The plot thickens this morning,
with US officials telling ABC News
that Russian President Putin was directly involved
in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
We have said repeatedly over the last two months
that our source is not the Russian government.
Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyberattacks.
- Do you respect Putin? - I do respect him.
Do you? Why? Putin's a killer.
There are a lot of killers. What, you think our country's so innocent?
- Hello. - How are you?
Mr. President. Nice to see you again.
I thought maybe you could sit over there?
- Okay. - And I'll sit here, and we'll see.
Play it by ear a little bit.
And we'll improvise.
No rules about this one.
Yes!
For over 40 years, the United States led the West
in the struggle against Communism
and the threat it posed to our most precious values.
This struggle shaped the lives of all Americans.
It forced all nations to live
under the specter of nuclear destruction.
That confrontation is now over.
I think a lot of Western people don't know much about you.
We'd like to know about your background,
and where you came from.
I know that you were born in October 1952,
after the war,
that your mother was a factory worker,
and your father had been in the war.
And I know that you lived in a collective apartment
with other families as you grew up.
Doing what exactly?
He was wounded in the war, though?
I heard he had a bit of juvenile delinquency problems.
He was a bit of a wild child
until he studied judo at the age of 12.
You, uh, graduated from, uh, high school
and I believe you went directly to law school.
That's the Russian system?
And met your first wife there?
You last wife. I mean, your only wife.
And then you joined the KGB right away in '75?
1975. Yeah, you joined, in Leningrad.
Oh, you were s... You had no choice?
And you had romanticized of course this...
There's the Soviet films about the KGB and intelligence.
You went to Dresden in 1985 through 1990.
But the first 10 years, uh, you were mostly in Leningrad.
East Germany in 1985 to '90 was pretty dismal.
It was a strange time.
Did you go back to Moscow? Did you experience perestroika?
But these are Gorbachev's ideas,
so you were influenced by Gorbachev.
The Soviet Union collapsed
and the Russian Federation was formed with Yeltsin.
Yeah.
You moved to Moscow in 1996.
And you became the head of the Federal Security Bureau for 13 months.
So, in that role, you must have seen what a mess this was.
I gather, there was a nightmare of chaos.
In October 1993, Russia was on the brink of civil war...
With parliament deputies on one side
and Boris Yeltsin and his supporters on the other.
Yeltsin, who controlled tank divisions,
would give the order to fire directly at the parliament building
with shells pounding the offices of the Supreme Soviet chairman
and the vice president who sided with the deputies.
Two days of street fighting left hundreds dead and injured.
The United States continues to stand firm in its support of President Yeltsin
because he is Russia's democratically elected leader.
And in 1999, you worked your way up to acting prime minister.
And Yeltsin resigned in 2000.
Just looking at, uh, press conferences and film of Mr. Yeltsin,
it was clearly, uh, alcohol, uh, disease.
His brain seemed to be...
The way he spoke, and the way he... he stared at the camera,
the way he moved, he looked like he was catatonic.
So, here you are,
many prime ministers come and go,
and all of a sudden,
wow, you're the acting prime minister.
Now what?
You refused? Why is that?
Change his life, in what way?
I mean, he's already been a bureaucrat
in the government for a long time.
Oh, really?
What would you do?
Yeah, but did you see his...
Did he see his children during this period and his wife?
And, uh, did you wake up at four in the morning? Did you ever sleep?
Really?
No nightmares?
This is a discipline from the from military, from your KGB experience?
Your theory of life, they say is summed up in the philosophy of judo?
Not too complicated.
You have a lot of discipline, sir.
Okay. Well, then, we're in 2000 now.
You've become president. The vote was 53 percent.
You're not expected to last.
You're president of a country which is in a dark time.
Chechenya War is going on, it looks very bad.
One side says that it is fighting against terrorism,
the other side says it is fighting for independence.
And all the while, bodies line the street amid the rubble of war.
This is not the Middle East.
This is the break-way Russian Republic of Chechnya,
little mentioned, but no less horrifying.
You're credited with, uh, doing many fine things in your first term.
You built up industries,
electronics, engineering, petrochemical, agriculture.
You raised the GDP, you raised the income.
You reformed the army.
The privatization was stopped.
A real son of Russia.
The oligarchs took... Underestimated him.
And when he became president, they didn't think he would last.
He cut the poverty rate by two-thirds.
Respect for the old people, pensions.
In 2000, 700 rubles was the average income,
in 2012, 29,000 rubles.
Immensely popular in 2004,
he's reelected with 70 percent of the vote.
And 2008, because, uh, two terms are only allowed,
you become the prime minister.
Well, you worked hard when you were prime minister too.
And in 2012, you run for president,
and you win by 63 percent?
Yeah, you're right.
Three times president. Five assassination attempts, I'm told.
Not as much as Castro, who I've interviewed.
I think he must've had 50,
but, uh, there's a legitimate five I've heard about.
In other words, you trust your security,
and they've done a great job.
Because, always, the first mode of assassination,
you try to get inside the security of the... of the president.
What is your fate, sir?
Have you... Do you know?
To die in bed, maybe.
You've had a tough day.
It's been a while. Nice to see you.
I think, uh, last June was the, uh...
was the last time I saw you.
You miss me?
I'm sure you cried about other things.
Uh, excuse me, I just feel asleep upstairs.
Uh, I caught up on my jet lag.
How was your day?
Holy cow! Well, you didn't have a cabinet meeting then, did you?
There was... I'm told there was
a national security council kind of meeting?
I see. A crisis or anything?
Well, I'm just asking, 'cause I'm curious,
'cause we're normally scheduled at 3:00 p. m.,
and it's six hours and forty minutes later.
No, but I'm saying there's always...
There are crises that come up?
There are things that aren't scheduled?
Uh, that goes to my bigger question,
'cause my producer who's here, Fernando,
we were talking about you earlier,
and he said, you are an excellent CEO,
uh, Chief Executive Officer of a company...
Russia is your company.
You kick the tires, you deal with these problems,
and you try to solve them on the spot.
Let's say the problem is this, and you go into the detail here,
and the detail sometimes gets smaller, and you do a micro-detail,
and the micro-detail has another micro-detail, and before you know it,
you've lost the forest for the trees, as they say.
That can be very irritating. You could probably go to bed at night,
not having solved some of these things, and it really drives you nuts.
He says he needs to complete something?
Which bring us to the... A large problem,
which is he's been doing this as a president, prime minister,
and now president again, for 15 years.
I'm sure he knows the story of Ronald Reagan,
one of the most admired presidents... by conservatives... in my country.
He was famous for sticking to his schedule,
which required him, on most nights, to come home,
in the White House by six o'clock,
and have an early supper and watch TV with his wife.
That is my point, is that he was a smiley man.
He was a great greeter and meeter.
He was very happy eating jelly beans
and telling a good joke.
Though Reagan was a big believer in delegating authority,
to everyone around him.
I'm just trying to make that example because...
it's another way of living.
Well, it seems to me, you're doing it the hard way.
Well, Reagan would disagree.
He would say the country America was broke,
and that it needed to be fixed,
and it was morning in America again,
and it was his job to bring in positive energy to America.
And he did a pretty good job of making that feeling.
It's a feeling. It's an illusion.
Well, uh, actually, some people would argue
that Reagan made America more broke
because the debt grew enormously.
I forgot.
Russia's one, right?
Eighteen trillion, US?
And about one trillion, Russia.
The food prices went up 20 percent in 2015,
and, uh, inflation was running at 13 percent.
12.9 percent to be more precise. Okay. Okay.
What is the Russian Central Bank about?
What is that doing?
I thought you had nothing outstanding.
You had no debts to the IMF, I'm told.
Aah, you know, you still talk as if the IMF is a partner of Russia's.
You act as if Wall Street wants Russia to succeed,
and I question that.
And I would ask you,
is Wall Street actively working to destroy the Russian economy,
in the interest of the United States?
That is the throne of the tzar
and the throne for the tzarina... Yeah.
And also for the dowager empress. Yeah.
You know, they say that you want to be tzar.
This is, uh, you know, that you're the new tzar.
They put magazine covers out there...
You laugh, right?
Yeah.
But you allowed, uh, Charlie Rose to make a point
when he said, you have all the power,
you can do what you want.
He made that very clear, and then...
Because that's the way many Americans think,
that there's no system here.
And, uh, you didn't correct him.
You, you...
Excuse, excuse me.
Well, then you should shoot the interpreter too...
That's why we say that.
Was it you? Yeah...
I don't think he understood the question that Rose was leading him to.
I mean, in other words, in English, it sounded like he wants the tzar,
and he took it for granted that he was tzar.
Some have called you a tzar.
So what? You know, people call me different names.
Well, does the name fit?
Do you ever lose it?
He says, you're so irrational
every time you're asked a question,
do you ever like have a day, like a bad day? And...
Is that right?
There you go. Now you're going to insult
50 percent of the American public.
The way they're gonna take it.
I know.
So a woman to you is a... Tends to be more emotional?
You don't want to have your emotions ever cut in and control your reasoning?
- Question to, uh, - President Bush.
Is this a man that Americans can trust?
Uh, I'll answer the question.
I looked the man in the eye.
I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.
Now, we had a very good dialogue.
I was able to, uh... get a sense of his soul.
What did you sense when he was saying that?
And on 9/11, you were one of the...
You were one of the first to call him
and offer him condolences and cooperation.
When President Bush, invaded Afghanistan, uh,
President Putin cooperated with the, uh, invasion
and set up bases in the Caucasus and Eurasia,
in order for the Americans to supply line Afghanistan.
And continued to do so until recently.
Russia has a long history in Afghanistan.
So how come you guys did not figure out where Bin Laden was,
and what was really happening with Bin Laden?
Not just where he was, but...
how weak the Al Qaeda base was at this point in Afghanistan.
Bill Casey, director of the CIA under Ronald Reagan,
made it a special effort
to excite the Muslims
in the Caucasus in Central Asia against the Soviet Union.
His plan was bigger than just to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
His plan was basically regime change in the Soviet Union.
In his mind, what was the most dangerous moment in the Chechen Wars?
The first one, the second one? What years?
The US support was covert.
You say you have evidence that they were supporting the Chechens.
I think the administration has adopted a hands-off attitude,
repeating like a mantra that this is an internal Russian affair,
which in effect legitimated the Russian action.
And then on top of it, senior administration spokesmen
have engaged in a vilification of the Chechens.
And, uh, all this while they're fighting the war against terror in Afghanistan?
It seems like contradictory behavior, and strange behavior.
I guess the letter is top secret, so, it's not available for viewing?
Today we welcome
Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic,
finally erasing the boundary line the Cold War
artificially imposed on the continent of Europe,
strengthening an alliance that now clearly
is better preserved to keep the peace
and preserve our security into the 21st century.
Our goal is to help to build a Europe
that is undivided, free,
democratic, at peace, and secure.
Today we proudly welcome
Bulgaria...
Estonia...
Latvia...
Lithuania...
Romania...
Slovakia...
and Slovenia.
We welcome them into the ranks
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This is a special moment
in the hopeful story of human liberty,
as America formally declares its support for Albania
and Croatia's entry into NATO.
What I've heard from Mr. Gorbachev
as well as American officials, including James Baker,
there was a, a deal with the Soviet Union
not to expand NATO eastward.
So this was a clear violation.
And right now the Warsaw Treaty has faded into oblivion.
There is no Soviet Union.
Under the rules of NATO, I believe you'd have to share
all your nuclear information with the United States.
Yeah. Right.
Right.
The old Soviets were always very realistic about American policy.
They always tried to understand the intentions of the Americans.
I don't know if those think tanks still exist here. I would imagine they do,
that Mr. Putin gets very accurate assessments about
what United States' intentions are.
Has this ever stopped?
Has this attitude of the US ever stopped,
that they had an enemy in Russia?
Whether it was Communism or whether it was Putinism
or whether it was any form, it was just the concept of an enemy.
It raises the question of,
you know, the broader question, of what is the US policy?
What is its strategy in the world?
In the whole world?
Well, uh, I can state it for you, and you can argue with me.
That's one thing, I could say I think
or many learned people think that US strategy
right now is to destroy the Russian economy,
bring it back to 1990s' levels.
And change the leadership of Russia.
Make a new ally out of Russia for the United States,
and basically, dominate Russia, as they once did.
And perhaps did not... they feel they did not go far enough
and take your nuclear arsenal away from Russia.
I understand that Russia will not give up.
They will go to the end on this economy. Under Stalin,
they gave their jewelry.
They gave their personal possessions down to their last dollar
to support the government against the Nazis.
We have the US elections in this year,
and none of these issues,
uh, the environment, fixing our alliances
has even been discussed one time.
Everything in the election rhetoric has been
get tough, be tougher, build up our military again,
and in addition to that...
And that goes for both sides, that includes Hillary Clinton,
who's most definitely become a neoconservative, a hawk,
strong policies against Russia.
She was certainly for the Syrian intervention, and so forth.
And we have to send a very clear message to Putin
that this kind of belligerence,
this kind of testing of boundaries
will have to be responded to.
In addition to that, the Pentagon has announced recently,
this new general has announced that Russia is the number one threat to the United States.
He's been very forceful in those statements.
If you want to talk about a nation that could pose
an existential threat to the United States,
I'd have to point to Russia.
If you look at their behavior, it's nothing short of alarming.
Do you ever see him?
Yeah.
He has an opinion of his own and some things...