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Nov. 13, 2025 18:07-18:58 - CSPAN

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David Ignatius Discusses Global Conflicts

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unidentified		started.
		Visit our website at studentcam.org.
		Next, a discussion about global conflicts with Washington Post associate editor and foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius.
		He spoke at the American Bar Association's National Security Law Conference in Washington, D.C. Good afternoon, everyone.
		It is my distinct privilege to introduce our keynote speaker, David Ignatius, a journalist, novelist, and one of the nation's most respected voices on intelligence, diplomacy, and global security.
		For nearly four decades, David has been a fixture at the Washington Post, where he writes a twice-weekly column on international affairs.
		Over the years, he has served as editor of the Outlook section, foreign editor, and assisting managing editor, shaping how Americans understand events far beyond our borders.
		Before joining the Post, David reported for the Wall Street Journal, covering the Justice Department, the CIA, and the Middle East.
		Those early assignments gave him a rare first-hand understanding of intelligence operations and the legal and ethical questions that accompany them.
		David's reporting has earned him numerous awards, including the Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary, the Edward Weintel Prize for Diplomatic Reporting, and I did not know this before I had to write this introduction, the Legion of Honor from the French government.
		It's pretty cool.
		But David Ignatius isn't just a chronicler of history.
		He's also a storyteller.
		He's written more than 10 acclaimed spy novels, translating complex, often secret worlds into compelling and entertaining narratives.
		He's also, if you're not into the nonfiction or fiction for the music lovers out there, he's a librettist.
		So you can ask him anything Glenn is going to ask him about his opera.
		So all of that makes him the perfect keynote after lunch for the conference.
		Joining him in a conversation about technology, intelligence, and a world in turmoil is Glenn Gerstahl, a member of the committee.
		And he is perfect for interviewing this interviewer.
		He served as general counsel of the National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020.
		And he is currently a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is a commentator on national security and cybersecurity matters.
		So please join me in welcoming David Ignatius and Glynda Gerstahl.
		Well, Yvette, thank you.
		Good afternoon, everyone, to those here in the audience.
		And I understand this is being broadcast live on C-SPAN.
		So hello to all.
		David, this is just an incredible treat for me personally and a privilege to be chatting with you here in front of this audience.
		You and I have talked about some of these issues before, but this is a terrific venue to do this.
		And so thank you so much to do it.
		I guess let's get started right away.
		You know, it's a cliché to say that we face unprecedented national security challenges and the reason the cliché persists is because it's true.
		So let's get started.
		And I was trying to think of where we would start.
		For me, it's hard to believe that we're coming up on four years of the date of Russia's invasion in Ukraine.
		So maybe we'll start with Ukraine.
		I know you've been there, what, seven times, as I recall?
		You've interviewed President Zelensky.
		You're quite familiar with the situation there.
		There's some reporting today that Russia's on the verge of capturing another strategic city, possibly all the ruins of a strategic city.
		What's your sense of where things are on the battlefield?
		And then could you talk a little bit about the negotiating table and the implications of that for our audience here?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		So I'm pleased to start there.
		And let me just begin by thanking Steve and Yvette.
		It's so nice to be with this audience.
		As I said to one of your colleagues, I spent a lot of time trying to get you to tell me things unsuccessfully, and so now I'm going to try to prime the pump by being as forthright as I can.
		But watch out.
		You may get a call.
		So Russia would love this to be an inflection point in Ukraine.
		They are throwing a lot.
		I don't want to say everything they have, but a lot of force at two points in particular, Pokhrowsk in Donetsk province, the province they've been trying to capture unsuccessfully since the war began, and in the sort of southeast in Zaporizhia.
		I have a friend who just got back from Pokhrovsk, who was at the front line with their commanders, who says it's going to fall, but the fall will be delayed thanks to desperate but effective attempts to shore up the lines.
		And then the question is whether there will be a breakout beyond that.
		Pokhrovsk is seen as a key strategic point because it's thought with rail junctions and other factors you could move quickly west towards the Dnipro River and that eventually Kyiv could even be at risk again.
		The same in Zaporizhia in the south, fear of rapid movement.
		My guess is that predictions of Russian decisive victories that totally transform the battlefield will be wrong.
		They've been wrong in the past.
		This war, since the early days, has been a stalemate.
		It's been a protracted, incredibly bloody stalemate, but it's striking how little the lines have varied.
		It's a weird combination of World War I, you know, think of Verdun and people just slaughter to gain a few hundred yards at the front,
		combined with this modern battlefield of a sort that we've never seen before, so dense with drones that it's said you can only move in the little brief window between sunset and moonrise,
		for example, or a similar period just before dawn when the optical and other sensors can't see you and the drones are blind.
		So with that kind of front, the idea the Russians could just roll forward, I think, is unrealistic.
unidentified		If the Russians capture this next city, it has some strategic value because of its position.
		But is this just to get into a better position for the negotiating table, or is there actual, do the Russians actually think they're going to be successful in literally capturing all of Ukraine?
		What is their mindset?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		So I don't think that Putin has given up his desire to have effective political control of Ukraine, like hegemony, like a neutral Ukraine that really is under Russia's thumb.
		He has indicated in the dialogue that has accompanied the negotiations that he wants all of Donetsk.
		I mean, that's been a Russian goal.
		He has announced that Donetsk is a part of Russia, so he wants to finish that.
		The Ukrainians have been refusing to do that, and I'm told that Marko Rubio has helped convince the President that the loss of all of Donetsk would really be strategically important for Ukraine.
		So what's striking about this war to me is that from the beginning, it's been an obsession for Vladimir Putin.
		I'm not sure, certainly Donald Trump didn't understand that.
		I think Trump imagined that, you know, my friend Vladimir, we talked six times when I was president.
		He's said to have called Putin from Mar-a-Lago after his election defeat in 2020 and kind of kept up with him.
		And I think he really did imagine that welcoming Putin back into the Fellowship of Nations, he literally rolled out a red carpet in Anchorage, you'll remember.
		I think he thought that would work.
		And it didn't.
		And the reason is that Putin is obsessed with control of Ukraine.
		He sees it as an insult to Russia, that this fragment of Russia is gone.
		So I fear, personally, that we're in for still a long war.
unidentified		Do you see an end to this, or is it just indefinite continuation?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I often cite a strategist named Freddie Clay, who wrote a book during Vietnam titled Every War Must End.
		And that's true.
		Every war must end, and this one will too.
		We usually say that wars end when the combatants are exhausted and finally conclude that they can't achieve on the battlefield gains that are sufficient to justify the losses.
		But if you think back to your World War I history, every body, every death becomes a reason for continuing the war.
		People imagined that World War I was going to be short, that they'd be back by Christmas.
		That was what people said when they rolled off to war in August.
unidentified		Putin must have thought about this one.
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		And Putin thought this would be a two-week affair, and so did the U.S. intelligence analysts.
		I mean, our view was that the Ukrainians couldn't possibly hold out.
		And you remember, we were sort of trying to offer Zelensky a ride out of town to relocate his government to Lviv in the West, and Zelensky famously said, nope, I don't want to ride, I want ammunition.
		And that, you know, very stirring, very courageous decision by him made him the wartime leader that he's been.
		So Glenn, I fear that this one has a long way to go.
		Just to say one final thing.
		When I think about the war, I think of a concept that a Ukrainian general friend used, which is strategic neutralization, that Ukraine has to be able to neutralize this enormous advantage Russia has in manpower.
		So over a protracted conflict, Russia's advantages are neutralized and you just have a steady state.
		Pushing the Russians back, I think has now disappeared as a goal for Ukraine.
unidentified		All right.
		All right, well, let's move off from Ukraine.
		We then have 194 countries to go.
		We can talk about another protracted conflict and another one where I know that you've spent a lot of time personally visiting the leaders in the area of the Middle East.
		And obviously, a far more, I think, as complicated as the Ukraine situation is, clearly the Middle East is even more complicated.
		We have seen just some head-spinning news with Israel's reputation around the world being greatly diminished.
		Who would have thought that last week a person designated by the United States government as a terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head, Ahmed al-Shara, would be the President of Syria meeting in the Oval Office.
		So lots of head-spinning things going on in the Middle East.
		Again, your big picture take on that and where we are headed, is the ceasefire in Gaza going to stick and will it lead to something more positive, or is this another intractable situation?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		So it's embarrassing to admit this, but I have been covering the Middle East since 1980.
		For 45 years, I have been writing about fundamentally the same set of issues.
		When I got started, I was working then for the Wall Street Journal, and one of my colleagues said to me, you know, David, when it comes to covering the Middle East, pessimism pays.
		And boy, was that good advice.
		That said, some of the groups that I over the years have grown to like least, Hamas and Hezbollah at the top of the list, have been vanquished.
		The cost in civilian life in Gaza has been horrifying to watch.
		I just say that flat out.
		I don't think anybody can watch that and not just feel a sense of anguish.
		Leave the legal issues to all of you in the room.
		What saddens me about Gaza is that there still is not, despite Trump's much Ballyhood peace plan, Board of Peace, there still is not a coherent plan for the day after in Gaza that will allow for stable governance.
		I mean, to have gone through the misery of this war and still have people fighting over distribution of humanitarian supplies and Hamas is at the point of a gun trying to control the food that these desperate people eat is disheartening, to put it mildly.
		I am encouraged that Jared Kushner, somebody who I think does know a lot about the Middle East, in particular about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, is involved.
		I am encouraged that part of President Trump's announcement that we were going to have a CENTCOM coordination cell to help administer whatever comes in the future in terms of a stabilization force, that that is continuing and, in fact, growing stronger, and that coordination cell is taking over some responsibilities from the IDF.
		Lebanon, there is a plan for the day after, and it is called the Lebanese government.
		Lo and behold, this poor country that gave up its sovereignty to the PLO back in 1970, if you really go back in time, Has a chance to regain it in the way that countries do with a strong army.
		And I spent much of December when the war was still going on in Lebanon and meeting with everybody, and even the people who were most closely associated with Iran were saying privately, often publicly, in usable quotes: we need our independence back.
		We need to be free of dictation from Iran or anybody else.
		And that project is still continuing.
		There's reason to be hopeful, to take it seriously.
		Syria, I mean, to have Ahmed Al-Shara here in Washington meeting with Trump.
		I mean, you know, I'd like to know who his tailor is.
		Something about him, you know, Trump just sort of decided, well, this guy looks like he's a leader, so let's let bygones be bygones.
		I just said it's sort of brief note.
		So back in 2012, when the Syrian civil war was roaring, I decided that I couldn't possibly write coherent columns about it without seeing it.
		So I arranged to smuggle myself across the Turkish border into Syria, which seemed like a good idea.
		The problem, I hadn't really, and I would note that you have to pay a lot more to be smuggled into Syria if you're an American.
unidentified		Was your life insurance agent aware of this?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		No.
		But my wife was, and this was of all the stupid things I did, this topped the list.
		But I just mentioned this because I ended up being handed off from crazy rebel fighter to his friend, somebody who was his second cousin, whatever, and ended up in Aleppo, which was under siege from the Syrian Army.
		And I said, are there any al-Qaeda fighters around here?
		And the guy said, yeah, they're right over there.
		And the group that he was referring to, Jubhat al-Nusra, it was called, was headed by Ahmed Al-Shar, the man who was just in the White House.
		So, you know, it's just a sign of how times change.
unidentified		Can we just follow up quickly on you mentioned Iran, which is in some ways maybe seen its power in the region diminished, obviously with its proxies greatly injured?
		What's your sense of where we're going with Iran?
		Trump famously canceled the nuclear agreement in May of 2018 in his first term.
		There are some who say we arguably would have been better off had we continued that agreement than today.
		What's your take on where we are going and what the prognosis holds, obviously given that Israel is extremely interested in making sure that Iran doesn't succeed in its nuclear ambitions?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		So I should have added Iran to the list of people I'm glad to see diminished by these events.
		I was in the American Embassy a half hour before an Iranian bomb blew it up way back in 1983.
		And Iran has a lot of American blood on its hands.
		And so to see them more restrained, I hope, is a good thing.
		In the case of Iran, as in the case of Gaza, what's troubling to me is that there isn't a coherent endgame.
		We used a lot.
		I mean, Israel went to war for 12 days, brilliant campaign, Significantly reduced Iranian missile power, its ability to make a nuclear bomb.
		There are no nuclear signs left in Iran.
		I mean that quite literally.
		I mean, they went down the list this first tier, second tier, third tier.
		They are all dead.
		And so Iran poses less of a threat, but you needed to, I think, finish that process with an agreement that was a version of what President Obama negotiated that would clearly limit and allow inspection to verify the limits for future Iranian nuclear activity.
		And my fear is that, as in Gaza, I mean, at some point, you are just going to go back to war again.
		There are going to be signs that the Iranians are reconstituting certainly their ballistic missile program.
		And so Israeli jets will be up in the sky, and then we will have another round.
		And I think that sort of endless cycle of violence is a central problem in the Middle East.
		And for the development of the region, not to mention the welfare and security of the people, it is really important to move to more stable systems.
		I have been to Iran twice.
		Each time, Glenn, I have been struck by the immense hunger of the Iranian people to be a modern country.
		I mean, they have this goofy system run by medieval-sounding clerics, but Iran is as sophisticated a country.
		Just look at Iranian cinema if you want an example of how much a part of our world they are.
		So at some point, that pressure of Iranian society and culture will break through, but I couldn't tell you when.
unidentified		All right.
		Well, tempted to continue on that, too, but let's complete our geographic overview here for a minute with the obvious of China.
		Some would say that our current, I think it's fair to say that our relations have probably never been more fraught.
		Some would say that is arguably a little bit self-inflicted by the current administration with its vacillation on tariffs.
		But on the other hand, China has been extremely assertive in many other ways, not only in the Indo-Pacific area but around the world.
		What is your sense?
		You have been a longtime observer, too, of China.
		What is your sense?
		Are we talking past each other because many in the U.S. policymaking sectors view China as an unalloyed adversary, period, full stop?
		Does China really think of us that way?
		When I used to live in China years ago, or lived in Hong Kong and then traveled extensively in China, I was always struck by the fact that the Chinese were very quick to say, oh, our only concern about the United States is that you are trying to keep us down.
		We don't necessarily view you as an inherent enemy.
		Is there some truth to that, or is it just posturing?
		What is your sense of are we talking past each other?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		You are one of the people that is a genuine China expert because you spent so much time out there, and I observe it from a distance, and it has not been possible in recent years to visit.
		I used to go there often.
		So my sense is that in this latest round in the trade war that wasn't in the end, or the trade war that led to a quick truce, both sides learned something significant, which is that decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies, which is a phrase that had been thrown around.
		I am sure you have encountered it some in your legal work, Was widely thought to be inevitable.
		We are just going to have a break.
		There are going to be two ecosystems for trade and especially trade and technology.
		And both Trump and Xi stared over the edge of that one and decided, nope, don't want to do that, and so stepped back.
		What is significant to me is that it was the Chinese demonstration of their ability to use trade embargoes to embargo sale of rare earth strategic minerals that was decisive.
		I mean, as the strategists would say, it turned out they had escalation dominance, and Trump really had little choice but to pull back.
		I think that is a significant and worrying point.
		I hope people get into the rare earths business.
		On your final question, Glenn, are we talking past each other?
		Yes.
		Whenever I talk to somebody who really looks at the intelligence about China, that person will say, if you saw what I see, you would be worried.
		I mean, the intensity of Chinese military technology developments, the things they do behind the scenes.
		Just look at Salt Typhoon.
		I mean, they really tried to take administrative root control of our telecommunications infrastructure and to a large extent succeeded.
		And there is a lot more that they have put out into our networks that control every vital aspect of our economy.
		That is not consistent with a country that really just wants to get along, the usual, we don't want to threaten you.
		Well, that is not what the evidence shows.
unidentified		Including, I might add, you mentioned Salt Typhoon, the Volt Typhoon campaign of apparently prepositioning malware and infrastructure elsewhere beyond telecom systems.
		So there is no espionage reason for that.
		That is beyond that.
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		You know, as your former colleagues at NSA might say, they are preparing the battlefield for a future conflict.
		So we have to be aware of that.
		I mean, a war between the United States and China would be catastrophic, a general war, beyond the level anything anyone has ever imagined.
		So any sensible policy needs to begin with the idea of deterring that kind of conflict, and that means a lot of military spending.
		But it also means, to me, avoiding sharply destabilizing things.
		I thought Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, for example, was not a good idea.
		A lot of people tried to talk her out of it, and she was determined to go.
		But that would be one example.
		The poor Taiwanese are still paying the bill for that one.
		So I think, in general, deter aggression but seek stability.
		Those are you in mind.
unidentified		Let's follow up on Taiwan and also use that as a means to get to some of the other things you have talked about, the changing nature of war.
		President Xi, some observers think President Xi is positioning the PLA to take action in some form, whether it is a blockade or something even more assertive than that against Taiwan, perhaps in 2028, 2027, whatever.
		It is timed with the People's Congress, of course, wants to do something presumably afterwards and doesn't want a failure before then.
		But what is your sense of the timing of any activity that they might take against Taiwan in a more aggressive way?
		Is the U.S. properly positioned to deal with that?
		And then maybe you could riff on that a little bit to talk about the changing nature of warfare, because we certainly see that in Ukraine.
		You alluded to drones and other high-tech aspects of warfare.
		If there is a conflict in Taiwan, it is clearly going to look very different from past conflicts.
		Can you talk a little bit about that?
		And I know, in particular, I'm throwing a lot at you, but I'll add one more thing, which is you have written a little bit about the role of space in future conflicts.
		So I've put a lot on your plate there, but I know you'll rise to the occasion.
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		Space may slip off.
		So I have always thought that, in the spirit of Sun Tzu, the famous strategist, that the Chinese like to win wars without fighting them.
		I mean, that's the genius of Chinese strategy is to make defeat of the adversary inevitable so you don't have to actually fight the war.
		And my assumption is that that would be their strategy in the case of Taiwan.
		Right now, Xi Jinping has a problem in that he doesn't seem to be able to trust any of the senior leaders of his military.
		I don't know if you have noticed, but right before Trump's visit, there was a party plenum, and he announced that nine top generals had been fired.
		Last year, he fired two former defense ministers.
		The year before that, he fired the top people of his strategic rocket force.
		I mean, the people you'd most want to trust.
		And the reason is that the Chinese military, like many parts of Chinese life, is just completely riddled with corruption.
		If you want to be a four-star general, you buy your way up by paying bribes, and then you receive bribes from the younger officers who want your favor.
		That's just the way the system has worked.
		And Xi sees it, and he doesn't like it.
		So I think that's a cautionary note about how eager would she be to commit forces.
		Taking Taiwan militarily is difficult.
		I mean, here is Russia after four years, and it hasn't even taken Donetsk Province.
		So, you know, when you are facing a wall of drones, seizing an objective is more difficult than it used to be.
		So I personally think that a scenario is unlikely.
		Unfortunately, there are a lot of other ways that mainland China could effectively neuter Taiwan that would have strategic importance for as long as we are dependent on chips made there, and I am sure that is going to be an area of intense focus.
		Just to say a word about space, I think it is fair to say that the next big war will start in space.
		My view is that the Ukraine war started in space.
		In the early hours, Russia, recognizing Ukraine's dependence on Starlink for its command and control, tried to take it out, or take out the predecessor, which was a European system, and then tried desperately to block Starlink and couldn't.
		The Chinese have been extremely aggressive in developing space weapons, really more aggressive for a long time than the United States was.
		We were a little bit asleep at the switch.
		That has changed now with the creation of Space Force.
		Trump was absolutely right.
		It is rare that I get to say that sentence.
		I will just repeat it.
		Trump was absolutely right to create the Space Force because the Air Force just wasn't doing the job adequately.
		But the Chinese have the most exotic.
		I just was out talking to people about this a few days ago.
		The most exotic anti-satellite weapons.
		I mean, they have weapons.
		There is something, I will just 30 more seconds, there is something that people refer to as the graveyard zone.
		And it is where satellites are supposed to go die.
		You get kicked up into an orbit that is even higher than geocentric orbit, and there is just dead silent up there.
		And the Chinese have sent satellites up there, and guess what?
		They come back to life.
		They are zombie satellites, and they come back and then they get into geocentric orbit and chase satellites they might want to observe.
		And people who look at this behavior think, holy smokes, the Chinese are really, really good at space warfare, too.
		So anyway, you could go on about space, but if you want to know all the details that I don't have really enough facts to write in my journalism, you can read my latest novel, which is called Phantom Orbit.
		All right.
unidentified		Well, we'll get to your novels in a minute.
		But I want to stick, I want to move more to a little bit of a legal topic, the rule of law, because you have written extensively about the importance of the rule of law in the national security sector.
		And you and I have talked about it before, too.
		There are some who say that currently, with diminished congressional oversight, the recent firings of general counsels in various positions and inspector generals and other dismissals that we have seen in the legal area, that the rule of law is being diminished.
		Others say, no, no, no, that's just a correction.
		It is not something you should worry about.
		This is just a correction to get rid of weaponization and so on and so forth.
		What is your view on this?
		Where are we headed with the rule of law and the national security, which is, to this room, is so critically important?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		So, frankly, I have been astonished at how fragile the institutions that make up the rule of law, in Trump's mind, I guess the institutions of the deep state, how quickly those guardrails have been dismantled.
		Very quickly at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Hegseth fired not just the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C.Q. Brown, and other top operational officials, but fired all the JAGs, the Judge Advocate General.
		So there was nobody around to tell commanders what a legal order was all of a sudden.
		And I think that has had a significant effect on the ability of the military to kind of think, well, gee, I swore my oath to the Constitution.
		Does this order I have been given square with that?
		There was nobody to give them advice.
		And quite properly, commanders don't want to make those decisions on their own.
		I'm struck.
		So to me, it turns out that my business of trying to get information so that you have a free flow, I think is integral to the rule of law.
		It is hard to make judgments about whether behavior is proper or not unless you know what that behavior is.
		And to see the Pentagon Press Corps, this is the best press corps, I think, in the country.
		They are dedicated.
		They have all served overseas, embedded with the troops.
		These are the last people who make erratic judgments about classified information.
		See them just exiled from the Pentagon and have to report from afar, and there would be no recourse.
		I mean, that is what is so striking.
		And each of the different areas that we could list that affect national security, whether it is the top leadership at the FBI with decades of experience in counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gone.
		Whether it is the similar senior leadership in the National Security Division of the Justice Department, gone.
		You could go down the list of all these different components, and there just don't seem to be protections against that.
		I was going to say that I have developed a Second Amendment problem.
		I just don't understand why the founders, who were so brilliant, were so vague in explaining what Article II powers actually are.
		It's just like it's a sentence.
		I have a friend who is a historian, a constitutional scholar, who says they didn't want to offend George Washington, who was in the audience at the Constitutional Convention, and everybody knew he would be the President, and they didn't want to be saying, well, George, do this, that.
		So they just kind of left it out.
		And the problem is there is nothing there that is very helpful to go by.
		So the simple answer, Glenn, is I think the effect on rule of law and the national security components of rule of law has been quite stunning.
		And I am struck by the lack of pushback or ability to push back that I have seen.
unidentified		Really shows you how fragile the system is.
		And as you say, not we have got a Constitution, but it depends on lots of people behaving in ways that are expected in accordance with norms, but not necessarily the actual printed words in the Constitution.
		So, yes.
		Well, we have about just a few more minutes.
		Let me ask you one or two more, if I may shift to some more personal questions.
		Your extraordinary father just passed away.
		Again, I have my condolences at 104 last week.
		He was the former Secretary of the Navy, head of the Air Transportation Association, as I recall, and for a period of time, the president of the Washington Post.
		And during that period, as I understand, he advised against the publication of the Pentagon Papers to then publisher Kay Graham, but later reversed his course and said that was the right thing to do.
		As his son, as a journalist, you are surely in a situation where you get classified information leaked to you.
		And how do you deal with that?
		Are there systems in place?
		Do you just automatically say, well, if I have it, it's published and not?
		What is your way of thinking about the obvious national security risks associated with the leakage of national security information?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		First, I should just say a word.
		My dad did pass away a week ago, five days short of his 105th birthday, which was so he had a good long life.
		One of the difficult chapters in my dad's life was the two years he spent at the Washington Post.
		And at the center of that, I think it's fair to say, was this issue of the Pentagon Papers.
		He was among a group, his title is president of the paper, but there was a group, the CEO of the larger company that post Newsweek, their legal counsel, et cetera, et cetera, who cautioned Mrs. Graham with your company about to make an initial public offering, acting in defiance of contempt of court order,
		which was out, could have the most dangerous business consequences.
		I am not sure he could have said anything else.
		And Mrs. Graham, to her everlasting credit, listened to the advice from all these business people and said, no, it is right for the country.
		She took an enormous risk, and she did it on her own.
		We all love, I certainly love Ben Bradley.
		I am godfather of Ben's son.
		But Mrs. Graham's own role deserves credit.
		And my dad certainly in later life wanted to make that clear that that was his judgment.
		So Mrs. Graham had very specific thoughts about classified information, which may surprise you given the decision, go for it, boys, back in 1970.
		People may imagine that we are capricious about how we treat classified information that comes into our hands.
		And in truth, it is the opposite.
		Thanks to Mrs. Graham, she gave a speech that we understood was kind of holy writ during the 80s that said that when we come into possession of something that is secret, we have an obligation as journalists to inform the agency that is relevant and let them make a case as to why this is damaging to the national security,
		why people's lives could be at risk or the nation's fundamental security interests could be at risk.
		And we have an obligation not just to them, but to listen to them.
		And then in the end, these decisions are made by editors, not by the reporters.
		I have spent many years an editor, and I can remember many, many meetings where we would struggle to think what is the right thing to do here.
		Ben Bradley would often say, our readers don't need to know the wiring diagram.
		Meaning, there are things that informing readers about may be important, but there are certain details that readers could care less about.
		And there is no obligation.
		I think it is fair to say that people in this room probably know this to be true already, but many don't, that people would be surprised at how many things journalists learn that don't end up getting published because of the process of exercising judgment that I just tried to describe.
		So these days people are often much more careful.
		People are pretty intimidated in the military and the intelligence agencies now.
		If you are not seeing a lot of secrets jumping into the news pages, there is a reason.
		But I just wanted people to know that we do take this seriously with orders from our late wonderful boss as the foundation.
unidentified		Good.
		All right, let me squeeze in one last question.
		We're almost out of time, but I do want to.
		You've written 12 spy novels, and I know you're working on one, you told me, another one right now.
		You've had a terrific education.
		You were at Harvard and Cambridge, and when you were ending your formal education, did you decide?
		Did you know then that you wanted to be a journalist and had some spy novels in view?
		Or did you ever consider a higher calling such as law?
		Or did you.
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		So, funny you should ask.
		So, I spent my 30s saying to myself, sometimes out loud, I wonder if it's too late to go to law school.
		Because, you know, I thought I love journalism.
		And, you know, I'm pretty good at it, but that's not a real profession, right?
		So at some point, you're going to have to go to law school.
		And then eventually it was too late to go to law school.
		And so I was there.
		I was.
unidentified		Day ain't over yet.
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, life is long, as my father demonstrated.
		So the novelist part, I actually had taken fiction writing courses at Harvard, and it was really quite bad at it.
		You know, I mean, my teacher, Robert Fitzgerald, translated Homer, could have put his arm around me and said, basically, well, you'll find something else to do.
		And I did.
		And then I had this experience.
		I'm not going to go into all the details, but I made reference to it.
		In April 1983, I was in the American Embassy in Beirut, and I left 12:30, just after 1 o'clock.
unidentified		Boom!
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		Loudest explosion I'd ever heard in Beirut.
		And the embassy had been, you remember the photos, the whole front facade.
		Many, many people killed, including every member of the CIA station that was in Beirut that day, and a visitor who'd come from Washington named Robert Ames, one of the great case officers CIA ever produced.
		And I had already written a story on the front page of the journal about an operation he had run that had recruited Yasser Arafat's chief of intelligence as an American asset for almost 10 years until he, regarded correctly by Israel as an anti-Israel terrorist, was assassinated.
		So in the aftermath of that, all of these Arabs that Ames had worked with grieving in the way people do, they needed to talk to somebody.
		And so I just became the person they talked to.
		And I heard so much stuff, I thought, there is no way you're going to get this in the newspaper.
		And I'd already written the basic story a couple months before, as I said.
		So that's how I ended up wanting to write a novel.
		It was turned down by every single publisher in America, except for one which said, okay, we'll publish it if you'll write a book of nonfiction.
		So anyway, that book was called Agents of Innocence and got me started on what's now, you know, I'm now on my 13th.
unidentified		Including Body of Lies, which turns into a movie.
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		Our close family friend, Leonardo DiCaprio, is the star.
unidentified		And what's very quick, what's the topic of the new one you're working on?
david ignatius ▲ ● ▼		So the new one, I'm not going to say too much about it, but it's about the U.S. and China, the sort of the CIA and the Chinese Ministry of State Security, its Chinese counterpart, have been in the most complicated and intriguing battle over the last 15 years you can imagine.
		And so this, it's going to be a novel.
		I don't mean to imply that it has anything to do with real life, but it's going to be about that general topic.
unidentified		All right.
		Terrific.
		Well, as the French would say, this has been a fabulous tour of the horizon.
		So thank you so much.
		I know all of us joined me in thanking you very much for coming here today.
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		When I found out that Comcast was coming, I ran down the road and I said, welcome.
		High-speed internet is one of those good things that we needed to help us move our farming, our small businesses, our recreation forward.
		And now future generations will thrive here in Sussex County.
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