But the fact of the matter is, I provided the information, that was what we had at the time.

So, Sen. Graham was among the most vociferous, and I would think disingenuous, of those who attacked me. And eight congressional investigations that looked into this subsequently validated that. There was no effort to mislead, to lie or to falsify it. I think it's important for people to remember that, in the first instance, the information that I provided on those Sunday shows was drafted by the intelligence community, approved by the intelligence community as our best current understanding of what had happened. If anybody's trying to discount you or dismiss you or cause you to doubt yourself, you push back.Ĭarol, I don't think so, or the president wouldn't have named me national security adviser subsequently.

And in the same vein, he taught me and my brother, often, don't take crap off of anybody. And he had several sayings, one of which was, 'If my being black is going to be a problem, it's going to be a problem for somebody else, not for me.' In other words, I'm not going to allow other people's bigotry, which is borne of insecurity, become my own insecurity. He served in this segregated military, as some will recall, when the mission was to fight for the freedom of everybody in this country and around the world, except for African Americans.Īnd so my father, who was an extraordinary patriot and served in our government at the highest levels, ultimately as a governor of the Federal Reserve, also was quite affected by the experience of serving in a segregated military and the message that it sent about how this country viewed people like him and like me. He was born in segregated South Carolina, around 1920, faced the harshest form of Jim Crow, and served at Tuskegee during World War II with the Tuskegee Airmen at a time when it was believed that blacks couldn't effectively fight or fly. Well, my father was an extraordinary man.

Tough Love by Susan Rice