U.S. SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: Brian, I‘ve said that after the election next year I‘ll make a decision on my political future.

LAMB: Why are you waiting until next year?

HAGEL: Well, first, my second term in the U.S. Senate is up in 2008 so I‘m going to have to make some decision about a political future. I don‘t know what the political landscape will look like after the 2006 election. I don‘t know what kind of a presidential candidate the Republican Party will be looking for, what kind of a president America will be looking for. I may not fit either.

I think that it‘s better to do the job that you‘re elected to do, focus on the issues, be as effective as you can be, listen, learn, then see what the political landscape looks like.

LAMB: Can you remember the first time you thought you might have a little bit of leadership capability in you?

HAGEL: Well, I suppose like all of us we didn‘t dwell on such things at those young ages. But I always thought that having people around you and being part of an effort, a team, a process, a system was a big deal. And I suspect the first realization of that came when I played on little league baseball teams. And you saw leadership develop on those teams and I never really thought too much about myself being a leader. I just did what I thought was right and said what I wanted to say and it all followed. And I think that‘s what life is about and it takes you in directions sometimes you don‘t anticipate if you‘re focused and doing what you think is right and working hard and then luck plays a little bit of a role in all this as well.

LAMB: There‘s a pattern we see develop of people who come to Washington. Talked to Governor Mark Warner last program and he was president of his senior class – no, president of his class in high school three years. And I noticed you were president of the student council.

HAGEL: I was and I enjoyed that job. It was, again, part of something bigger than yourself and your own self interests.

I‘ve always enjoyed bringing a consensus of purpose together. I‘ve always been stimulated by that, focusing on projects and big issues and trying to do things for your school or community that you can be part of but leading that effort‘s a big deal. And I think also it‘s part of who we are as individuals and to have the trust of others whether it‘s a student council president or the people in Nebraska is something that I take seriously and it encourages me and inspires me. And I know that doesn‘t fit for everyone but it does for me.

LAMB: What was it like growing up in the Hagel household, four boys if I count right?

HAGEL: I‘m the oldest of four boys. I have a brother Tom who is two years younger. He‘s a law school professor at University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio.

My next brother, three years younger, is Mike who is an illustrator, commercial artist, has his own firm. Both have been very, very well in their lives, I‘m very proud of each.

Our youngest brother was eight years younger than me. He was killed in a car accident when he was 16 years old.

When I was 16 my father died on Christmas Day so my mother was left with four rather spirited boys that she had to raise. And I think aside from the fact that she raised one politician and one lawyer she did pretty well. But my mother passed away two years ago and she really was the centerpiece of our family. My father was important but, you know, after a while it‘s your mother who certainly took over and raised the kids and worked a couple of jobs and did the things that many mothers and single parents do today. So I have a real appreciation for families that have to deal with that and kids that come from those kind of families, and a great respect for single parents.

LAMB: Your brother Jimmy would have been – you‘d have been 24 when he was 16 when he died. What impact did that have on you?

HAGEL: Well, it was particularly difficult because the year he was killed my mother remarried and my mother and her new husband had moved to a new community where they could start over. My brother Tom and I had just finished combat tours in Vietnam together and both came back OK.

So my mother felt pretty good about things and about four months after she was remarried my brother, Tom, and I got back from Vietnam, her youngest son was killed. And it was tough for my mother because my brother Jim was in second grade when my father died so my youngest brother Jim and my mother were really inseparable for many, many years. He went with her everywhere. So it was tough for the family.

I was very close to him. I coached him in little league baseball, I coached him in little league football, I was kind of a surrogate father for him.

But anytime a family loses one of their siblings and one of their immediate family it‘s tough and especially at 16.

LAMB: I want to play a piece of – not a video tape but an audio tape for you because I read that this particular conversation had an impact on you. Let‘s listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)

FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? What – I‘d like to hear you talk a little bit.

RICHARD RUSSELL: Frankly, Mr. President, if you were to tell me that I was authorized to settle it as I saw fit, I would respectfully decline (INAUDIBLE). It‘s a – it‘s a damn worse mess I ever saw and I don‘t like to brag, I never have been right many times in my life but I knew we was going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there and I don‘t see how we‘re going to ever get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies in and jungles. I just don‘t see it. It – I just don‘t know what to do.

JOHNSON: Well, they‘d impeach a president though that‘d run out wouldn‘t it?

RUSSELL: I just don‘t believe …they would.

(END AUDIO TAPE)

LAMB: Richard Russell and LBJ in 1964. Do you remember when you read this exchange?

HAGEL: I don‘t remember the exact year. I recall over the last couple of years I listened on public radio to most of those tapes and renewed my understanding and appreciation of those tapes and what was said and the significance of what was said on those tapes.

LAMB: And what‘s the significance for you?

HAGEL: Well, significance for me is how easily a nation can be drawn into a war with major consequences for that country when none of its leaders or essentially none questioned that process that took us into Vietnam, the policy that kept us in Vietnam, and probably worse, the excuses as to why we were not winning.

And I think the fundamental responsibility of any elected official is to probe, is to question. And certainly one of the greatest responsibilities of Congress, not just constitutionally, is oversight. What is our policy? Why is this our policy? Where is this policy leading this country? What are the consequences of this policy? Those questions weren‘t asked when we were in Vietnam other than by the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator J. William Fulbright, and maybe a couple of others.

We just left this thing drift for years and consequently 58,000 Americans died, we ruined our military, we had hundreds of thousands wounded. And it‘s taken a generation to build back out of that.

So that‘s the lesson that we all in these positions of trust and responsibility must ask the tough questions.

LAMB: You went into the Army what year?

HAGEL: I went into the Army in 1967, April of ‘67.

LAMB: Enlisted?

HAGEL: I volunteered for the draft and went in as an enlisted man.

LAMB: How about your brother, Tom?

HAGEL: He volunteered for the draft and went in 30 days after I did as an enlisted man. We went through basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas, together. We went through advanced infantry training in Fort Ord, California, together. And we ended up in Vietnam together. We both volunteered to go to Vietnam.

LAMB: Now why would they have let the two of you go in the same place?

HAGEL: Well, I had orders to go to Germany. And at the time I went through advanced infantry training I was given orders to go to White Sands Missile Range for a three-month then top-secret course on then a very top-secret weapon. It was the first shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile called the redeye missile gun. It was produced to bring down low-flying Soviet aircraft in Europe. And it was the – it was the first of the sophisticated shoulder-fired missiles.

And I went out to White Sands and took that course for three months. And then along with the nine other guys in my unit, there were 10 of us, we were ordered to Germany. We would be integrated into NATO units there.

And I got to Fort Dix, New Jersey, in November of 1967 and we were getting ready to board the bus to go to Germany and I took my orders down to the orderly, said, "I‘m Private Hagel. I‘m going to Germany but I want to volunteer to go to Vietnam."

My brother was going to Germany as well as a cook and he volunteered to go to Vietnam. And the reason that they let us both go was because first, we essentially gave up our rights which at that time stipulated that no two members of the same immediate family would have to serve in a combat zone at the same time. Since we both volunteered to go then that took care of that stipulation.

LAMB: Why did you want to go?

HAGEL: I thought, Brian, if America was at war at the time it needed its best people. I thought if I was going to be in the military and spend a couple years serving this country then I should go where there was a war, not war games. And I just felt it was the right thing to do.

My father had been in World War II, served overseas in the Army Air Force. He was a radio operator tail gunner in a B25 in the South Pacific about two-and-a-half years over there – overseas. In fact, I‘m in the process now and my brothers have been reading many of his letters that he wrote back in 1942 to 1945 to his sister and his parents. Remarkable, remarkable letters.

And we had a tradition of American Legion-VFW growing up in little towns in Nebraska. You served and there was an expectation to serve. And you served where you thought your country needed you most.

My grandfather had not been overseas but he had been serving in uniform in World War I. So I just felt it was the right thing to do and if America said this was the right thing to do it was the right thing to do.

LAMB: So how close did you come to dying?

HAGEL: Oh, I don‘t think I came very close to dying. I was wounded twice. My brother, Tom, and I were wounded twice together. My brother, Tom, was wounded the third time. Serious wounds but not lasting. I still have shrapnel in my chest and both eardrums were blown out and still have problems with my ears occasionally. And my face was burnt, left side of my body and still some shrapnel in my back but none really life-threatening. My brother, Tom‘s, wounds were about the same.

LAMB: What‘s the story of the two of you when you were together and wounded at the same time?

HAGEL: Well, first time we were wounded we were on a patrol crossing a stream in the middle of the jungle. And my brother, Tom, and I used to walk point most of the time. One of us would carry the compass and the other would be on point and we just felt better the two of us walking point. And he was very good.

We were rotated back to the next squad after we had been breaking the jungle for about six hours. And about a half hour later the point squad taking us across the stream one of the guys hit some tripwires, booby traps in the stream. And there were large Claymore mines in the trees and once those tripwires hit the full blast of those big Chinese Claymore mines hit. And killed some of the guys in the front where Tom and I just had been a half hour before, hit both Tom and I with a lot of shrapnel. And we had to medevac the dead out and the seriously wounded because you couldn‘t move and the VC opened up on us once we had been pinned down.

So it took us all day to get them out. And Tom and I walked our guys out at night and went a long way to get back to base camp.

The second time we were surrounding a village at midnight-1:00 in the morning – where the VC had been. And my armored personnel carrier was the first in, we were the point track in. So we were the last ones going out after we had secured the village. And it was about 2:00 in the morning and we ran over a 500 pound bomb which destroyed the armored personnel carrier and I was burnt and both eardrums blown out and shrapnel. And my brother, Tom, was knocked unconscious, he was in the machine gun turret – and his eardrums were both blown out.

And I was on the track throwing guys off. Some were dead and some were got wounded. And the concussion was so powerful it just vaporized so much. So we got everybody off. The track blew up. The VC opened up on the wood line on us. Our guys came back to get us. So we were medevacked out that night, Tom and I were, out of – out of that area after we got dead out and the ones who were wounded more severely than the two of us.

Then they took Tom and I to a field hospital for about three days where they patched us up and we went back out in the field.

LAMB: You were how old then?

HAGEL: 21 and Tom was 19.

LAMB: If you ran for president, if you became president, what impact do you think that experience would have on the future of how you would look at the military?

HAGEL: Brian, we are all products of our experience of our environment where we come from. I have been tempered by that experience about war. What war means, the consequences, who has to fight it, all of that experience is part of me and how I look at policy, how I look at our foreign policy, how I look at our military policy, how I judge consequences, how the world sees us, their trust in our purpose, in our power.

No question that much of the questioning that I‘ve done about Iraq even before we went into Iraq was conditioned by, tempered by that experience in Vietnam. And whatever I will ever do in my life whether it‘s in politics or outside those experiences shaped me just like anyone who has gone through war. Those experiences shape you very much.

One of the things it does is it makes you less inclined I suspect to jump into war. It‘s easy to get into war, not very easy to get out, as evidenced by the Johnson tapes. And you need to think through these things. Diplomacy is critically important, especially in the complicated world that we live in today.

I think something else is important here and certainly it‘s a lesson we learned from Vietnam, what is going to be very important for America for our future is not to isolate ourselves – unintentionally isolate ourselves in the world. We did that in Vietnam. We did – we‘ve done that to some extent in Iraq.

We need friends. We need allies. We need institutions and structures like we formed after World War II, of common purpose dealing with common challenges. Terrorism is a common challenge, it‘s not unique to America. And if we‘re going to win against terrorism it‘s going to take all of these relationships, seamless networks of intelligence sharing and gathering.

So, yes, that experience in Vietnam has shaped me and will continue to shape me.

LAMB: What would it be like if you and John McCain ended up running for president on the Republican ticket at the same time?

HAGEL: Well, I don‘t know. John McCain is a very close friend of mine. There‘s no one I admire more than John McCain. We think alike on many things. We are different, too. I disagree with John and John disagrees with me on issues.

But how all of this plays out over the next two years I don‘t know. But regardless of how it plays out, he will always be a good friend and I will always be a great admirer of his. And I am grateful for his service to our country.

LAMB: But can you see yourself running – if he runs will that impede you from running if he says, "I‘m going again"?

HAGEL: Well, Brian, I think in this business or any major decision one makes in your life that decision has to come from you first. It‘s got to come from you. The considerations are your family or other personal issues. Then you start working through the more external conditions.

You know in this business that if you run for president there will be many very qualified candidates out there, some will be good friends I suspect. You know that and you factor that in and you‘re not unmindful of that kind of competition. And that kind of competition is good for the country. It‘s good for our system. We want the best people in this business.

So whatever decision John makes would not influence my decision.

LAMB: You guys ever talk about this?

HAGEL: No. He‘s not there yet. I‘m not there yet. You know he said that he‘ll make a decision after the election next year, as I have. There‘s no question he and I are both mindful of his interest and I‘ve encouraged him. I‘ve said I think he needs to be out there looking seriously at offering himself for the presidency in 2008. He has built a very strong base of support. He, I think, is the most influential senator in the U.S. Senate today. He needs to keep offering himself out there, and his ideas and his leadership. And again, that‘s good for this country – as the Democrats need to do.

LAMB: Before you went into the service you went off to an institute in Minnesota to study broadcasting, Brown Institute or something like that?

HAGEL: Yes.

LAMB: What were you doing?

HAGEL: Well, I was trying to really get my life back together. I was trying to find a new center of gravity for Chuck Hagel. I had been to three colleges and had not done very well in any of them. I had a football scholarship to Wayne State College in Nebraska and I got hurt when I was a freshman and I was never able to kind of rebound from that. I was aimlessly drifting on college campuses having a great time but I‘m not sure I was enhancing the institutions where I was enrolled nor was I enhancing myself.

And I got to a point one day where I just had a little talk with myself and I said, "Chuck, old boy, you better get straightened out, you‘re not going anywhere. And you need to figure some things out."

And I had heard about this place from a couple of friends and I had always had an interest in radio and television. So I thought, well, this might be something that could get me re-focused, put some new discipline back in my life, get me back where I need to be with some center of gravity in my life and a purpose.

And so I took my old 1957 Edsel and drove it up to Minneapolis early January, right after New Year‘s and spent a year, 1966, in Minneapolis attending Brown Institute, graduated, loved it, thought it was a great business, radio. And came back and started to get into that business, worked for a radio station in Omaha and Lincoln, Council Bluffs, before I went into the Army.

And then when I came back to finally get my college degree, which I did from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, got back into the radio business.

LAMB: And it was in that job, if I understand it correctly, that you were able to talk to the congressman from that area that – John McCollister. How did that happen? What were the circumstances?

HAGEL: Well, I had met Congressman John McCollister, who had been elected in 1970. He had defeated an incumbent Republican congressman in the primary, which was pretty impressive, and went on to win a very tight race in 1970 against the number one rated television anchor in the Omaha market.

And John McCollister at the time had been a Douglas County commissioner, which is Omaha. And I got acquainted with him a little bit through different interviews and covering him in the news business and on some of the talk shows I had. And I decided as I was getting ready to graduate from the University of Nebraska at Omaha the spring of 1971 that I was interested in coming to Washington to look for a job. I had never been to Washington, I‘d never been in politics. I‘d always been fascinated with government and politics and history.

So I went down to Brandeis Department Store, I had a credit card from Brandeis, had never used it. And I bought two suits – I didn‘t have suits. And I bought two suits that looked a lot like two senators that I would see on TV, Howard Baker and Ted Kennedy. The blue suit looked like what I had seen Howard Baker wear, the green pinstripe looked like Senator Kennedy‘s. So I bought those suits on credit and went to Washington.

Spent a week in Washington going around talking to people and just in fact last week talked to former Congressman and Senator Jim Broyhill from North Carolina. I reminded him I‘d gone to interview with him in 1970. I talked to anybody who would listen to me and who would take my resume. And I would go from door to door, literally with Republicans, and leave my resume. And so Congressman McCollister said he would help me.

The end of the week quite shocked that no one offered me a job so I went back to Omaha a bit dejected. Went back as I was finishing college – I was graduating in a month – and went back to my full-time radio job at KLNG in Omaha.

And about three weeks later I got a call from Congressman McCollister, said, "I‘ll make you a deal. If you want to come out here I‘ve got these new questionnaires that I sent out, they‘re starting to come back – the results – and I‘ll give you a job $200 a month if you grade those questionnaires, you do some stuff around the office, work half days you can look for a job the rest of the time and I‘ll let you live at my wife and my house. And our youngest son is there but he‘s going to be leaving. We have a big house, you could stay free, 200 bucks a month, look for another job."

I didn‘t think that was all that attractive. I had a grander vision than that about my future. Went and talked to my boss and he said, "Well," he said, "I think you ought to take a look at that." He said, "You can always come back here, you can always go back to radio."

So by then I bought a – had bought my brother Mike‘s ‘65 Chevy Impala, loaded that up with everything I had, drove to Washington and went to work for Congressman McCollister in July of 1971 with a little chair and table grading questionnaires.

LAMB: How long did you do that?

HAGEL: I worked for him kind of a part time but it turned into full time for about a year. And then I went back to learn about his campaign and be his campaign coordinator for re-election in ‘72 and after that election in ‘72 he made me his administrative assistant.

LAMB: How long did you do that?

HAGEL: I did that until he ran for the Senate in ‘76 and he was defeated. And that was ‘76, left in January of ‘77. So I worked for Congressman McCollister from 1971 to ‘77. And really learned probably as much from him and his style and philosophy about government, how to do it right with class and with ability and with integrity. That was a tough time. If you recall that was Watergate, Vietnam. Those were difficult years for especially conservative Republicans.

But it was Congressman McCollister who really framed for me a philosophy about government and gave me a real frame of reference that I still use today.

LAMB: So how is it that when you became a Republican and a conservative your brother, Tom, became a Democrat?

HAGEL: Well, if it had been the other way around he‘d probably be a conservative Republican today. He and I are very close personally as I noted my brother, Mike, all three of us are very, very close.

Our political philosophy in many ways is close as well. I mean you give Tom or me the underdog, we‘ll take the underdog always. I mean we‘ll always challenge the institution, we‘ll always challenge the power. I do it maybe a little differently than he does it.

But basic beliefs in our country and our people and our system, we don‘t disagree. How we come at it we do disagree a little bit. But I don‘t know he became a Democrat and I became a Republican and I suspect when he and I both came back from Vietnam attitudes about the war may have influenced some of that. He was very opposed to the war when he came back. I was supporting our effort in Vietnam when we came back. And that probably put us on divergent political paths.

LAMB: Do you agree today on Vietnam?

HAGEL: We do.

LAMB: And so was it learning what LBJ was saying about it that changed your mind?

HAGEL: Not just that, Brian, but an accumulation over years of understanding really how it was a lie at the beginning, Tonkin Gulf resolution, the process – the misrepresentation to the American people, the folly of how we conducted that war not listening to some of the people we should have. Not the intent, the nobility of the effort and what we tried to accomplish, I still feel strongly that that was noble and that was good. But the conduct of the war was wrong, the lying and the deceit was wrong. And so we have now pretty much come to the same place although we do have some disagreements on it. But we‘re pretty much together on the end.

LAMB: How do you differ on the Iraq war?

HAGEL: Well, you know I have been rather direct on my concern about why we went in, going in not planning, not preparing, not thinking through consequences. I think we both agree on that right from the beginning.

I think we‘re pretty close actually on the Iraq war. I voted for the Congressional resolution that gave the President the authority to use force if diplomatic – all diplomatic efforts failed and if only war in the end was the last resort. I also made a speech on the floor of the Senate a couple of hours before I made that vote. And I defined why I was voting, with some apprehension for that resolution. My brother, Tom, if he would have been here he would have voted against that resolution.

We‘re pretty close I think on most of these things. I don‘t believe – and I‘ve said this and I‘ll give a major foreign policy speech to the Foreign Relations Council next week on this and some ideas about how we change our policy in order to get us out of Iraq. We can‘t just get up and leave Iraq. We cannot allow this to become a 1975 when we took the last remnants of our influence out on a helicopter on top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

We can‘t do that. We‘ve got to work our way out of this in a way that doesn‘t even further destabilize the Middle East, which I think our presence has done. We‘ve got to try to do everything we can to enhance the security there and do everything we can to enhance the Iraqi people with some opportunities to govern themselves.

But in the end, just like in Vietnam, it will be up to the people. The people of Iraq will decide their future. We can‘t impose that future for them. We can help them. We can buy them some time. But Tom and I have had long talks about all this.

LAMB: Kenneth Feinberg was the special master that gave away the money, the $8 billion, to the families of the victims of 9/11. Here‘s a little bit from an interview we did with him a couple months ago.

(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)

KENNETH FEINBERG: Senator Hagel‘s the reason I really was appointed by the attorney general. As a former chief of staff to Senator Kennedy I wasn‘t exactly the person who everybody would automatically assume would be assigned this task by the attorney general and the administration.

Chuck Hagel, who I‘ve known for – since Agent Orange for, you know, over 20 years, personally pushed at the White House and at the Department of Justice claiming that I was the right man to do this.

(END AUDIO TAPE)

LAMB: Explain this to outsiders. Here‘s a guy that is a Democrat – I don‘t know if he‘s a liberal Democrat or not but worked for Ted Kennedy, and he sat here and talked about you at great length and how he met you at the Veterans‘ Administration and Agent Orange, and is very much supportive of I guess you‘re last candidacy. Was he involved in your campaign?

HAGEL: Well, he was a big supporter financially and every way, has been very generous in helping me and supporting my political action committee as well.

LAMB: Well, people like to talk about getting people together in this country. Here we have a Republican and a Democrat, how does that work? Why did it – why did it work between the two of you?

HAGEL: Well, it worked between the two of us because we had a higher purpose that we were both focused on when we first met and that was the Agent Orange settlement at that time I think was the largest out-of-court settlement in the history of our country, it was about $200 million. And Judge Weinsten called me one day and asked if I would come up to New York and visit with him about this.

LAMB: Where were you then?

HAGEL: I had just left the VA and I was starting my companies with my business partners.

And so I did. Judge Weinstein laid it out, this was what we‘ve got. We‘re going to have $200 million we don‘t know what to do with it, how to spend it, what we should do. And I‘d like you to put together a board, make something out of this, define what it is that we can do with this money. And he said the special master in this is a man by the name of Ken Feinberg and you would be working very closely with him.

So I agreed to do it, set it up, worked every day. I had no financial stake in it. I had expenses paid any time I‘d travel but was given no stipend or no consulting fees, which I didn‘t want any. And Ken and I became very close through that.

But there was a purpose to this. How do we take $200 million and get that to the people who need it most? That is really the essence of the process and of who we are as Americans and how we should strive and we can do things together regardless of political philosophies if there is a purpose, if there is a consensus to that purpose. And Ken and I have worked on a number of things like that.

And he‘s a Democrat, I‘m a Republican, and sure there are differences in political philosophies, there should be and that‘s healthy and that presents to the American people options and you pick where you think philosophically you fit. But that should never exclude doing for our people and our country what must be done and doing not only the right things but enhancing our country. And that‘s what‘s brought Ken and I together.

I happen to personally be very, very fond of him and we‘ve developed a very strong relationship. And by the way, he has with Attorney General John Ashcroft. I just saw John the other day, last week, and he brought Ken Feinberg up and said we have lunch once a month and Ken always brings Ashcroft up. And these two guys philosophically are about as far apart I suspect as anybody in the political spectrum, but they are great admirers of each other and they‘re friends. And again, it‘s a common purpose that unites.

LAMB: I mentioned earlier that last week‘s interview was with Governor Warner of Virginia and you have a number of things in common. You both were paperboys, you both were leaders in your high school, you both got into the cellular phone business and made a lot of money. How did you get into it?

HAGEL: Warner made a lot more money than I did. I had an opportunity given to me by a couple of old friends who had been in the cable television business, Don Clark, Dave Smith and Bill Collins. And we were always going to do something together and I would always say, OK, I‘m interested and then I‘d go off and do something in government or some other project.

So I left the Veterans‘ Administration in 1982 and they came to me and said, "We think there‘s a new technology out there that‘s really going to develop into something." I didn‘t know anything about it, most people didn‘t.

So I was looking at different options and so I started reading everything I could about this wireless telephony called cellular. This is 1982 and AT&T was just being divested at that time which opened up – unlocked all these new great technologies.

So I went up to New York and visited with a couple of friends of mine that were working for big investment banking houses who were telecommunications specialists. I read, I went to libraries. And I was convinced that this thing may be something pretty important and could, in fact, revolutionize telecommunications, which of course it did, it‘s still doing.

And so I went back to Bill, and Don, and Dave and I said, "Well, I‘m ready to do something." They said, "Here‘s what we‘ll do. We‘ll work it out that you can own a third of the company, we‘ll take the other two-thirds – the other three guys. You can be president. You‘ll have the biggest share but we‘ll control the two-thirds. You‘ll have a third." And I didn‘t have any money and they said, "Well, that‘s OK. You put whatever you‘ve got in." And that‘s how it started.

And I had a – I had a 1985 Buick Riviera and I had two insurance policies. And I sold the Riviera to my mother and her husband and I cashed those insurance policies in. I think I got about $1,200 each. I came up with about 5,000 bucks. We put that in the deal. And my partner said we‘ll give you the rest of your equity as earned equity and you be president, you run the outfit, and we‘ll see what we can do. And that‘s how it all began.

LAMB: And how many years were you in that business?

HAGEL: Well, we formed Collins, Hagel and Clark in August-September of 1982. We had Collins, Hagel and Clark for three years and then we bought some new partners in from North Carolina called Vanguard and then we rolled our interest into that company. Then I was with Vanguard, the new consolidated company, from ‘85 to ‘87 when I took over as presidency of the World USO. But I stayed on the board of Vanguard and was very active on the board and still did some management.

So there was a – from ‘82 to ‘87, five years that I did the cellular work full time, nothing else. And then three years I was president of the World USO I stayed on the board of Vanguard Cellular which that was the holding company that then owned – eventually owned about 36 systems with its investors on the East Coast. And then in 1988 we took that company public.

LAMB: Now Governor Warner said that he wouldn‘t agree that I said he was worth $200 million but he said he doesn‘t have to worry about for the rest of his life. Are you in that same position?

HAGEL: No, no, I‘m not. I‘m just a poor Republican.

LAMB: Does that mean if you got out of this politics business you‘d have to go back to work?

HAGEL: Well, I‘ve done – I‘ve done well and it has given me some independence.

LAMB: So what was it that led you to believe that you could run for Senate in ‘96? Was that your first run?

HAGEL: It was the first run for public office other than student council president and president of my fraternity and, you know, those kind of jobs.

I‘ve always thought that if an opportunity presented itself for high public office I would hope to be in a position to maybe take advantage of that. What does that mean? Well, it means first where are you with your family, where are you with your business, where are you with other obligations that are more important than running for office, at least I think they are.

In 1995 I looked at that Senate seat, that was Senator Jim Exxon‘s seat in 1996 he was up. I don‘t know – I didn‘t know at the time whether he was going to run for a fourth term or retire. But it didn‘t make any difference to me, I made the decision with my wife, Lilibet, this was the right time to do it. My business career, my family, I was 49 years old. I was going to be 50 in 1996. My dear, dear friend and business partner at the time, Mike McCarthy – I was president of McCarthy and Company, which is an investment banking firm in Nebraska – and my other partner said if you want to do it, go do it.

So all the board was kind of cleared. Our children were very small, they were two and four years old at the time. And I think if you‘re going to do this that‘s a perfect time for children to do it. It just was right, Brian. I felt right about it, I felt good about it. And I just decided to do it.

And kind of the same answer I‘d give you to the question about John McCain. I fully expected that there would be strong competition in the primary and in the general election thinking I‘d probably run against an incumbent United States Senator. As it turned out, I announced in March of 1995 I was going to run. Senator Exxon announced a few months later that he was not going to run for a fourth term. I don‘t think it had anything to do with me scaring him out. But he‘d had enough, he‘d been a two-term governor of Nebraska, 18 years in the Senate, he wanted to retire.

So I worked all of 1995 all over that state and all 1996 going everywhere. No one knew me – worked as hard as I‘ve ever worked at anything for people to get acquainted with me. Tremendous experience, one of the great experiences of my life those two years.

LAMB: But you ran against the governor?

HAGEL: I ran against another governor. I ran in the primary against the incumbent Republican attorney general, Don Stenber (ph) and I won. Then I won against the incumbent governor who is now my colleague in the Senate, Ben Nelson.

LAMB: How did – how did you beat him? What was it – what did you use?

HAGEL: Well, in August of 1996 almost every poll showed that I was 25 points behind. This was three months before the election. And I think it‘s like everything in life, Brian, there‘s no magic bullet, there‘s no one thing. It‘s an accumulation of things of building up a team, of building a process, of building a profile, of building a campaign that was strong and that was preparing itself to eventually win.

And like everything in life, building C-Span, building your life, building anything, it doesn‘t happen in a day or a month or a year if you do it right. And we did it right. I had tremendous people, LuAnn Linahan (ph) was a housewife, mother of four children who had never run a big campaign like this. I asked her to be my campaign manager. And all the political pros in Washington said well, what a disastrous move that‘s going to be. This woman doesn‘t know how to run anything. And she had run campaigns for county sheriff and done well and elected a county sheriff.

But I brought those kind of people in, new people, young people, fresh people. And I just worked hard and went out and convinced people that I should be a United States Senator. And we were able to get a lot of traction and a lot of fresh ideas and a lot of new ideas.

Well, for example, one of the first things I did in late 1995, I wrote a book – not a book but a booklet and it was very simple and it said this on the front, "Where I Stand." I took 50 issues and I wrote a paragraph. I wrote it. I didn‘t ask anybody. I wrote a paragraph on where I stood on 50 of the biggest issues facing our country certainly would be facing the senate campaign and I laid those out.

A lot of people said why would you do that, I mean, you don‘t need to do that. I did a lot of things that no one else had done before. But I thought as I told Lilibet when we started, I don‘t know how it‘s going to come out but one thing I do know, we‘re going to do it right, we‘re going to run a campaign that people could be proud of, Nebraska could be proud of, I would be a senator this state could be proud of – you may not always agree with me – and that‘s the way we conducted the campaign. We won that by – that race by 14 points.

LAMB: Now this is your second marriage?

HAGEL: Yes.

LAMB: How long was your first?

HAGEL: Two years.

LAMB: And you met Lilibet, which is not a name you hear in the north very often – what year, where was she?

HAGEL: She was working for Chairman Sonny Montgomery, a Congressman from Mississippi. Lilibet‘s from Mississippi. He, Sonny, was chairman of the Veterans‘ Affairs Committee when I was the deputy administrator of the Veterans‘ Administration. She was a press secretary. And so that‘s when I first met her in 1982 and we were married in 1985. And we just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary in April of this year.

LAMB: How old are the two kids?

HAGEL: Our daughter just turned 15 two weeks ago and our son just turned 13 two weeks ago. So that‘s a zone there that I‘m constantly understanding and learning about, those teenage years. Allyn is our daughter is a freshman at Oakcrest which is an all-girls Catholic school in McLean and our son Ziller is a 7th grader at an all-boys Catholic school in Potomac called the Heights.

LAMB: Would you put a label on yourself, conservative, liberal, moderate?

HAGEL: Well, I think labels come as a result of your political philosophy and certainly in my case your voting record. And if you look at my voting record and if you look at my political philosophy it‘s conservative. I have one of the most conservative voting records in the United States Senate.

I suppose some people are perplexed by that because I challenge my Republican administration on the war and other issues, detainee issues. But I do what I think is right and I say what I think is right and I don‘t ever worry about is that Republican or Democrat or is that a conservative or moderate thing to do. That‘s the way I‘ve done everything in my life.

LAMB: Would you define this President as a conservative?

HAGEL: I would define him as a conservative although five years of his policies don‘t always resound in a – in a conservative way or with a conservative political philosophy. When you look at the debt we‘ve run up, you look at some of these issues like I voted against No Child Left Behind, I thought it was the largest federal land grab in the history of this country. I think it‘s philosophically and practically was a wrong thing to do; the Medicare reform bill and some of these things have just added more and more obligation and debt to entitlements. I voted against those. I – and I‘m always a little bewildered because it‘s not just the president‘s responsibility governance it‘s the Congress, too, but yet we have a Republican Congress and a Republican President that‘s accumulated more debt than almost anybody in the last five years in the history of our country and built a bigger government and this is coming from a conservative Republican Party.

LAMB: Yes, but Nebraska if I – since ‘72 they‘ve voted for a Republican president almost two to one out there. Do they – people that live in Nebraska consider themselves conservative?

HAGEL: I think so. But Nebraska, you‘ve got to remember, is part of that populace belt. The first populace presidential convention was held in Omaha in 1896. And that populism that spread down from North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska into Kansas, that‘s still woven into the fabric of Nebraskans. And that‘s important I think because it allows Nebraskans to challenge and to probe and to question.

We‘re unique in Nebraska in that we have a unicameral, a one-house legislature and it‘s nonpartisan. So the 49 state senators don‘t run as Democrats or Republicans. They just run as …

LAMB: Do the people know …

HAGEL: … who they are.

LAMB: … who they are, do they know what side they‘re on?

HAGEL: Well, sure they‘re registered as a Republican or a Democrat but they don‘t campaign on that. They don‘t campaign or form or govern with any party structure. The chairman of the committees are elected by the committee members, it doesn‘t make any difference if you‘re Democrat or Republican.

So there is a tradition for that and you look at Nebraska‘s history that you mentioned two to one going strongly for the republican presidential candidate, when I was elected to the Senate in ‘96 I was the first Republican elected to the Senate in 24 years. The Democrats had dominated the governor‘s races, lieutenant governor‘s races, the Senate races for many, many years out there. And so it‘s an interesting phenomenon.

But Nebraskans are pretty independent minded. Yes, they‘re conservative. Yes, they‘re philosophically conservative when it comes to governance. But they will probe deeply and I think that gives them a great dimension.

LAMB: Reason I asked you about the conservative label and all that is it seems that – you know, I listen to the callers all the time – that people are – who support George Bush are wondering are they conservative or are they George Bush supporters. And it leads to what the thinking will be in 2008. Will you be able to run totally as an independent?

I mean we were told when President Bush was campaigning that Republicans and conservatives didn‘t believe in nation building, that they believe in balanced budgets and all that. I mean can you just throw this stuff out the window and nobody cares in the country?

HAGEL: No, I don‘t think you can do that, Brian but I think events dictate an awful lot of this. I‘ve always believed political parties, leaders must be anchored with some philosophy about governance. They must be anchored with a set of standards and values.

LAMB: What‘s your first value then?

HAGEL: Trust, honesty, I think everything has to emanate from that. That is the only currency that you have as an elected official, it‘s the only currency in life.

LAMB: But as you know, if you ran for president somebody‘s going to ask you will you raise taxes. How do you deal with that?

HAGEL: Sure, well, you deal with that like you do all the issues. You – some will deal with it differently but …

LAMB: I mean will you sign that pledge and …

HAGEL: No, I wouldn‘t sign a pledge. I can‘t sign a pledge like that. That‘s the whole point of governance. I don‘t believe in those kinds of things. You – for example, you take issues – a fiscal policy issue is one thing and taxes reside in that universe.

You take another set of issues like abortion, pro-life, pro-choice – I don‘t think you can negotiate those things away. And I don‘t put that group of issues in the same group of issues that I do fiscal policy or monetary policy or foreign policy because those are policy issues that shift. They must adapt, they must calibrate depending on issues. You have a philosophy about those, sure, I‘m a low tax, low spend, conservative Republican. My nine years in the Senate indicates that and very clearly demonstrates that. I mean I don‘t say one thing and vote another way. Everything I say is backed up with my voting record.

On the social issues, which is another part of me, most of us don‘t equivocate on that. That‘s just what I believe and that‘s where I am. And so if you want me to sign a pledge on that that‘s fine, too. But to say you‘re going to sign pledges on policy issues or monetary issues, fiscal issues, when you don‘t know what the world looks like in 2010, you don‘t know how much trouble this country‘s going to be in or where we‘re going to be – I think is irresponsible. That‘s why we elect people to govern, it‘s judgment, it‘s tough decision, making the hard choices. We‘ve not done much of that in the last five years.

LAMB: Was the prescription drug bill nothing but a campaign gimmick?

HAGEL: Well, I wouldn‘t say that because that would impugn the motives of some of my colleagues who felt strongly about it. But I …

LAMB: And you voted against it?

HAGEL: I voted against it, strongly voted. There were only two Republicans that voted against the motion to proceed. And there were some other Republicans that voted against the bill but then it didn‘t really count because it was a straight majority vote and you had 51. John McCain and I were the only two and that‘s kind of interesting I suspect because McCain and I are often referred to as moderate Republicans when we were the only two Republicans that voted to stop that bill because we thought it was irresponsible.

And I think there was a campaign dynamic to that and I – there‘s no question in my mind that there was a political dynamic to that. Some of my colleagues felt strongly about it. So I would be careful how I would say it and I don‘t ever broad brush, broad stroke my colleagues or impugn others‘ votes. Every Senator and Congressman votes the way he or she thinks they have to.

LAMB: Is there anything conservative about that prescription drug bill?

HAGEL: Not that I‘m aware of. First of all, the way it was done was done dishonestly. I think you‘re aware of that, most of the people I suspect watching this – that we had a budget resolution in place that said we would not pass anything that went over $400 billion over a 10-year period. That was a budget resolution in place that we passed.

And so strangely enough the administration came back with the numbers that fit perfectly within that 400 billion. A month after that you probably recall that the members of Health and Human Services Department came forward and said that they were told not to give the Congress the honest, real answers and real numbers because that number was now somewhere in the $600 billion cost range. Now it‘s about 850 billion and it‘s probably going to be over a trillion the real costs of that over 10 years. So it was very dishonest the way that was handled.

LAMB: So handicap the chances of Chuck Hagel being a presidential candidate?

HAGEL: I don‘t handicap anything, Brian.

LAMB: And you‘ll not make the decision until after the 2006 election?

HAGEL: I will not make a decision on my political future until after the 2006 election.

LAMB: And if you run for president will you run for Senate again or can you?

HAGEL: We do not have a law like that in Nebraska, even if we did I wouldn‘t do that, that‘s not my style. I don‘t think that‘s a fair way to do it. Others do what they want to do but I do things my way. Once I can make a commitment if I decide not to seek re-election to run for my party‘s nomination for president that‘s what I‘ll do. If I decide to run for a third term that‘s what I‘ll do. If I decide to get out after 12 years in the Senate that‘s what I‘ll do.

LAMB: What‘s the best thing about being a Senator?

HAGEL: An opportunity to participate in this great system to enhance Americans and make a better world.

LAMB: Senator Hagel, thank you for joining us.

HAGEL: Brian, thank you.