♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: I'm pleased to be in conversation today with my former boss at the White House in the Carter administration, Stuart Eizenstat.

Uh, Stuart served in the Carter White House as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.

Uh, subsequent to that, in the Clinton administration, he had four Senate-confirmed positions, including Ambassador to the European Union and deputy secretary treasury, also two senior positions at the Commerce Department and at the State Department.

He is currently, uh, the author of several books about diplomacy and President Carter.

The President Carter book is called “President Carter: The White House Years”, and his most recent book is “The Art of Diplomacy.” So, Stuart, you were asked by President Carter, many years ago, to deliver one of his eulogies.

Um, obviously, he lived, uh, 44 years after, uh, we both left the White House, so you had 44 years to work on this.

Um, how did you go about condensing your entire knowledge of Jimmy Carter into five to ten minutes?

EIZENSTAT: Uh, I've lived with, uh, President Carter for a very long time.

I first met him, uh, 55 years ago when he was an underdog candidate for Governor of Georgia, became his policy director, then, his policy director as president, and then, of course, his chief domestic advisor, and was engaged in a number of the Carter Center activities, as well.

So, uh, writing this was not as much a challenge as you would think because I really, uh, had lived with him through his various parts of his life.

And I, I wanted to crystallize the ones that I thought were most important.

RUBENSTEIN: We wanted to talk about foreign policy.

So, let's go through some of the foreign policy issues.

There's been a great deal of discussion about human rights in foreign policy.

Prior to Jimmy Carter, human rights wasn't the biggest thing in foreign policy, as American government had practiced it.

Why did Carter care so much about human rights?

EIZENSTAT: Quite the contrary.

It wasn't an issue at all.

Let's remember what the foreign policy was of Nixon and Kissinger, which was, by the way, relatively successful.

It was called “Realpolitik,” which meant you didn't care what the country did internally to its own citizens.

You only cared about their external conduct.

So, for example, the dictators in Latin America, who were terribly repressive, putting political prisoners in jail, assassinate... I mean, in Argentina, they were literally dropping thousands of people in the La Plata River from the plane.

But Carter felt diametrically opposite, "No.” Why, because he saw human rights abroad as the other side of the coin of civil rights at home.

He had a great sympathy for what Blacks and minorities had gone through because of his upbringing.

He lived their trauma.

I used to go to Black churches with him during the campaign, and I literally cried.

I mean, he would, he would be singing hymns with the w... you know, in the Black churches.

Human rights was the other side of the coin.

If we're going to stand up for civil rights at home, we have to stand up for civil rights abroad, and that means we have to have a foreign policy based on values, on American values.

And, "This is not naive," he said.

We're in a contest with the Soviet Union.

That contest has two components.

One is a hard power contest.

Soviets are building up arms, nuclear arms, supporting Cuban troops in, uh, the Horn of Africa, fomenting revolutions everywhere they can.

But the other side is for the hearts and minds of the developing world, and we have to show that we stand abroad for the basic values that make us strong at home.” RUBENSTEIN: All right, so that was part of his entire foreign policy?

EIZENSTAT: And can I just say one thing, please?

Anatoly Dobrynin, who was, for 25 years, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, said in his memoirs that Jimmy Carter's human rights campaign helped unravel the Soviet Union.

He said it hit us in our weakest spot and it led to the liberalization of the Soviet Union, which in turn ended up in its collapse."

RUBENSTEIN: Early in the administration, Carter did something that, uh, many political advisors said to him, "This is not a great idea," giving back the Panama Canal to Panama.

What propelled Carter to do that?

Was there big pressure to do that?

EIZENSTAT: So, first of all, I want everybody to understand Rosalynn's role.

Rosalynn was a unique first lady.

She was the first to have her own office in the East Wing with a staff.

She was the first to draft her own legislation on community mental health.

She was the second, next to Eleanor Roosevelt, to testify in Congress, and she sat in on cabinet meetings.

She was very, very smart and very tough, and in some respects, a better politician than he.

When he was talking with us about doing the Panama Canal, she said, "Jimmy, wait till your second term.

Nixon started it.

Johnson didn't get anywhere.

It's electric, nuclear issue.

Wait till your second term."

And he said, "Rosalynn, suppose there isn't a second term.

I need to do it now."

Why?

Interestingly, it was the military that said to him, "We have an untenable situation in the Canal Zone.

There are riots going on.

There's gonna be a civil war against the US residents there.

We've got to deal with this issue."

So, it wasn't purely, again, out of being a nice guy.

Uh, you know, Senator Hayakawa, from California, said, "We stole the canal fair and square."

I mean, it was technically ours, but it was really taken from Panama.

So, part of it was this human rights dimension.

Part of it was establishing a new relationship with Latin America.

By encouraging human rights and cutting off arms to Uruguay, to Guatemala, to Brazil, to Chile, to Argentina.

We got thousands of political prisoners released, and we got those countries on the way to democracies.

And the Panama Canal was the cherry, uh, oh, on the cake.

RUBENSTEIN: But getting it approved, you needed two-thirds of the Senate, um, to get it approved, so Carter worked around the clock to get those 67 senators.

So, Richard Nixon, in one of the great diplomatic feats of the 20th century, opened the door to China.

He and Kissinger.

But they never actually recognized China, legally.

Why did Carter feel he needed to go forward and recognize China and have a diplomatic relationship with them?

EIZENSTAT: They started the opening.

There was the famous Shanghai communique of 1972, but the Taiwan lobby and the Republican Party was very strong.

And they were not willing to risk offending that lobby by going all the way to diplomatic relations.

Carter was for two reasons.

The first was, let's put ourselves back now.

We were in the middle of the raging Cold War.

And interestingly, the two communist giants, Russia and China, were at each other's throats.

They had border disputes and so forth, and President Carter's thinking was, if we actually establish diplomatic relations with China, it will divide China from Russia, give us an opening to work both against the middle.

And the second was, he said, "Look, this is the most populist country in the world."

At the time, it was almost a fifth of the world's population.

And that's al-also why Nixon did it.

We, we can't just keep them forever estranged.

Uh, so it was also very unpopular because in order to normalize relations and establish diplomatic relations with China, we had to sever our diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

And, so, we created the Taiwan Relations Act.

It never said we will come to the aid of Taiwan if China invades.

What it said was we will provide assistance, uh, to Taiwan, which we've done.

So, it established a cultural relationship with them, an arms relationship with them.

I mean, President Biden, three times during his presidency said, "We will defend Taiwan if China invades."

And each time, his staff backed him off because that's not what the Taiwan Relations Act said.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Jimmy Carter had very little personal diplomatic experience before he became president.

He had been governor.

Why did he think he can bring a, uh, an agreement between Israel and Egypt together where they had been fighting since 1948 and-and several wars?

'67, '48, '67, '73.

EIZENSTAT: When he came into office, the Brookings Institution had done a major study on how to reach a comprehensive Middle East policy.

And Dr.

Brzezinski, Zbig, convinced him that this was something that needed to be done.

Why, because Kissinger had negotiated two disengagement agreements with Egypt after the Yom Kippur War.

And let's remember, the Yom Kippur War almost was literally the end of Israel.

I mean, they were totally surprised.

They were really on their heels.

And these two disengagements, meaning that Israel would withdraw from different parts of the Egyptian Sinai, had really reached their endpoint.

Israel said, "We're not gonna do any more withdrawals from the Egyptian Sinai, unless we now have full peace with Egypt."

And, so Carter felt this was time bomb that was going to happen.

We have to do it.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

So, he invites Sadat and Begin to Camp David for an extended period of time.

Was it hard to get both of them to show up?

And did advisors like you tell him, "This is a great idea"?

EIZENSTAT: So, let's remember now.

Sadat goes to Israel.

He pledges no more war before the Knesset, no more war.

And then Egypt and Israel, after that, start negotiating.

How do you convert no more war into something concrete?

And they couldn't.

And they were about to depart, and Sadat was saying, "I made a mistake in going.

This was terrible."

And Carter felt we can't take a risk that this is gonna fall apart.

And over the objection of every single advisor, 'cause we felt it would fail, he invited Sadat and Begin to Camp David.

And they were like two scorpions in a bottle.

We got the deal done.

After 13 days, Carter personally drafted 22 peace agreements.

I mean, he personally drafted, and he went between the two sides.

RUBENSTEIN: Because they weren't talking to each other.

EIZENSTAT: They wouldn't talk to each other.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

EIZENSTAT: They talked to each other the first day, and then, at the end, when we had an agreement, never before.

And Carter did everything possible to humanize the negotiations.

He took them both, for example, to the Gettysburg Battlefield to show them what it meant to have another fourth war with Egypt and Israel.

And Begin was so moved that he gave, extemporaneously, at the Gettysburg Battlefield, the full Lincoln Gettysburg address with not a note.

Then he had a Shabbat dinner, the only kosher Shabbat dinner at Camp David ever, before or since, with the Israeli delegation.

Uh, but the 13th day comes, and we're close but not there.

Begin comes to Carter's cabinet and says, "Mr.

President, I'm sorry, I can't compromise anymore.

Get me a limousine to take me to Andrew's Air Force Base.

I've got an El Al plane waiting to take me to Jerusalem."

Well, Carter, realizing that if Sadat goes home empty-handed, he could be assassinated.

He was in the end anyway, and it would be a blight on his own administration.

So, because of his preparation, knowing the issues so well and knowing the people, he had read the CIA profiles of Sadat and Begin, and he knew that Begin had a great love for his eight grandchildren.

He calls Susan Clough, his secretary, at Camp David, and says, "Make eight copies of the original picture of the three of us, Carter, Sadat, and Begin, when we came to Camp David.

Get the names of the grandchildren," and he endorses each one to the grandchild “With hopes for peace, Jimmy Carter,” walks it over to Begin's cabin, and Begin looks at each one, reads the names of each grandchild, and his eyes start to tear, his lips quiver, and he puts his suitcase down, and he says, "Mr.

President, for my grandchildren, I'll make one last try."

RUBENSTEIN: And it worked.

EIZENSTAT: And that's what worked.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, but people forget, when they had the signing that night, that w-was just the beginning.

They had to get the treaty, which took, uh, months.

EIZENSTAT: Yeah, so, so this is really important.

Everybody talks about the Camp David Accords, and they were historic.

They were an accord, they were a framework for peace.

They were not legally binding.

They weren't a treaty.

It called for, within three months of the Camp David Accords, a binding legal treaty.

Three months went by.

Four months went by.

Five went by.

We're now in our sixth month, no treaty.

So I, I'm not exaggerating.

Every one of the advisors tried to tell President Carter not to do what he said he wanted which is to go to Israel and Egypt and do shuttle diplomacy, to convert this accord into a treaty.

He said, "I've got to do it.

I can't get it this close and not do it."

Okay, three days go by, shuttle diplomacy.

Again, we're close, but not there.

Air Force 1 is now refueled at Ben Gurion Airport.

The airspace is cleared.

And Begin suddenly calls up, 9:00 in the morning.

Carter had already taken his suit off and was just putting his, uh, flight clothes on.

And he said, "I'd like to see the president one last time."

EIZENSTAT: And, so Carter goes up to the presidential suite of the King David, and that's where the treaty, the legally binding treaty, where 45 years that treaty has stayed, never once violated, including in Gaza.

Okay?

Not once has it been violated.

Okay, so they then come down in the elevator at the famous King David Hotel, uh, to meet the, meet the press, and the elevator sticks between the first floor and the lobby.

And the Secret Service have to pull Begin and Carter out butt first, and I call it the breached birth of the treaty.

RUBENSTEIN: Let me talk about Iran.

He invited the Shah to come to the White House.

They had a ceremony there.

I think he bonded with the Shah a bit.

It was a ceremony that where a lot of protesters were protesting and tear gas, uh, used against the protestors, came back and actually went in the eyes of Carter and the Shah.

So, not a, uh, au- auspicious occasion.

EIZENSTAT: Iran was our real Achille's heel along with inflation.

In the New Year's Day of 1977-78, New Year's Eve, Carter is in Tehran, and he says, in a toast, "Iran is an island of stability... in a sea of turmoil, that is the Middle East."

This is in my opinion, one of the worst in intelligence failures in all of American history.

Six weeks before the Shah is forcibly deposed and, and has to leave, and I have the report now declassified, the CIA said to President Carter that Iran is a neither a revolutionary nor even a prerevolutionary state.

They did not realize that the Shah had lost all domestic support, that had completely eroded, and with that kind of advice, he, he was really misled.

In addition, the Shah's problems occurred at the very time of Camp David, so, all of Carter's focus was on the, Egypt-Israel issue, and not on Iran.

In fact, interestingly, Sadat and Carter called together, nobody knows this, from Camp David to the Shah when the demonstrations started, assuring him of, uh, of their support.

So, it occurred at the same time, and all of the focus, again, was not on Iran, 'cause we were told everything's fine.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, Carter did not wanna let the Shah into, uh, the United States initially.

EIZENSTAT: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Why?

EIZENSTAT: So, so, among the failures of the CIA was not only that they weren't in the revolutionary, prerevolutionary state, that the, the, they didn't tell us then, because they didn't know, that he had incurable cancer.

He was our guy.

Six presidents had supported him.

So, then when it finally comes out, he starts going from one country to another, Egypt, and then Morocco, and other places to get treatment.

And Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller and John J. McCloy, the key sort of foreign policy doyennes, get together, and they put tremendous pressure, including a public relations campaign with TV ads, "How can you not let the key ally of the United States into the United States when he's suffering from cancer?"

Now, he could've been treated in Mexico there were doctors from Houston that coulda come.

And Carter said, in the penultimate meeting in the Situation Room, "Okay, everybody wants me to let the Shah in.

What happens if they storm our embassy in protest and take our, uh, uh, our, uh, diplomats as hostage?"

He actually asked that, and of course, nobody had an answer.

And that's exactly what happened.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when the hostages were taken, it was thought widely that they might be held for one or two or three days, as a previous, uh, hostage-taking had been.

Why do you think, uh, Carter never wanted to react militarily by saying, "Okay, I'm gonna go in and now get these hostages out, even if it might lead to some of their dying"?

EIZENSTAT: So, so two points.

The first is, it's very important to understand that Carter was not naive about the dangers of letting the Shah in.

In February of '79, after, just after the Shah left, and Khomeini, the radical, Islamic, uh, ayatollah came back, there was there was a communist student effort to storm the US Embassy.

And Khomeini ordered the, uh, Iranian Police to back them off.

So, before Carter made this final decision to let the Shah in, he called the prime minister and foreign minister of Iran, Khomeini's appointees, and said, "Will we have the same protection we did in February?"

And they said, "We'll do the best we can."

The difference was that this time, Khomeini wanted the hostages to be taken to strengthen his own domestic political position.

Now, why didn't he use force?

In the first meeting, I said, and remember, I'm the domestic advisor, not the foreign policy advisor, but I said, "I think we should do what John Kennedy did with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That is, he blockaded Cuba."

You remember?

Uh, "And we should blockade or mine Charge Island, just off of the Iranian coast, which is where 60% of their oil came, because that will send a message to Khomeini that we really mean business."

And the rejoinder by Ham was, Ham Jordan, "Uh, well, that'll get the hostages back, but it'll get 'em back in a coffin."

"They'll assassinate 'em."

And I said, "They will not assassinate 'em because Khomeini knows if he assassinates even one American, it'll be the third world war for them.

They'll be through."

But Carter had a disposition of not wanting to use military force.

He said to the hostage families, two weeks afterward, which was a mistake, that, that, "My number one priority was getting the hostages, your family members, back, uh, safe and sound."

And he did, but that meant the leverage transferred from him to Khomeini.

RUBENSTEIN: Subsequent to the, the election and everything that happened, reports came out that William Casey, the campaign chair for Reagan and later the CIA director, had gone to, I think, Spain and had importuned, uh, an intermediary to say, "Don't let the hostages out while Carter is still running for election."

You think that's true?

EIZENSTAT: Yes.

There were two things that happened, David and I prepared the briefing book for Carter's debate with Reagan.

It turned out, after the fact, we didn't know it, of course, at the time, that Bill Casey had arranged to have one of our briefing books stolen.

Now, Bill Casey had been with the OSS during World War II.

He was ultimately rewarded by being head of the CIA.

And Jim Baker confirmed this, he came into Jim Baker's office and he plopped down this big black notebook, and he said, "I think you may find this interesting."

It was our debate book.

The second thing Casey did, we now believe, and I... Look, I, in a court of law, could I prove it?

It's very close because I'm not making the allegation.

I'm repeating what historians have now said, and two or three, including conservative historians, in the midst of the campaign, Casey said, "Don't let the hostages out before the election.

We'll give you a better deal than Carter will."

And he did.

The Contra deal?

The whole arms for hostages deal, he gave them arms that they needed against Iraq during that war.

RUBENSTEIN: The hostages were released 10 minutes after Carter was no longer president.

EIZENSTAT: One minute after.

RUBENSTEIN: One minute afterwards, okay.

So, uh... EIZENSTAT: But Carter reached the deal.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

EIZENSTAT: He, he negotiated the deal.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Carter was president for four years, and he left, uh, very unpopular.

He then was a former president for 44 years.

What would you say is the most significant thing he did in those 44 years that either won him the Nobel Prize or so much adulation as, at his memorial service?

EIZENSTAT: He created something that was unique.

It's now been duplicated by President Clinton and President, uh, George W. Bush, and that is, in addition to having a presidential library, he created an active, engaged Carter Center.

It monitored 125 democratic elections.

He even got Noriega in Nicaragua to accept his defeat.

He cured two African diseases, Guinea worm and river blindness as well.

Uh, he built Homes for Habitat, 4,300 homes, he and Rosalynn did.

So, his post-presidency was terrific.

But, people said, "Well, he was the best post-president."

He was, but that's a way of saying that he wasn't a good president.

And the fact is, on domestic affairs, we got over 70, almost 70% of our domestic affairs done.

We have energy security today because of our energy program.

He was the greatest environmental president since Theodore Roosevelt.

We got double the size of the National Park System.

Uh, he was a great educational president.

We created the Department of Education.

And this Southern governor from the deepest part... I mean, you have no idea.

Plains has zero traffic lights.

Okay.

600 people.

And, he comes into the White House as a Southerner, growing up in a racist, uh, background.

I'll tell you one anecdote in a minute, and that is he appoints more Blacks and women to federal judgeships and to, uh, senior positions in his administration than all 38 presidents put together, all 38, including, by the way, somebody named Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Now, the anecdote to show you how deep this racism was, he grew up in a, in a farm, which I've seen, a farmhouse.

It had no insulation, no electricity, no running water, no shower and bath.

They got their water from a well.

Uh, and their whole communication with the outside world was a battery-operated, uh, radio.

Now, the Joe Louis, Max Schmeling fight, okay, all the whites in the South, even though Joe Louis was an American and Schmeling was a German, were pulling, of course, for Schmeling.

So, uh, his father would not allow any Blacks into the house to listen to the radio.

So, Jimmy, as a young boy, put the radio on the windowsill so they could be outside and listen.

And when Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in the first round, uh, the Blacks were elated, but they were afraid to show it, so they ran away and celebrated afterward.

I mean, that's how deep the racism was.

And yet, here again, he becomes this great civil rights... It wasn't just appointees.

He supported Affirmative Action in colleges.

He had, we, we created, David, you and I, a minority set-aside for Black contractors for federal contracts.

It's really an amazing story of transformation.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, look, we didn't cover everything, uh, Stuart's done.

His book, “President Carter: The White House Years”, his extraordinary, uh, account of Carter's presidency, the four years of the presidency.

His new book, "The Art of Diplomacy,” which has a forward by Jim Baker and, uh, Henry Kissinger... EIZENSTAT: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: ...uh, talks about diplomacy and the lessons post, uh, World War II, largely about what it takes to be a great diplomat.

Stuart, thank you for a great conversation.

EIZENSTAT: Thank you.

RUBENSTEIN: Appreciate it.

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