The following is a transcript of an interview with former national security adviser John Bolton that aired on Sunday, July 5, 2020 on “Face the Nation.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: We want to go now to former national security adviser John Bolton. He has a new book. You may have heard of his time in management called “The Room Where It Happened”. Good morning, Ambassador.
FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY COUNSELOR JOHN BOLTON: Good morning, I’m glad to be with you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Glad to have you back on FACE THE NATION. I want to discuss a number of issues with you, but in your book you present a series of incidents where you got to the point of potentially giving up, but stayed with that for about 17 months. However, the President continues to refer to a specific incident in this program with you as the reason for his relationship to the south. It was a comment on North Korea. I want to play it.
(CLIP BEGINS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is it a requirement that Kim Jong not agree to give away those weapons before granting some kind of concession?
BOLTON: I think it is correct. I think we are looking at the Libyan model from 2003, 2004.
(END CLIP)
MARGARET BRENNAN: The president told Fox News, “That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen on television.” Was it that moment that ruined your relationship?
BOLTON: Well, well, who knows, I guess the president’s discontent with me should make me ask him who hired that guy. Maybe he is the one who needs to be fired. You know, I don’t think I can be any clearer when talking about the Libya model from 2003, 2004. We had a clear strategic decision by Muammar Gaddafi to abandon Libya’s nuclear weapons program. We have never received it from North Korea. So the fact that seven or eight years later, in the midst of the Arab Spring, Gaddafi was overthrown:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Correct.
BOLTON: – No one predicted in 2003, 2004. I will keep on my comment. One day the President will learn a little history and would be better off for it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Are the president and his thinking shaped more by television or government advisers?
BOLTON: Well, I think it’s a combination of television and listening to people outside the government that he trusts for one reason or another. I think if you could see the amount of time he actually spent in the Oval Office versus the amount of time he spent in the small dining room of the Oval Office with cable news networks in one form or another, it would be a very interesting statistic. .
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to move on to some issues on the national security front. You are no longer in government, but I know you are watching Iran closely. There have been at least three mysterious explosions in the past few days, specifically one at the Natanz nuclear site. Does that sound like Israeli or American sabotage?
BOLTON: Well, nobody claims credit for it except the dissident group inside Iran. The Iranian government itself is trying not to comment on it. The Israeli government is not commenting. It’s not clear–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Exactly.
BOLTON: whether this is the precursor to a major attack or not. But if someone is starting the process of taking down Iran’s ballistic and nuclear missile program, I tell you more power. And if they have some free time, maybe they could try the same thing in North Korea.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we’ll see what we hear from government officials. The Israelis are not confirming, as you mentioned there. In Afghanistan and Russia, as you know, current national security adviser Robert O’Brien has acknowledged that the United States did have information that Russia was paying rewards for the American dead. But he said a CIA president withheld the president’s information, even if it was brief. Did you ever know the rewards when you were a national security adviser?
BOLTON: Well, I am not going to comment on what I did or did not know about intelligence, but I think it is important that people understand it. Intelligence doesn’t come in just two qualities, fully verified intelligence and then unverified intelligence. All intelligence is …
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I want to focus on this because this morning, I just want to make sure, you know, this morning, Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, appeared on television on another network and said the information came to light in 2019. when you were at work, and she believed you would have told the president. She is wrong? Did you know about that
BOLTON: Well, I’ve said in countless interviews, I’m not going to reveal classified information. I already have the fight with the president trying to suppress my book in that regard. I’m going to say this. All intelligence is spread across the spectrum of uncertainty. And this intelligence in 2020, by the administration’s own admission, was deemed credible enough to be given to our allies. Therefore, the notion that he only gives the president truly 100% verified intelligence would mean that he gives him next to nothing. And that is not the way the system works. And it’s certainly not a decision made only by the person who briefs the president twice a week. That is a decision that at least when I was there, it would have been made by the director of national intelligence, the director of the CIA, myself, and the shorter one together.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Correct. Well, I mean, this information that Russia was providing arms and money to the Taliban was released in 2018 by the then Commander of the US forces in Afghanistan. Then you may have known it when you were at that job. I wonder if it is in your comments today, politely saying that the current national security adviser failed at his job.
BOLTON: Look, I’m not going, I don’t want this to be a matter of personalities, and by the way, what was made public in 2018 was Russian assistance to the Taliban, and that’s known for some time. That is just worrying. What is particularly troubling, if true, is this latest information that they were killing: They were providing compensation for killing Americans. And that’s the kind of thing where you go to the president and say, look, this president is running it, we may not know everything about this, but a nuclear power supposedly offers rewards for killing Americans. That’s the kind of thing you need to have in the president’s opinion so you can think about it as it unfolds, well, at least as normal presidents develop a strategy for managing Russia, managing Afghanistan.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes. Before I let you go, I want to ask you, in your book you were very critical of some of your fellow cabinet members. Nikki Haley, you really have downloaded her. You called it untethered, a free electron. You mention that she entered this show and said things she shouldn’t have said about Russia. It seems that you have very little regard for someone who is considered to have a bright future within the Republican Party. Why did you do that?
BOLTON: Well, she wrote about this, the conversation on her show in her book, and it was inaccurate. And I felt it was important to clarify the record. I really wrote this book largely for history. Other people will write their books and future scholars will figure it out. I wrote the best I could remember what I saw and thought it was important:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
BOLTON: When someone really gets the title of your book from the incident and the facts are wrong.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Ambassador Bolton, it is always interesting to speak with you. We will leave it there. And we will be back with good economic news this week.
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