YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Sciutto

lines on the record: 120
first: 2019-06-10
most recent: 2019-06-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, no, I do. I do think it's important to have underground things. Some of the times everyone's like, oh, that's your pin. I'm like, no, I covered it for years. I really am right. I feel like I'm actually accurate as a partner. I've seen it. You just are saying it and stuff like that. So it's an interesting thing. It's really important to have.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if you found in your career. I do often find in a career that your best opportunities, I don't want to say they come out of the blue, but I was lucky at that point that I wanted to come back, that there was a position and they were looking for someone like me.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first they took me back as a national security. Well, thank you so much. There's a lot of work. First, I came back as National Security Correspondent at the anchoring came later. But they knew that I had the chops for it because I'd spent a lot of time on the ground of these countries. And I think that kind of on-the-ground experience is often lacking in Washington. One, yes, you can operate under any circumstances and make it happen. But two, I'd been to Iran. If we were talking about Iran as nuclear provinces, the government, the plants, I've been inside the wars. I wasn't dealing with theoretical knowledge of this stuff. I was dealing with firsthand knowledge. So that helped.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And government is a top down kind of structure. It's like a military organization, chain of command, and that's slow and frustrating and a little confining. So I did it for a couple of years, learned a lot, and said, you know what? I'm a journalist. I'm going back.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I learned that lesson. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, you realize just like in companies, right, it's imperfect people with imperfect information, making imperfect decisions, often doing their darnedest, right? But there is no all-knowing anyone in these circumstances. So I certainly learned that. And I'm not questioning motivations because I met a lot of dedicated Americans who really love their country and are fighting hard to do the best they can. They make mistakes too, and a lot of them. The other frustration was that journalism, as you know, is a very self-driving business. You take the initiative. It's your product. You're developing a product every day.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's funny, you know, I think that we have the impression. That the folks on the inside know everything, right? I don't know. Well, or that they have access to knowing so much, right? They have access to the intelligence and surveillance satellites and intercepted communications and all this kind of stuff.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So on the good side, I learned a lot. I was right in the middle of this country and this relationship with this country that I'd studied for a number of years. I had a high-level security clearance, so reading the intelligence. I was in the room for many... High level meetings, and in the midst of difficult decisions between the U.S. and China, I was literally a fly on the wall, right?”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was the new ambassador to China, Gary Locke, just appointed and it was about to be. Sent over And we ought to talk about China. We talked the whole dinner about China. And then that followed with a lunch and then another dinner. And he came to offer me a job as his chief of staff. He said, listen, I've been looking for someone, not a typical candidate for this job, someone a little outside the box who can kind of give me just a different perspective of these things. How would you like to go? And the first question I asked was to my wife. We had two young kids, and she said, I'm game. And she's a journalist as well. She still works for ABC News. So she was excited by it and the prospect of taking our kids over there to absorb the place and learn something. So once I had her approval, I said,”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or exotic. And I went to the White House correspondence dinner in 2011 And I found myself, although that was back when they still told jokes. So, you know.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lots So I did a decade, more than a decade with ABC, principally overseas, came back to Washington in 2010-11, was really bored.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I did. And I went there in early 2002 and ended up staying. I mean, I was based in London, but staying covering the region for a decade that followed. I went to Iraq a dozen times. To Afghanistan a dozen times, Iran a dozen times, all over there, Israel, Palestine, you name it. And that covering the wars, covering the intelligence behind the wars. Covering the terror attacks that followed and efforts to prevent terror attacks, that got me into the national security space. And I sort of never gave it up. It was just interesting to me and substantive and a little bit exciting. And so you've brought you to CNN then. You moved for, you were at the major networks.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I still think my nature is a journalist, so I came back to the fold Foreign correspondentship, what got you into national security? So I went over to London for ABC after 9-11, basically. 9-11 happened. Went to cover the attacks at the Pentagon. I was based in Washington at the time. But immediately afterwards, I raised my hand. I said, I want to go cover the aftermath of this. I want to go to Afghanistan. I want to cover the region.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that would come up years later when I was offered this job as chief of staff of the Ambassador to China. This is just in 2011. And I took that job. So I said, and I explored that for a couple years, and I'm glad I did. And I learned a lot.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would believe it. When I was in college, I did think about foreign service, but I felt I looked at the folks who took the Foreign Service exam and felt like I couldn't pull it off. I just didn't feel like I knew enough and I was intimidated by it.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do kind of lousy when I'm not in the country, but when I return recently and I did a stint in government, I dove right back into it. I was decent. I was pretty decent”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it just gave me a bug on the country, the region, the culture, but also a bug for getting paid to travel the world and bring back stories.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mom saved all these newspapers from around the region reporting the news of the events of the early morning, june 4th, nineteen eighty nine. So I'm choosing my major. And a lot of folks looking at American political history, this or that. And I said, you know what? I'm going to study China because there's something going on over there and I want to know about it. That turned out to be my major. And after college, I went out to Asia. Well, study Chinese history and politics and culture. And then after college, I decided I want to go live there. I did a Fulbright Fellowship. Took me out there. And I ended up staying out there as a reporter, traveling around the region. This was in the early 90s and mid-90s.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And those images, and they were heartbreaking for them because they'd met many of these young students, and it was just such an exhilarating time to be there. In fact, I fished out, I found these the other day.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'll tell you the origin story, and it's interesting because having just passed the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, I was a freshman in college in May, the end of my freshman year in May 1989. And I have three sisters, but another sister who was interested in China, and she was living over there at the time. And my parents and another sister went to visit her. And they found themselves in Beijing in late May 1989 taking family pictures inside the pro-democracy protest there. They left the day that martial law was declared. And then in the succeeding days, they, of course, read about and saw on television the horrible events that took place afterwards.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's in the book. So let's talk a little bit. I want to get to the book in a second, but talk about your background includ And anchoring CNN, which is sort of in the middle of. Yes, a target.”
2019-06-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: CNN's Jim Sciutto · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT