YouSaid · the spoken record

Wendy Sherman

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87
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2017-03-23
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2017-03-23
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  1. “When you're negotiating to stop a country from having nuclear weapons, the stakes are just a little bit different. And the complexities of it are quite different. And it is true that President Trump learned everything there was to learn about what is necessary to build something He knew how to put the zoning together, how to put the financing together, how to sometimes sort of go on the offense against the community to get what he wanted. But An international relations in these kind of efforts that we're working on in American security, you have to work and play well with others to get your interests met, and you have to learn details of the That are quite complicated and quite difficult, and it remains to be seen whether he understands any of that.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “You know, soon after he was elected, I was traveling abroad coming through Dulles Airport as I often do, and picked up a copy of the art of the deal because I wanted to understand him. And indeed, he's got some negotiating skills, but you know what, David, when you're building a building, A very elite building. If the building doesn't get built because you can't get the zoning, you can't get the money and the president as a businessman rarely used his own money. He always got loans leveraged other people's money. Then, you know, you go on to the next project, and those wealthy people go live someplace else.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “complex pieces, and it would never, the press would always say, well, what are the odds? And I'd say, well, it's binary. We're either going to get there or we're not. And you could get to 95%, 98% of the way there. And if you didn't get that last 2%, you didn't have a deal. And it's the same thing when you're organizing. I also believe that even though I was trained as a community organizer, I was also trained in clinical skills and probably some of them have been helpful along the way, whether that's with members of Congress or dictators.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yes Say, as I teased before, my caseload has just changed over the years, and I think that I learned a set of skills, and I think everybody can learn a set of skills and then bring that to the work you do. So social work teaches you to begin where the person on the other side of the table is, not where you are, to understand what their interests are, knowing what yours are and not giving them up, and certainly in the Iran negotiation we never gave up our interests. And the president was very clear about what we had to achieve. And so whether you're stopping a road, as Barbara McCulsky did, or you're stopping a nuclear power, you have to pursue your self-interest while understanding what the other person is seeking, what the other party is looking for. It helps you to see the entire landscape to see three hundred sixty degrees. I talk about the Iran negotiation as a Rubik's Cube, that there were all these unbelievable.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Right. You can't do it alone. So the flaw in bilateral is nothing happens in this world alone anymore, as if it ever did.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “That argument is issues cut across borders, whether it is climate which I know this administration doesn't believe in climate change. But terrorism, which they certainly are concerned about, terrorism doesn't pay attention to anybody's borders. And in fact, Secretary Tillerson, we're speaking in this podcast the week that the 65 member coalition that President Obama built and Secretary Kerry, Secretary Clinton, and Secretary Kerry built, is coming to Washington. Because when it comes to counterterrorism, you can't.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, I'm working on another book, but it'll make some use of the Iran negotiation. I think it's too soon to write the details. It would undermine the deal itself. But that said, there was one very well-known issue, and towards the end, I thought it wasn't going to get solved. It simply wasn't going to get solved. And the last issue to be solved, which was very controversial, one of the last big issues, was the UN Security Council resolution and that very tricky issue of missiles and arms embargo that the Russians and the Chinese wanted none of, we wanted a lot of, and we had all agreed we'd leave it to the end because by then everybody would want to come to closure, so the Russians and the Chinese wouldn't get everything they wanted, which was nothing, and we would get something we wanted, though maybe not as much as we wanted.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Absolutely. Many points, even towards the end. There was one day on particular issue some day the book will be written, but I think it's too soon to do that. But one issue and...”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “and we'd have to work very hard with Israel and with our Gulf partners on a strategy to stop Iran's nefarious behavior, so we never told everybody we could get everything done in one deal, and indeed, oddly at the beginning of the negotiation, the Gulf country said just don't discuss anything else because we're not in the room and you're talking about our lives and our future.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Exactly. Exactly. And on the money and on the money, the last point I want to make, people have thrown all kinds of numbers around. They're all wrong. There was about $100 billion in frozen assets and foreign bank accounts. That was Iranian money. We're not talking about U.S. taxpayer money. Of that, $100 billion, our Treasury Department, our intelligence community thought about $50 billion was available to the Iranians. The others were in non-performing loans or Chinese loans, and that they'd probably keep that $50 billion abroad because they'd need that currency for trade. That said, we always said to the Congress that they would probably use some of the money for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and for Hezbollah, and that we clearly would have to keep all of the sanctions in place and vigorously enforce them to stop Iran from proliferation, from the arms trade that it did, from their human rights abuse.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “We could not have because the only reason that we had everybody stay together, the only reason countries like Korea and South Korea and Japan stopped and reduced the oil that they imported from Iran is because we were committed to diplomacy. So the day that we stepped away from diplomacy, they would, those sanctions would have frayed.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Putting our troops in a rack in immediate risk. So it would have perhaps even gone into Arab-Persian war of quite a great size. So great risks to take military action. And we wouldn't have bombed their way their knowledge. Sanctions, people said just have more sanctions, put them on. What people don't understand, I think, sometimes is sanctions never stopped Iran's program. When around in the early two thousands Iran had one hundred sixty four centrifuges. When we finish this negotiation, we had to deal with nineteen thousand centrifuges. Sanctions are meant to sharpen a choice for a country to bring them economic pain so they decide they want to get rid of that economic pain, but it never stopped their program.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So what I say to all of that is that I believe that if everybody complies this agreement last longer than ten years, it is true that some things begin to change after ten years, but a lot of the monitoring and verification stays on for quite some time, and there are other technical things that will make the sustainable well past that 10 years. That said, I understand the critique, but there are some flaws in the critique. The options that the president had were to try to get to close down all of the pathways to fissile material. Or he could have bombed all of the facilities, and as I said, bombing all of the facilities would have gotten rid of them, we can do that, but they could be reconstituted, and in the meantime, Iran would have retaliated, and they probably would have retaliated first by sending many, many, many rockets over Israel.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Not successfully, but technically every step of the way, they knew what we were doing and they were immensely helpful, immensely helpful.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I tease that I negotiated inside the government because everybody in the interagency had to agree, negotiated with the Congress, because we brief them all of the time hundreds of briefings, negotiated with the P five plus one both bilaterally and as a group, negotiated with partners and allies Israel, of course, on a regular basis with the Gulf countries.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Secretary of Energy, Ernie Moniz, who is just fantastic and gave us enormous technical help. And then I had a team that was doing the day-to-day negotiating that was first rate backed up by hundreds of people in the US government. But we also arrayed our military power. We also used our intelligence capabilities. We also, as I said, the president deployed a weapon that could penetrate the underground facility that Iran had built. We sent teams around the world to not only after we had imposed sanctions and got the UN Security Council to impose sanctions, but to enforce those sanctions, we did everything in a really constant, very focused, and ultimately successful effort. And we worked with Congress.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “First and foremost a president who knew what the objectives were and what he required of us that every pathway to fissile material including a covert pathway would be shut down. And Barack Obama learned every detail of this agreement and its very technical, incredibly technical. Secretary of State who was dogged? We all know John Kerry will try and then try again and then try again another time and believes in the power of personal relationships.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “To see whether, in fact, an interim agreement could be reached that would give us the time to reach a full agreement. That actually began to proceed. All of that happened in English. It turned out one of the members of the previous group spoke English, but we never knew it, and he became part of now Foreign Minister's Reefs team Abasarachi. I then brought that agreement that still had lots of brackets in it into the P five plus one negotiation, and that ultimately led to an interim agreement signed by everyone, we thought it would take six months to get a final agreement. It actually took us over a year to get that final agreement, and it was a slog, every bit of the way. What made it possible?”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So even if we bombed all their facilities, we couldn't bomb away knowledge. They knew how to do what they knew how to do, and they'd be able to recreate everything all over again and they'd probably do it underground and in secret. So the president and then Secretary Clinton, who understood this equally as well, decided they would test out with the help of the Sultan of Oman, who had first come to John Kerry when he was the chair of the Senate Farm Relations Committee and said, I think I can help sent an emissary to Oman to find out whether something could happen here, and that led to a secret effort led by Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan, who was became head of policy planning for Secretary Clinton, which I joined later in the process”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “And timing does matter in negotiations, ripeness matters. And the other thing that was ripe was we had a president of the United States, Barack Obama, who understood that That if we were going to get a deal with Iran, We might have to agree to a very limited enrichment program under very strict verification and monitoring, enrichment is one of the vehicles enriching uranium to get fissile material for nuclear weapon. Plutonium is the other way to create fissile material. And this was a big change in American policy, and the reason the president”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Had begun this a little bit, but it really got engaged when I became under secretary. At that time, Ahmadinejad was the president of Iran, and quite frankly we traiped around for a year and a half to all kinds of places, but Ahmedinjad wasn't at all serious about having any negotiation. They spoke in Farsi, we spoke in English, everybody had a set piece. Helga Schmidt, who was my counterpart for the European Union, would spend hours negotiating where we'd have the next round, we went Almadi, we went to Baghdad, we went to Baghdad and everybody was so concerned about security. We all met Naman and came in on US military planes to Baghdad, the Russians, the Chinese, all the Europeans, all of us on the same airplane. But then we saw that there was a possibility that Rouhani would become president.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “So the reason I had the privilege to do this is because as the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, I'm the political director of the United States, was, when I was in government, and the negotiation among the P five plus one, that's the permanent members of the Security Council, the five permanent members plus one is Germany, and coordinated by the European Union was because I was the political director and that negotiation was being done at the political director level. This was because a UN Security Council resolution that had been taken that the P5 plus 1 coordinated by the High Representative of the European Union should have this negotiation with Iran. And Iran had agreed to it. And my predecessor, Bill Burns, who went on to be deputy in his extraordinary career diplomat, great diplomat.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “That John Kerry had made in his speech where he said, Well, an answer to a question, well, I guess if Assad were willing to get rid of the chemical weapons, then we wouldn't have to take military action. So Lavrov picked up the phone and called Carrie and said, okay, let's do it. I'll deliver Assad? You deliver, help deliver the rest of the world. And we went off to Geneva and did that agreement.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Absolutely. Absolutely. I was going to say it led to Lavrov picking up on a comment that Lavrov is Minister of Russia picking up on a comment.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “And yes, we were getting ready for a strike. And yes, I remember on that Friday when John Carey, I was then under secretary for political affairs, and John Carey gave a really stirring speech about how we could not let this stand that when a leader uses chemical weapons against his own people he's broken the contract in the international community has to act. And we all expected Saturday morning we would take a strike. And the president went and thought that he needed to make sure because there was so much at stake that the United States Congress was engaged on this issue. So yeah, a lot of us had to take a deep breath and regroup, but it led to...”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “It's very interesting you asked that because I was having this discussion the other day because on North Korea, President Trump just said. Time is up If any other president had said time is up? It would have been considered a red line. But because President Trump has lost such credibility, he says so many outrageous things all of the time, no one hears him with the same ear. And my recollection of President Obama may be different than yours, David, is that, and you probably know better than I do, what he was doing was really saying that we cannot tolerate The use of chemical weapons against his own people, Assad's use of chemical weapons.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “The only time NATO has invoked the article that says, you know, someone being attacked is an attack by all. So the only time they have invoked that article of the NATO Charter was for the United States of America.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Being a leader in the world is not about just doing good for the sake of it. Being a leader in the world is protecting our national security and our military and our treasure.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “By Besides saying those kind of things, they say, you know, they can't believe him. They can't trust him. So when you undermine your credibility in that way, your ability to manage a situation like that, like North Korea's extraordinary, and he doesn't have a team in place. There's no deputy at the State Department. He wants to promulgate a budget that will cut the State Department by nearly 31%, which will undermine our ability to do diplomacy. And if you're going to throw all the tools you've got against North Korea, you have to travel the world and work capitals everywhere. He wants to undermine diplomacy and tools of diplomacy and development. He wants to undermine our credibility. He wants to draw back from providing leadership, which is in our own national security interest.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Including about nuclear weapons, and certainly his saying that President Obama wiretapped him, which has now been proven by everyone to be absolutely false, has undermined his credibility in the world. I travel all of the time, and besides people in other countries always ask me what the heck I'd use other language, but we're on the air, what the heck is going on in your country?”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I think it would be a challenge for any president. I obviously was incredibly strong supporter for Hillary Clinton. She was the most prepared person ever probably to become president because as you know David nobody's ready to become president, but she had been Secretary of State, she'd been a United States Senator, she'd lived in the White House's first lady. She is incredibly studious person, as you know. So even Hillary Clinton would have found North Korea an incredible challenge. This is tough for anybody, but What I think has been most dismaying and most concerning about President Trump. is that his use of tweets and his use of hyperbole and”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Most people in this day and age have no idea of what that would be like. We one of the reasons I think President Obama, who was really courageous to make his speech in Prague about how we should get to zero nuclear weapons and how nuclear weapons were the scourge of our future, and got a Nobel Prize for setting out that agenda, the reason it's hard to get traction is because the average everyday citizen finds it unimaginable that moment will come. So I hope that moment doesn't come, and using all of the tools that we have to put pressure on North Korea while leaving an opening for dialogue with them, and that might have to start at a secret level as opposed to a public level for a lot of complicated reasons. I believe it is worth the high risk because the alternative. Is almost unimaginable.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “I would hate to think that it would because it is horrifying and it could reach the proportions of war that none of us understand is horrible as Syria is and it is a tragedy of immense proportion. It would be nothing compared to this. And if Kim Jangun used a nuclear weapon, which would be quite possible if he felt his back was up against a wall? I just, it's unimaginable. And I think that.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “The X and I think that was partly a signal to us to remind us all they have chemical weapons as well as nuclear and conventional military means. So I think however he operates from a different paradigm. And crazy as we think it is, he fundamentally believes the only way he survives is to have nuclear weapons. And we have to, the world has to, not just the United States, but the world has to show him that it is a choice between those weapons and survival.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “When I was dealing with his father, so I've been to North Korea twice. The second time was when Secretary Albright went, and we spent about twelve hours with Kim Jung Il. He was smart. He was transactional. He was knowledgeable. And my own sense is that I don't think Kim Jong is crazy in the sense of being completely irrational, he is clearly a dictator. He is clearly ruthless. Aye, he killed his uncle shortly after he came to power he now killed his half-brother with”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “And with Japan and certainly the president has had a discussion with Abe. But we also have to have very serious discussions with China to address the anxieties they have about putting this much pressure on North Korea and try to address some of those anxieties.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “As they are. So I think there are a lot of things we can do in the sanctions arena. I think we can array our military forces in a way that says we mean business and we're ready to go. President Obama did that in the case of Iran by commissioning and deploying a weapon that could penetrate an underground one secret facility that Iran had, and the Iranians knew we could do it. I think that there are probably some things we can do in the spooky world of intelligence and covert action that I wouldn't talk about, even on your podcast. And I think that we can mobilize the world community in a way that we have not. All to do this we need to have very serious conversation, not with South Korea, which is difficult because I don't have a president right at the moment or a lasting president because of the impeachment.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Right. Well, I don't think All the sanctions. China certainly, you know, in the Iran situation, the United States had the greatest economic leverage because of what we call secondary sanctions, and that's the reality that other banks around the world want to do business with our banks because the dollar is the reserve currency. In the case of North Korea, their economic lifeline is China. And China has just recently begun to enforce UN Security Council sanctions and to pull back on coal exports, but they have not done everything they need to do. We have not used all of our banking secondary sanctions to the extent that we can with North Korea, though it won't have quite the same impact with Iran. The international community has not enforced all the sanctions, cut off all the lifelines that North Korea has to its financial assets as poorer country.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “On behalf of President Obama and President Obama said, you know, we want to have all options available. No one wanted to go down the military road with Iran, and we certainly don't want to go down the military road with North Korea because they have nuclear weapons. Many, and they may well try to use them, even if they haven't perfected everything yet. They might try anyway. And experts believe, and I'm not a nuclear expert, I know quite a bit about it now, but I'm not a technical expert, but many believe that it's not all that far away that North Korea will have a missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead. So it's a really, really dangerous place.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “My reaction was I don't you know we all have said all options are on the table as you know David I had the honor of being quite involved in the arrondissement we're going to get to that”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Also, we can use Thad to spy on them. But China, I'm sure, Tillerson, Secretary Tillerson said to China, this is real. And you've got to either be ready to do some things you have been unwilling to do to put pressure on North Korea, or we're going to find ourselves in a pickle.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “I'm going to flow over the border, they don't want to precipitate a civil war, they don't want American troops on their border, they don't want the economic crisis. There are all kinds of reasons. They don't want to be surrounded by the United States of America. President Obama tried to take a crack at this, but I think what I would say today is that no administration, Democrat or Republican, has deployed all of our tools all at once to really take a crack at this problem. It's high risk. It's very difficult. I think China is understanding more and more how risky this has become, how much is at stake. The United States is putting fad, which is a missile defense system in South Korea, the Chinese. Our apoplectic about it because they think ultimately fat is about them.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “No one, whether we have tried inducements and incentives? Or some limited sanctions? We have never gotten them to change their calculus. It's been complicated because South Korean governments change and they share a border with North Korea. If there were war, we would win in the end helping South Korea, but hundreds of thousands of people would die because they have a large conventional military, let alone now nuclear weapons. Japan is at risk because their missiles can reach Japan today. China was reluctant because North Korea remains really their buffer chip. On the chessboard of Northeast Asia.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “And we thought we had to brief the incoming administration before we considered my going to Pyongyang to see if we could strike a deal and perhaps have the present United States go to North Korea. So we ultimately decided around Christmas that we could not proceed. And when it was decided by the Supreme Court that George Bush had won, I went and briefed Colin Powell and Condy Rice. Powell thought what the hand we were playing was a good one Condy thought the president would want to do a policy review and the rest is history. Not only was there a policy review and they didn't want to pursue it, they didn't want to pursue Kim Jung Kim Dejung's sunshine policy the leader of South Korea and we found out that in fact North Korea had been starting covertly a enriched uranium program which is another way to get fissile material. So over the years”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “We were close I went with Madeline to Africa on her last trip. I had two suitcases one of cold weather clothes to go to Pyongyang, one of warm weather clothes for Africa. But the US presidential election, you may recall, never got over.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Towards the end of the Clinton administration, we knew things were starting to get rocky on that agreed framework, and we saw North Korea testing more missiles and got very concerned. And so the president asked Bill Perry, the former Secretary of Defense, to start a process to look at what we should do. And I worked with Bill as the person inside government, and then I took over when he stepped down. And towards the end of the Clinton administration, we were in the midst of negotiating an agreement that they would do no more missile testing. And that was important because then they would never have this delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Exactly he negotiated what was called the agreed framework, which was a deal with North Korea that they would give up their nuclear weapons in pursuing nuclear weapons. They didn't have any at the time. They just had some fissile material for a nuclear weapon. They would give up going for a nuclear weapon, and we would, in return, normalize our relations as well as give them some assistance, help them build a... Country Organization called Keto, the Korean Energy Development Organization that would help them move forward in energy. And so for the entire Clinton administration, there were no nuclear weapons and there wasn't any more fissile material than what was there when Bill Clinton became president.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “We had had a meeting before she became Secretary of State, and I had said I wanted to work on North Korea, and when we had a meeting of everybody who was coming on board, everyone thought within two years North Korea would collapse. Wrong. People have believed that for years. They're incredibly resilient because they're closed off from the rest of the world. They keep going. And Bob Galucci, not me, but Ambassador Bob Galuchi, who's a superb diplomat, negotiated in...”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Absolutely, Kim Jong Unlike his father and like his grandfather, believe that the only way they can survive as a regime is to have nuclear weapons because they believe that the United States presents an existential threat to them, and they watched what happened in Serbia, they've watched what has happened other places where people who don't have missiles or nuclear weapons end up dying or being killed or being deposed. So they firmly believe this, and what we have not been able to do is to really impress upon them it's not about having nuclear weapons for regime survival, it's choosing between nuclear weapons and regime survival. It's sort of consigniary.”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Absolutely. You know, it's certainly been reported that when President Obama meant the president-elect, he said the most dangerous and difficult challenge in front of you is going to be North Korea. I think that's absolutely right, and we're seeing that. And I think it's why Secretary Madison, Secretary Tillerson went to Northeast Asia on some of their first big trips because they know it is the big challenge. So when I was...”

    2017-03-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 132 - Wendy Sherman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source