges. Throughout this book, you'll see examples of how this worked. Consider our efforts on Iran. We used new financial tools and private-sector partners to enforce stringent sanctions and cut Iran off from the global economy. Our energy diplomacy helped reduce sales of Iranian oil and drummed up new supplies to stabilize the market. We turned to social media to communicate directly with the Iranian people and invested in new high-tech tools to help dissidents evade government repression. All of that bolstered our old-fashioned shoe-leather diplomacy, and together they advanced our core national security objectives.
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Soon this office would become my second home, where I would spend many hours on the phone with foreign leaders while I paced the small room. But for now, on this first day, I just soaked it up.

I picked up the letter from Condi and opened it. It was brief, warm, and heartfelt. She wrote that being Secretary of State was "the best job in government" and that she was confident she was leaving the Department in good hands. "You have the most important qualification for this job--you love this country deeply." I was touched by her words.

I couldn't wait to get started.
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At the back were the Air Force flight attendants who prepared our meals and always took good care of us. That was not easy when everyone's food preferences and sleep patterns were out of sync most of the time. The flight crew shopped for provisions in the countries we visited, which allowed for some unexpected treats, like Oaxaca cheese in Mexico, smoked salmon in Ireland, and tropical fruit in Cambodia. But wherever we were, we could still count on finding staff favorites on the menu, like the Air Force's famous turkey taco salad.

This packed metal tube became our home in the sky. I told the staff to dress casually, sleep as much as possible, and do whatever they could to stay sane and healthy amid the rigors of a grueling schedule. Over those two thousand hours in the air, we would celebrate birthdays, see distinguished diplomats weeping over soapy romantic comedies (and try and fail not to tease them for it), and marvel at Richard Holbrooke's bright yellow pajamas that he called his "sleeping suit."

On most flights the team carved out a lot of work time, and so did I. But at the end of a long international tour there was a palpable sense of relief and relaxation on the flight home. We'd enjoy a glass of wine, watch movies, and swap stories. On one of those flights we watched Breach, a film about Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who spied for the Russians in the 1980s and '90s. In one scene the Hanssen character complains, "Can't trust a woman in a pantsuit. Men wear the pants. The world doesn't need any more Hillary Clintons." The whole plane burst into laughter.

The plane broke down on a number of occasions. Once, stranded in Saudi Arabia with mechanical difficulties, I managed to hitch a ride home with General David Petraeus, who happened to be passing through the region. Dave generously offered me his cabin and sat with his staff. In the middle of the night we stopped to refuel at an Air Force base in Germany. Dave got off the plane and headed right to the base's gym, where he worked out for an hour, and then we were off and flying again.
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The rise of China is one of the most consequential strategic developments of our time. It is a country full of contradictions: an increasingly rich and influential nation that has moved hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and an authoritarian regime trying to paper over its serious domestic challenges, with around 100 million people still living on a dollar or less a day. It's the world's largest producer of solar panels and also the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, with some of the world's worst urban air pollution. Eager to play a major role on the global stage but determined to act unilaterally in dealing with its neighbors, China remains reluctant to question other nations' internal affairs, even in extreme circumstances.

As a Senator, I argued that the United States would have to deal with a rising China and its growing economic, diplomatic, and military power in a careful, disciplined way. In the past, the emergence of new powers has rarely come without friction. In this case the situation was particularly complicated because of how interdependent our economies were becoming. In 2007, trade between the United States and China surpassed $387 billion; in 2013, it reached $562 billion. The Chinese held vast amounts of U.S. Treasury bonds, which meant we were deeply invested in each other's economic success. As a consequence, we both shared a strong interest in maintaining stability in Asia and around the world and in ensuring the steady flow of energy and trade. Yet beyond these shared interests, our values and worldviews often diverged; we saw it in old flash points like North Korea, Taiwan, Tibet, and human rights, and newly important ones such as climate change and disputes in the South and East China Seas.

All this made for a difficult balancing act. We needed a sophisticated strategy that encouraged China to participate as a responsible member of the international community, while standing firm in defense of our values and interests. This was a theme I carried through my campaign for President in 2008, arguing that the United States had to know both how to find common ground and how to stand our ground. I emphasized the importance of convincing China to play by the rules in the global marketplace by dropping discriminatory trade practices, allowing the value of its currency to rise, and preventing tainted food and goods from reaching consumers around the world, such as the toys contaminated by toxic lead paint that had ended up in the hands of American children. The world needed responsible leadership from China to make real headway on climate change, to prevent conflict on the Korean Peninsula, and to address many other regional and global challenges, so it wasn't in our interests to turn Beijing into a new Cold War boogeyman. Instead we needed to find a formula to manage competition and foster cooperation.

Under the leadership of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the Bush Administration started a high-level economic dialogue with China that made progress on some important trade issues, but these talks remained separate from broader strategic and security discussions. Many in the region felt that the administration's focus on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East led to disengagement from America's traditional leadership role in Asia. Some of those concerns were overstated, but the perception was a problem in and of itself. I thought we ought to broaden our engagement with China and put the Asia-Pacific at the top of our diplomatic agenda.

Jim Steinberg and I quickly agreed that the person who should run the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs was Dr. Kurt Campbell. Kurt, who helped shape Asia policy at the Pentagon and the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration, became a key architect of our strategy. Besides being a creative strategic thinker and devoted public servant, he was also an irrepressible traveling companion, fond of pranks and never without a joke or a story.

During my first days on the job, I made a round of calls to key Asian leaders. One of my more candid exchanges was with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith of Australia. His boss, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, spoke Mandarin and had a clear-eyed view of the opportunities and challenges of China's rise. Rich in natural resources, Australia was profiting by supplying China's industrial boom with minerals and other raw materials. China became Australia's largest trading partner, surpassing Japan and the United States. But Rudd also understood that peace and security in the Pacific depended on American leadership, and he put great value on the historic ties between our countries. The last thing he wanted was to see America withdraw from or lose influence in Asia. In that first call, Smith expressed his and Rudd's hope that the Obama Administration would "more deeply engage with Asia." I told him that was right in line with my own thinking and that I looked forward to a close partnership. Australia became a key ally in our Asian strategy over the coming years, under both Rudd and his successor, Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Its neighbor New Zealand presented more of a challenge. For twenty-five years, since New Zealand prohibited all nuclear vessels from visiting their home ports, the United States and New Zealand had had a limited relationship. However, I thought our long friendship and mutual interests created a diplomatic opening for bridging the divide and shaping a new relationship between Wellington and Washington. On my visit in 2010, I signed the Wellington Declaration with Prime Minister John Key, which committed our nations to work more closely together in Asia, the Pacific, and multilateral organizations. In 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta would rescind the twenty-six-year ban on New Zealand's ships docking at American bases. In global politics, sometimes reaching out to an old friend can be as rewarding as making a new one.

All my calls with Asian leaders that first week reinforced my belief that we needed a new approach in the region. Jim and I consulted with experts about various possibilities. One option was to focus on broadening our relationship with China, on the theory that if we could get our China policy right, the rest of our work in Asia would be much easier. An alternative was to concentrate our efforts on strengthening America's treaty alliances in the region (with Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia), providing a counterbalance to China's growing power.

A third approach was to elevate and harmonize the alphabet soup of regional multilateral organizations, such as ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization). Nobody was expecting anything as coherent as the European Union to spring up overnight, but other regions had learned important lessons about the value of well-organized multinational institutions. They could provide a venue for every nation and point of view to be heard and offer opportunities for nations to work together on shared challenges, resolve their disagreements, establish rules and standards of behavior, reward responsible countries with legitimacy and respect, and help hold accountable those who violated the rules. If Asia's multilateral institutions were supported and modernized, they could strengthen regional norms on everything from intellectual property rights to nuclear proliferation to freedom of navigation, and mobilize action on challenges like climate change and piracy. This kind of methodical multilateral diplomacy is often slow and frustrating, rarely making headlines at home, but it can pay real dividends that affect the lives of millions of people.

In keeping with the position I had staked out as a Senator and Presidential candidate, I decided that the smart power choice was to meld all three approaches. We would show that America was "all in" when it came to Asia. I was prepared to lead the way, but success would require buy-in from our entire government, beginning with the White House.

The President shared my determination to make Asia a focal point of the administration's foreign policy. Born in Hawaii, and having spent formative years in Indonesia, he felt a strong personal connection to the region and understood its significance. At his direction, the National Security Council staff, led by General Jim Jones, along with Tom Donilon and their Asia expert, Jeff Bader, supported our strategy. Over the next four years we practiced what I called "forward-deployed diplomacy" in Asia, borrowing a term from our military colleagues. We quickened the pace and widened the scope of our diplomatic engagement across the region, dispatching senior officials and development experts far and wide, participating more fully in multilateral organizations, reaffirming our traditional alliances, and reaching out to new strategic partners. Because personal relationships and gestures of respect are deeply significant in Asia, I made it a priority to visit almost every nation in the region. My travels would eventually take me from one of the smallest Pacific islands to the home of a long-imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate to the edge of the most heavily guarded border in the world.

Over four years, I delivered a series of speeches explaining our strategy and making the case for why the Asia-Pacific deserved greater attention from the U.S. government. In the summer of 2011, I began working on a long essay that would situate our work in the region in the broader sweep of American foreign policy. The war in Iraq was winding down, and a transition was under way in Afghanistan. After a decade of focusing on the areas of greatest threat, we had come to a "pivot point." Of course, we had to stay focused on the threats that remained, but it was also time to do more in the areas of greatest opportunity.

Foreign Policy magazine published my essay in the fall under the title "America's Pacific Century," but it was the word pivot that gained prominence. Journalists latched on to it as an evocative description of the administration's renewed emphasis on Asia, although many in our own government preferred the more anodyne rebalance to Asia. Some friends and allies in other parts of the world were understandably concerned that the phrase implied turning our back on them, but we worked to make clear that America had the reach and resolve to pivot to Asia without pivoting away from other obligations and opportunities.
      
Our first task was to reassert America as a Pacific power without sparking an unnecessary confrontation with China. That's why I decided to use my first trip as Secretary to accomplish three goals: visit our key Asian allies, Japan and South Korea; reach out to Indonesia, an emerging regional power and the home of ASEAN; and begin our crucial engagement with China.
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I made it clear that I wanted to get out beyond the Foreign Ministries and palaces and meet with citizens, especially community activists and volunteers; journalists; students and professors; business, labor, and religious leaders, the civil society that helps hold governments accountable and drives social change. This was something I had been doing since I was First Lady. In a speech at the 1998 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I had compared a healthy society to a three-legged stool, supported by a responsible government, an open economy, and a vibrant civil society. That third leg of the stool was too often neglected.

Thanks to the internet, especially social media, citizens and community organizations had gained more access to information and a greater ability to speak out than ever before. Now even autocracies had to pay attention to the sentiments of their people, as we would see during the Arab Spring. For the United States, it was important to build strong relationships with foreign publics as well as governments. This would help ensure more durable partnerships with our friends. It would also build support for our goals and values when the government wasn't with us but the people were. In many cases civil society advocates and organizations were the ones driving progress inside countries. They were battling official corruption, mobilizing grassroots movements, and drawing attention to problems like environmental degradation, human rights abuses, and economic inequality. From the start I wanted America to be firmly on their side and to encourage and support them in their efforts.
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After Japan it was on to Jakarta, Indonesia, where I was welcomed by a group of young students from the primary school that President Obama attended as a young boy. During my visit, I went on The Awesome Show, one of the country's most popular television programs. It felt just like MTV. Loud music blared between segments, and the interviewers all looked young enough to be in school, not hosting a national talk show.

They asked me a question that I would hear all over the world: How could I work with President Obama after we had campaigned so hard against each other? Indonesia was still a very young democracy; the longtime ruler, Suharto, was ousted in 1998 through popular protests, and the first direct Presidential election was held only in 2004. So it was not surprising that people were more accustomed to political rivals being jailed or exiled rather than appointed chief diplomat. I said that it had not been easy losing a hard-fought campaign to President Obama but that democracy works only if political leaders put the common good ahead of personal interest. I told them that when he asked me to serve, I accepted because we both love our country. It was the first of many times that our partnership would serve as an example for people in other countries trying to understand democracy.
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As I stared across the DMZ, it was hard not to be struck anew by how this narrow line separated two dramatically different worlds. South Korea was a shining example of progress, a country that had successfully transitioned from poverty and dictatorship to prosperity and democracy. Its leaders cared about the well-being of their citizens, and young people grew up with freedom and opportunity, not to mention the fastest broadband download speeds in the world. Just two and a half miles away, North Korea was a land of fear and famine. The contrast could not have been starker, or more tragic.

Bob and I went inside the nearby headquarters of the UN forces with our South Korean counterparts for a military briefing. We also toured a building that sits squarely on top of the border, half in the north and half in the south, designed to facilitate negotiations between the two sides. There is even a long conference table positioned exactly on the dividing line. As we walked through, a North Korean soldier stood just inches away, on the other side of a window, staring stonily at us. Maybe he was just curious. But if his goal was to intimidate, he failed. I stayed focused on our briefer, while Bob smiled merrily. A photographer captured the unusual moment in a picture that ran on the front page of the New York Times.
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I also made the obvious point that, given the breadth and complexity of our relationship with China, our profound differences on human rights could not exclude engagement on all other issues. We had to be able to stand up forcefully for dissidents while also seeking cooperation on the economy, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. This had been our approach since Nixon went to China. Nonetheless my comments were widely interpreted to mean that human rights would not be a priority for the Obama Administration and that the Chinese could safely ignore them. Nothing could have been further from reality, as future events showed. Still, it was a valuable lesson: now that I was America's chief diplomat, every utterance would be subjected to a whole new level of scrutiny, and even seemingly self-evident observations could set off a feeding frenzy in the media.
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China prefers to resolve territorial disputes with its neighbors bilaterally, or one-on-one, because in those situations its relative power is greater. In multilateral settings where smaller nations could band together, its sway decreased. Not surprisingly, most of the rest of the region preferred the multilateral approach. They believed there were too many overlapping claims and interests to try to settle them in a patchwork, one-off fashion. Getting all the relevant players in the same room and giving them all a chance to express their views--especially the smaller countries--was the best way to move toward a comprehensive solution.

I agreed with this approach. The United States has no territorial claims in the South or East China Seas, we don't take sides in such disputes, and we oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo. We have an abiding interest in protecting freedom of navigation, maritime commerce, and international law. And we have treaty obligations to support Japan and the Philippines.

My concerns escalated when I was in Beijing for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in May 2010 and for the first time heard Chinese leaders describe the country's territorial claims in the South China Sea as a "core interest" alongside traditional hot-button topics like Taiwan and Tibet. They warned that China would not tolerate outside interference. Later the meetings were disrupted when a Chinese admiral stood up and launched into an angry rant accusing the United States of trying to encircle China and suppress its rise. This was highly unusual in a carefully choreographed summit, and--although I assumed the admiral had gotten at least a tacit go-ahead from his military and party bosses--it appeared that some of the Chinese diplomats were as surprised as I was.

The confrontations in the South China Sea in the first two years of the Obama Administration reinforced my belief that our strategy in Asia must include a significant effort to upgrade the region's multilateral institutions. The available venues just weren't effective enough for resolving disputes between nations or mobilizing action. For the smaller nations, it could feel like the Wild West: a frontier without the rule of law, where the weak were at the mercy of the strong. Our goal was not just to help defuse flash points like the South or East China Sea but also to nurture an international system of rules and organizations in the Asia-Pacific that could help avoid future conflicts and bring some order and long-term stability to the region--something that began to approximate what Europe had built.

On the flight home from the talks in Beijing, I took stock with my team. I thought China had overplayed its hand. Instead of using the period of our perceived absence and the economic crisis to cement good relations with its neighbors, it had become more aggressive toward them, and that shift had unnerved the rest of the region. When times are good with few threats to security or prosperity, nations are less likely to see the appeal of expensive defense alliances, strong international rules and norms, and robust multilateral institutions. But when conflict unsettles the status quo, these agreements and protections become a lot more attractive, especially to smaller nations.
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Perhaps there was an opportunity to be found amid all these troubling developments. One presented itself just two months later at an ASEAN regional forum in Vietnam. I touched down in Hanoi on July 22, 2010, and went to a lunch marking the fifteenth anniversary of normalized diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States.

I vividly remembered the day in July 1995 when Bill made the historic announcement in the East Room of the White House, flanked by Vietnam veterans, including Senators John Kerry and John McCain. It was the beginning of a new era--healing old wounds, settling questions about prisoners of war, and charting a path of improved economic and strategic relations. In 2000, we went to Hanoi, the first visit by a U.S. President. We were prepared to find resentment, even hostility, but as we drove into the city, large crowds lined the streets to welcome us. Throngs of students, who had grown up knowing only peace between our nations, gathered at Hanoi National University to hear Bill speak. Everywhere we went we felt the warmth and hospitality of the Vietnamese people, a reflection of the goodwill that had developed between our countries in the span of a single generation and a powerful testament to the fact that the past does not have to determine the future.

Back in Hanoi as Secretary of State, I marveled at how far Vietnam had come since that visit and how our relations continued to improve. Our annual trade had grown to nearly $20 billion in 2010 from less than $250 million before relations were normalized, and it was expanding rapidly every year. Vietnam also presented a unique--though challenging--strategic opportunity. On the one hand, it remained an authoritarian country with a poor record on human rights, especially press freedoms. On the other, it was steadily taking steps to open up its economy and trying to claim a larger role in the region. Over the years Vietnamese officials had told me that, despite the war we had fought against them, they admired and liked America.
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When Kurt touched down in Beijing, he immediately made his way to the third floor of the embassy's Marine barracks. The Chinese security presence around the compound had grown significantly since the day before, and inside it felt like a siege. Chen appeared frail and vulnerable. It was hard to believe that this slight man with the large dark glasses was at the center of a brewing international incident.

I was relieved to hear from Kurt that he found at least a little good news waiting for him: The Chinese had agreed to meet. Considering we were talking about one of their own citizens, picked up on Chinese soil, that in itself was promising. What's more, Chen seemed to have already bonded with Bob and some of the other Mandarin-speaking officers at the embassy, and he was declaring his firm desire to remain in China rather than seek asylum or remain in the barracks forever. Chen talked about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the corrupt local authorities in Shandong and expressed his hope that the central government in Beijing would step in and provide justice. He had special faith in Premier Wen, who had a reputation for caring about the poor and disenfranchised. "Grandpa Wen" would surely help if he only knew what was really going on.

As we waited anxiously for negotiations to begin, there was reason to be cautiously optimistic. What was not immediately clear in those early hours was that Chen would turn out to be unpredictable and quixotic, as formidable a negotiator as the Chinese leaders outside.
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Back at the embassy our team listened as Chen talked about wanting to study law and continuing to be an advocate for reforms inside China. He was familiar with the stories of exiled dissidents who lost their influence once they left the country and lived in safe obscurity in the United States. That was not what he wanted. This was a concern Harold Koh could appreciate. His father, a South Korean diplomat, had fled Seoul after a military coup in 1961 and gone into exile in the United States. Harold spoke movingly of the difficulties Chen would face if he decided to leave China.

Besides being one of our nation's top legal scholars, Harold was also an accomplished university administrator, and his experience there now came to the fore. He developed a plan that would get Chen out of the embassy, avoid the emotionally charged question of asylum, and provide a face-saving solution for the Chinese before the start of the summit. What if Chen was admitted to study at a Chinese law school, somewhere away from Beijing, and then, after a period of time, perhaps two years, left to pursue his studies at an American university? Harold had close ties with professors and administrators at New York University, which was in the process of setting up a Shanghai campus, and overnight he persuaded the university to offer Chen a fellowship. That allowed us to present a package deal to the Chinese.

The Chinese were skeptical but didn't reject the proposal out of hand. It appeared that the Communist Party leadership was trying to walk a tightrope between working constructively with us and salvaging the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, and satisfying the concerns of more hard-line elements in the security apparatus. Eventually orders came down to Cui: Do what it takes to get this resolved.

Late in the evening of Monday, April 30, five days after the initial phone call, I boarded an Air Force jet from Andrews heading to Beijing. That gave the negotiators roughly twenty more hours to nail down the details. It was as tense a flight as any I can recall. From the White House the President had sent a clear message: Don't screw up.

Slowly the outlines of a deal emerged. First Chen would be transferred to a Beijing hospital to receive medical attention for the injuries he suffered during his escape. He would then have the opportunity to tell appropriate authorities about the abuses he had suffered under house arrest in Shandong. Next he would be reunited with his family, who had faced continued harassment since his escape. Then he would leave Beijing for two years of study elsewhere in China, followed by possible study in the United States. The American Embassy would maintain contact with him every step of the way. Kurt presented a list of five or six possible Chinese universities to consider. Cui scanned the list and exploded in anger. "There's no way he's going to East China Normal," Cui roared. "I will not share an alma mater with that man!" That meant we were getting somewhere.

Back at the embassy Chen himself wasn't so sure. He wanted to speak with his family and have them come to Beijing before making any final decisions; waiting to be reunited was not good enough. Kurt dreaded going back with another request after the Chinese had already conceded so much, but Chen was insistent. Sure enough, the Chinese could not believe it. They were withering in their criticism of Kurt and the team and refused to budge. There was no way Chen's wife and children would be allowed to come to Beijing until the deal was finalized.

We needed to raise the stakes. The Chinese are famously sensitive to protocol and respectful of authority. We decided to use this to our advantage. Bill Burns was the highest-ranking career diplomat in the U.S. government, and is a widely respected former Ambassador to Jordan and Russia. What's more, he is among the calmest and steadiest people I've ever met, qualities that we desperately needed at the negotiating table. When he arrived on Monday, he joined the next session. Sitting across from Cui, Bill made a soothing and persuasive case, diplomat to diplomat: Just deliver the family and move ahead with the summit, then we can all put this whole incident behind us. Mollified, Cui agreed to take the matter back to his superiors. By midnight, while I was still somewhere over the Pacific, word came back that the family would be on the morning train from Shandong. Now all we needed was for Chen to walk out the door.
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When we arrived back at the hotel I convened an emergency meeting in my suite. While Chen seemed to be talking easily with every reporter and activist from Beijing to Washington, no one at the embassy could reach him on the cell phones that, ironically, we had provided. We hadn't heard anything official yet from the Chinese, but they were reading the same reports we were, and security outside the hospital was growing by the hour. I could just imagine Dai and Cui preparing to deliver an epic "I told you so."
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The next day was a surreal exercise in diplomatic multitasking. Thanks to elaborate measures the government had taken in advance of the summit, the normally clogged streets and polluted air of Beijing were clearer than normal as our motorcade sped through the city that morning. But the road ahead was far from clear. A lot was riding on the next few hours.

We arrived at Diaoyutai, the sprawling complex of traditional guesthouses, gardens, and meeting rooms. It was here in 1971 that Henry Kissinger first negotiated with Zhou Enlai, laying the groundwork for President Nixon's historic visit, normalization, and everything that followed. It was also here, during our 2010 meetings, that an intemperate outburst by a Chinese admiral had exposed the deep rifts of mistrust that still divide our countries. I wondered, given the current predicament, which of those two spirits our Chinese hosts would be channeling.

The answer came as soon as the first formal speeches began. Dai and the other Chinese leaders were clearly working just as hard as Tim Geithner and I were to project a sense of normalcy and calm. They repeated their standard talking points about China's harmonious rise and the importance of other countries staying out of their internal affairs--statements that, while familiar, took on a bit more edge in light of recent events. When it was my turn, I avoided the Chen issue and focused on Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the long list of other challenges on which we needed Chinese cooperation. But, I added, "a China that protects the rights of all its citizens will be a stronger and more prosperous nation, and of course, a stronger partner on behalf of our common goals." That was as close as I got that morning to the current crisis.

Following the speeches, we moved into smaller groups to dive into the agenda in more detail. Even if our minds often wandered to the drama unfolding in a hospital room across town, this was a chance to work on important business, and we couldn't afford to waste it. So I sat through hours of presentations and discussions, asking questions and raising concerns.

Kurt, meanwhile, was constantly excusing himself so he could monitor developments with Chen. The news wasn't good. The embassy still couldn't get through to his cell phone, and the Chinese were limiting physical access to the hospital. Protesters popped up outside, some wearing Chen-style dark glasses in homage to their hero, and Chinese security was getting increasingly anxious. None of that, however, was stopping Chen from talking with American journalists, who kept trumpeting his new desire to leave China and go to the United States and questioning whether we had done enough to help him.

Back home, with election-year politics swirling, Washington was in an uproar. Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner proclaimed himself "deeply disturbed" by reports that Chen was "pressured to leave the U.S. embassy against his will amid flimsy promises and possible threats of harm to his family." Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate, went even further. He said it was "a dark day for freedom" and "a day of shame for the Obama Administration." I don't know if the critics were aware that we had done what Chen said he wanted every step of the way. The White House went into full damage-control mode. The guidance to us in Beijing was simple: Fix this.

I told Kurt and Ambassador Locke to restart negotiations with Cui immediately and try to get Chen out of the country. That was easier said than done. The Chinese were absolutely incredulous that we would seek to reopen a deal that they hadn't wanted in the first place. Cui just shook his head. He said that Kurt should "go back to Washington and resign." Meanwhile Chen took his outreach to another level. Although he still had not spoken with anyone at the U.S. Embassy, he managed to call in to a Congressional hearing back in Washington. An activist close to Chen, Bob Fu, put his iPhone on speaker in front of Congressman Chris Smith's committee. "I fear for my family's lives," Chen said, and then repeated his request to travel to the United States. It was like throwing fuel on the political fire.
      
It was time for me to step in. If Cui refused to negotiate, I would put aside the pantomime and raise the issue directly with Dai. Would our years of relationship-building pay off? On Friday I was scheduled to meet with President Hu and Premier Wen in the Great Hall of the People, and it was important to both Dai and me that those encounters go smoothly. It was in both our interests to get this resolved.

On the morning of May 4, I met with Dai and thanked him for China honoring its side of the agreement. Then I explained the political firestorm back home and the difficulties it was causing us. Dai seemed surprised as I described the circus at the Congressional hearing. Nothing like that ever happened in China. What to do now? I offered what I hoped would be a face-saving solution. In the original understanding, Chen was supposed to go to school in China for a period of time and then continue his studies at an American university. Moving up that timetable wouldn't mean a whole new deal; it would simply be a refinement of the existing agreement. Dai stared at me quietly for a long while, and I wondered what thoughts were racing behind his stoic demeanor. Slowly he turned to Cui, who was visibly agitated, and directed him to try to work out the details with Kurt.

Heartened, but not yet confident, I headed off to the Great Hall of the People for my meetings with the senior leaders. True to my word, I did not raise Chen with Hu or later with Wen. I didn't need to. In our discussions they appeared distracted but pleasant. We mostly talked in circles, dancing around the big issues facing the future of our relationship, while our aides were scurrying around trying to find a way out of our common dilemma.
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Occasionally, amid all the diplomatic pomp and circumstance of these summits, with their prepared speeches and choreographed set pieces, an actual human moment breaks through and reminds us of what we're doing there in the first place. This was one of those moments. Listening to the students express so much empathy and excitement, I thought about all the effort we had put into what some critics dismiss as the "softer" side of diplomacy: the educational exchanges, cultural tours, and scientific collaboration. I had made it a priority to send more American students to China, with the goal of 100,000 over four years, in part because I believed it would help convince wary Chinese officials that we were serious about expanding engagement with them. These programs may garner few headlines, but they have the potential to influence the next generation of U.S. and Chinese leaders in a way no other initiative can match. If these students were any indication, it was working. I looked across the table at Liu, Cui, and the others, and I knew they could feel it too.

When Cui sat down with Kurt and his team after lunch to work out the next moves in the Chen drama, his tone was noticeably different. Despite our differences, we were working together to save the relationship and the future those two students represented. Afterward Kurt and Jake raced to put down on paper a short and carefully worded statement that would not acknowledge an explicit deal but would make it clear that an understanding had been reached. Chen, as a Chinese citizen in good standing, would apply for a visa to the United States, and it would be processed expeditiously by both sides. He could then take his family and begin his studies at New York University.
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Chen was still in his hospital room, and we all knew there was a real chance this second deal would unravel just like the first. None of us would be truly comfortable until he was safely on American soil. Based on the understanding with the Chinese, that could take a number of weeks. But the Chinese had held up their side of the bargain throughout the crisis, and I believed they would do so again. Sure enough, on May 19 Chen and his family arrived in the United States to begin his fellowship at New York University.
      

I was immensely proud of my team and everyone at the embassy in Beijing. This was about much more than one man. We had spent four years preparing for a crisis like this--building up the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and other diplomatic mechanisms, developing habits of trust between counterparts up and down the chain, grounding the U.S.-China relationship in a framework of mutual interest and respect, while also staking out clear markers about human rights and democratic values. It had been a delicate tightrope walk from the start, but now I felt we had proof that it had been worth it. We also had reason to believe our relationship was strong enough to withstand future crises. Given our different visions, values, and interests, they were inevitable.

One of the primary goals of the pivot plan was to increase our active involvement in Asian affairs in a way that advanced our interests in a more open democratic and prosperous region, without weakening our efforts to build a positive relationship with China. The frictions in our relationship are a reflection of both disagreements over the issues at hand and very different perceptions of how the world, or at least Asia, should work. The United States wants a future of shared prosperity and shared responsibilities for peace and security. The only way to build that future is to develop mechanisms for and habits of cooperation and to urge China toward greater openness and freedom. That's why we oppose China's suppression of internet freedom, political activists like Chen, and the Tibetan and Uighur Muslim minorities. It's why we want peaceful resolutions between China and its neighbors over their territorial claims.

The Chinese believe we don't appreciate how far they've come and how much they've changed, or how deep and constant is their fear of internal conflicts and disintegration. They resent criticism by outsiders. They claim the Chinese people are more free than they have ever been, free to work, to move, to save and accumulate wealth. They are rightly proud of moving more people out of poverty faster than any other nation in history. They believe our relationship should be formed on mutual self-interest and noninvolvement in each other's affairs.

When we disagree, they believe it's because we fear China's rise on the world stage and want to contain it. We believe disagreement is a normal part of our relationship and think if we can manage our differences it will strengthen our cooperation. We have no interest in containing China. But we do insist that China play by the rules that bind all nations.

In other words, the jury's still out. China has some hard choices to make, and so do we. We should follow a time-tested strategy: Work for the best outcome, but plan for something less. And stick to our values. As I told Kurt and Jake on that first tense night when Chen was pleading for refuge, our defense of universal human rights is one of America's greatest sources of strength. The image of Chen, blind and injured, seeking through that dangerous night for the one place he knew stood for freedom and opportunity--the embassy of the United States--reminds us of our responsibility to make sure our country remains the beacon for dissidents and dreamers all over the world.
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The Irrawaddy River cuts through Burma from north to south and has long been at the heart of the country's culture and commerce. George Orwell recalled it "glittering like diamonds in the patches that caught the sun," bounded by vast stretches of rice paddies. Bundles of teak logs, a major Burmese export, float down the river from inland forests all the way to the sea. Fed by glaciers in the eastern Himalayas, the Irrawaddy's waters run through countless canals and irrigation systems, feeding farms and villages up and down the country and across its wide and fertile delta. Like the Ganges in India and the Mekong in Vietnam, the Irrawaddy occupies a revered place in Burmese society. In the words of Suu Kyi, it is "the grand natural highway, a prolific source of food, the home of varied water flora and fauna, the supporter of traditional modes of life, the muse that has inspired countless works of prose and poetry."

None of this stopped a state-run Chinese electric power company from using Beijing's long-standing relationship with the ruling generals to win permission to build the first hydroelectric dam across the upper Irrawaddy. The massive project threatened to cause lots of damage to the local economy and ecosystem, but it held significant benefits for China. Along with six other Chinese-built dams in northern Burma, the Myitsone Dam, as it became known, would deliver electricity to energy-thirsty cities in southern China. By 2011 Chinese construction workers in hard hats had descended on the banks of the Irrawaddy's headwaters in the remote northern hills that are home to the separatist Kachin ethnic group. The Chinese began blasting, tunneling, and building. Thousands of villagers living nearby were relocated.

In a country long ruled by capricious autocrats, such a disruptive project wasn't particularly surprising. What was surprising was the reaction from the public. From the beginning, local Kachin groups had opposed the dam, but soon criticism spread to other areas of the country and even appeared in heavily censored newspapers. Activists got their hands on a nine-hundred-page environmental impact statement conducted by Chinese scientists that warned about damage to downstream fish and other wildlife, as well as proximity to a major seismic fault line, and questioned the necessity and wisdom of the project. Anger over ecological damage to the sacred Irrawaddy tapped into deep-seated popular resentment toward China, the military regime's main foreign patron. As we've seen in other authoritarian states, nationalism is often harder to censor than dissent.

A wave of unprecedented public outrage built across Burma. In August 2011 Suu Kyi, who had kept a relatively low profile since her release from house arrest, published an open letter criticizing the dam. The new, nominally civilian government appeared divided and caught off guard. The Information Minister, a retired general, held a press conference and tearfully pledged to protect the Irrawaddy. But other senior officials dismissed public concerns and insisted that the dam would continue as planned. Finally Thein Sein addressed the matter in Parliament. The government had been elected by the people, he said, so it had a responsibility to answer the concerns of the public. Construction on the controversial dam would be halted.

This was the most compelling evidence yet that the new government might be serious about reforms. It was also a surprising official repudiation of China, where the news was met with consternation.

I marveled at the success of Burma's emerging civil society, which had been persecuted for so long and prevented from organizing or speaking freely. The use of the Myitsone Dam as a galvanizing issue reminded me of a wonderful insight from Eleanor Roosevelt. "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?" she asked in a 1958 speech to the United Nations, and then gave her answer: "In small places, close to home," in "the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. . . . Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." The people of Burma had been denied so many of their fundamental freedoms for so long. Yet it was environmental and economic abuse that ultimately sparked widespread outrage because it hit home in a direct and tangible way. We see a similar phenomenon with antipollution protests in China. What starts as a prosaic complaint can quickly become much more. Once citizens succeed in demanding responsiveness from their government on these everyday concerns, it can raise expectations for more fundamental change. It's part of what I call making "human rights a human reality."

Stopping the dam seemed to unleash a flood of new activity. On October 12 the government began freeing a few hundred of its more than two thousand political prisoners. On the 14th it legalized labor union organizing for the first time since the 1960s. These moves came on the heels of modest steps earlier in the year to ease censorship restrictions and defuse conflicts with armed ethnic minority groups in the countryside. The government also initiated discussions with the International Monetary Fund about economic reforms. A cautiously optimistic Suu Kyi spoke to supporters in Rangoon and called for more prisoners to be released and additional reforms.

In Washington we monitored these events closely and wondered how much weight to give them. We needed a better feel for what was actually happening on the ground. I asked the State Department's top human rights official, Mike Posner, to accompany Derek Mitchell to Burma and attempt to get a read on the intentions of the new government. In early November Mike and Derek met with members of Parliament and had encouraging discussions about further reforms, including allowing freedom of assembly and opening up registration for political parties. Suu Kyi's party remained banned and would not be able to participate in 2012 Parliamentary elections unless the law was changed. This was one of the top concerns of the skeptical opposition leaders who Mike and Derek met. They also cited the large number of political prisoners still being held and reports of serious human rights abuses in ethnic areas. Suu Kyi and others were urging us not to move too hastily to lift sanctions and reward the regime until we had more concrete evidence of democratic progress. That seemed sensible to me, but we also had to keep engaging the leadership and nurturing these early advances.


In early November, as Mike and Derek were meeting with dissidents and legislators in Burma, President Obama and I were busy planning how to take the pivot to the next level. We knew the President's upcoming trip to Asia would be our best opportunity to demonstrate what the pivot meant. We started with APEC economic meetings in Hawaii and then he went on to Australia. I stopped in the Philippines to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of our mutual defense treaty on the deck of the destroyer USS Fitzgerald in Manila, and then met the President in Thailand, another key ally.

On November 17, President Obama and I both arrived in Bali, Indonesia, for a meeting of the East Asia Summit and the U.S.-ASEAN Leaders Meeting, the most important annual gathering of heads of state across Asia. It was the first time a U.S. President attended the East Asia Summit. This was a testament to President Obama's commitment to our expanded engagement in the region, and a direct result of the groundwork we had laid beginning in 2009 by signing the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and making multilateral diplomacy a priority in Asia. As in Vietnam the previous year, territorial disputes in the South China Sea were once again on everyone's mind. Just as at the ASEAN meeting in Hanoi, China did not want to discuss the issue in an open, multilateral setting, especially one that included the United States. "Outside forces should not, under any pretext, get involved," said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. The Vice Foreign Minister was more direct. "We hope the South China Sea will not be discussed at the East Asia Summit," he told reporters. But smaller countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, were determined to have the discussion. In Hanoi we had tried to advance a collaborative approach toward peaceful resolution of disputes in the South China Sea, but in the months since that encounter Beijing had dug in its heels even deeper.

On the afternoon of November 18, I accompanied President Obama to the private leaders meeting, where we met with seventeen other heads of state and their Foreign Ministers. No other staff or journalists were allowed in. President Obama and Premier Wen both listened quietly as other leaders began the discussion. Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia were among the early speakers, all of them with an interest in the South China Sea. Speaking in turn for two hours, nearly every leader repeated the principles we had discussed in Hanoi: ensuring open access and freedom of navigation, resolving disputes peacefully and collaboratively within the framework of international law, avoiding coercion and threats, and supporting a code of conduct. Soon it was clear there was a strong consensus in the room. The leaders spoke forcefully and without equivocation, but also without acrimony. Even the Russians agreed that this was an appropriate and important issue for the group to discuss.

Finally, after sixteen other leaders had spoken, President Obama took the microphone. By now all the arguments were well aired, so he welcomed the consensus and reaffirmed U.S. support for the approach the rest of the region had articulated. "While we are not a claimant in the South China Sea dispute, and while we do not take sides," he said, "we have a powerful stake in maritime security in general, and in the resolution of the South China Sea issue specifically--as a resident Pacific power, as a maritime nation, as a trading nation and as a guarantor of security in the Asia-Pacific region." When the President finished, he looked around the room, including at Premier Wen, who was visibly displeased. This was even worse than Hanoi. He had not wanted to discuss the South China Sea at all; now he faced a united front. Unlike Foreign Minister Yang in Hanoi, Premier Wen did not ask for a recess. He responded politely but firmly, defending China's actions and again insisting that this was not the appropriate forum for such matters.
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Just before we left Washington, Asia experts at the State Department had sent around a memo advising the traveling party not to wear white, black, or red clothing because of local cultural norms. It is not unusual to get that sort of memo before a trip; there are places where certain political parties or ethnic groups are associated with particular colors. So I diligently went through my closet trying to find outfits in the appropriate colors for Burma. I had just bought a lovely white jacket that was a perfect weight for hot climates. Would it really be culturally insensitive to bring it along? I packed it just in case the experts were wrong. Sure enough, when we stepped off the plane, we were greeted by Burmese wearing all the colors we had been warned to avoid. I hoped that wasn't a sign of deeper misconceptions on our part, but at least now I could safely wear my white jacket.
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The months since my visit to Burma had been full of exciting changes. Thein Sein had pulled his government slowly but surely down the path we had discussed in Nay Pyi Taw. He and I had met again over the summer at a conference in Cambodia, and he reaffirmed his commitment to reform. Hundreds of political prisoners were released, including students who organized the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations and Buddhist monks who participated in protests in 2007. A fragile cease-fire was signed with some of the rebel groups representing ethnic minorities. Political parties were beginning to organize again, and soon privately owned newspapers would be allowed to publish for the first time in nearly half a century.

In response, the United States had begun easing sanctions and had sworn in Derek Mitchell as our first Ambassador in years. Burma was rejoining the international community and was set to chair ASEAN in 2014, a long-standing goal. While the Arab Spring was losing its luster in the Middle East, Burma was giving the world new hope that it is indeed possible to transition peacefully from dictatorship to democracy. Its progress was bolstering the argument that a mix of sanctions and engagement could be an effective tool to drive change in even the most closed societies. If the Burmese generals could be coaxed in from the cold by the lure of international trade and respect, then perhaps no regime was irredeemable.

Reassessing the conventional wisdom on Burma back in 2009 and then experimenting with direct engagement against the advice of many friends back home had been a risky choice, but it was paying off for the United States. Burma's progress, in the wake of President Obama's well-received Asian tour in November 2011, which helped erase any lingering memories from 2009 in Beijing, was making the administration's pivot look like a success. There were still plenty of questions about what would happen next, both in Burma and across the region, but in February 2012 the journalist James Fallows, who has long experience in Asia, wrote glowingly about the pivot and the President's trip in the Atlantic: "Much like Nixon's approach to China, I think it will eventually be studied for its skillful combination of hard and soft power, incentives and threats, urgency and patience, plus deliberate--and effective--misdirection." Professor Walter Russell Mead, a frequent critic of the administration, called our efforts "as decisive a diplomatic victory as anyone is likely to see."

Still, despite the progress we had seen in Burma, Suu Kyi looked worried when we met in Washington. When she arrived at my house, she asked to speak to me alone. The problems, she said, were that political prisoners still languished behind bars, some ethnic conflicts had actually gotten worse, and the gold rush by foreign companies was creating new opportunities for corruption.

Suu Kyi was now in Parliament, cutting deals and forming new relationships with former adversaries, trying hard to balance all the pressures on her. Shwe Mann, the Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament, was gaining stature, and Suu Kyi had developed a positive working relationship with him; she appreciated his willingness to consult with her on important matters. The political situation was complicated by the possibility that Thein Sein, Shwe Mann, and Suu Kyi were all potential Presidential candidates in 2015. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering, shifting alliances, and political competition were getting intense. Welcome to democracy!

Thein Sein had gotten Burma moving, but could he finish the job? If Suu Kyi withdrew her cooperation, there was no telling what would happen. International confidence might collapse. Thein Sein would become vulnerable to hard-liners who still hoped to roll back the reforms they resented. Suu Kyi and I discussed the competing pressures she faced. I sympathized because I too had experienced the push and pull of political life. And I knew from years of painful experiences how hard it can be to be cordial, let alone collegial, with those who had once been your political adversaries. I thought her best option was to grit her teeth, keep pushing Thein Sein to follow through on his commitments, and keep their partnership alive at least through the next election.

I know it's not easy, I said. But you are now in a position where what you're doing is never going to be easy. You have to figure out a way to keep working together until or unless there is an alternative path. This is all part of politics. You're on a stage now. You're not locked away under house arrest. So you've got to project many different interests and roles all at once, because you are a human rights advocate, you are a member of Parliament, and you may be a future Presidential candidate. Suu Kyi understood all this, but the pressure on her was enormous. She was revered as a living saint, yet now she had to learn to wheel and deal like any elected official. It was a precarious balance.
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Petraeus had taken command of the failing U.S. effort in Iraq in early 2007, in the middle of another deadly insurgency. He presided over the surge of more than twenty thousand additional American troops that deployed to some of the most dangerous parts of the country. In January 2007 President Bush announced the Iraq surge in a prime-time speech to a skeptical nation.

His decision to send more troops was something of a surprise, because a respected bipartisan panel, the Iraq Study Group, had issued their report recommending handing over more responsibility to Iraqi security forces, drawing down U.S. troops, and launching more intensive diplomatic efforts in the region. President Bush essentially chose to do the opposite. In his speech he mentioned regional diplomacy and doing more to encourage reconciliation among Iraq's fractured sects and political factions, but most of the emphasis was on the security more U.S. troops could provide.

I doubted that was the right decision at that time. After years of blown calls and missed opportunities, there were questions about the ability of the Bush Administration to manage a major escalation. The next night I left for a trip to Iraq with Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Congressman John McHugh of New York, a Republican who went on to serve as Secretary of the Army under President Obama. It was my third visit to Iraq as Senator; I had last been there in 2005 with Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, Russ Feingold, and Lindsey Graham. I wanted to see with my own eyes how things had changed and to talk to our troops and commanders to get their perspectives on the challenges we faced.

I also had other reasons to be skeptical. My lack of confidence in the Bush Administration went back to the fall of 2002, when it was boasting of ironclad intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After weighing the evidence and seeking as many opinions as I could inside and outside our government, Democrats and Republicans alike, I voted to authorize military action in Iraq if the diplomatic efforts, meaning the UN weapons inspections, failed.

I came to deeply regret giving President Bush the benefit of the doubt on that vote. He later asserted that the resolution gave him the sole authority to decide when the clock had run out on weapons inspections. On March 20, 2003, he decided that it had, and he launched the war, with the UN weapons inspectors pleading for just a few more weeks to finish the job. Over the years that followed, many Senators came to wish they had voted against the resolution. I was one of them. As the war dragged on, with every letter I sent to a family in New York who had lost a son or daughter, a father or mother, my mistake become more painful.

Five years later President Bush asked us to trust him again, this time about his proposed surge, and I wasn't buying it. I didn't believe that simply sending more troops would solve the mess we were in. Our military is the best in the world, and our troops give their all to succeed in whatever they're asked to do. But putting the burden on them alone, without an equally robust diplomatic strategy, wasn't fair and wasn't wise. We needed both if we were going to get at the heart of the underlying challenges: the sectarian conflicts that were tearing the country apart, as well as the regional rivalries playing out inside Iraq. Most in the Bush Administration seemed to have little interest in that sort of work, including confronting or engaging Syria or Iran, even though they were a big part of the underlying challenges we faced in Iraq. In 2003 the United States went to war in Iraq with only half a strategy, with Colin Powell's State Department all but shut out of postwar planning. We weren't going to get out with only half. Later, when I got to the State Department myself as Secretary and saw the expertise of the career professionals there, I was even more appalled that they had been largely excluded by the Bush Administration.

When Petraeus appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing in late January 2007, I pressed him on these points. I pointed out that the counterinsurgency manual he had written himself at the Army's Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, said that military progress was linked to internal political progress and that one could not be achieved without the other. We had learned the same lesson trying to bring peace to the Balkans. "You are being sent to administer a policy that frankly does not reflect your experience or advice," I said. "You wrote the book, General, but the policy is not by the book. And you are being asked to square the circle, to find a military solution to a political crisis."

Fortunately, when he got to Iraq, Petraeus followed a strategy that looked a lot more like what he had advocated for in his writings and what I had pressed him on during the hearing instead of the Bush Administration's approach to date. Petraeus's comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy became known as COIN. It focused on protecting civilian population centers and winning Iraqis' "hearts and minds" through relationship-building and development projects. The slogan for the strategy became "Clear, hold, and build." The goal was to rid an area of insurgents, defend it so they couldn't return, and invest in infrastructure and governance so residents saw an improvement in their lives and would begin defending themselves. Under Petraeus, American troops in Iraq left their large, heavily fortified bases and fanned out into neighborhoods and villages, which put them more directly in harm's way but also enabled them to provide security.

Equally important, if not more consequential, there was a game-changing development on the ground that few saw coming. A number of Sunni sheiks who had formerly supported the insurgency became fed up with al Qaeda's brutality toward their people and split from the extremists. In what became known as the "Sunni Awakening," more than 100,000 tribal fighters switched sides and ended up on the American payroll. These events profoundly shifted the trajectory of the war.

Back at home, domestic politics was certainly part of the backdrop of the debate over the surge. By then it was clear just how wrong we had gotten Iraq. While the war in Iraq divided America from the start, by 2006 the American people were overwhelmingly against the war--as they made clear that November in the midterm elections. As we learned in Vietnam, it's very difficult to sustain a long and costly war without support from the American people and a spirit of shared sacrifice. I did not think we should escalate America's commitment in Iraq with such overwhelming opposition at home.

During my time in the Senate there were several Republicans whose opinion I valued highly. One of them was John Warner of Virginia. Senator Warner previously served as Secretary of the Navy under President Nixon and was the Ranking Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, on which I sat. He voted for the Iraq Resolution in 2002, so when he returned from a visit to Iraq in late 2006 and proclaimed that in his judgment the war was now going "sideways," it sent tremors through his own party and beyond. While understated, that single word coming from John Warner was both an indictment and a demand for change.

Wherever I traveled I heard from people who were dead set against the war and, as a result, personally disappointed in me. Many had been opposed from the start; others turned against it over time. Hardest of all were the anguished military families who wanted their loved ones to come home, veterans worried about their buddies still serving tours in Iraq, and Americans of all walks of life who were heartbroken by the losses of our young men and women. They were also frustrated by a war that had weakened our country's standing in the world, was not being paid for, and set back our strategic interests in the region.

While many were never going to look past my 2002 vote no matter what I did or said, I should have stated my regret sooner and in the plainest, most direct language possible. I'd gone most of the way there by saying I regretted the way President Bush used his authority and by saying that if we knew then what we later learned, there wouldn't have been a vote. But I held out against using the word mistake. It wasn't because of political expediency. After all, primary voters and the press were clamoring for me to say that word. When I voted to authorize force in 2002, I said that it was "probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make." I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had. And I wasn't alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple.

In our political culture, saying you made a mistake is often taken as weakness when in fact it can be a sign of strength and growth for people and nations. That's another lesson I've learned personally and experienced as Secretary of State.

Serving as Secretary also gave me a share of the responsibility for sending Americans into harm's way to protect our national security. As First Lady I watched Bill grapple with the gravity of these decisions, and as a Senator on the Armed Services Committee I worked closely with my colleagues and military leaders to conduct rigorous oversight. But there's nothing like sitting at the table in the White House Situation Room where you're debating questions of war and peace and facing the unintended consequences of every decision. And there's nothing to prepare you when people sent to serve in a dangerous place will not be coming home.

As much as I might have wanted to, I could never change my vote on Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the right lessons from that war and apply them to Afghanistan and other challenges where we had fundamental security interests. I was determined to do exactly that when facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism, and humility.
      

Generals Petraeus and McChrystal were proposing to bring COIN to Afghanistan. To do it, they needed more troops, just as they had in Iraq. But what if there were no equivalent to the Sunni Awakening this time? Was it possible we were learning the wrong lessons from Iraq?

The most vocal opponent of the Pentagon's proposals was Vice President Biden. For him, the idea of a surge was a nonstarter. Afghanistan was not Iraq. A large-scale effort at "nation-building" in a place with little infrastructure or governance was doomed to fail. He didn't think that the Taliban could be defeated, and he believed that sending more U.S. troops was a recipe for another bloody quagmire. Instead the Vice President argued for a smaller military footprint and a focus on counterterrorism. General Jones and Rahm Emanuel raised similar concerns.

The problem with this argument was that if the Taliban continued to seize more of the country, it would be that much harder to conduct effective counterterrorism operations. We wouldn't have the same intelligence networks necessary to locate the terrorists or the bases from which to launch strikes inside or outside Afghanistan. Al Qaeda already had safe havens in Pakistan. If we abandoned large parts of Afghanistan to the Taliban, they would again have safe havens there as well.
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Richard's bulldozer style took some getting used to. When he had an idea, he would pitch it relentlessly, phoning again and again, waiting outside my office, walking into meetings uninvited, even once following me into a ladies' restroom just so he could finish making his point--in Pakistan no less. If I rejected his suggestion, he would wait a few days, pretend it never happened, and then try again. Finally I would exclaim, "Richard, I've said no. Why do you keep asking me?" He would look at me innocently and reply, "I just assumed at some point you would recognize that you were wrong and I was right." To be fair, sometimes that did happen. It was exactly this tenacity that made him the best choice for this urgent mission.

Early in 2009 I invited Richard and Dave Petraeus for an evening at my home in Washington so they could get to know each other. They were men with endless energy and ideas, and I thought they would click. They dove right into the thorniest policy problems, feeding off each other. At the end of the evening they both said, "Let's do this again tomorrow night."

Richard shared Dave's interest in an aggressive counterinsurgency strategy that focused on bolstering the credibility of the government in Kabul and weakening the appeal of the Taliban as an alternative. But he wasn't sure that tens of thousands of additional troops were necessary to do it. He worried that more troops and more fighting would alienate Afghan civilians and undermine any goodwill achieved by expanded economic development and improved governance.

Drawing on his experiences in the Balkans, Richard believed that diplomacy and politics were the keys to ending the war. He wanted to lead a diplomatic offensive to change the regional dynamics that continued to fuel the conflict, especially the toxic relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan and Pakistan and India. He also pushed us to consider reconciliation among the warring Afghan combatants as a top priority.

Richard started visiting regional capitals, looking for any diplomatic opening, no matter how small, that might lead to a political solution, while also urging Afghanistan's neighbors to increase trade and contacts across their borders. He encouraged many of our allies and partners to appoint Special Representatives of their own, so he would have direct counterparts with whom to negotiate.

In February 2009, just a few weeks into our tenure, he organized an international "contact group" on Afghanistan that brought together about fifty countries, along with representatives from the UN, NATO, the European Union, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. He wanted every nation and group that contributed troops, donated funds, or wielded influence inside Afghanistan to share the responsibility by meeting frequently to coordinate. A month later Holbrooke and his team helped the United Nations plan a major international conference on Afghanistan at The Hague in the Netherlands. I even consented to inviting Iran in order to test the possibility of cooperating on shared interests in Afghanistan, such as improving border security and curbing drug trafficking. At lunch Holbrooke encountered the senior Iranian diplomat there in a brief exchange, one of the highest-level direct contacts between our countries since immediately after 9/11.

Within Afghanistan itself, Holbrooke advocated for a "civilian surge" that would put into practice the Riedel review's recommendations for a dramatic increase in assistance to improve life for Afghans and strengthen the government in Kabul. He pushed to shift U.S. antinarcotics operations in Afghanistan away from the farmers who eked out a living growing opium and toward the drug traffickers who were getting rich and using their wealth to help fund the insurgency. He tried to reorganize USAID's development programs in both Afghanistan and Pakistan around signature projects that would make positive impressions on the people, including hydroelectric dams in energy-starved Pakistan. And he became passionate about the propaganda war, which the Taliban was winning despite our vastly superior resources and technology. Insurgents used mobile radio transmitters mounted on donkeys, motorcycles, and pickup trucks to spread fear, intimidate local populations, and avoid detection by Coalition forces. For Richard, it was an infuriating problem.

This whirlwind of activity came with some collateral damage. At the White House some saw his efforts to coordinate among various government agencies as encroaching on their turf. Younger White House aides rolled their eyes when he invoked lessons learned in Vietnam. Officials working on the military campaign didn't understand or appreciate his focus on agriculture projects or cell phone towers. Holbrooke's old-school style of diplomacy--that mix of improvisation, flattery, and bluster that had outmaneuvered Milošević--was a bad fit in a White House intent on running an orderly policy process with as little drama as possible. It was painful to watch such an accomplished diplomat marginalized and undercut. I defended him whenever I could, including from several attempts to force him out of the job.

At one point White House aides told me point-blank to get rid of Richard. "If the President wants to fire Richard Holbrooke, he needs to tell me himself," I replied. Then, as was often the case on difficult matters, I spoke directly with President Obama. I explained why I thought Richard was an asset. The President accepted my recommendation and Richard continued his important work.

I was convinced that Richard was right about the need for both a major diplomatic campaign and a civilian surge, but I pushed back when he argued that additional troops weren't needed to make it work. "How will we force the Taliban to the peace table if they have all the momentum?" I asked him. "How do you have a civilian surge in Kandahar when the Taliban are controlling it?"

Over the course of our regular Situation Room meetings, the President seemed to be coming around to the idea of deploying the tens of thousands of additional troops the military sought, along with the new diplomats and development experts Richard and I were recommending. But he still had a lot of questions. Chief among them was how we would avoid an open-ended commitment to an endless war. What was the endgame here?

We hoped that the Afghan government and Army would eventually be strong enough to take responsibility for providing security for their own country and keeping the insurgency at bay, at which point U.S. help would no longer be needed and our troops could begin coming home. That's why we and our allies were training Afghan soldiers, modernizing Afghan government ministries, and going after the insurgents--all with the goal of paving the way for transition to Afghan control. But for this scenario to work, we needed a credible partner in Kabul who was prepared to take up these responsibilities. And in the fall of 2009 nobody around the table was confident that we had one.
      

Talking to Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, was often a frustrating exercise. He is charming, erudite, and passionate about his beliefs. He is also proud, stubborn, and quick to bristle at any perceived slight. There was, however, no way to avoid him or to take only those parts of him with which we agreed. Like it or not, Karzai was a linchpin of our mission in Afghanistan.

Karzai was the scion of a prominent Pashtun family with a long history in Afghan politics. In 2001, he was installed by the United Nations as a transitional leader after the fall of the Taliban and later chosen as interim President by a traditional grand council of tribal elders, a loya jirga. He then won a five-year term in the country's first Presidential elections in 2004. Responsible for a country riven by ethnic rivalries, devastated by decades of war, and destabilized by an ongoing insurgency, Karzai struggled to provide security and basic services beyond the capital of Kabul. He regularly frustrated his American partners with intemperate outbursts in person and in the press. Yet he was also a real political survivor who successfully played rival Afghan factions off one another and managed to form a strong personal bond with President George W. Bush. Despite his mercurial reputation, Karzai was actually quite consistent when it came to his core priorities of maintaining Afghan sovereignty and unity--and his own power.

Since 9/11, I had gotten to know Karzai fairly well. In June 2004, I brought him to Fort Drum in upstate New York so he could thank soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, one of the most deployed divisions in the U.S. Army, for their service in Afghanistan. Over the years I had the privilege of spending time with the men and women of the 10th Mountain Division, both at Fort Drum and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whenever I visited one of those war zones as a Senator, I tried to find time to talk with soldiers from New York about what was actually happening on the ground. I heard harrowing reports about inadequate body armor and vulnerable Humvees, but also stories of bravery and perseverance. When Karzai joined me at Fort Drum, he was gracious and respectful of the sacrifices the troops were making for his country. At other times over the years, however, he seemed to blame Americans more than the Taliban for the violence in his country. That was hard to stomach.

Still, we needed Karzai, so I worked hard to connect with him. We related well on a personal and political level. And as with many other world leaders, respect and personal courtesy went a long way with Karzai. Whenever he came to Washington, I tried to find ways to make him feel like the honored guest he was. It was in those settings that he was most productive as a partner. One day we went for a walk in the rose garden at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Georgetown, then sat down for tea in their conservatory. He talked more frankly than usual about the challenges back home, particularly the continuing threats coming from safe havens in Pakistan. In return for my gestures in Washington, he went out of his way to be hospitable during my visits to Kabul, including introducing me to his wife in their family's private quarters.

In August 2009, Karzai ran for reelection in a vote that international monitors found to be plagued with fraud. The UN called for a runoff between Karzai and his closest competitor, Abdullah Abdullah, but Karzai refused to allow it. He was angry at what he saw as foreign interference in the election (he was sure Holbrooke was scheming to oust him) and desperate not to lose his power. His pride was hurt that he hadn't been declared the victor after the first vote. By October the impasse was threatening to derail international support for his government and squander what little credibility it had with the Afghan people.

"Think about the historical consequences both for yourself, as the first democratically elected leader, and for your country," I implored over the phone, trying to broker a compromise that would preserve stability for the country and legitimacy for the regime in Kabul. "You have an opportunity to emerge with a stronger government under your leadership, but that rests on the choices that you make going forward."

Karzai dug in his heels. He was defensive about the allegations of widespread fraud in the election. "How can we tell the population that their vote was fraudulent?" he asked. After all, they had braved Taliban intimidation to participate in the election. "People's fingers and noses were cut off, people were shot, young women made sacrifices, your troops made sacrifices--to call all of that wrong and invalidated is a frightening scenario." Karzai was right about the extraordinary sacrifices Afghans had made, but wrong about how to honor them.

Over the next few days we debated back and forth. I explained to Karzai that if he accepted the runoff vote, which he would most likely win, he would gain the moral high ground and bolster his credibility with both the international community and his own citizens. I was glad that Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was planning on visiting Kabul. He would be a valuable ally on the ground, helping me convince Karzai to move forward with a second round of voting. With Kerry in the room and with me on the phone from my office at the State Department, we tag-teamed him using our own experiences to make the case. "I've run for office and so has my husband," I reminded Karzai. "I know what it's like to win and lose. Just like Senator Kerry does. We know how difficult these decisions can be."

I felt we were making progress, so when it was time for Kerry to return to Washington for Senate business, I asked him to stay in Kabul a little longer. He asked that I call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to request that no votes be held until he returned. When I reached Reid, he agreed to a one-day grace period but said he needed Kerry back quickly.

Finally, after four days of pressure, Karzai relented. He would accept the findings of the UN monitors and allow a second vote to be held in early November. In the end Abdullah wound up dropping out and Karzai was declared the winner. It wasn't pretty, but at least we avoided a fatal blow to Karzai's overall legitimacy, the likely collapse of his government, and grave doubts about democracy from many Afghans.

In mid-November I attended Karzai's inauguration in Kabul. The city was under exceptionally tight security as leaders from around the world gathered. Over a long dinner at the Presidential Palace on the eve of the ceremony, I pressed Karzai on several points. First, I stressed that it was time to start talking seriously about how to transition responsibility for security from the U.S.-led international Coalition to the Afghan National Army. Nobody expected this would happen overnight, but President Obama wanted assurances that the United States was not making an open-ended commitment.

I also talked with Karzai about the potential for a political settlement that might one day bring the fighting to an end. Could negotiations or incentives ever convince enough members of the Taliban to put down their guns and accept the new Afghanistan? Or were we dealing with a group of implacable extremists and dead-enders who would never compromise or reconcile? The obstacles to this kind of peace process appeared nearly insurmountable. But, I reminded Karzai, nobody was going to walk through the door if it wasn't open. Karzai was always willing to pursue negotiations with the Taliban on his own terms. One of our problems with him was that he didn't see the Taliban as his primary opponent in the war. He believed Pakistan was. He was even reluctant to visit his own forces, who were fighting the Taliban, in the field. He thought both Afghanistan and Coalition forces should direct the lion's share of their efforts against Pakistan, while he negotiated with his fellow Pashtuns in the Taliban. Unfortunately for him the Taliban did not want to reciprocate. U.S. troops and diplomats would have to lay the groundwork and then bring the parties together. In the meantime Karzai flirted with anyone who claimed to represent the Taliban.

Finally I made it clear that, after the election controversy, it was essential that he demonstrate more willingness to crack down on corruption. It was endemic in Afghanistan, sapping resources, fueling a culture of lawlessness, and alienating the Afghan people. Karzai needed a plan to go after the low-level "everyday corruption" of bribery that is a part of Afghan life and the pernicious corruption of senior officials who regularly diverted massive resources from international aid and development projects to line their own pockets. The worst example was the looting of the Kabul Bank. We didn't need Afghanistan to become a "shining city on a hill," but reducing large-scale theft and extortion was vital to the war effort.

The next day Karzai strode proudly down a red carpet flanked by an honor guard in dress uniform. If you saw only those soldiers, with their crisp white gloves and shiny boots, you would not have known that the fledgling Afghan National Army was still far from ready to lead the fight against the Taliban on its own. On that day, at least, they appeared confident and in command.

So did Karzai. As usual, he cut a dramatic figure, with his distinctive cape and jaunty hat. I was one of the few women present, and Karzai led me around to meet the Pashtun leaders from, as he said, both sides of the nonrecognized border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pashtuns are among the most strikingly attractive people in the world. Their sharp-featured faces and piercing, often blue eyes are set off by elaborate turbans. These are the people from whom Karzai came, and he never forgot that.

Karzai delivered his inaugural address inside the palace, flanked by Afghan flags and surrounded by a huge bed of red and white flowers. He said nearly all the right things. There was a robust pledge to take on corruption. He announced a new measure we had discussed to require government officials to register their assets so that money and influence could be more easily tracked. He also outlined steps to improve delivery of basic services, strengthen the justice system, and expand educational and economic opportunities. To the insurgents, he made this offer: "We welcome and will provide necessary help to all disenchanted compatriots who are willing to return to their homes, live peacefully and accept the Constitution," with a caveat that excluded al Qaeda and fighters directly linked to international terrorism. To show he was serious, he pledged to convene another loya jirga to discuss launching a peace and reconciliation process.

Most important of all, Karzai committed to speed efforts to stand up a capable and effective Afghan national security force that would be able to replace American and international troops over time. "We are determined that by the next five years, the Afghan forces are capable of taking the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country," he said. That was what President Obama had been waiting to hear.
      

On November 23, I met with President Obama, first in a midday Cabinet meeting, then in a late-afternoon huddle in the Oval Office with Vice President Biden, and finally in a nighttime National Security Council session in the White House Situation Room. It was the culmination of months of debate.

I updated the President on my trip to Kabul, including my discussions with Karzai. Then I laid out my thinking, beginning with the premise that we could not abandon Afghanistan. The United States had tried that in 1989, after the Soviets withdrew, and we paid a grievous price for allowing the country to become a safe haven for terrorists. Nor was the status quo acceptable. American troops were dying, and the government in Kabul was losing ground every day. Something had to change.

I supported the military's proposed troop increase, combined with a civilian surge and diplomatic efforts inside both Afghanistan and the region, to bring the conflict to an end. I believed more military forces were crucial to create space for a transition process to Afghan responsibility, to provide stability and security to help build up and strengthen the government, and to ensure leverage to pursue a diplomatic resolution.

I shared the President's reluctance about an open-ended commitment without any conditions and expectations. That's why I pressed Karzai so hard to offer a vision in his inaugural address for a transition to Afghan responsibility for security. Planning for that transition, and getting the buy-in of the international community, would have to be a priority going forward.

The President listened carefully to all the arguments presented by those of us sitting around the table. It was getting late, and he was still not ready to make a final decision. But in a few days, after a final review of the military options with Gates and Mullen, he would be.

President Obama decided to announce his new policy in a speech at West Point. After calling foreign leaders and briefing members of Congress, I joined him on Marine One for the short helicopter ride to Andrews Air Force Base, where we boarded Air Force One to New York's Stewart International Airport. Then we were back on another Marine One to West Point. As a rule, I am not fond of helicopters. They're loud and cramped and defy gravity only with fierce and jarring effort. But Marine One is different. The cabin of the iconic green and white Presidential helicopter feels more like a small plane, with white leather seats, blue curtains, and space for a dozen passengers. It's as quiet as riding in a car. Lifting off from the South Lawn of the White House, banking out over the National Mall, passing so close to the Washington Monument that it seems as if you could reach out and touch the marble--it's a unique experience.

On this ride I sat next to Gates and Mullen, facing Jones and the President, who read over the speech draft one more time. This was a President who had been elected in part because of his opposition to the war in Iraq and his pledge to end it. Now he was about to explain to the American people why he was escalating our involvement in another war in a far-off country. It had been a difficult deliberation, but I believed that the President had made the right choice.

When we arrived at West Point, I took my seat next to Secretary Gates in the Eisenhower Hall Theatre in front of a sea of gray-coated cadets. On Gates's right was General Eric Shinseki, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. As Army Chief of Staff in 2003 he had presciently warned the Bush Administration that many more troops would be needed to secure Iraq after an invasion than were being budgeted for. As a result of his honesty, Shinseki was criticized, sidelined, and ultimately retired. Now here we were, nearly seven years later, once again debating how many troops were really needed to achieve our goals.

The President began by reminding the audience why the United States was in Afghanistan. "We did not ask for this fight," he said. But when al Qaeda attacked America on September 11, 2001--an attack planned under the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan--war was thrust on us. He then explained how the war in Iraq had sapped resources and attention from the effort in Afghanistan. When President Obama took office, there were just over thirty-two thousand American troops in Afghanistan, compared to 160,000 in Iraq at the peak of the war. "Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years it has moved backwards," he said. "The Taliban has gained momentum." He reaffirmed our more focused mission in Afghanistan: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future. Then he explained that he would send an additional thirty thousand U.S. troops to carry it out, along with additional contributions from our allies. "After eighteen months, our troops will begin to come home," he said.

This was a starker deadline than I had hoped for, and I worried that it might send the wrong signal to friend and foe alike. Although I strongly believed in the need for a time-bound surge and a speedy transition, I thought there was benefit in playing our cards closer to our chests. However, with the pace of withdrawal unspecified, there was enough flexibility to get the job done.

The President emphasized the importance of spurring economic development in Afghanistan and reducing corruption, directing us to focus our assistance in areas, such as agriculture, that could make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people, and to put in place new standards for accountability and transparency.

Deputy Secretary Jack Lew was in charge of marshaling the staff and funds for our "civilian surge." Holbrooke and his team, along with our embassy in Kabul, mapped out its priorities: giving Afghans a stake in their country's future and providing credible alternatives to extremism and insurgency. Over the next year we would triple the number of diplomats and development experts and other civilian specialists on the ground in Afghanistan, expanding our presence out in the field nearly sixfold. By the time I left State, the Afghans had made progress. Economic growth was up and opium production was down. Infant mortality declined by 22 percent. Under the Taliban only 900,000 boys and no girls had been enrolled in schools. By 2010, 7.1 million students were enrolled, and nearly 40 percent of them were girls. Afghan women received more than 100,000 small personal loans that allowed them to start businesses and enter the formal economy. Hundreds of thousands of farmers were trained and equipped with new seeds and techniques.

That day at West Point, I was under no illusions about how difficult it would be to turn around this war. But, all things considered, I believed that the President had made the right choice and put us in the best possible position to succeed. Still, the challenges ahead were enormous. I looked around at the cadets filling every seat in the cavernous theater. They were sitting in rapt attention as their Commander in Chief spoke about a war many of them would soon find themselves fighting. These were young faces, full of promise and purpose, preparing to face a dangerous world in the hope of making America safer. I hoped we were doing right by them. When the President finished his remarks, he stepped into the crowd to shake hands, and the cadets surged around him.
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At the end of the day, despite all the influence and involvement of Pakistan, the United States, and others, this was not a war between nations; it was a war among Afghans to determine the future of their country.
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History tells us that insurgencies rarely end with a surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. Instead they tend to run out of steam thanks to persistent diplomacy, steady improvements in quality of life for people on the ground, and unyielding perseverance by those who want peace.

In my early conversations with Holbrooke about the possibilities of a political resolution to the conflict, we discussed two ways of approaching the problem: bottom up or top down. The former was more straightforward. There was good reason to believe that many low-level Taliban fighters were not particularly ideological. They were farmers or villagers who joined the insurgency because it offered a steady income and respect in a country wracked by poverty and corruption. If they were offered amnesty and other incentives, some of these fighters might willingly come off the battlefield and reintegrate into civilian life, especially if they grew weary of absorbing increasing American military pressure. If significant numbers could be persuaded to do so, that would leave mostly the hardcore extremists to sustain the insurgency--a much more manageable challenge for the government in Kabul.

The top-down approach was more challenging but potentially more decisive. The leaders of the Taliban were religious fanatics who had been at war practically all their lives. They had close ties with al Qaeda, relations with Pakistani intelligence officers, and deep-seated opposition to the regime in Kabul. It was unlikely they could be persuaded to stop fighting. But with enough pressure, they might realize that armed opposition was futile and the only road back to any role in Afghan public life was through negotiations. Despite the degree of difficulty, Richard thought we should pursue both approaches simultaneously, and I agreed.

In March 2009 the Riedel strategy review endorsed a bottom-up reintegration effort, but it rejected the prospect of a top-down peace process. The Taliban leaders were "not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them," it stated. Still, the review set out some core principles that would be important guides for either approach. To be reconciled, insurgents would have to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution. And reconciliation should not come at the expense of Afghanistan's progress on gender equality and human rights or lead to a return of reactionary social policies.

That was a concern I felt passionately about, going all the way back to my time as First Lady and continuing through my Senate service. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, I worked with other women Senators to support First Lady Laura Bush's U.S.-Afghan Women's Council and other programs for Afghan women as they sought new rights and opportunities. When I became Secretary of State, I requested that all our development and political projects in Afghanistan take into account the needs and concerns of Afghan women. Creating opportunity for women was not just a moral issue; it was vital to Afghanistan's economy and security. While life remained difficult for most Afghan women, we did see some encouraging results. In 2001 life expectancy for women in Afghanistan was just forty-four years. By 2012 it had jumped to sixty-two. Mortality rates for mothers, infants, and children younger than five all declined significantly. Nearly 120,000 Afghan girls graduated from high school in those years, fifteen thousand enrolled in universities, and nearly five hundred women joined university faculties. Those figures are astonishing when you consider that at the beginning of the 21st century, they were close to zero across the board.

Despite this progress, Afghan women faced constant threats to their security and status, and not just from the resurgent Taliban. In the spring of 2009, for example, President Karzai signed a terrible new law that dramatically restricted the rights of women belonging to the minority Shiite population, targeting an ethnic group called the Hazara, which had conservative cultural traditions. The law, which included provisions effectively legalizing marital rape and requiring Shiite women to seek permission from their husbands before leaving the house, blatantly violated the Afghan Constitution. Karzai had backed the measure as a way of shoring up support from hard-line Hazara leaders, which was, of course, no excuse. I was appalled, and I let Karzai know it.

I called Karzai three times over the course of two days to urge him to revoke the law. If the Constitution could be ignored and the rights of this minority rolled back, then nobody's rights were secure, men's or women's. It would undermine his regime's moral case against the Taliban. I knew how much personal relationships and respect mattered to Karzai, so I also made clear that this was important to me personally. I explained that if he allowed this outrageous law to stand, it would make it very hard for me to explain why American women, including my former colleagues in Congress, should continue supporting him. Now I was speaking the language he understood. Karzai agreed to put the law on hold and send it back to the Justice Ministry for review. Changes were eventually made. Though not enough, it was a step in the right direction. To keep faith with Karzai, I generally kept this kind of personal diplomacy quiet. I wanted him to know that we could talk--and argue--without it ending up in the newspapers.

Whenever I met with Afghan women, whether in Kabul or at international conferences around the world, they movingly told me how much they wanted to help build and lead their country, as well as their fears that their hard-earned gains would be sacrificed as U.S. troops departed or Karzai cut a deal with the Taliban. That would be a tragedy, not just for Afghan women but for the entire country. So in every conversation about reintegrating insurgents and reconciling with the Taliban, I was very clear that it would not be acceptable to trade away the rights of Afghan women to buy peace. That would be no peace at all.

I made the Riedel review's criteria for reintegration--abandon violence, break with al Qaeda, support the Constitution--a mantra of my diplomacy. At our first major international conference on Afghanistan, in The Hague in March 2009, I spoke to the assembled delegates about splitting "the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who joined their ranks not out of conviction, but out of desperation." At an international conference in London in January 2010, Japan agreed to commit $50 million to provide financial incentives to draw low-level fighters off the battlefield. I pledged that the United States would also provide substantial funding, and we convinced other countries to follow suit.

In an interview in London, I was asked if "it would be a surprise and maybe even disturbing" for Americans to hear that we were trying to reconcile with some insurgents even as the President was sending more U.S. troops to fight the very same Taliban. "You can't have one without the other," I responded. "A surge of military forces alone without any effort on the political side is not likely to succeed. . . . An effort to try to make peace with your enemies without the strength to back it up is not going to succeed. So, in fact, this is a combined strategy that makes a great deal of sense." That had been my argument during the many debates in the White House Situation Room about the troop surge, and it was in keeping with my beliefs about smart power. But I recognized that even if this was a wise strategy, it might be hard to accept. So I added, "I think underlying your question is the concern of people who say, well, wait a minute, those are the bad guys. Why are we talking to them?" That was a fair question. But at this point we weren't talking about reconciling with terrorist masterminds or the Taliban leaders who protected Osama bin Laden. I explained that all we were doing was trying to peel off nonideological insurgents who sided with the Taliban for the much-needed paycheck.

So far, at least, that was true--for us. For his part, Karzai followed up on his statements about reconciliation in his 2009 inaugural address by exploring direct talks with Taliban leaders. In the summer of 2010 he convened a traditional conference of tribal elders from across Afghanistan to back his efforts. Then he appointed a High Peace Council led by former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani to lead potential negotiations. (Tragically Rabbani was assassinated in September 2011 by a suicide bomber with explosives hidden in his turban. His son agreed to take his place on the council.)

One obstacle to these early Afghan efforts was opposition from elements within the Pakistani intelligence service, known as ISI. Elements in the ISI had a long-standing relationship with the Taliban, going back to the struggle against the Soviets in the 1980s. They continued to provide safe haven for insurgents inside Pakistan, and supported the insurgency in Afghanistan as a way to keep Kabul off balance and hedge against potential Indian influence there. The Pakistanis did not want to see Karzai reach a separate peace with the Taliban that did not take their interests into account. And that was just one of the complications Karzai faced. He also had to worry about opposition from his allies in the old Northern Alliance, many of whom were members of ethnic minorities such as Tajiks and Uzbeks and were suspicious that Karzai would sell them out to his fellow Pashtuns in the Taliban. It was becoming clear that lining up all these players and interests to forge a lasting peace was going to be like solving a Rubik's Cube.
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Richard latched on to a stalled "transit trade agreement" between Afghanistan and Pakistan that had been languishing unfinished since the 1960s. If completed, it would lower trade barriers and allow consumer goods and commodities to flow across a border most often used in recent years for troop movements and arms shipments. He reasoned that if Afghans and Pakistanis could trade together, maybe they could learn to work together to combat the militants who threatened them both. Increased commerce would boost the economy on both sides of the border and offer people alternatives to extremism and insurgency, not to mention giving each side more of a stake in the other's success. He successfully pushed both countries to restart negotiations and resolve their outstanding differences.

In July 2010, I flew to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, to witness the formal signing. The Afghan and Pakistani Commerce Ministers sat next to each other, staring down at the thick green folders before them that contained the final agreement. Richard and I stood behind them, next to Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. We looked on as the men carefully signed the accord and then stood to shake hands. Everyone applauded this tangible step, hoping that it could end up representing a new mind-set as much as a new business deal.

This was the first building block of a vision we would come to call "the new Silk Road," a network of expanded commercial and communications links that would bind together Afghanistan with its neighbors, giving them all a stake in promoting shared peace and security. Over the next few years the United States committed $70 million to significantly upgrade key roads between Afghanistan and Pakistan, including through the famous Khyber Pass. We also encouraged Pakistan to extend "most-favored nation" status to India, and India to liberalize barriers to Pakistani investment and financial flows, both of which are still moving forward. Given the distrust that exists between them, getting anything done on the Pakistan-India front was no easy task. Electricity from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan began powering Afghan businesses. Trains started running on a new rail line from the Uzbek border to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Plans progressed for a pipeline that one day could ship billions of dollars' worth of natural gas from energy-rich Central Asia across Afghanistan to energy-hungry South Asia. All these improvements were long-term investments in a more peaceful and prosperous future for a region too long held back by conflict and rivalry. It was slow going, to be sure, but even in the short term this vision injected a sense of optimism and progress in places where they were sorely needed.

In Islamabad, on that trip in July 2010 (and on every other visit there), I pushed hard to get Pakistan's leaders to view the war in Afghanistan as a shared responsibility. We needed their help in closing the safe havens from which Taliban insurgents were staging deadly attacks across the border. As Richard kept emphasizing, there was never going to be a diplomatic solution to the conflict without Pakistani support. In a television interview with five Pakistani television journalists set up in our Ambassador's home--part of my plan to be treated like a punching bag by the hostile Pakistani press to show how serious I was about engagement--I was asked whether it was possible to pursue such a settlement while still pounding away at the other side on the battlefield. "There is no contradiction between trying to defeat those who are determined to fight and opening the door to those who are willing to reintegrate and reconcile," I replied.

In fact Richard and I still harbored hope that top Taliban leaders might one day be willing to negotiate. And there were some intriguing developments. In the fall of 2009, Richard visited Cairo and was told by senior Egyptian officials that a number of Taliban representatives, including an aide to the top leader, Mullah Omar, had recently paid them a visit. In early 2010, a German diplomat reported that he had also met with the same aide, this time in the Persian Gulf, and that he seemed to have a direct line to the elusive Taliban chief. Most interesting of all, he reportedly wanted to find a way to talk to us directly.

Richard thought this was an opening that needed to be tested, but some of our colleagues at the Pentagon, CIA, and White House were reluctant. Many agreed with the analysis in the Riedel review that the top leaders of the Taliban were extremists who could never be reconciled with the government in Kabul. Others thought the time was not yet ripe for negotiations. The surge had just begun, and it needed time to work. Some did not want to accept the political risk of engaging so directly with an adversary responsible for killing American soldiers. I understood this skepticism, but I told Richard to quietly explore what was possible.
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The day after Thanksgiving Richard gave Ruggiero his final instructions. "The most important objective of the first meeting is to have a second meeting," he said. "Be diplomatic, clearly lay out the redlines authorized by the Secretary, and keep them negotiating. The Secretary is following this closely, so call me as soon as you walk out of the meeting." The redlines were the same conditions I had been repeating for more than a year: If the Taliban wanted to come in from the cold, they would need to stop fighting, break with al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution, including its protections for women. Those terms were nonnegotiable. But beyond that, as I told Richard, I was open to creative diplomacy that could move us toward peace.
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In mid-February I flew to New York and went to the Asia Society, where Richard had once served as chairman of the board, to deliver a memorial lecture in his name, which would in time become an annual tradition. I began by providing an update on the military and civilian surges that President Obama had announced at West Point. Then I explained that we were conducting a third surge, a diplomatic one, aimed at moving the conflict toward a political outcome that would shatter the alliance between the Taliban and al Qaeda, end the insurgency, and help produce a more stable Afghanistan and a more stable region. This had been our vision from the beginning, and it was what I had argued for in President Obama's strategic review process in 2009. Now it was moving front and center.

To understand our strategy, it was important for Americans to be clear about the difference between the al Qaeda terrorists, who attacked us on 9/11, and the Taliban, who were Afghan extremists waging an insurgency against the government in Kabul. The Taliban had paid a heavy price for their decision in 2001 to defy the international community and protect al Qaeda. Now the escalating pressure from our military campaign was forcing them to make a similar decision. If the Taliban met our three criteria, they could rejoin Afghan society. "This is the price for reaching a political resolution and bringing an end to the military actions that are targeting their leadership and decimating their ranks," I said, including a subtle but important shift in language, describing these steps as "necessary outcomes" of any negotiation rather than "preconditions." It was a nuanced change, but it would clear the way for direct talks.

I acknowledged, as I had many times before, that opening the door to negotiations with the Taliban would be hard to swallow for many Americans after so many years of war. Reintegrating low-level fighters was odious enough; negotiating directly with top commanders was something else entirely. But diplomacy would be easy if we had to talk only to our friends. That's not how peace is made. Presidents throughout the Cold War understood that when they negotiated arms control agreements with the Soviets. As President Kennedy put it, "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." Richard Holbrooke had made this his life's work, negotiating with an ugly tyrant like Milošević because that was the best way to end a war.
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We began discussing confidence-building measures that both sides could take. We wanted the Taliban to make public statements disassociating themselves from al Qaeda and international terrorism and committing to participate in a peace process with Karzai and his government. The Taliban wanted to be allowed to open a political office in Qatar that would provide a safe place for future negotiations and engagement. We were open to this idea, but it raised a number of challenges. Many Taliban leaders were considered terrorists by the international community and could not appear in the open without facing legal jeopardy. Pakistan also had to agree to allow them to come and go openly. And there was a good chance Karzai would see a Taliban outpost in Qatar as a direct threat to his legitimacy and authority. All these concerns seemed manageable, but they would require careful diplomacy.
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In January 2013, just before I left office, I invited President Karzai to have dinner with me, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and a few other senior officials at the State Department in Washington. Karzai brought along the chair of his High Peace Council and other key advisors. We gathered in the James Monroe Room on the eighth floor, surrounded by antiques from the early days of the American republic, and talked about the future of Afghanistan's democracy.

It had been more than three years since Karzai and I had dined on the eve of his inauguration. Now I was about to hand the reins of the State Department over to Senator Kerry, and another Afghan election would soon select Karzai's successor, or at least that was the plan. Karzai had publicly pledged to abide by the Constitution and leave office in 2014, but many Afghans wondered if he would actually follow through on that promise. The peaceful transfer of power from one ruler to the next is a crucial test of any democracy, and it is not unusual in that part of the world (and many others) for leaders to find ways to extend their tenure.

In a long one-on-one meeting before dinner, I urged Karzai to keep his word. If the government in Kabul could build more credibility with its citizens, deliver services, and administer justice fairly and effectively, it would help undercut the appeal of insurgency and improve the prospects for national reconciliation. That depended on all government officials, but especially Karzai, to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. Presiding over a constitutional transition would be an opportunity for Karzai to cement his legacy as the father of a more peaceful, secure, and democratic Afghanistan.

I recognized how difficult this might be for him. The Rotunda of the Capitol Building in Washington is home to a series of soaring patriotic paintings that depict proud moments from our own democracy's early days, from the voyage of the Pilgrims to the victory at Yorktown. There is one painting in particular that I have always thought spoke to the democratic spirit of our country. It shows General Washington turning his back on the offered throne and giving up his commission as commander in chief of the Army. He went on to serve two terms as a civilian President and then voluntarily stepped down. More than any election victory or inaugural parade, that selfless act was the hallmark of our democracy. If Karzai wanted to be remembered as Afghanistan's George Washington, he had to follow this example and give up the throne.

The other topic I raised with Karzai was the stalled peace process with the Taliban. Karzai had effectively pulled the plug in late 2011; I wanted him to reconsider. If we waited until after U.S. troops started coming home, we and he would have less leverage with the Taliban. Better to negotiate from a position of strength.

Over dinner Karzai ran through a litany of familiar concerns: How would we verify if Taliban negotiators actually spoke for the leadership? Would Pakistan be pulling the strings from Islamabad? Would Americans or Afghans lead the talks? One by one I answered his questions. I tried to impart the sense of urgency I felt to get the process moving again and suggested a plan that did not require him to directly reach an agreement with the Taliban on opening the office. All he had to do, I said, was make a public statement supporting the idea. I would then arrange for the Emir of Qatar to invite the Taliban to move forward. The goal would be to open the office and organize a meeting between the Afghan High Peace Council and representatives of the Taliban within thirty days. If that failed to happen, the office would be closed. After much discussion, Karzai agreed.

In June 2013, a few months after I left the State Department, the Taliban negotiating office finally opened. But the new understanding, which had taken years to reach, collapsed in little more than a month. The Taliban staged a flag-raising ceremony at the office and proclaimed that it represented the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," the official name of the country in the 1990s when the Taliban were in power. We had been clear from the beginning that using the office in this way would be unacceptable. Our objective had always been to strengthen the constitutional order in Afghanistan and, as I had assured Karzai, we were vested in the sovereignty and unity of the country. Understandably, Karzai was apoplectic. To him it looked more like the headquarters of a government-in-exile than a negotiating venue. It was everything he had always feared. The Taliban refused to back down, relations ruptured, and the office was forced to close.

Watching all this now as a private citizen, I am disappointed but not surprised. If making peace were easy, it would have been done long ago. We knew the secret channel with the Taliban was a long shot, with failure more likely than success. But it was worth testing. I believe that we laid a positive foundation that might help future peace efforts. There are now a range of contacts between Afghans and the Taliban, and we exposed debates inside the Taliban that I suspect will only intensify over time. The need for reconciliation and a political settlement isn't going away. If anything, it is more pressing than ever. The benchmarks we put down could still guide the way.

I wondered what Richard would have thought. Up until the end, he never lost his confidence in the power of diplomacy to untangle even the toughest knots. I wish he were still with us, twisting arms and slapping backs and reminding everyone that the way to start ending a war is to begin talking.
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The secure videoconference room in the basement of the West Wing fell silent. Next to me, Secretary Bob Gates sat in his shirtsleeves with his arms folded and his eyes fixed intently on the screen. The image was fuzzy, but unmistakable. One of two Black Hawk helicopters had clipped the top of the stone wall surrounding the compound and crashed to the ground. Our worst fears were coming true.

Although President Obama sat stoically watching the screen, we were all thinking the same thing: Iran 1980, when a hostage-rescue mission ended in a fiery helicopter crash in the desert, leaving eight Americans dead and badly scarring our nation and our military. Would this end the same way? Bob had been a senior official at the CIA then. The memory surely was weighing on him, and on the man across the table, President Obama. He had given the final order, directly staking the lives of a team of Navy SEALs and Special Operations helicopter pilots and perhaps the fate of his presidency on the success of this operation. Now all he could do was watch the grainy images beamed back to us.

It was May 1, 2011. Outside the White House, Washington was enjoying a spring Sunday afternoon. Inside, the tension had been building since the helicopters took off from a base in eastern Afghanistan about an hour earlier. Their target was a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which the CIA believed might be sheltering the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Years of painstaking work by the intelligence community, followed by months of soul-searching debate at the highest levels of the Obama Administration, had brought us to this day. Now it all rested on the pilots of those state-of-the-art helicopters and the Navy SEALs they carried.

The first test had been crossing the Pakistani border. These Black Hawks were equipped with advanced technology designed to allow them to operate undetected by radar, but would it work? Our relationship with Pakistan, America's nominal ally in the fight against terrorism, was already very troubled. If the Pakistani military, always on a hair trigger out of fear of a surprise attack from India, discovered a secret incursion into their airspace, it was possible they'd respond with force.

We had debated whether to inform Pakistan about the raid ahead of time in order to avoid this scenario and the complete breakdown in relations that could follow. After all, as Bob Gates often reminded us, Pakistani cooperation would continue to be needed to resupply our troops in Afghanistan and pursue other terrorists in the border region. I had invested considerable time and energy in the Pakistan relationship over the years, and I knew how offended they would be if we did not share this information with them. But I also knew that elements in the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, maintained ties to the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other extremists. We had been burned by leaks before. The risks of blowing the whole operation were just too great.

At one point another senior administration official asked if we needed to worry about irreparably wounding Pakistani national honor. Maybe it was the pent-up frustration from dealing with too much double-talk and deception from certain quarters in Pakistan, or the still-searing memories of the smoking pile in Lower Manhattan, but there was no way I was going to let the United States miss our best chance at bin Laden since we lost him at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in 2001. "What about our national honor?" I said, in exasperation. "What about our losses? What about going after a man who killed three thousand innocent people?"

The road to Abbottabad ran from the mountain passes of Afghanistan through the smoking ruins of our embassies in East Africa and the shattered hull of the USS Cole, through the devastation of 9/11 and the dogged determination of a handful of U.S. intelligence officers who never gave up the hunt. The bin Laden operation did not end the threat of terrorism or defeat the hateful ideology that fuels it. That struggle goes on. But it was a signal moment in America's long battle against al Qaeda.
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Later that evening I sat down with a group of Pakistani television reporters to continue the discussion. From the first minute, their questions were suspicious and hostile. Like many other people I met that week, they pressed me on the conditions attached to the large new aid package approved by Congress. One might have thought, given the generosity of the package, especially at a time of economic hardship of our own, that there would have been statements of appreciation. Instead all I heard was anger and suspicion about why the money came with "strings attached." The bill tripled our assistance, yet many Pakistanis took issue with its requirement that military aid be tied to the country's efforts to fight the Taliban. That seemed a reasonable request, but the Pakistani military reacted negatively to being told what it could and could not do with our money. The condition was seen by many Pakistanis as an insult to their sovereignty and pride. I was surprised at the degree of vitriol and misunderstanding generated around this issue, and how many people seemed to be scrutinizing every word of the legislation for possible slights. Very few Americans ever read our own laws so carefully. "I think your PR and charm offensive is fine, explaining your position is fine," one of the journalists said, but "we believe that the bill had a sort of hidden agenda." I tried to stay patient and calm. This was aid meant to help people, nothing more. "I am very sorry you believe that, because that was not the intention," I replied. "Let me be very clear: You do not have to take this money. You do not have to take any aid from us."

Clearly our approach to development aid in Pakistan was not working. Either the toxic politics of our relationship had infected the aid, or the aid wasn't being allocated and spent in a way that made a positive impression on the Pakistani people, or both.

When I became Secretary, the United States was funding over a hundred projects in Pakistan, most of them relatively small and targeted. Some were run directly by USAID, but most were outsourced for implementation to for-profit contractors, as well as nonprofits, including private NGOs, faith-based charities, and research institutes. The contractors were paid whether or not their programs produced verifiable results or furthered our country's interests and values. There were so many American-funded projects that our embassy couldn't determine the total number. It was no wonder Pakistanis were telling me they could not see the impact of American efforts.

Both before and after my trip, I worked with Richard Holbrooke on a strategy to address these concerns. We agreed that the entire effort needed to be streamlined. USAID needed to consolidate programs into signature projects with support among Pakistanis and measurable impacts for both our countries. Since we were spending ten times more money in Pakistan than all other countries combined, it seemed an easily achievable objective.

Nothing moved quickly enough for my taste, but USAID announced in April 2012 that it had developed a more focused and strategic plan for Pakistan that centered on a reduction in the number of programs, from 140 in 2009 to thirty-five in September 2012, emphasizing energy, economic growth, stabilization, health, and education. That was at least a step in the right direction.

Throughout my October 2009 visit, Pakistanis emphasized the human and financial costs they were bearing in the fight against terrorism, which many viewed as America's war that had been unfairly imposed on them. Was it worth the lives of their thirty thousand civilian and military victims? Couldn't they just make a separate peace with the extremists and live in peace? "You had one 9/11, and we are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan," one woman in Lahore said to me. I recognized their feelings, and everywhere I went I paid tribute to the sacrifices of the Pakistani people. I also tried to explain why this struggle was as important to Pakistan's future as to our own, especially now that the extremists were expanding their reach beyond the border region. "I don't know any country that can stand by and look at a force of terrorists intimidating people and taking over large parts of your territory," I told the students. I asked them to imagine how the United States would react if terrorists crossed the border from Canada and took control of Montana. Would we accept it because Montana is remote and sparsely populated? Of course not. We would never allow such a scenario anywhere in our country, and neither should Pakistan.

I also heard a lot of questions about drones. The use of remotely piloted aircraft was fast becoming one of the most effective and controversial elements of the Obama Administration's strategy against al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists in hard-to-reach areas. President Obama would eventually declassify many of the details of the program and explain his policies to the world, but in 2009 all I could say was "No comment" whenever the subject came up. Yet it was widely known that dozens of senior terrorists had been taken off the battlefield, and we later learned that bin Laden himself worried about the heavy losses that drones were inflicting.

Within the administration we intensely debated the legal, ethical, and strategic implications of drone strikes and worked hard to establish clear guidelines, oversight, and accountability. Congress provided a domestic legal basis for counterterrorism operations when it authorized the use of military force against al Qaeda after 9/11, and we had an international legal basis under the laws of war and self-defense. The administration began briefing all strikes occurring outside of Iraq and Afghanistan to the appropriate committees of Congress. The preference remained to detain, interrogate, and prosecute terrorists when those options were available. But when there was not the ability to capture individual terrorists who posed a real threat to the American people, drones provided an important alternative.

I agreed with the President when he said that "this new technology raises profound questions--about who is targeted, and why; about civilian casualties, and the risk of creating new enemies; about the legality of such strikes under U.S. and international law; about accountability and morality." I spent time talking about the complexities of these issues with Harold Koh, the State Department Legal Advisor, a former Dean of Yale Law School, and a renowned expert on international law. Harold argued that, as with any new weapon, we needed to put in place transparent processes and standards governing their use, in accordance with domestic and international law and the interests of U.S. national security. That America is a nation of laws is one of our great strengths, and the Supreme Court has been clear that the fight against terrorism cannot occur in a "legal black hole."

Every individual decision to carry out a strike was subjected to a rigorous legal and policy review. There were times when I supported a particular strike because I believed it was important to the national security of the United States and met the criteria the President set out. There were other times when I dissented; my good friend Leon Panetta, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and I had a shouting match over one proposed strike. But in every case I thought it was crucial that these strikes be part of a larger smart power counterterrorism strategy that included diplomacy, law enforcement, sanctions, and other tools.

The administration did everything it could to achieve near certainty that civilians would not be killed or injured. Despite those efforts, reports of civilian casualties from drone strikes--often, but not always, untrue--fueled anger and anti-American sentiments. Because the program remained classified, I could not confirm or deny the accuracy of these reports. Nor was I free to express America's sympathies for the loss of any innocent life, or explain that our course of action was the one least likely to harm civilians, especially when compared to more conventional military action, such as missiles or bombers--or the costs of leaving terrorists in place.

Another common question in Pakistan was how, after backing Musharraf for so long, America expected to be taken seriously about wanting to promote development and democracy. One TV journalist called our behavior "rolling out the red carpet for a dictator." He and I went back and forth a bit about George Bush, Musharraf, and who was responsible for what. Finally I said, "Look, we can either argue about the past--which is always fun to do, but can't be changed--or we can decide we're going to shape a different future. Now, I vote that we shape a different future." I'm not sure I convinced him, but by the end of the session the steam seemed to have come out of the group's anger, at least a bit.
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After answering a question about why we were forcing Pakistan to fight America's war without enough help, I looked around at these journalists, many of whom were so quick to blame the United States for all their troubles. "Let me ask you something," I said. "Al Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002. I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to. . . . The world has an interest in seeing the capture and killing of the people who are the masterminds of this terrorist syndicate, but so far as we know, they're in Pakistan."

For a moment the room was completely silent. I had just said what every American official believed to be true but never uttered out loud. Bin Laden and his key lieutenants, in all likelihood, were hiding in Pakistan. Somebody had to know where. That evening my statement was repeated endlessly on Pakistani television, and government officials in Islamabad hurried to deny that they knew anything at all. Back in Washington, Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, was asked, "Does the White House think it was appropriate for Secretary Clinton to be as blunt as she was towards Pakistan in the comments she made about Pakistan's unwillingness to find terrorists within their borders?" Gibbs responded, "Completely appropriate."

The next day, in yet another round with the Pakistani press, I made the point again: "Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan, must know where these people are."
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Fourth, we wanted to use targeted development programs and partnerships with local civil society to try to tip the balance away from extremism in specific terrorist-recruiting hotspots. Over time we had found that recruits tended to come in clusters, influenced by family and social networks. We might not be able to end poverty or bring democracy to every country in the world, but by focusing on specific neighborhoods, villages, prisons, and schools, we might be able to break the cycle of radicalization and disrupt the recruiting chains.
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There was also the question of timing and logistics. Because the raid had to be conducted under cover of darkness, Admiral McRaven recommended launching on the soonest moonless night, which would be Saturday, April 30, just two days away. Some officials raised an unexpected concern. The annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, a high-profile black-tie event at which the President usually tells jokes in front of a room full of reporters and celebrities, was scheduled for Saturday night. These officials worried about how it would look to have the President doing a stand-up routine in case he was needed while the mission was under way. And if he canceled or left early, it would look suspicious and might jeopardize the secrecy of the operation. Admiral McRaven, always the good soldier, gamely promised to make Sunday work if that was the final decision, although any further delays would be a major problem.

I've sat through a lot of absurd conversations, but this was just too much. We were talking about one of the most important national security calls the President would ever make. The mission was already complicated and dangerous enough. If the commander of Special Operations wanted to move on Saturday, then that's what we should do. While I don't remember exactly what I said, some in the media have quoted me using a four-letter word to dismiss the Correspondents' Dinner as a concern. I have not sought a correction.

The President agreed. He said that if worst came to worst and he had to bow out in the middle of the dinner, they could just blame a stomachache. In the end, fog was predicted for Abbottabad on Saturday night, and the mission had to be postponed to Sunday anyway. But at least it wasn't for a Washington party.

After the final meeting the President took time to think it over. The team was still divided. It was a decision only he could make. Then he gave the order. The operation, code-named Neptune Spear, was a go.
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We watched on the video feed as the SEALs improvised, sweeping through the courtyard of the compound and heading inside to look for bin Laden. Contrary to some news reports and what you see in the movies, we had no means to see what was happening inside the building itself. All we could do was wait for an update from the team on the ground. I looked at the President. He was calm. Rarely have I been prouder to serve by his side as I was that day.
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The question of nations working together on some issues while clashing on others is part of a classic debate within foreign policy circles. Should the United States stop negotiating on arms control or trade because we objected to Russia's aggression in Georgia? Or should issues proceed on parallel tracks? Straight up transactional diplomacy isn't always pretty, but often it's necessary.
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From my first day leading the State Department, I was aware that terrorists could strike any of our more than 270 diplomatic posts around the world. It had happened too many times before, and those hell-bent on attacking America would never stop trying. In 1979, fifty-two American diplomats were taken hostage in Iran and held captive for 444 days. The Hezbollah attacks on our embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 killed 258 Americans and more than a hundred others. In 1998, al Qaeda bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than two hundred people, including twelve Americans. I vividly remember standing next to Bill at Andrews Air Force Base when the remains of those who had fallen returned home.

All told, terrorists have killed sixty-six American diplomatic personnel since the 1970s and more than a hundred contractors and locally employed staff. Four U.S. Ambassadors were murdered in terrorist attacks between 1973 and 1979 alone. Since 2001 there have been more than one hundred assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities around the world and nearly two dozen direct attacks on diplomatic personnel. In 2004, gunmen killed nine people, including five locally employed staff in an attack on our consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In May 2009, a roadside bomb in Iraq killed Terry Barnich, the Deputy Director of our Transition Assistance Team. In March 2010, Lesley Enriquez, a pregnant twenty-five-year-old consular officer in Juarez, Mexico, was shot to death, along with her husband. In August 2012, USAID officer Ragaei Said Abdelfattah was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. As of 2014, 244 of America's diplomats have fallen in our nation's history while serving overseas.

Diplomacy, by its very nature, must often be practiced in dangerous places where America's national security hangs in the balance. We have to weigh the imperatives of our national security against the sacrifices required to safeguard it. As Secretary of State I was responsible for nearly seventy thousand employees, and I deeply admired those who volunteered to accept the risks that come with carrying our flag where it is needed most. Every day as they walk into work the men and women of the State Department pass the names of those 244 fallen diplomats inscribed in marble in the lobby of the Harry S Truman Building. It's a constant reminder of the risks that come with representing the United States around the world. I was heartened--though not surprised--to learn from the Department that after major attacks against the United States, applications to the Foreign Service went up. People want to serve our country, even when it means being in harm's way. Nothing speaks more to the character and dedication of those who represent our country around the world.

The events of September 2012, and the choices made in the days and weeks before and since, throw into sharp relief some of the toughest dilemmas of American foreign policy--and the heartbreaking human stakes of every decision we make. Our diplomats must balance the necessity of engaging in difficult and dangerous settings with the need to stay safe and secure. As a country, we have to do more to protect them, without preventing them from doing their important jobs. We need to stay open to the world in a time when any provocation can spark anti-American riots across the globe and far-flung terrorist groups continue to plot new attacks. Ultimately these challenges boil down to this: Are we willing to shoulder the burdens of American leadership in a perilous age?

Part of the answer came from the independent investigation into the Benghazi attacks, which noted, "The total elimination of risk is a non-starter for U.S. diplomacy, given the need for the U.S. government to be present in places where stability and security are often most profoundly lacking and host government support is sometimes minimal to non-existent."

While we can and must work to reduce the danger, the only way to eliminate risk entirely is to retreat entirely and to accept the consequences of the void we leave behind. When America is absent, extremism takes root, our interests suffer, and our security at home is threatened. There are some who believe that is the better choice; I am not one of them. Retreat is not the answer; it won't make the world a safer place, and it's just not in our country's DNA. When faced with setbacks and tragedies, Americans have always worked harder and smarter. We strive to learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them. And we do not shrink from the challenges ahead. That is what we must continue to do.

The events of that September occurred in what is often called the "fog of war," with information hard to come by, and conflicting or incomplete reports making it difficult to tell what was actually happening on the ground, especially from thousands of miles away in Washington. To a frustrating degree, that fog persisted so long, in part because of continuing turmoil in Libya. And despite the best efforts of officials from across our government--including the White House, the State Department, the military, the intelligence community, the FBI, an independent Accountability Review Board, and eight Congressional committees--there will never be perfect clarity on everything that happened. It is unlikely that there will ever be anything close to full agreement on exactly what happened that night, how it happened, or why it happened. But that should not be confused with a lack of effort to discover the truth or to share it with the American people. I am grateful to the many dedicated professionals who have worked tirelessly to answer all the questions they could to the best of their abilities.
     What follows is based on a combination of my own personal experience and information learned over the following days, weeks, and months thanks to several exhaustive investigations, especially the work of the independent review board charged with determining the facts and pulling no punches. While there has been a regrettable amount of misinformation, speculation, and flat-out deceit by some in politics and the media, more than a year later in-depth reporting from a number of reputable sources continues to expand our understanding of these events.
      

While the morning of September 11, 2012, began like many others, there are few dates as meaningful to our country. On every 9/11 since 2001, I think back to that terrible day. I was not even a year into representing New York in the Senate when it was devastated by the attacks on the Twin Towers. That day, which started with hundreds fleeing down the stairs of the Capitol Building and ended with hundreds of members standing on those very same steps singing "G-d Bless America" in a moving display of unity, shaped my unrelenting focus on helping New York recover and securing it against future attacks. With those memories flooding back, I left home for the State Department.

After the short drive to the office, the first order of business, as always, was to receive the daily briefing on intelligence and national security developments, including the latest reports of terrorist threats around the world. This briefing is given every day to senior officials across our government. It is prepared by a team of dedicated career intelligence analysts who work overnight before fanning out across Washington before dawn every morning to hand-deliver and orally present their reports.

The past few months had been a tumultuous time across the Middle East and North Africa. The civil war in Syria was escalating, sending refugees streaming into Jordan and Turkey. In Egypt the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood and tensions with the military raised questions about the future of the Arab Spring. Al Qaeda's affiliates in North Africa, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula continued to threaten regional security.

On September 8, an inflammatory fourteen-minute video that purported to be a trailer for a full-length movie called Innocence of Muslims was aired on an Egyptian satellite TV network widely available across the Middle East. According to several press accounts, the film depicts a "buffoonish caricature of the prophet Muhammad," using "slurs about him that are often repeated by Islamophobes," even comparing him to a donkey. One press report claims that in the film the Prophet is "accused of homosexuality and child molestation." Many Egyptian viewers were outraged, and, fueled by the internet, that rage quickly spread across the Middle East and North Africa. Although the U.S. government had absolutely nothing to do with the video, many blamed America.

The anniversary of 9/11 added another potentially combustible element and, like every year, prompted our intelligence and security officials to proceed with extra caution. Yet the intelligence community, as they've testified since, relayed no actionable intelligence about specific threats against any U.S. diplomatic post across the Middle East and North Africa.

Later that morning I walked from my office down the hall to the Treaty Room to officially swear in Gene Cretz, who had recently returned from service in Libya, as our new Ambassador to Ghana. Around the same time, half a world away in Cairo, young men began gathering in the street outside the U.S. Embassy as part of a protest organized by hard-line Islamist leaders against the insulting video. The crowd swelled to more than two thousand people shouting anti-American slogans and waving black jihadi banners. Some demonstrators climbed the walls and ripped apart a large American flag, replacing it with a black flag. Egyptian riot police eventually arrived, but the protest continued. Thankfully none of our people were injured in the melee. Journalists and others in the crowd using social media recorded angry comments about the video. One young man said, "This is a very simple reaction to harming our prophet." Another insisted, "This movie must be banned immediately and an apology should be made."

This was not the first time that provocateurs had used offensive material to whip up popular outrage across the Muslim world, often with deadly results. In 2010, a Florida pastor named Terry Jones announced plans to burn the Quran, Islam's holy text, on the ninth anniversary of 9/11. His threats were picked up and amplified by extremists setting off widespread protests. At that time I was surprised that one firebrand in Gainesville, Florida, with a tiny church could cause so much trouble. But the consequences of his threat were all too real. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates personally called Jones and told him that his actions endangered the lives of American and Coalition soldiers and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jones agreed to hold off, and the anniversary came and went. Then in March 2011, he went back on his word and burned a Quran. Bob's warnings proved tragically prescient, as an angry mob in Afghanistan set fire to a UN office and killed seven people. Deadly protests erupted again in February 2012 after U.S. troops inadvertently burned religious texts at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. Four Americans died. Now Jones was helping promote this new video insulting the Prophet Muhammad and there was a real danger of history repeating itself.

With an eye on the developing situation in Cairo, I headed to the White House to meet with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. When I returned to my office, I huddled with senior State Department leaders throughout the afternoon, closely monitoring reports from our embassy. Our Ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, happened to be back in Washington for consultations, and she stayed in constant contact with her Deputy Chief of Mission and worked the phones to pressure the Egyptian authorities to get control of the situation. We were all relieved when further violence was avoided.

We learned later that as events unfolded in Cairo, in neighboring Libya Ambassador Chris Stevens was visiting the country's second largest city, Benghazi.

A lot had happened in Libya since my visit to Tripoli in October 2011. Two days after I left Libya, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was captured and killed. The first Parliamentary elections were held in early July 2012, and the transitional government handed over power to a new General National Congress in August in a ceremony that Chris cited as the highlight of his time in the country. Chris and his team worked closely with Libya's new leaders as they grappled with the significant challenges of setting up a democratic government and providing security and services in a country hollowed out by decades of tyranny. Militia fighters, like those who had greeted me at the airport and guarded my motorcade a year earlier, would have to be brought under the authority of the central government. There were loose weapons to collect, elections to organize, and democratic institutions and processes to establish. Law and order remained a real problem.

In February 2012, I sent Deputy Secretary Tom Nides to Tripoli and then welcomed interim Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib to Washington in March. We offered to help the government secure its borders, disarm and demobilize the militias, and reintegrate former fighters into the security services or civilian life. In July Deputy Secretary Bill Burns followed up with another visit. I stayed in touch with leaders in the Libyan government by phone, including an August call with Libyan General National Congress President Mohammed Magariaf, and received regular updates from our teams in Washington and Tripoli on efforts across the U.S. government to assist the new Libyan government. There was preliminary progress on demobilization, demilitarization, and reintegration, as well as efforts to secure and disable loose weapons throughout Libya, but so much remained to be done. Specialists from the Defense Department and State Department border security experts worked closely with their Libyan counterparts. On September 4, 2012, we designated Libya eligible for the Global Security Contingency Fund, a joint Defense and State initiative pooling resources and expertise to address the wide variety of challenges the Libyan government faced.

Chris was at the center of all this activity, and he knew better than anyone how many challenges remained for Libya. On Monday, September 10, he left the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and flew four hundred miles east to Benghazi, where we maintained a temporary diplomatic post with rotating staff. Benghazi is a port city on the Mediterranean Sea with a population of more than 1 million people, mostly Sunni Muslims, and large African and Egyptian minorities. Its varied architecture, a mix of age-weathered buildings and construction projects abandoned half-completed, reflects a history of conquest and conflict by competing Arab, Ottoman, and Italian rulers, as well as the quixotic ambitions and long, slow decay of the Qaddafi regime. Benghazi had been a hotbed of dissidents, and both the 1969 revolution that brought Qaddafi to power and the 2011 revolution that unseated him began in the city. Chris knew Benghazi well from his time as our representative to the rebel Transitional National Council, which was based there during the 2011 uprising, and he was widely liked and admired.

U.S. Ambassadors are not required to consult or seek approval from Washington when traveling within their countries, and rarely do. Like all Chiefs of Mission, Chris made decisions about his movements based on the security assessments of his team on the ground, as well as his own judgment. After all, no one had more knowledge or experience in Libya than he did. He was well aware of the lawlessness in Benghazi, including a series of incidents earlier in the year against Western interests. Yet he also understood Benghazi's strategic importance in Libya and decided that the value of a visit outweighed the risks. He brought along two security officers, so there were five Diplomatic Security (DS) agents at the compound in Benghazi at the time of the attack. With State Department officer Sean Smith, there was a total of seven Americans on-site.

We would subsequently learn that upon arriving in Benghazi, Chris received a briefing from local CIA personnel, who were based at a second, larger compound less than a mile away. Its existence and mission were closely guarded secrets, but there was an understanding between security officials in both agencies that in an emergency, a CIA rapid-response team would deploy to the State Department compound to provide extra protection. Chris's first day ended with dinner with members of the city council at a hotel in town.

On Tuesday, the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, Chris held all of his meetings within the State compound. In the late afternoon, after the mob had gathered at our embassy in Cairo, he met with a Turkish diplomat. When Chris walked him out afterward, there were no signs of anything out of the ordinary. At around 9 P.M. both Chris and Sean retired for the night.

About forty minutes later, without warning, dozens of armed men appeared at the gates of the compound, overwhelmed the local Libyan guards, and streamed inside. They set fires as they went.

Alec, the DS agent manning the compound's tactical operations center, saw the mob on closed-circuit television, heard the sounds of gunfire and an explosion, and sprang into action. He activated the compound's alert system, established contact with U.S. security officials at the embassy in Tripoli, and, as had been practiced, alerted the well-armed CIA team stationed nearby to request their immediate assistance.

The other four DS agents reacted exactly as they were trained to do. Scott, the Agent in Charge, moved Chris and Sean, two men he would nearly lose his own life protecting that night, to a fortified safe haven within the compound's main house. The remaining three agents scrambled to collect their heavier weapons and tactical gear, but quickly found themselves pinned down in two separate buildings elsewhere on the compound.

Scott kept watch from inside the safe haven, his M4 rifle at the ready, while Chris borrowed his phone to make a series of calls to local contacts and to his Deputy, Greg Hicks, at the embassy in Tripoli. They heard men rampaging through the rest of the house and banging on the steel gate of the safe haven. Then, unexpectedly, the attackers withdrew. They doused the building with diesel fuel and set it on fire. The diesel gave off a thick, black, acrid smoke that quickly filled the air. Soon Chris, Sean, and Scott were struggling to see and breathe.

Their only hope was to make it to the roof. There was an emergency exit that offered a chance of escape. Crawling on his hands and knees, Scott led the way. His eyes and throat burning, he managed to reach the exit grille and throw it open. But when he crawled through it and turned around, Chris and Sean were not right behind him as they had been only moments before. They were lost in the blinding smoke. To this day I am haunted by the thought of what those excruciating minutes in the burning building must have felt like.

Scott searched desperately, reentering the building multiple times, calling out their names without success. Finally, near collapse, he climbed a ladder to the roof. The other DS agents heard his hoarse voice crackle through the radio with a chilling message: the Ambassador and Sean were missing.

When the crowd of armed attackers, having ransacked most of the compound, started to recede, the three agents who had been pinned down were finally able to reach the main building. They provided first aid to Scott, who was suffering from severe smoke inhalation and other wounds, and then they retraced his steps back through the window into the safe haven. By now it was impossible to see anything inside because of the smoke, but they refused to give up the search, making numerous attempts to find Chris and Sean, crawling on the floor and feeling their way around. When one of them attempted to open the front door of the building, part of the ceiling collapsed.

From the moment the CIA station learned their fellow Americans were under attack, a response team prepared to launch a rescue. They could hear explosions in the distance and quickly assembled their weapons and prepared to deploy. Two vehicles of armed officers left the CIA post for the diplomatic compound about twenty minutes after the attack had begun. Until late October, when the Agency publicly acknowledged its presence in Benghazi, the existence of the CIA station was a secret, so in the immediate aftermath of the attack these officers received no public recognition. But all of us at the State Department were immensely grateful for the way our CIA colleagues responded that night.

When the CIA team arrived, they split up to secure the compound and joined the DS agents in the search of the burning building. Soon they made a terrible discovery. Sean was dead, apparently from smoke inhalation. His body was carefully carried out of the ruined building. There was still no sign of Chris.

My first word of the attack came around that time, when Steve Mull rushed down the hall to my office from the State Department's Operations Center. Steve, a thirty-year veteran of the Foreign Service, widely respected for his diplomatic and logistical skills, was in his final weeks as the Department's Executive Secretary, preparing to take up his next post as Ambassador to Poland. Among other responsibilities, the "Exec Sec" is tasked with managing the flow of information between Washington and the Department's hundreds of posts around the world. Troubling reports from across the Middle East had filled this day. But even against that backdrop, as soon as I saw the look in Steve's eyes, I could tell something was terribly wrong. All he knew at that point was that our Benghazi compound was under attack.

My thoughts immediately went to Chris. I had personally asked him to take on the assignment of Ambassador to Libya, and I shuddered to think that he and our other people on the ground were now in grave danger.

I picked up the secure phone on my desk and hit the button that instantly connected me to the White House, to National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. President Obama learned of the attack during an Oval Office meeting with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Marty Dempsey, a no-nonsense straight shooter. After hearing the news the President gave the order to do whatever was necessary to support our people in Libya. It was imperative that all possible resources be mobilized immediately. The CIA outpost was already responding, but he wanted any assets that could be deployed pressed into service. When Americans are under fire, that is not an order the Commander in Chief has to give twice. Our military does everything humanly possible to save American lives--and would do more if they could. That anyone has ever suggested otherwise is something I will never understand.

Learning of the attack was a punch in the gut, but in the middle of an ongoing crisis, I didn't have time to process the flood of emotions--there was too much to do. I directed our State operations team, led by Under Secretary Pat Kennedy, to work with the embassy in Tripoli to get our people to safety and to break down the doors of the Libyan government if necessary to demand more support. I also called CIA Director David Petraeus since the Agency maintained the nearby post with a heavy security force. We also had to get ready for the possibility of other assaults elsewhere. Our embassy in Cairo had already been targeted. Now Benghazi was under attack. Where would be next? Pat was a forty-year veteran of the Foreign Service, having served eight Presidents from both parties. Some mistook his mild manner and penchant for cardigans and sweater vests as a sign of softness, but Pat was as tough as they came. He was calm amid the commotion and assured me that everything that could be done was being done. He was no stranger to fluid events, having served during some of the worst attacks on State Department personnel and property, and as a young Foreign Service officer had a small role supporting the families of the six American diplomats who ultimately escaped Iran after our embassy there was overrun in 1979 (dramatized in the film Argo).

In Tripoli a plane was quickly chartered, and a group of seven military and intelligence personnel began prepping for rapid deployment to Benghazi. Additional options were limited. The Pentagon had Special Operations forces standing by in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but they would take several hours to muster and were more than five thousand miles away. Our civilian leaders and uniformed commanders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others from his team, have repeatedly testified under oath both in public and in closed classified hearings that assets were immediately mobilized, but none could quickly reach Libya. Critics have questioned why the world's greatest military force could not get to Benghazi in time to defend our people. Part of the answer is that, despite having established United States Africa Command in 2008, there just wasn't much U.S. military infrastructure in place in Africa. Unlike in Europe and Asia, the U.S. military footprint in Africa is nearly nonexistent. Additionally our military is not deployed globally with the mission of maintaining forces at the ready to defend diplomatic posts. Tethering our forces to more than 270 embassies and consulates worldwide is a mission our military leaders have testified the Pentagon is simply not equipped to handle. Those are the facts, though not everyone accepts them and some insist on repeatedly questioning the actions of our military. For instance, weeks after the attack there was a sensational report that an American AC-130 gunship was sent to Benghazi but later waved off. The Pentagon undertook a comprehensive look into the accusation. Not only was there no gunship nearby, but there was no gunship on or near the entire continent of Africa. The closest gunship was over a thousand miles away in Afghanistan. This is but one of the false accusations made by those all too willing to misinform.

Another asset that some critics assert would have made a difference was called FEST. After the embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, an interagency Foreign Emergency Support Team was deployed; it was trained and equipped to help restore secure communications, respond to biohazards, and provide other support to crippled diplomatic facilities. But this team was not an armed reaction force capable of intervening in an active fight, and they too were based thousands of miles away, in Washington.

Many Americans and even members of Congress were surprised to learn that there were no U.S. Marines assigned to our Benghazi compound. In fact Marines are assigned to only a little over half of all our diplomatic posts around the world, where their primary mission is the protection and, if necessary, the destruction of classified materials and equipment. So while there were Marines stationed at our embassy in Tripoli, where nearly all of our diplomats worked and which had the capability to process classified material, because there was no classified processing at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, there were no Marines posted there.

There was also no live video feed out of the compound in Benghazi for anyone back in Washington to monitor. Some larger embassies around the world do have this capability, but Benghazi was a temporary facility without sufficient broadband access. It did have closed-circuit cameras and a video recording system on-site, not unlike a home DVR, but U.S. security officials would not gain access to this footage until weeks later, when Libyan authorities recovered the equipment and turned it over to American officials. So officials in the Diplomatic Security Command Center in Virginia trying to monitor the rush of events in real time had to rely on a single open phone line, listening to their colleagues in Tripoli and Benghazi. They could hear some of what was happening, but the picture was agonizingly incomplete.

To help fill this gap, one asset that could be quickly brought to bear was an unarmed and unmanned surveillance drone that was already flying a mission elsewhere over Libya. The drone was redirected to Benghazi and arrived on station roughly ninety minutes after the attack began, providing U.S. security and intelligence officials another way to monitor what was happening on the ground.

Around that time the Operations Center reported that gunfire at the compound had subsided and our security forces were attempting to locate missing personnel. That was a chilling phrase. Much of the mob had withdrawn, but for how long? Fighters and looters were still milling about nearby. The team decided that staying any longer would put more American lives at risk. Despite the ongoing efforts to find Chris, who was still missing in the burning main building, their only choice was to evacuate back to the CIA's more heavily guarded facility less than a mile away.

Reluctantly the five DS agents piled into an armored vehicle. The drive was short--only a few minutes--but harrowing. They took heavy and sustained fire on the street almost immediately and sped past a crowd of fighters clustered around a roadblock. Two tires blew out and the armored glass shattered, but they kept pressing forward. Possibly tailed by two unknown vehicles, they crossed into the median and then into oncoming traffic. A few minutes later they reached the CIA post. The wounded received medical support, and the others took up defensive positions. The CIA response team followed shortly afterward, carrying Sean Smith's body. Chris was still missing.

On the seventh floor of the State Department, everyone was doing everything we could think to do. State officials at all levels were talking to their counterparts across the government. U.S. officials in Washington and Libya were working with the Libyans to restore security and help with the search for our Ambassador. I called the Department's senior leadership back together to take stock and discuss next steps. I also spoke again with the White House. The CIA post was now coming under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. Everyone there braced for another swarm of attackers, but they did not materialize. The shooting continued sporadically before finally stopping.

The Operations Center reported that a hard-line Islamist militia called Ansar al-Sharia was claiming responsibility for the attack, though they would later retract it. It was something to take seriously. In the days that followed, U.S. intelligence analysts took a hard look at the attacks to try to determine how they began and who participated in them. But until then, we had to assume and plan for the worst--the possibility of further attacks against U.S. interests in the region.

Our embassy in Tripoli was twisting every arm they could find, but I wasn't satisfied with what we were getting from the Libyans. I called Libyan President Magariaf, and as I would do in other conversations that week, put in the starkest of terms the possibility of additional attacks. I wanted to make sure that he and others understood the urgency of the situation and did not assume the threat had passed. Magariaf was deeply apologetic. I thanked him for his concern but made it crystal clear that we needed more than regret: We needed immediate action to protect our people in Benghazi and Tripoli.

Meanwhile the plane with U.S. security reinforcements from Tripoli landed at the airport in Benghazi. Their goal was to locate vehicles and get to the CIA post as quickly as possible. But by now the airport was full of Libyan security officials and militia leaders who insisted on assembling a large armored motorcade to escort the Americans. Our frustrated team, anxious to help their colleagues, was held for hours until Libyan forces felt confident enough to leave the airport and head to the CIA post.

In Washington I convened a conference call with eight senior Department leaders and Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks in Tripoli. Greg was one of the last people to talk to Chris before he disappeared, and with the Ambassador missing, he was now assuming formal responsibility for the safety of every American in the country. It had been a long night, and I was worried about how our team in Tripoli was holding up. I also wanted them to know what was being done from Washington, by the military, the CIA, and other parts of the government. Greg told me that as a precaution, he thought we should evacuate the embassy in Tripoli to an alternative compound, and I agreed. We talked about the search for Chris, whom we both cared about deeply. Things were not looking good, and I could hear the pain in Greg's voice. I asked him to pass along my prayers to his entire team and to stay in close contact.

I headed to the Operations Center for a secure videoconference between various government agencies and the White House Situation Room, officials from the National Security Council, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other agencies. This was a Deputies meeting that did not include Principals, but protocol was the last thing on my mind. I downloaded to the group my discussions with Greg and President Magariaf, and I stressed how critical it was to get our people out of Benghazi as quickly and safely as possible.

Back in my office I told the team it was time to make a public statement. So far, I had been single-mindedly focused on coordinating across our government and mobilizing resources for our people on the ground. But reports about events in Benghazi were swirling in the press, and the American people deserved to hear directly from me about what was going on, even if we had only limited information. State Department practice was to hold off on issuing any statement until we could confirm the fate of all our personnel--but we still couldn't locate Chris. I decided it was important to be as forthcoming as possible as quickly as possible. I issued a statement confirming the loss of one of our officers, condemning the attack, and pledging to work with partners around the world to protect American diplomats, posts, and citizens.

Not long after talking with me, Greg and his team at the embassy received a startling phone call. It was from the same cell phone that Chris had used in the final moments before he disappeared in the smoke-filled safe haven. But this wasn't Chris. A man speaking Arabic said that an unresponsive American matching the Ambassador's description was now at a local hospital. He offered no further information or assurances. Could this really be Chris? Or was this report a trap to lure our people out of the CIA complex and into the open? We had to find out. Greg asked a local contact to go to the hospital and investigate. Remarkably this person was the same Libyan who helped rescue our downed Air Force pilot a year earlier.

An amateur video surfaced days later that showed a crowd of looters and onlookers wandering through the smoldering compound after our team evacuated. A group of Libyans, never identified, found Chris's body amid the clearing smoke and, although they did not know his identity, took him to a local hospital. They reportedly arrived at the emergency room shortly after 1 A.M. Doctors spent forty-five minutes attempting to resuscitate him, but at around 2 A.M. they declared Chris dead from smoke inhalation. Later the Prime Minister of Libya called Greg in Tripoli with the news. He called it the saddest phone call of his life. Absolute confirmation came when Chris's body was brought to American personnel at the airport in Benghazi the next morning. I knew that Chris was likely dead, but until confirmation there was still a chance that he might somehow have survived. Now that hope was gone.
      

With our DS agents at the heavily fortified CIA post and our reinforcements from Tripoli on the ground at the airport, I decided to move from the office to my home in northwest Washington, only minutes away from Foggy Bottom. I knew the days ahead were going to be taxing on us all, with the entire Department looking to me to lead them through this shocking tragedy while keeping everyone focused on what lay ahead. When I became Secretary the Department outfitted my house with all the secure communications and other equipment necessary to work as easily from there as I could from the office.

I got on the phone with President Obama and gave him the latest updates. He asked me how our people were holding up and reiterated that he wanted all necessary steps taken to protect our diplomats and citizens in Libya and across the region. I agreed and gave him my assessment of where we stood. I did not believe this crisis was over. We could expect more unrest to come, if not in Libya, then somewhere else.

The reinforcement team from Tripoli finally made it from the airport to the CIA outpost, providing their exhausted colleagues with a tremendous sense of relief. It did not last long.

Within minutes of the team's arrival, mortar fire was heard. The first shells missed, but the next hit their target with devastating force, killing the two CIA security personnel, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, and seriously wounding others, including one of our DS agents, David.

The tragedy in Benghazi had now been compounded immeasurably. We needed to get the rest of our people--nearly three dozen in all, between State's five DS agents and the CIA personnel--out of that city before we lost anyone else.

About an hour later Libyan government security forces, who had dispersed when the CIA post was hit by the mortar attack, returned to provide escort to the airport. A first planeload of Americans took off at 7:30 A.M. A second plane evacuated the rest, including the bodies of Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Chris Stevens, which had arrived from the hospital. By noon all U.S. personnel from Benghazi were finally in Tripoli.
      

In Washington, I kept thinking about the horror of what had happened. For the first time since 1979, a U.S. Ambassador had been killed in the line of duty. Four Americans were dead. Our compound in Benghazi was a smoking ruin, our CIA post abandoned. And there was no telling what would happen next, or where.

I braced myself for the day that lay ahead. I knew how essential it would be to lead with strength a reeling Department while remaining focused on ongoing threats. But first I needed to call the families of those we'd lost. They needed to know how much our Department and the nation honored their loved ones' service, that our hearts were broken at their loss. These would not be easy calls to make, but they were a solemn responsibility.

After checking in for any updates with General Dempsey, I sat down at my desk in the State Department and called Chris's sister, Anne Stevens, a doctor at Seattle Children's Hospital. She had been up most of the night talking with Chris's colleagues at the State Department and passing news to the rest of the Stevens family. Even exhausted and in shock, she was still able to focus on what her brother would have wanted. "I hope this will not prevent us from continuing to support the Libyan people, from moving ahead," she told me. Anne knew how committed Chris was to helping build a new Libya out of the wreckage of the Qaddafi regime and how important that was to American interests. He had fallen in love with the Middle East as a young Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Morocco and went on to represent the United States as a Foreign Service officer all over the region. Everywhere he went, he won friends for the United States and made other people's hopes his own. I told Anne that he would be remembered as a hero by many nations.

In the weeks that followed I was awed by the grace and dignity with which the Stevens family coped with their grief and the harsh spotlight of history. After I left office we stayed in touch, and I was proud to support their efforts to launch the J. Christopher Stevens Virtual Exchange Initiative, which will use technology to connect young people and educators across the Middle East and the United States. It is a fitting way to honor Chris's memory and to carry forward the work he cared about so much.

I then called Sean Smith's wife, Heather, who lived in the Netherlands with the couple's two young children, and expressed my condolences for the loss of her husband. It was an enormous shock. He and Heather had made plans to go on vacation after his tour. Like Chris Stevens, Sean Smith was committed to America's engagement around the world and proud to serve. In the aftermath of the attack in Benghazi, Heather also expressed her belief that her husband wouldn't have wanted America to pull back from the world or live in fear.
     That was an important sentiment to remember on September 12. Overnight, protests against the offensive internet video had continued to spread from Egypt across the Middle East. About two hundred angry Moroccans gathered outside our consulate in Casablanca. In Tunisia police had to use tear gas to disperse a crowd outside the U.S. Embassy. In Sudan, Mauritania, and Egypt similar demonstrations were taking place outside American outposts. After what had happened in Benghazi the day before, everyone was on edge, and we treated each incident as if it might quickly spiral out of control.

I convened another videoconference with the exhausted but determined team still in Tripoli. They had done extraordinary work over the previous twenty-four hours, and I wanted to thank them personally and let them know that though they were thousands of miles from home, they were not alone.

Next I wanted to speak directly to the American people and the world. I felt the heavy burden of explaining the unexplainable to a country that had woken up to news of another bloody 9/11. Emotions were running very high. A number of my aides, who had known and loved Chris Stevens, were in tears. I took a quiet moment alone in my office to compose myself and think about what I wanted to say. Then I walked down the hall to the Treaty Room, where the press corps was assembled.

As the cameras snapped away, I laid out the facts as we knew them--"heavily armed militants" had assaulted our compound and killed our people--and assured Americans that we were doing everything possible to keep safe our personnel and citizens around the world. I also offered prayers for the families of the victims and praise for the diplomats who serve our country and our values all over the world. Chris Stevens had risked his life to stop a tyrant, then given his life trying to help build a better Libya. "The world needs more Chris Stevenses," I said.

With Anne Stevens's plea to carry forward Chris's commitment to the future of Libya still in my ears, I explained to the American people that "this was an attack by a small and savage group--not the people or Government of Libya," and that we would not turn our back on a country we had helped liberate. I also assured them that while we were still working to determine the exact motivations and methods of those who had carried out the attacks, we would not rest until they were found and brought to justice.

After my remarks I headed to the White House, where President Obama was preparing to address the nation himself. Standing just outside the Oval Office, we discussed whether he could come to Foggy Bottom right after his statement to comfort Chris's and Sean's grieving colleagues. I told him it would mean a great deal to a Department still very much in shock. We walked out into the Rose Garden, where the President told the world, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."

After the President spoke I raced back to the Department. Though he suggested I ride over with him, I wanted to make sure everything was in place for this impromptu visit. Usually a Presidential visit takes weeks to orchestrate. This one would be on the fly.

When he arrived, we walked together through the lobby and I showed him where the names of diplomats who have fallen in the line of duty are inscribed in marble. He later signed the condolence book for those we had just lost.

On almost no notice, hundreds of State Department employees had gathered in the building's inner courtyard, including many from the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, where Chris Stevens had spent his career, as well as the Information Resource Management Bureau, where Sean Smith worked. The hastily arranged sound system wouldn't work, so I set the microphone on the ground and went ahead introducing the President. He spoke movingly for twenty minutes about how much the work of our diplomats means to America's national security and to our values. He urged the men and women of the State Department to honor the memory of those we lost by redoubling our efforts to represent the best traditions of our great nation. I could see on their faces how it meant the world to them, and to the many others watching through their windows overlooking the courtyard. When he was finished, I brought him over to meet some of Chris's colleagues in Near Eastern Affairs, who had been working practically nonstop since the crisis began. Later that afternoon I went to their offices and the office where Sean's colleagues worked to express my sorrow and gratitude. I felt enormously proud to serve this President, to lead this team, and to be part of the State Department family.
      

The turmoil in the region continued to rage. Over the coming days and weeks we faced wave after wave of unrest that threatened our people and posts in a dozen countries and resulted in the deaths of scores of protesters, though thankfully no additional American lives were lost.

On Thursday, September 13, demonstrators breached the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. Yet more violent clashes continued in Cairo. In India as many as 150 people were arrested outside our consulate in Chennai. On Friday the tensions grew even worse. Thousands of Tunisians besieged our embassy in Tunis, destroying vehicles and defacing buildings while staff was barricaded inside. An American school across the street was burned and looted. I called Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki, who promised to send his personal guards to disperse the protesters and protect our American and Tunisian staff. In Khartoum thousands of Sudanese swarmed over the walls of our embassy and tried to raise a black flag. Pakistani protesters took to the streets in Islamabad, Karachi, and Peshawar. There were demonstrations as far away as Indonesia and the Philippines. Even in Kuwait, a wealthy country that the United States helped liberate in the first Gulf War, people were arrested trying to scale the walls of our embassy. The spark lit in Cairo on September 8 was now a full-on wildfire, continuing to spread and threaten American posts and personnel in its path.

Throughout those difficult days my team and I were in constant touch with the governments of the countries wracked by protests. I had tense conversations with regional leaders who needed to hear exactly how serious this was. I also worked with the Pentagon to make sure extra Marines were dispatched to Tunisia, as well as to Sudan and Yemen.

I know there are some who don't want to hear that an internet video played a role in this upheaval. But it did. Pakistani protesters even beat an effigy of Terry Jones, the Florida pastor associated with the film. And American diplomats, far from the politics of Washington, felt the impact up close.

What about the attack in Benghazi? In the heat of the crisis we had no way of knowing for sure what combination of factors motivated the assault or whether and how long it had been planned. I was clear about this in my remarks the next morning, and in the days that followed administration officials continued to tell the American people that we had incomplete information and were still looking for answers. There were many theories--but still little evidence. I myself went back and forth on what likely happened, who did it, and what mix of factors--like the video--played a part. But it was unquestionably inciting the region and triggering protests all over, so it would have been strange not to consider, as days of protests unfolded, that it might have had the same effect here, too. That's just common sense. Later investigation and reporting confirmed that the video was indeed a factor. All we knew at that time with complete certainty was that Americans had been killed and others were still in danger. Why we were under attack or what the attackers were thinking or doing earlier that day was not at the forefront of anyone's mind. All that mattered to us was saving lives. Nothing else made a difference.

However, there were journalists still on the ground in Benghazi asking questions. The New York Times reported, "Interviewed at the scene on Tuesday night, many attackers and those who backed them said they were determined to defend their faith from the video's insults." Reuters also had a reporter on the ground that night, who wrote, "The attackers were part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the Prophet Muhammad." The Washington Times also interviewed residents in Benghazi and said, "Heavily armed militants had hijacked what was initially a peaceful protest outside the U.S. diplomatic mission. The demonstrators were protesting a film that insulted Islam's prophet, Muhammad. They were quickly joined by a separate group of men armed with rocket-propelled grenades."

More than a year later, in December 2013, the New York Times published the most comprehensive account to date of what happened in Benghazi based on "months of investigation" and "extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context." The investigation concluded that, "Contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam." The Times found that, "Anger at the video motivated the initial attack," and "there is no doubt that anger over the video motivated many attackers."

There were scores of attackers that night, almost certainly with differing motives. It is inaccurate to state that every single one of them was influenced by this hateful video. It is equally inaccurate to state that none of them were. Both assertions defy not only the evidence but logic as well. As the New York Times investigation found, the reality "was different, and murkier, than either of those story lines suggests."

Regardless, there was no question that the unrest threatening other U.S. embassies and consulates around the world was related to the video. So over the course of those difficult days, I did what I could to publicly address the widespread anger in the Muslim world. As a person of faith myself, I understand how hurtful it can be when your beliefs are insulted. But no matter how wronged one might feel, resorting to violence is never justified. The world's great religions are strong enough to withstand petty insults, and our individual faith should be as well.

On the evening of September 13, I hosted the State Department's annual Eid al Fitr reception marking the end of Ramadan, Islam's holy month of fasting. Among a warm and diverse crowd, I emphasized that we knew the killers in Benghazi did not speak for the more than 1 billion Muslims around the world. Then the Libyan Ambassador to the United States came forward to say a few words. He grew emotional remembering his friend Chris Stevens, whom he had known for years. They had played tennis and eaten traditional Libyan food together and spent hours talking about the future. Chris was a hero, he said, who never stopped believing in the potential of the Libyan people to emerge from the shadow of dictatorship.

He wasn't the only one who felt that way. Tens of thousands of Libyans poured into the streets of Benghazi to mourn Chris, who they knew as a steadfast champion of their revolution. The images were striking. One young woman, her head covered and her eyes haunted with sadness, held up a handwritten sign that said, "Thugs and killers don't represent Benghazi nor Islam." Others said, "Chris Stevens was a friend to all Libyans," and "We want justice for Chris."

In Tripoli the country's leaders publicly condemned the attack and organized a memorial service for Chris. "He gained the trust of the Libyan people," President Magariaf told the mourners. The government fired top security officials responsible for Benghazi and, on September 22, issued an ultimatum to Ansar al-Sharia and other militias across the country: Disarm and disband in forty-eight hours or face the consequences. As many as ten major armed groups complied. Taking matters into their own hands, the people of Benghazi overran the headquarters of Ansar al-Sharia and many of the militia's members fled the town. "You terrorists, you cowards, go back to Afghanistan," people chanted.
      

Throughout this sad period, the families of our fallen colleagues were always on my mind. I wanted to be sure that we did everything possible to comfort and accommodate them. I asked Chief of Protocol Capricia Marshall to make this her mission. Complicating matters was the fact that Tyrone Woods's and Glen Doherty's real jobs working for the CIA were still secret, and would remain so for six more weeks. Nobody was permitted to even talk about it with their families, who may or may not have known the truth of their loved ones' missions at the time.

I asked Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, America's highest-ranking Foreign Service officer, who was traveling abroad, to meet the plane carrying the remains of our fallen and accompany them from Germany back to Washington. Bill is as balanced and stoic as they come, but that is a journey no one should ever have to take.

Normally the remains of Americans who are killed serving our country go through Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan return. But I wanted to be sure that the families and our colleagues from the State Department had a chance to be present for their arrival, if they wanted to be. So with help from Leon Panetta and his Pentagon team, we routed the plane from Germany to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland before proceeding to Dover, just as was done in 1998 after the East Africa embassy bombings.

On Friday afternoon, three days after the attacks, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and I met the families at Andrews. Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods both had small children. Seeing them there, knowing they would grow up without their fathers, was almost more than I could bear. All four men had loved ones who were devastated by their sudden loss. In a situation like that, there are no sentiments that can provide much comfort or understanding. All you can do is offer a human touch, a kind word, a gentle embrace. The room was crowded with more than sixty family members and close friends, and every person carried his or her own private grief. They were united by the heroism and service of those they loved, and the grief they felt for lost husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers.

We walked out to a large open hangar off the tarmac, where thousands of friends and colleagues had gathered under a giant American flag. It was an extraordinary outpouring of support and respect. Everyone stood in somber silence as U.S. Marines in crisp blues and whites slowly carried the four flag-draped coffins from the transport plane to waiting hearses and then saluted the fallen. A military chaplain offered a prayer.

When it was my turn to speak, I paid tribute to the service and sacrifice of the four patriots we had lost and tried to reflect both the pride and sorrow their colleagues and I felt. I also wanted to honor the work of diplomacy that Chris Stevens had so exemplified, and I talked about the remarkable scenes of sympathy and solidarity we had seen in Libya since his death. They were testaments to the impact Chris had there. I also read aloud a letter from Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, who worked closely with Chris when he served in Jerusalem and fondly recalled his energy and integrity. Abbas deplored his murder as "an act of ugly terror." Finally, with protests continuing across the region, I once again addressed the ongoing unrest and anti-Americanism rocking the Middle East that had begun with a video before taking on a life of its own. "The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob," I said. The violence needed to stop. We could expect more difficult days to come, but the United States would not retreat from the world or our responsibilities of global leadership. We would "wipe away our tears, stiffen our spines, and face the future undaunted."

President Obama added his own sober words of eulogy. When he finished, I squeezed his hand. He put his arm around my shoulder. The Marine Band played "America the Beautiful." Never had the responsibilities of office felt so heavy.
      

As Secretary of State, I was accountable for the safety of almost seventy thousand people at the Department and USAID and our more than 270 posts around the world. When something went wrong, as it did in Benghazi, it was my responsibility. And that responsibility included making sure that we determined where the gaps had been in the Department's systems and security procedures and that we did everything possible to reduce the risks of another tragedy in the future. We had learned from Beirut in 1983, from Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, from September 11, 2001, and now it was time to learn from the tragedy in Benghazi. That learning process needed to start with figuring out what went wrong.

Whenever there is a loss of life of State Department personnel overseas, law requires that an Accountability Review Board be stood up to investigate. Since 1988 there have been nineteen such investigations. Thomas Pickering was chosen to serve as Chair of the Benghazi review board. Pickering is a retired senior Foreign Service officer with an impeccable record who has represented the United States all over the world, including in many difficult posts such as El Salvador during that country's civil war, Israel during the start of the first intifada, and Russia in the early years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Tom is tough, smart, and blunt. To honor and protect the Department he loved, he would spare no criticism wherever he found error. If anyone could lead a credible investigation and find the answers to our many questions, it was Ambassador Pickering.

Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a widely respected, straight-talking Navy man, served as Pickering's partner. They were joined by a distinguished group of public servants with long experience in diplomacy, management, and intelligence. The five-person board was tasked with getting to the bottom of what happened.

I announced the investigation on September 20, just a few weeks after the attacks. That was faster than many previous investigations had launched, but it was important to move as quickly as possible. I ordered everyone at the State Department to cooperate fully and urged the board to leave no stone unturned. They had unfettered access to anyone and anything they thought relevant to their investigation, including me if they had chosen to do so. Though most previous review board reports were not made available to the public, I wanted to release as many as possible without compromising any security sensitivities.

As the investigation got under way, I also took steps to address a number of pressing vulnerabilities that couldn't wait for the official report. I ordered an immediate and thorough review of our diplomatic security posture around the world. I asked the Department of Defense to partner with us in forming joint security assessment teams to carefully scrutinize embassies and consulates in dangerous countries, sending teams of Special Forces and Diplomatic Security specialists to more than a dozen high-risk nations. I worked with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta to dispatch additional Marine Security Guards to bolster security at high-threat posts, and asked Congress to fund additional Marines going forward, hire additional Diplomatic Security agents, and address physical vulnerabilities at our facilities overseas. I named the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for High-Threat Posts in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

When the Accountability Review Board finished its report, Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen briefed me on its findings. They didn't pull a single punch. Their investigation was hard-hitting, finding systemic problems and management deficiencies in both the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. They found poor coordination between the offices handling diplomatic security and the offices guiding policy and relations with the host government. Security was not viewed as a "shared responsibility," and there was confusion about who on the ground, beyond the Ambassador himself, was actually empowered to make decisions. With more than 270 posts around the world, each with its own technical challenges and requirements, day-to-day questions about security rarely rose to the top levels of the Department, and, as a result, there was inadequate leadership in regard to matters of security.

Though security upgrades had been made to the Benghazi compound--including extending the height of the outer wall with masonry concrete and barbed wire; installing external lighting, concrete vehicle barriers, guard booths, and sandbag emplacements; hardening wooden doors with steel and reinforced locks; and adding equipment to detect explosives--the review board determined that these precautions were simply inadequate in an increasingly dangerous city. A focus of the investigation and Congressional inquiries was on the question of whether requests made by security officials on the ground in Libya were denied by their supervisors in Washington. The review board found that personnel in Benghazi did not feel that their security requests were "a high priority for Washington" and that "Embassy Tripoli did not demonstrate strong and sustained advocacy with Washington for increased security." At the embassy, and in the relevant bureaus and offices charged with making decisions about security, there was "confusion over who, ultimately, was responsible and empowered to make decisions." Communications between Washington and Tripoli took the form of phone calls, emails, and cables. Millions of these documents are sent every year by posts to headquarters, by headquarters to posts, between posts, and so on. They are used for everything from summarizing what's happening in a country to announcing personnel changes. Every cable written to headquarters is sent over the Ambassador's name and addressed to the Secretary of State. Every cable written by headquarters goes out over the name of the Secretary of State to the Ambassador. That might not make a whole lot of sense, but it's been the practice of the State Department for as long as anyone can remember. Obviously no Secretary can read or write these more than 2 million cables a year, and Ambassadors aren't writing--or even aware of--every cable that comes in or out of their embassy. Only a fraction are actually meant for the Secretary's eyes. The bulk of them are meant for the other recipients, sometimes numbering in the hundreds.

Some critics have taken advantage of this procedural quirk to say that security requests reached my desk. But that's not how it works. It shouldn't. And it didn't. Security matters are handled by officials responsible for security. It's rare that such a cable would come to the Secretary of State's desk. First, that's not what the sender intended. An agent in Islamabad isn't writing to me personally, asking for more ammunition. Second, it wouldn't make sense. The professionals charged with security should be the ones making security decisions. Third, it's just plain impossible for any Secretary of any Cabinet agency to take that on, not only because of the volume but because it's just not their expertise, nor is it mine. I had confidence in Diplomatic Security because they were ably protecting our posts in dangerous places all over the world, including highly volatile countries such as Afghanistan and Yemen.

Another major finding of the review board was that the Department relied too heavily on local Libyan security. Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, host governments have primary responsibility for providing security to diplomatic facilities in their countries. But in fractured postrevolutionary Libya, the government had limited capacity, with militias filling many of its functions. So the Department had contracted with members of a local militia vetted by the CIA to be present at the compound at all times, and also contracted unarmed local security guards to man the entry points. As became evident during the attacks, there were fatal weaknesses in their abilities and willingness to fulfill their security duties against fellow Libyans when they were most needed.

The review board also noted that the State Department faced a "struggle to obtain the resources necessary to carry out its work," something we faced in a time of shrinking budgets across the entire government. I spent four years making the case to Congress that adequately funding our diplomats and development experts was a national security priority, and we had many great partners and champions on the Hill. But it was a continuing challenge. The review board called for "a more serious and sustained commitment from Congress to support State Department needs, which, in total, constitute a small percentage both of the full national budget and that spent for national security."

In its final analysis, the review board found that "U.S. personnel on the ground in Benghazi performed with courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues, in a near impossible situation." Despite the flaws in our security systems, the investigation concluded that "every possible effort was made to rescue and recover Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith" and that "there simply was not enough time for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference." The report praised the administration's "timely" and "exceptional" coordination during the crisis itself and found no delays in decision making and no denials of support from Washington or from the military. It said our response saved American lives, and it did.

The review board made twenty-nine specific recommendations (twenty-four unclassified) to address the deficiencies it found in areas such as training, fire safety, staffing, and threat analysis. I agreed with all twenty-nine and immediately accepted them. I asked Deputy Secretary Tom Nides to head a task force to ensure that all of the recommendations would be implemented quickly and completely and to take a number of additional steps above and beyond the recommendations. We would take a top-to-bottom look at how the State Department makes decisions about where, when, and whether people operate in high-threat areas and how we respond to threats and crises.

Tom and his team got right to work translating each of the recommendations into sixty-four specific action items. They were assigned to bureaus and offices with specific timelines for completion. In addition we initiated an annual high-threat post review to be chaired by the Secretary of State and ongoing reviews by the Deputy Secretaries to ensure that pivotal questions about security would reach the highest levels. We also began regularizing protocols for sharing information with Congress so that their resource decisions were continually informed by our security needs on the ground.

I pledged that I would not leave office until every recommendation was on its way to implementation. By the time I left, we had met that goal. By then the State Department was working with Congress and the Department of Defense to increase the number of Marine Security Detachments at U.S. diplomatic facilities, had reviewed and begun upgrading fire and life safety equipment requirements abroad, started equipping all overseas facilities with more modern surveillance cameras, created 151 new Diplomatic Security positions with Congressional support, and enhanced the Department's security training efforts.
      

As a former Senator I understand and have a great deal of respect for the oversight role that Congress is meant to play. Over my eight years serving on Capitol Hill, I exercised that responsibility many times when I believed there were tough questions that needed answers. So being responsive and transparent with lawmakers was a priority starting immediately after the attacks. I decided to go up to Capitol Hill the week after the attacks to brief the entire House and Senate on what we knew at that point, along with the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James "Sandy" Winnefeld Jr., and other senior officials from the intelligence and law enforcement communities. Many members of Congress were left unsatisfied with the answers they heard that day; some were outright angry. We ourselves were frustrated by not having every answer, but that didn't deter us from sharing what we knew. Though the briefing was scheduled for only an hour, I remained in the Senate's secure chamber for more than two and a half hours, until every single Senator who had a question was able to ask it.

Over the months that followed, senior officials, most of them nonpartisan career professionals, from the State Department, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, and other intelligence agencies appeared on more than thirty occasions before eight different Congressional committees, submitted thousands of pages of documents, and answered questions as quickly and fully as possible.

In January I spent more than five hours testifying before the Senate and the House of Representatives, answering what must have been more than a hundred questions from dozens of members as best I could, given what we knew at the time. Though the end of my term was near, I told the Senators and Congressmen that I was determined to leave the State Department and our country safer and stronger. Addressing the attacks in Benghazi, I stated, "As I have said many times, I take responsibility, and nobody is more committed to getting this right." The United States has a vital role to play as a global leader, I reminded the lawmakers, and when America is absent, especially from unstable environments, there are consequences. That's why I sent Chris Stevens to Libya in the first place; it's also why he wanted to be there. It was our responsibility, I said, to make sure that the men and women on the front lines always have the resources they need and to do everything we can to reduce the risks they face. America could not and would not retreat.

Some of the members of Congress asked thoughtful questions aimed at applying the hard lessons we had learned and improving future operations. Others remained fixated on chasing after conspiracy theories that had nothing to do with how we could prevent future tragedies. And some only showed up because of the cameras. They had skipped closed hearings when there wasn't a chance of being on TV.

Much attention focused on what Susan Rice, our Ambassador to the United Nations, said on various Sunday-morning talk shows on September 16, five days after the attacks in Benghazi. In response to questions, Susan cautioned that the facts about what happened in Benghazi were still unclear and that an investigation was pending. But, she said, according to the best information currently available, the attacks were "initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of--of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video. What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding."

Critics accused her of trumping up tales of a protest that never happened in order to cover up the fact that this had been a successful terrorist attack on President Obama's watch. They obsessed over the question of who in the government prepared Susan's "talking points" that morning and hoped to find evidence of heavy-handed political malfeasance by the White House. Susan stated what the intelligence community believed, rightly or wrongly, at the time. That was the best she or anyone could do. Every step of the way, whenever something new was learned, it was quickly shared with Congress and the American people. There is a difference between getting something wrong, and committing wrong. A big difference that some have blurred to the point of casting those who made a mistake as intentionally deceitful.

Many also fixate on the question of why I didn't go on TV that morning, as if appearing on a talk show is the equivalent of jury duty, where one has to have a compelling reason to get out of it. I don't see appearing on Sunday-morning television as any more of a responsibility than appearing on late-night TV. Only in Washington is the definition of talking to Americans confined to 9 A.M. on Sunday mornings. The days and hours in between simply don't count. I don't buy that.

The American people need to be kept informed of what's happening. That's our responsibility. I wanted the American people to hear directly from me. That's why I spoke publicly first thing in the morning after the attack. And two days later at Andrews Air Force Base. And countless times in the weeks and months that followed, through statements, press interviews, and press conferences.

The extensive public record now makes clear that Susan was using information that originated with and was approved by the CIA. The earliest drafts of the talking points written and circulated by the Agency said, "We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo." That assessment didn't come from political operatives in the White House; it came from career professionals in the intelligence community. It was written by intelligence officials for use by members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Democrats and Republicans alike, who asked David Petraeus at the end of a briefing on Benghazi on Friday the 14th what part of what they heard behind closed doors they were allowed to say on television. The points were not designed to be an exhaustive account of every piece of intelligence; they were merely meant to help already briefed Congressmen make public statements while staying clear of classified or sensitive material. None of the intelligence officials working on that request had any idea the talking points would be used two days later by Susan. This is another conspiracy theory that flies in the face of facts--and reason.

I was asked about this repeatedly during my Congressional testimony. "I personally was not focused on talking points. I was focused on keeping our people safe," I responded. At one point, during some particularly tendentious questioning, the exchange grew heated. Afterward some of my words were taken out of context for political purposes, so it's worth repeating my full answer that day:

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they would go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator. Now, honestly I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the, the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information. The [intelligence community] has a process, I understand, going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out. But, you know to be clear, it is from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it, than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we'll figure out what was going on in the meantime.

In yet another example of the terrible politicization of this tragedy, many have conveniently chosen to interpret the phrase "What difference at this point does it make?" to mean that I was somehow minimizing the tragedy of Benghazi. Of course that's not what I said. Nothing could be further from the truth. And many of those trying to make hay of it know that, but don't care. My point was simple: If someone breaks into your home and takes your family hostage, how much time are you going to spend focused on how the intruder spent his day as opposed to how best to rescue your loved ones and then prevent it from happening again? Many of these same people are a broken record about unanswered questions. But there is a difference between unanswered questions and unlistened to answers.

Coming in the heat of a tight Presidential campaign less than two months before Election Day, maybe it's naïve of me to think the death of four Americans wouldn't have been used for political purposes. Politics only muddied the context and obscured many of the facts. One of the best parts of being Secretary of State was experiencing four years in a place where partisan politics was almost entirely absent from our work.

Those who exploit this tragedy over and over as a political tool minimize the sacrifice of those who served our country. I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans. It's just plain wrong, and it's unworthy of our great country. Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me.
      

As Secretary I got to know many of the Diplomatic Security officers stationed all over the world, and I was extraordinarily grateful for their service and professionalism. The two agents who headed up my own protective detail, first Fred Ketchem and then Kurt Olsson, were unflappable and indefatigable. I trusted them with my life.

Although the five agents in Benghazi on September 11 were vastly outnumbered, they performed heroically and put their own lives on the line to protect their colleagues. David, the agent critically wounded in the mortar attack at the CIA base, spent months recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center. I called him during his stay and told him that when he was healthy enough, I wanted to host him and his colleagues and properly honor them for their service.

On the morning of January 31, 2013, my second-to-last day as Secretary of State, the Treaty Room was filled with family and friends of the five agents. David was still in a wheelchair, but he made it. Members of the Stevens family were there as well, to show their appreciation for how much these men had done to protect Chris. It was my honor to pay tribute to their courage and professionalism. They represented the strength and spirit of a great nation. I presented each agent with the State Department's Heroism Award. There were tears in people's eyes as they watched. It was a reminder that on that terrible night, we saw the best and worst of humanity, just as we had eleven years before.

Memories of Benghazi will stay with me always, and they will shape the way America's diplomats do their jobs in the future. But we should remember Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods as much for how they lived as for how they died. They all volunteered to serve their country where security was far from assured because those were the places where American interests and values were most at stake and they were most needed.
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That morning, at a press conference in London, Secretary Kerry was asked if there was anything Assad could do to prevent military action. "Sure," Kerry replied, "he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week--turn it over, all of it without delay and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it and it can't be done." Although Kerry's answer may have reflected conversations he was having with allies and the Russians, it sounded to the world like an offhand remark. A State Department spokesperson downplayed it as "a rhetorical argument." The Russians, however, seized on Kerry's comment and embraced it as a serious diplomatic offer.
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After hours of intense negotiation we hammered out an agreement. The cease-fire would go into effect at 9 P.M. local time, just a few hours away. (It was an arbitrary time, but we needed to come up with a clear answer to the basic question "When will the violence stop?") But before we could declare victory, there was one more piece of business to attend to. We had agreed that President Obama would call Bibi, both to personally ask him to agree to the cease-fire and to promise increased American assistance cracking down on weapons smuggling into Gaza. Was this political cover so Bibi could tell his Cabinet and his voters he had called off the invasion because Israel's most important ally had begged him? Or did he take some personal satisfaction from making the President jump through hoops? Either way, if this was what it would take to seal the deal, we needed to get it done.
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As it turned out, the cease-fire held better than anyone expected. In 2013, Israel enjoyed the quietest year in a decade. Later, one senior Israeli official confided to me that his government had been forty-eight hours away from launching a ground invasion of Gaza and that my diplomatic intervention was the only thing standing in the way of a much more explosive confrontation. Of course, I continue to believe that over the long run nothing will do more to secure Israel's future as a Jewish democratic state than a comprehensive peace based on two states for two peoples.
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No! No! No!" the Chinese official said, waving his arms across the doorway. The President of the United States was barging uninvited into a closed meeting with the Premier of China--and there was no way to stop him.

When you're a senior official representing the United States abroad, let alone the President or Secretary of State, every movement is carefully planned and every door opens on cue. You get used to being whisked through busy city centers in motorcades, bypassing customs and security at the airport, and never having to wait for an elevator. But sometimes protocol breaks down and diplomacy gets messy. That's when you have to improvise. This was one of those times.

President Obama and I were looking for Premier Wen Jiabao in the middle of a large international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark. In December 2009, that charming city was cold, dark, and uncharacteristically tense. We knew that the only way to achieve a meaningful agreement on climate change was for leaders of the nations emitting the most greenhouse gases to sit down together and hammer out a compromise--especially the United States and China. The choices and trade-offs confronting us would be difficult. New clean energy technologies and greater efficiencies might allow us to cut emissions while creating jobs and exciting new industries, and even help emerging economies leapfrog the dirtiest phases of industrial development. But there was no getting around the fact that combating climate change was going to be a hard political sell at a time when the world was already reeling from a global financial crisis. All economies ran primarily on fossil fuels. Changing that would require bold leadership and international cooperation.

But the Chinese were avoiding us. Worse, we learned that Wen had called a "secret" meeting with the Indians, Brazilians, and South Africans to stop, or at least dilute, the kind of agreement the United States was seeking. When we couldn't find any of the leaders of those countries, we knew something was amiss and sent out members of our team to canvass the conference center. Eventually they discovered the meeting's location.

After exchanging looks of "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" the President and I set off through the long hallways of the sprawling Nordic convention center, with a train of experts and advisors scrambling to keep up. Later we'd joke about this impromptu "footcade," a motorcade without the motors, but at the time I was focused on the diplomatic challenge waiting at the end of our march. So off we went, charging up a flight of stairs and encountering surprised Chinese officials, who tried to divert us by sending us in the opposite direction. We were undeterred. Newsweek later described us as "a diplomatic version of Starsky and Hutch."

When we arrived outside the meeting room, there was a jumble of arguing aides and nervous security agents. Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, got tangled up with a Chinese guard. In the commotion the President slipped through the door and yelled, "Mr. Premier!" really loudly, which got everyone's attention. The Chinese guards put their arms up against the door again, but I ducked under and made it through.
     In a makeshift conference room whose glass walls had been covered by drapes for privacy against prying eyes, we found Wen wedged around a long table with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and South African President Jacob Zuma. Jaws dropped when they saw us.

"Are you ready?" said President Obama, flashing a big grin. Now the real negotiations could begin.
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Now here we were, making a last-ditch effort. Among the sticking points was this: If nations agreed to cut their emissions, how would those commitments be monitored and enforced? The Chinese, always allergic to outside scrutiny, were resisting any robust reporting requirements or verification mechanisms. The Indians, however, were more amenable. The country's soft-spoken Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was gently pushing back against the Chinese objections. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, who had been one of our most strident critics in earlier meetings, was also more constructive and conciliatory.

We could feel the momentum in the room shifting, and we weren't the only ones. In a surprising display, one of the other members of the Chinese delegation, a talented diplomat with whom we generally had very cordial relations, started loudly scolding the far more senior Premier. He was quite agitated by the prospect that a deal might actually be at hand. Wen, embarrassed, instructed his interpreter not to translate the outburst. Trying to get the meeting back on track, President Obama, in his cool and calm way, asked Wen what the other Chinese official said. The Premier looked at us and said, "It is not important."
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Unfortunately, much of the attention that day was not on trade but on a drama unfolding thousands of miles away, back in Washington, one that threatened to undermine my argument and the world's confidence in American economic leadership.

In mid-May 2011, the U.S. government had reached its debt ceiling, and the President and Congress had only a limited time to raise it or risk defaulting on America's debts, which would have catastrophic consequences for us and the global economy. Despite the high stakes, this was a difficult issue for many to understand. To many Americans, it sounded like Congress was debating whether to give itself permission to spend a lot of money and rack up new debts. But that wasn't it at all. The real question was whether Congress would vote to pay debts it had already run up in spending bills it had already passed into law. The vast majority of countries don't require an extra step like this, so it was also hard for people around the world to comprehend what was happening.

Some in Congress were actually arguing that, for the first time in history, we should refuse to pay our debts and let our country default, despite all the consequences for the global economy and for America's credibility and leadership. From every continent, foreign leaders were expressing grave concerns. China, which had invested more than a trillion dollars in U.S. government securities, was particularly nervous. The state-owned newspaper Xinhua reflected the prevailing attitude when it wrote: "Given the United States' status as the world's largest economy and the issuer of the dominant international reserve currency, such political brinksmanship in Washington is dangerously irresponsible." When this scenario played out a second time, in 2013, the Chinese went further. They started talking about a "de-Americanized world" and suggested it was time to look for a different reserve currency besides the dollar. Of course, because China owned so much of our debt, they were in a strong position to make that outcome more likely.

When I arrived in Hong Kong, the crisis had reached a fever pitch. I awoke to the headline "US Debt Talks Down to Wire as Parties Battle" in the local English-language newspaper. At the Hong Kong Government House, Chief Executive Donald Tsang greeted me with his customary smile and bow tie but asked the questions that were on everyone's mind in Asia and around the world: What is going on in Washington? Could they still trust the U.S. economy? I heard the same questions at a reception with business leaders before my speech.

The answer I gave was, of course, yes. I said that I was confident a deal would be reached. Privately I crossed my fingers and hoped it was true.

The entire experience was a reminder of how closely the rest of the world watches how we make decisions at home and how central America's economic strength and political resolve are to our global leadership. The full faith and credit of the United States should never be in doubt, and the Secretary of State shouldn't have to publicly reassure people in other nations that we'll pay our debts. Period.
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The world has changed a lot since I was growing up, but the American middle class remains the greatest economic engine in history and the heart of the American Dream. Its success is rooted in the basic bargain that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will prosper; that if you innovate, if you create and build, there is no limit on what you can achieve. The middle class has always been defined as much if not more by the values and aspirations we share as by the goods we purchase.

My time as Secretary of State coincided with another great movement of people into the middle class, but this time it was happening in other countries, as hundreds of millions climbed out of poverty for the first time. The projections are staggering. The global middle class is expected to double in size by 2035, to as many as 5 billion. Two-thirds of all Chinese, more than 40 percent of all Indians, and half the population of Brazil are all expected to make it into the middle class. For the first time in history most people on earth are projected to be middle class rather than poor by 2022.

This explosive growth raises questions about our planet's capacity to sustain the level of consumption we've come to identify with middle-class life, especially when it comes to automobiles, energy, and water. Climate change, scarce resources, and local pollution will force us to make dramatic changes in patterns of production and consumption. But if we do it well the changes will create new jobs, new businesses, and a better quality of life. That means the rise of a global middle class will be good for the world. It will also be good for Americans. As wages and incomes rise elsewhere, there'll be more people able to buy our goods and services and less incentive for companies to outsource our jobs. After years of stagnant incomes and declining social and economic mobility, we need it.

Middle-class people around the world are also more likely to share our values. People everywhere typically want the same things out of life: good health, a decent job, a safe community, and the chance to provide education and opportunities to their children. They care about dignity, equality of opportunity, and due process before a fair judicial system. When people manage to climb into the middle class, and the immediate needs of survival are less pressing, they also tend to demand accountable governance, efficient services, better education, better health care, a clean environment, and peace. And most of them find the siren song of political extremism less appealing. The global middle class is a natural constituency for America. It's in our interest to see it grow to include more people. We should do everything we can to expand it at home and around the world.
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I decided to go to Haiti to meet with Préval and the candidates to see if there could be a peaceful resolution that would avoid a crisis when there was so much work still to be done in the aftermath of the earthquake. Préval's preferred candidate, who the OAS said had actually finished third, complained that the international community was pushing him out of the race. I insisted that just wasn't the case. After all, I explained, people tried to push me out of the race when I ran for President in 2008. Just as President Obama and I did, he and the other two candidates had to respect the voters' preference. "Look, I've run in elections," I said. "I've won two, and I've lost a big one. So I know how it feels. But what's more important is that democracy be protected." Unlike a professional diplomat or an academic or businessperson, I could put myself in these candidates' shoes. Elections can be painful. Democracy is tough. In some places you can be killed because you want to run or you want to vote, or you can be imprisoned and bankrupted. You have to understand the risks that people are taking, the worries they have, their need to feel respected.

I met with Préval at his temporary residence. We sat close together in plush chairs, practically knee-to-knee. I started talking about what it means to think not just for tomorrow but for the long term. I told him that this was his defining moment. He was either going to be remembered as a President no different from all the Haitian leaders in history who refused to listen to their people, or he was going to be remembered as the President who allowed democracy to take root. He had to choose. "I'm talking to you not only as your friend, but as someone who loves my country and had to do a lot of hard things, too," I said. "Do the hard thing, because the hard thing is going to ultimately be in the best interests of your country and in your best interests, even though you won't feel that way until you're able to step back and look back." He ended the meeting saying, "Well, you've given me a lot to think about. I'll see what I can do."

Shortly afterward Préval and all three candidates accepted the OAS results. The celebrated musician Michel Martelly, widely known as "Sweet Micky," won the run-off, and Préval retired. Usually the winner of an election receives all the kudos. But in this case I thought the hero of the hour was the man who stepped down gracefully, even with his country still reeling from an unimaginable catastrophe. It was the first time in Haitian history that any President peacefully turned over power to someone from an opposing party.

This was a very good sign for the country's future. The link between sustainable development and good governance is well established. That's why we put it at the heart of many of our aid programs, most notably the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Haiti's troubles on both fronts provided a case in point. And we had a counterexample readily available. Chile was hit by an even more powerful earthquake just a month after Haiti. But unlike Haiti, Chile had the infrastructure, resources, and governing institutions to withstand such a devastating event and respond quickly and effectively. To "build back better" Haiti needed to do more than clean up the rubble and get the economy going again. It needed a strong democracy and an accountable, responsive government. A peaceful transfer of power was a crucial first step.

I was pleased to see Préval at the Caracol ribbon-cutting event, but I wondered how he and Martelly would interact. To my surprise and delight, Martelly acknowledged Préval and brought him up onstage. Then they raised their hands together in celebration. It was a simple gesture, familiar to Americans. But no two Presidents had ever done that in Haiti--mainly because there have been so few peaceful transitions. It left me believing that Haiti was, finally, despite all of the struggles, on a better path.
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I was appalled by what happened in Iran and by the persecution of online activists in authoritarian states all over the world. I turned to Dan Baer, our Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor whom I had recruited from Georgetown, where he was a professor researching and teaching about the intersection between ethics, economics, and human rights. I asked Dan to work with Alec and his team to find ways we could help. They told me there were powerful emerging technologies we could fund that would help dissidents circumvent government surveillance and censorship. Our investments could play a pivotal role in taking such tools to scale and making them accessible to the activists who needed them most. But there was a catch: Criminals and hackers could also use these tools to avoid detection. Our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies would have a hard time keeping up. Could we be opening up a Pandora's box of illicit online activity? Was it worth the risk to empower and protect the activists?

I took those concerns seriously. The implications for our national security were real. It was not an easy call. But I decided that striking a blow for free expression and association around the world was worth the risk. Criminals would always find ways of exploiting new technologies; that was no reason to sit on our hands. I gave the green light to move ahead. Our team got to work, and by the time I visited Lithuania in 2011, we had invested more than $45 million in tools to help keep dissidents safe online and trained more than five thousand activists worldwide, who turned around and trained thousands more. We worked with designers to create new apps and devices, such as a panic button that a protester could press on a phone that would signal to friends that he or she was being arrested, while simultaneously erasing all of their personal contacts.
      

This technology agenda was part of efforts to adapt the State Department and U.S. foreign policy to the 21st century. During the transition period before I became Secretary, I read an essay in the journal Foreign Affairs titled "America's Edge: Power in the Networked Century" by Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. Her concept of networks keyed off the architecture of the internet, but it was bigger than that. It had to do with all the ways people were organizing themselves in the 21st century, collaborating, communicating, trading, even fighting. In this networked world, she explained, diverse and cosmopolitan societies would have significant advantages over homogeneous and closed societies. They'd be better positioned to take advantage of expanding commercial, cultural, and technological networks and capitalize on the opportunities presented by global interdependence. This was good news, she argued, for the United States, with our multicultural, creative, hyperconnected population.

In 2009, more than 55 million Americans were immigrants or the children of immigrants. These first- or second-generation Americans were valuable links back to their home countries and also significant contributors to our own country's economic, cultural, and political life. Immigration helped keep the U.S. population young and dynamic at a time when many of our partners and competitors were aging. Russia, in particular, faced what President Putin himself has called a "demographic crisis." Even China, because of its "One Child Policy," was headed toward a demographic cliff. I only wish that the bipartisan bill passed in the Senate in 2013 reforming our immigration laws could pass the House.

While I maintained a healthy respect for traditional forms of power, I agreed with Anne-Marie's analysis of America's comparative advantage in a networked world. Here was an answer to all the hand-wringing about decline that was rooted in both America's oldest traditions and our newest innovations. I asked Anne-Marie to take a leave from Princeton and join me at the State Department as Director of Policy Planning, our internal think tank. She also helped lead a top-to-bottom review of the State Department and USAID that we called the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. It was inspired by the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, which I became familiar with as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and it aimed to map out exactly how we would put smart power into practice and use what I started calling "21st-Century Statecraft." This included harnessing new technologies, public-private partnerships, diaspora networks, and other new tools, and it soon carried us into fields beyond traditional diplomacy, especially energy and economics.

The State Department's Bureau of Public Affairs established a digital division to amplify our messaging across a wide range of platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Google+. By 2013 more than 2.6 million Twitter users followed 301 official feeds in eleven languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Turkish, and Urdu. I encouraged our diplomats at embassies around the world to develop their own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, to go on local TV, and to engage in every other way they could. Just as important, I wanted them to listen to what people in their countries were saying, including on social media. In an era in which security concerns often limited contact with foreign citizens, social media offered a way to hear from the people directly, even in relatively closed societies. More than 2 billion people were now online, nearly a third of humankind. The internet had become the public space of the 21st century, the world's town square, classroom, marketplace, and coffeehouse, so America's diplomats needed to be there, too.

When Mike McFaul, a professor of political science at Stanford and a Russia expert at the National Security Council, was preparing to move to Moscow as our new Ambassador, I told him that he'd have to find creative ways to get around government obstacles and communicate directly with the Russian people. "Mike, remember these three things," I said, "be strong, engage beyond the elites, and don't be afraid to use every technology you can to reach more people." Mike soon found himself harassed and vilified by the Kremlin-controlled media. I made a point of calling him on an open line one night and, speaking very clearly so all the eavesdropping Russian spies could hear, I told him what a good job he was doing.

Mike became an avid user of social media, eventually attracting more than seventy thousand followers on Twitter and becoming one of Russia's ten most influential online voices, based on numbers of mentions by other users and readership. Many Russians knew him primarily as @McFaul, and they were intrigued by his surprising candor and willingness to mix it up with all comers. In between explaining U.S. policies and shining a spotlight on some of the Kremlin's abuses, Mike posted a steady diet of personal thoughts and photos. Russians got to see the U.S. Ambassador as a human being, enjoying the Bolshoi Ballet, showing visiting relatives around Red Square, and recovering from a broken finger injured in a basketball game. In one official meeting not long after that incident, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev asked about Mike's hand. When he began to tell the story behind the injury, Medvedev just waved him off. "I know all about it," he said. "I read about it on the internet."

Early in his tenure Mike got into a heated back-and-forth on Twitter with the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who has more than 250,000 followers, chimed in with a tweet of his own: "I see that Russia MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] has launched a twitter-war against US Ambassador @McFaul," he wrote. "That's the new world--followers instead of nukes. Better." I think Mike would be the first to agree.
      

If the hyperconnectivity of the networked world played to America's strengths and offered opportunities to exercise smart power to advance our interests, it also presented significant new challenges to our security and our values.

This became painfully apparent in November 2010, when the online organization WikiLeaks and several media outlets around the world began publishing the first of more than 250,000 stolen State Department cables, many of which contained sensitive observations and intelligence from our diplomats in the field.

A junior military intelligence officer stationed in Iraq, Private Bradley Manning, downloaded the secret cables from a Department of Defense computer and gave them to WikiLeaks and its Australian leader, Julian Assange. Some celebrated Manning and Assange as champions of transparency who were carrying on a noble tradition of exposing government wrongdoing, comparing them to Daniel Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. I didn't see it that way. As I said at the time, people of good faith understand the need for sensitive diplomatic communications, to protect both the national interest and the global common interest. Every country, including the United States, must be able to have candid conversations about the people and nations with whom they deal. And the thousands of stolen cables generally showed America's diplomats doing their jobs well, often in difficult circumstances.

The cables also provided intriguing color. For instance, one discussed a diplomat's meeting with a Central Asian Minister who showed up drunk to a meeting, "slouching back in his chair and slurring all kinds of Russian participles," while another described the scene at a wedding in Dagestan, Russia, where guests threw $100 bills at child dancers as a "microcosm of the social and political relations of the North Caucasus." Diplomats often provided insight into world leaders, such as one cable on the Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe that noted "his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics)."

The publication of these reports had the unintended consequence of showing how hard our Foreign Service officers were working, and what keen observers and talented writers many of them were. But some of the unvarnished comments also damaged relationships our diplomats had carefully built over many years. Our diplomats routinely reported on conversations with human rights activists and dissidents, business leaders, even officials of foreign governments who could face persecution and retribution if their names became public.

In the immediate aftermath of the leaks I condemned the illegal disclosure of classified information. "It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems," I said. Then I turned to face the diplomatic fallout from aggrieved allies and outraged partners.

I asked Under Secretary of State for Management Pat Kennedy to set up a task force to analyze the leaks cable by cable and determine exactly what information was compromised and the consequences of those disclosures to our interests, our personnel, and our partners. We rushed to develop a process to identify at-risk sources and, if needed, help them get to safety.

On the night before Thanksgiving 2010, I started making what would be dozens of calls from my house in Chappaqua. First up was my friend Kevin Rudd, the Australian Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister. We began with a discussion of our usual topics of interest, led by North Korea. "The other point I want to raise is WikiLeaks," I told him. Our Ambassador to Australia had already briefed Rudd that some of our confidential discussions about the region, including China's activities, might have been compromised. In response the Australian government had established their own task force to deal with the situation. "It could be a real problem," he said. "It's a dreadful fallout," I agreed. "We deeply regret it and feel blind-sided." I promised to do all we could to help with the damage control.

It would be a long Thanksgiving holiday, working the phones and offering apologies. Over the coming days I spoke with many Foreign Ministers, one Prime Minister, and one President. These calls covered other issues as well, but in every conversation I explained the impending release of the secret cables and asked for their understanding. Some were angry and hurt; others saw an opportunity to gain leverage with the United States and tried to exploit it. But most were gracious. "I appreciate that you called yourself," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang was consolatory, saying, "I can't predict the reaction of the public, but it's important for both sides to deepen mutual trust. That's the magic word for the China-U.S. bilateral relationship." One leader even joked, "You should see what we say about you."

The in-person conversations were harder. In the first week of December I attended a summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Astana, Kazakhstan, along with many other world leaders. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister whose antics described in a number of leaked cables were now being ridiculed on the front pages of Italian newspapers, was especially upset. "Why are you saying these things about me?" he asked when we sat down together. "America has no better friend," he insisted. "You know me, I know your family." He launched into an impassioned story about how his father used to take him to the graveyards of American soldiers who had sacrificed on behalf of Italy. "I've never forgotten it," he said. Berlusconi was no stranger to bad publicity, as bulging files of scandalous press clippings could attest. But the way he was regarded by his peers, and by the United States in particular, mattered a great deal to him. And this was embarrassing.

I apologized, yet again. No one wished these words had stayed secret more than I did. Understandably that wasn't enough to assuage him. He asked me to stand with him in front of the cameras and offer a strong statement about the importance of the U.S.-Italian relationship, which I did. For all of Berlusconi's foibles, he genuinely loved America. Italy was also a key NATO ally whose support we needed around the world, including in the upcoming military campaign in Libya. So I did everything I could to reestablish a measure of trust and respect.

Eventually my team and I reached nearly every leader mentioned prominently in a secret cable. Our full-court press seemed to minimize the lasting harm. And in some cases the honesty of our apology may even have added new depth to some relationships. Others were beyond repair.

In Libya, Ambassador Gene Cretz's searing reports on Colonel Muammar Qaddafi made him persona non grata in Tripoli. He was even threatened by some of Qaddafi's thugs, prompting me to recall him to the United States for his own safety. In neighboring Tunisia it was the dictator who had to flee. The publication of secret U.S. reports about the corruption of the regime helped fuel growing popular frustration that eventually blossomed into a revolution that chased Ben Ali from office.
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In this context you could look at a map of the world in a number of ways. It was easy to see one problem after another. Throw a dart at the map, and you were likely to hit a country where women faced violence and abuse, an economy where women were denied the chance to participate and prosper, or a political system that excluded women. It was no coincidence that the places where women's lives were most undervalued largely lined up with the parts of the world most plagued by instability, conflict, extremism, and poverty.

This was a point lost on many of the men working across Washington's foreign policy establishment, but over the years I came to view it as one of the most compelling arguments for why standing up for women and girls was not just the right thing to do but also smart and strategic. The mistreatment of women was certainly not the only or even the chief cause of our problems in Afghanistan, where the Taliban banished girls from school and forced women to live in medieval conditions, or in Central Africa, where rape became a common weapon of war. But the correlation was undeniable, and a growing body of research showed that improving conditions for women helped resolve conflicts and stabilize societies. "Women's issues" had long been relegated to the margins of U.S. foreign policy and international diplomacy, considered at best a nice thing to work on but hardly a necessity. I became convinced that, in fact, this was a cause that cut to the heart of our national security.

There was another way to look at the map. Instead of problems, you could see opportunities. The world was full of women finding new ways to solve old problems. They were eager to go to school, own land, start a business, and run for office. There were partnerships to form and leaders to nurture, if we were willing to step up. I encouraged our government, the private sector, the NGO community, and international institutions to take up this challenge and to see women not as victims to be saved but as partners to be embraced.

I had two Chiefs of Staff in the White House who were indispensable traveling companions on my journey. Maggie Williams, who worked with me at the Children's Defense Fund in the 1980s, is a terrific communicator and one of the most creative and decent people I've ever met. She helped set the course for my time as First Lady and remained a close friend and confidante ever since. Melanne Verveer was Maggie's Deputy in the first term and then her successor in the second. We've always had a real mutual admiration society. Melanne and her husband, Phil, had studied at Georgetown with Bill, and she had gone on to be a star on Capitol Hill and at People for the American Way. Her energy and intellect are simply unstoppable, and her passion for working on behalf of women and girls is unmatched.

The years that followed Beijing saw exciting progress. In many countries laws that once permitted unequal treatment of women and girls were repealed. The United Nations created a new body called UN Women, and the Security Council passed resolutions recognizing the crucial role of women in peacemaking and security. Researchers at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other institutions expanded their study of the untapped potential of women to drive economic growth and social progress. As women gained the chance to work, learn, and participate in their societies, their economic, social, and political contributions multiplied.

Yet despite this progress, women and girls still comprise the majority of the world's unhealthy, unfed, and unpaid. At the end of 2013, women held less than 22 percent of all seats in Parliaments and Legislatures around the world. In some places women cannot open a bank account or sign a contract. More than a hundred countries still have laws that limit or prohibit women's participation in the economy. Twenty years ago, American women made 72 cents on the dollar. Today it's still not equal. Women also hold a majority of lower wage jobs in this country and nearly three quarters of all jobs in fields that rely on tips like waiters, bartenders, and hairstylists--which pay even less than average hourly work. Meanwhile, only a small percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In short, the journey toward full participation for women and girls is far from over.

Faced with these grim facts, it can be easy to get discouraged. In the White House after Beijing, at times when I felt daunted by the scope of the challenges we were trying to overcome, I often found myself looking for comfort to a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt that I kept in my office. The example she set as a fearless First Lady and a courageous fighter for human rights inspired and fortified me. After Franklin Roosevelt's death and the end of World War II, Eleanor represented the United States as a delegate to the new United Nations and helped shape its development. During the first meeting of the UN General Assembly, in London in early 1946, she joined the sixteen other women delegates in publishing "an open letter to the women of the world," in which they argued that "women in various parts of the world are at different stages of participation in the life of their community," but "the goal of full participation in the life and responsibilities of their countries and of the world community is a common objective toward which the women of the world should assist one another." Eleanor's language of "full participation," echoed in the Beijing Platform for Action nearly fifty years later, has always resonated with me.

So have many of her other words. "A woman is like a tea bag," she once observed wryly. "You never know how strong she is until she's in hot water." I love that and, in my experience, it's spot on. In 1959, by which time Eleanor was a revered elder stateswoman near the end of her life, she used one of her newspaper columns to issue a call to action to the American people: "We have not yet succeeded in our democracy in giving every one of our citizens equal freedom and equal opportunity, and that is our unfinished business." As I dove deeper into my work on behalf of women and girls around the world, I started describing the quest for equal rights and full participation for women as the "unfinished business" of our time. It was a reminder to audiences--and to me--just how far we still had to go.
      

Eleanor Roosevelt's greatest achievement was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first binding international agreement on the rights of humankind. In the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, many nations were pressing for a statement of this kind to help ensure that we would prevent future atrocities and protect the inherent humanity and dignity of all people. The Nazis were able to pursue their crimes because they were able progressively to constrict the circle of those defined as humans. This cold, dark region of the human soul, where people withdraw first understanding, then empathy, and finally even the designation of personhood from another human being, was not, of course, unique to Nazi Germany. The impulse to dehumanize has reappeared throughout history, and it was precisely this impulse that the drafters of the Universal Declaration hoped to restrain.

They discussed, they wrote, they revisited, revised, and rewrote. They incorporated suggestions and revisions from governments, organizations, and individuals around the world. It is telling that even in the drafting of the Universal Declaration there was a debate about women's rights. The initial version of the first article stated, "All men are created equal." It took women members of the Commission, led by Hansa Mehta of India, to point out that "all men" might be interpreted to exclude women. Only after long debate was the language changed to say, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

At 3:00 in the morning on December 10, 1948, after nearly two years of drafting and one last long night of debate, the president of the UN General Assembly called for a vote on the final text. Forty-eight nations voted in favor, eight abstained, none dissented, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It made clear that our rights are not conferred by governments; they are the birthright of all people. It does not matter what country we live in, who our leaders are, or even who we are. Because we are human, we therefore have rights. And because we have rights, governments are bound to protect them.
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Throughout the history of American foreign policy, there has been a running debate between so-called realists and idealists. The former, it is argued, place national security ahead of human rights, while the latter do the opposite. Those are categories that I find overly simplistic. No one should have any illusions about the gravity of the security threats America faces, and as Secretary I had no higher responsibility than to protect our citizens and our country. But at the same time, upholding universal values and human rights is at the core of what it means to be American. If we sacrifice those values or let our policies diverge too far from our ideals, our influence will wane and our country will cease to be what Abraham Lincoln called the "the last best hope of earth." Moreover, defending our values and defending our interests are often in less tension than it may sometimes appear. Over the long term, repression undermines stability and creates new threats, while democracy and respect for human rights create strong and stable societies.
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When women participate in peace processes, they tend to focus discussion on issues like human rights, justice, national reconciliation, and economic renewal that are critical to making peace. They generally build coalitions across ethnic and sectarian lines and are more likely to speak up for other marginalized groups. They often act as mediators and help to foster compromise.

Yet despite all that women tend to bring to the table, more often than not they're excluded. Of the hundreds of peace treaties signed since the early 1990s, fewer than 10 percent had any women negotiators, fewer than 3 percent had any women signatories, and only a small percentage included even a single reference to women. So it's not too surprising that more than half of all peace agreements fail within five years.
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Remembering all the conversations I'd had with foreign leaders who threw up their hands and said, "Our people hate gays, they support these laws, what can we do?," I spoke directly to those officials: "Leadership, by definition, means being out in front of your people when it is called for. It means standing up for the dignity of all your citizens and persuading your people to do the same."
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Not long after I announced No Ceilings, I heard a surprising story. Stephen Massey, a colleague from the Clinton White House, happened to be in Beijing and wandered into a bookstore. It was a large and modern shop, but quiet and nearly empty. Then Stephen could hardly believe his ears. Over the store's loudspeakers he heard a familiar phrase: "Human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all." It was my voice. They were playing a recording of the speech throughout the store. What a difference twenty years makes! In 1995, the Chinese government had shut down the closed-circuit television feed carrying my remarks. Now those controversial words had become "background music" for shoppers, part of the fabric of everyday life. Stephen whipped out his smartphone, recorded a video, and emailed it home. When I saw it, I had to laugh. Was that really a good way to sell books? In China?

The message of Beijing and the lifetime of work it represented had become so much a part of my identity it was practically written into my DNA. I was glad that it had permeated into the culture, in places that had once been hostile. The cause of protecting and expanding human rights is as urgent and compelling as ever, and further progress is unlikely without continued American leadership.
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Mom's own childhood was marked by trauma and abandonment. In Chicago her parents fought frequently and divorced when she and her sister were young. Neither parent was willing to care for the kids, so they were put on a train to California to live with their paternal grandparents in Alhambra, a town near the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles. The elderly couple was severe and unloving. One Halloween, after Mom was caught trick-or-treating with school friends, a forbidden activity, she was confined to her room for an entire year, except for the hours she was in school. She wasn't allowed to eat at the kitchen table or play in the yard. By the time Mom turned fourteen, she could no longer bear life in her grandmother's house. She moved out and found work as a housekeeper and nanny for a kind-hearted woman in San Gabriel who offered room and board plus $3 a week and urged her to attend high school. For the first time she saw how loving parents care for their children--it was a revelation.

After graduating high school, Mom moved back to Chicago in the hopes of reconnecting with her own mother. Sadly she was spurned yet again. Heartbroken, she spent the next five years working as a secretary before she met and married my father, Hugh Rodham. She built a new life as a homemaker, spending her days lavishing love on me and my two younger brothers.

When I got old enough to understand all this, I asked my mother how she survived abuse and abandonment without becoming embittered and emotionally stunted. How did she emerge from this lonely early life as such a loving and levelheaded woman? I'll never forget how she replied. "At critical points in my life somebody showed me kindness," she said. Sometimes it would seem so small, but it would mean so much--the teacher in elementary school who noticed that she never had money to buy milk, so every day would buy two cartons of milk and then say, "Dorothy, I can't drink this other carton of milk. Would you like it?" Or the woman who hired her as a nanny and insisted that she go to high school. One day she noticed that Mom had only one blouse that she washed every day. "Dorothy, I can't fit into this blouse anymore and I'd hate to throw it away. Would you like it?" she said.
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