>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." al: good evening, i am al hunt of bloomberg view. charlie rose is on assignment. we begin tonight with the first presidential democratic debate. stageandidates took the at the wynn hotel in las vegas last night but all eyes were on the two front runners. hillary clinton and bernie sanders traded jabs on wall street reform. sec. clinton: my plan would have the potential of sending the executives to jail. no one went to jail after $100 billion in fines were paid.

and would give regulators the authority to go after them. view,anders: in my comverse technology wall street, wall street regulates congress and we have got to break off the cycle. al: clinton went on the offensive on gun control. >> is bernie sanders tough enough on guns? sen. sanders: -- all.clinton: no, not at it has gone on too long. it is time the entire country stood up to the nra. the majority of our country supports that and even the majority of gun owners do. senator sanders, did vote five times against the brady bill. more than 2 passed, million prohibited purchases have been prevented. for thelso vote

immunity provision. i voted against it. i was in the sanders at the same time. it was pretty straightforward to me. al: sanders try to bail her out on the e-mail controversy. sen. sanders: let me say something that may not be great politics. but i think the secretary is right. and that is that the american people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails. sec. clinton: need to. al: the three other candidates challenged clinton but largely struggled to share the spotlight. joining me now is maggie haberman. she has covered hillary clinton extensively and she works for the new york times and is a political analyst for cnn. and roger altman is the founder and executive chairman of evercore. he was deputy secretary of treasury under bill clinton and is now acer order of hillary clinton. over at the brooklyn

headquarters of hillary clinton are they popping champagne corks? happy: they were very with her performance. she had a very strong night by all accounts. the expectations were low which helped her but the reality is that she is a good debater. she did the five of these in your weight against candidates did t five ofe .hese in 2008 she was loose, she looked like she was having fun. is not something you usually associate with hillary clinton. maggie: that is correct. you have not seen her do that much during this campaign. his has been a joy list -- joyless campaign for all involved. she was comfortable going on the

offense against bernie sanders. she was doing it carefully. she was watching her tone. she was not sounding nasty. al: she avoided her smugness. sometimes look like she is talking down to a person when she disagrees with them and that was a risk but she knew what punches that she wanted to get in and she had early openings. on guns. she was able to defend herself well on the iraq war which bernie sanders did not address with her. she used president obama as a shield at that point and it -- and she had a good night. al: she had bernie from the left on guns and from the right on capitalism. she was on the offensive. al: the whole -- roger: the setup allowed her to do that. we can debate this and people will have different views but i thought she was feeling one that looked presidential.

standard look to find at a certain level that he did not -- sanders looked fine at a certain level. al: one of the titans of wall street, as one of those, was to declarenton able herself as a born-again populist on wall street? unpacki would have to some of the positions she has taken which have been different than what she has taken in the past. tpp is different from wall street's performance. politically or otherwise. i think the proposals she have made -- she has made on wall street reform are good. fee?he risk fee was a good

idea. fundamentally, that is about making it more costly for the largest institutions to maintain themselves in this gigantic form and the inherent risks that those forms represent. this is a way of saying it will be costly if you do not shrink. that is the right thing and that is what the regulators tend to seek. on taxes, everyone has a point of view about this. i think the highest earners need to pay more in taxes. al: let's talk about glass-steagall. i sure there were people all over america wondering who this steagall was. it may seem arcane but that is a defining difference between these two coup. .- between these two

because that issue -- al: let's describe it. roger: it was a piece of required thatich that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment banking. in 1999.s repealed maggie: under bill clinton. today, and you see , was what08 glass-steagall 80 years ago prohibited. much of the thrust of 2008, including dodd-frank and other aspects of the much tighter push towards

closer supervision and control, much of the thrust of that has been towards requiring the banks to wind down, maybe that is too strong, but to progressively limit a lot of the activities that were at the heart of your weight. for example, proprietary trading. you are going turn rose army. going to charlie rose on me. i thought one exception was on the tpp. it really seemed disingenuous. she called it the gold standard when she was secretary of state and everyone knew what the basic contours of it. labor is against it and bernie sanders challenged her from the left. she was not convincing.

maggie: i wanted to add one point on glass-steagall. where she had to debate this in 2000 in the senate race. she has dealt with this before. there have been efforts by bernie sanders by martin o'malley in particular to reinstatinging for it. she has refused because she genuinely does not believe it should be reinstated. it is an issue where she would be accused of political expedient the if she switched -- expediency if she switched. i think that is tricky. her policy positions on that issue were not problematic last night. as much as her language. on tpp, that is a much trickier needle to thread. while she was secretary of state, she wants refer to it as the gold standard for trade

deals. she does have a history of not supporting trade deals in her career. that is true and her advisers will point to that. this began under her and she carried it throughout and she took a long time to say that she was against it. she basically gave the criteria for why she would be against it back in april that involved the absence of a currency minute relation focus. it was clear from the get-go that was not in there. she could have said a while ago that she was not in favor of it. currencyht ask roger, stuff -- those issues are not in trade deals so that is phony. push: although there was a as maggie said sometime ago led by chuck schumer to get that in. she was not the only one. a great dealalked about the pivot to asia but it is hard to pivot to asia if you are against the tpp. roger: last night, i thought she

said the only thing she could say which is when the facts change, i change my view which is a pretty good line that what else can you say. a winning going to be moment no matter how she handled it. i think she said all she could. she did not -- al: she did not have an opponent to seize on that. maggie: i was frankly surprised that bernie sanders did not seize on it. i thought he would as an example of her switching positions. i thought he was going to hit her harder. it was mostly the moderator, anderson cooper who raised it as an issue. i do think this is an area where she has left her cell phone or ball to the extent that she waited so long -- she left extent vulnerable to the that she waited so long. concern of the unions is

driving this in part in terms of her move to come against it. she waited until it was officially ideal and the two days later, she said she was not in favor of it. it was not convincing to a lot of people that she would be so familiar with it and then said no. she gets the criticism for flip-flopping and not the benefit. very few people, even republicans told me today that she did great. i don't think it is true that bernie did poorly. i think he kept his base. he raised $1.3 million in four hours. he may not have grown his base. he may not have looked presidential, like roger said, but i do not think he hurt himself in iowa and new hampshire. maggie: i agree. what he did not look with wild eyed or scary in the way that you have heard a lot of people who support hillary clinton suggest he may be. i think people forget that the democratic party base,

especially in presidential liberal.s very his positions are going to be appealing in places like iowa. i don't think this will hurt him. there is no question she did well. he did not do badly. he remained true to himself which is very important. on guns he was clearly struggling. he talked about being from a rural state and that is not a great answer but at the end of the day, his supporters are still going to be with him. i think that would be dangerous for hillary clinton supporters would be to expect that the overall horserace numbers that they have been worried about are going to change. which havele ratings been low lately are going to go up. al: the odds are overwhelming she will be the democratic nominee. we will talk about joe biden in a moment. i would think her greatest fear

right now is that bernie wins iowa and new hampshire which is not beyond the realm of the possibility. roger: i am not smart enough to know if that scenario could manifest itself or not. if i were on the political side of her campaign, and i am not, i would think that she is still reasonably well positioned in iowa. nevertheless, it would take an earthquake for sanders to be the nominee. the best i can tell, it he does not have any serious inanization or big following nevada and south carolina which are the two next states. she is a more national candidate than he is. maybe that scenario happens but i still think she will be the nominee. everyone woke up this morning knowing that. al: and then the walk-on trio. o'malley, jim webb, and lincoln chafee. o'malley think

performed fine. he did not have any breakout moments. he seemed uncertain on how aggressive he wanted to pursue hillary clinton. he showed some hesitance. lincoln chafee was most memorable for saying -- cut me some slack because of how i voted in 1999. my father had passed away. , other than complaining about not having enough time, was most memorable for a moment when he was asked about the enemies he is the proudest up and he was talking about a moment when he was a soldier which was a serious moment if you read about it in his career and it involved saving other soldiers. what he said was that the enemy soldier who threw a grenade at me is not around to speak anymore and he flashed a grin and it was uncomfortable. al: was there anything on national security, we were a on that last night, and he thought

was a defining moment? roger: no. that is her strong suit. by a lot of democratic standards, secretary clinton is .elatively hawkish a lot of people who follow these things know that. she is also hugely experienced. that is her strong suit. generally speaking, there are a couple of exceptions, potentially libya which did not come up, but that is her strong suit. al: i did think to myself, that i always miss tim russert and he would not let her get away with the libya misadventure, not benghazi, but the misadventure with with her signature issue and it has gone south. or the reset with russia. simply saying that vladimir putin was in charge but she was not challenged by her opponents last night. she really was light on

the entire thing. she gave a quick answer. thanley had a tissue response on foreign policy and bernie sanders was his most at sea on these issues. no one wanted to challenge her because they did not want the spotlight turned on her. al: inuoye, the benghazi hearings and opportunity? maggie: they are very excited about this. they were excited before kevin mccarthy tethered her, declining -- tethered her declining poll numbers to this activity. when he dropped out of the speaker's race, that was another gift. and then you have the revelations about the work of the committee. a man that worked on it said it was a political mission does -- aimed at destroying her. i think that is how a lot of her supporters view with. they see her previous congressional testimony when she was about to lead the state department as a really strong defining moment for her. they believe this will be a chance for her to address her

critics face-to-face. most of them and expect that house republicans will cross the line or go overboard or be too aggressive. i am not certain that will happen but i think that if they do not, she will probably win either way. al: assuming the fbi does not come up with anything, if that is the case, do you think that and they ends benghazi e-mail server controversy that has so dominated the last six months? roger: i don't know how to judge that. if i had to bet, i would say no because of politics being what it is and the press being what it is. the big opportunity. entirely on the upside for her. either the republicans will overreach and she will look like the only adult or they will be timid and she will look like the strong person. she cannot lose. she is very good at this type of thing. does not come she

across as arrogant. maggie: i don't think she well. roger: it is an opportunity. missinge was one person last night, the vice president of the united states. there has been a lot of conjecture in recent weeks. my guess, is that he is not affected by last night's debate. there are other factors. i think most of which they militate against him running. i think that if joe biden is looking rationally at what the path is for him, i think he comes up with the answer that there is not much of him. that was true before the debate night, hillary clinton gave democrats who were feeling iffy about her something to grab onto. and that is where the debate does factor him. i think that joe biden has gone through a terrible personal tragedy and it is hard to predict where he will come down on this because it seems that he

feels about it differently depending on the day and who he is speaking to. i would assume he does not run only because the hour is getting late. the money that is needed is a lot and his cap was always going to be if she implodes in some way. he could still get in later. maggie: there is no reason for him to do this right now. al: no clamor from the donor base for a new entry. roger: not nearly enough. i really have a great deal of respect for the vice president. didn't think -- i he was going to run before last night and i don't think he will run now. it is a good thing in my view for the biden legacy that he not. onelet me put out questioning note. did debates matter that much?

clinton didhillary great in 2008 someone else got the nomination. elites have very if levels of influence and that seeps into the press. i think they do matter. a be not directly but importantly, indirectly. directly, but importantly, indirectly. they feel strongly about hillary clinton today. confident and good and that was about last night's performance. maggie: in 20 away, she had all 2008 she did very well except for one in philadelphia. that was a moment and people were turning in. you had a lot of democratic voters who were inclined to find a reason not to vote for her. you have democrats who are more inclined to want to be with her but they need her to give them a reason and they got that last night. al: whatever we think about

those other four candidates, there was no barack obama on that stage last night. thank you to both of you for enlightening us on all of this. we will be back in just a moment. ♪

niall ferguson is here, he is a professor of history at harvard. his latest book is " kissinger:

it has been 10 years in the making. james baker calls it a masterpiece. i employ to have him back at this table. welcome. a masterpiece, secretary baker said. niall: i will take that. charlie: how did this come about -- how did this come about? brit?e -- this i think i was the second or third on the list of people he approached. i told the story in the preface in the spirit of full of -- full disclosure. we were talking history at a party. we got on. we were talking about world war i. after a kind of courtship, he suggested that i write his biography. charlie: he was courting you.

niall: it was his idea. and i said no. i hesitated. but eventually, i could not resist it. what happened is after i had said no i cannot do this, he wrote one of those henry kissinger letters. i declined. after much agonizing. he wrote and said -- what a great pity because i had just made up my mind that you were the ideal person to do this. moreover, i just found 150 boxes of my private papers that i had thought i had mislaid. and like a fish seeing a large fly and i bit and went and looked at the papers that were at his house in connecticut and within a matter of hours of reading through those early letters, his vietnam diary, fragments of documents, i knew i had to do it. volumes.it is two have you finished the entire two volumes? niall: no. i am half way.

i am literally through half of his life. 46 years. another 46 to go. it means that there is this tantalizing break at the end. the story in volume one and just as he comes into his new office in the white house to be richard nixon's national security advisor. this is a book about a refugee, a soldier, a book about an academic. an amateur political adviser. it is not the book about the statesman that i still have to write. charlie: interesting because he asked me to do an interview with about hisocation here experience in the war. and about the holocaust and his father and his family. he had not talked about it. it was surprising to me. niall: that was surprising. writing ite midst of them. it is a story that has never been thoroughly told on the basis of documents which i was

able to piece together from all over the world. it is an extraordinary story. not extraordinary in the sense that there were many jewish families that fled germany in the 1930's and came to the united states. it is extraordinary because of the way it influenced 10 and shaped him and i do not think that you can understand kissinger until you have read those parts of the book that have dealt with his early life, his exile and his trip to the united states. his conscription and returned to the united states after six years in a u.s. uniform. remarkable sequence of events. he is present at the liberation of a concentration camp. after the war ends, he discovered that all of his relatives that remained in germany have been killed including his grandmother and to hiselects to stay on parents and amazement and is not returned to the united states until the summer of 1947. serving first in counterintelligence and then in

the military school. because, and he writes this in letters to his parents, because when i looked around the table where my the spaces fallen comrades had been, i felt we had to stay on and make sure that their sacrifice had not been in vain. and that is the henry kissinger that i don't think many of your viewers will have ever encountered. charlie: what did the experience due to him? how did that shape who he is today? niall: two things. like anyone in world war ii, he's all conflict on a scale that today we struggle to imagine. it is an enormously difficult to anyone for my generation imagine what it was like to be in one's early 20's in the battlefield that was europe. he saw war on a massive and shocking scale. the second thing that i think

was crucial was that he lost his religious faith during the war. that led to a very painful series of exchanges with his parents. in which he tried to explain to them why he could never come back to the orthodox judaism that he had been brought up in. his brother had a similar experience. he served in the pacific theater. these events, the holocaust and even more the war it self shaped him. and he returned to the united states in 1947 to study at harvard under the g.i. bill, he made it clear to his parent and another one of these amazing letters that i am fundamentally changed. this has changed me and made me different and i see the world differently now. charlie: how? niall: there is one extraordinary letter. do you everything is black and white but i see things different shades of gray. he had gone to work after the end of the hostilities as a nazi

hunter in counterintelligence interrogating or trying to find the most egregious nazis under azification program. this was an important part of his life. confronting all of the shades of gray. he was back studying at harvard, this was a great preoccupation of his. this notion that there are impossibly difficult decisions that one sometimes has to make in life between evils. where there is no good choice. those are the kinds of decisions the germans had to make under the third reich. charlie: whatever else there is about him, it is one in his dna, a sense of a strong sense role -- a strong central government and a fierce nationalism.

kissinger seems to have, to me, the same sense of the anionstate as being essential element of the structure of civilization. of the order between nationstates is worth a lifetime of participation and study. niall: order is a hugely important concept in his work down to his most recent work, world order. it is there at the outset and his doctrinal dissertation. he defines it -- he is concerned with the kind of relations between states that constitute an international order. how are the states constituted internally -- he sees as a matter of history. history that makes the united states think in terms of freedom and democracy whereas history has made the russian state a very different thing. -- kissinger, because of his training, is someone who

sees these different types of government as products of history therefore he does not have an expectation that some bright future there will be perpetual peace in a world of western-style democracy. i don't think that is ever something he has foreseen. he is accepting of vladimir putin's argument. charlie: especially world war ii. at the same time, he has said they have to decide whether they want to be a revolutionary force or a nationstate. niall: this is an important concept in his writing. an international orders against problem -- biggest problem is a revolutionary state that delegitimize his order. it fundamentally changed the international order and in some ways it was as a profound event at the opening to china in the early 1970's that we associate

with his time in government. that revolutionary state still poses a problem and we can see that in his critical writing at the time of the iran deal and negotiated.being there is a fundamental skepticism that you can bring an international -- a regime like that into the international order. charlie: i expect people that pick up this book will say -- , andnger, niall ferguson historian, and then they see idealists. this might seem like a provocation and i imagine there will be some viewers who are reeling. calling kissinger and idealist. charlie: one biographer said to me, and idealist? niall: i am running up against extreme, some one people think he is a criminal but even in the middle ground, the majority of the people will

say he is the realist. the bismarck of our time with a machiavelli of our time. as i read through his private papers and his correspondence and diaries, to read thoroughly what he is written as an academic, i was struck at how --ference did -- different he was critical of bismarck. bismarck preoccupied him. when you read the unpublished book that he wrote about he only published a part of it as an article, it was really a critique of bismarck's realism. --lize him in the sense of i will do anything, whatever it takes to advance interest. endyoung kissinger, to the of 1968 does not think that way and clashed with those that did. untile: this was 1923 1968. the life of henry kissinger.

government,entered there is a lot to argue that he was an idealist in how he looked at -- niall: he was steeped in kantian philosophy. he was convinced that world war ii had come about because of the realism of the appeasers. they thought they were great realists. is anen thirdly, he idealist because he rejects materialism. leninismmarxism and but all of the doctrines of the 20th century that say it is all about economics. henry kissinger rejects even capitalists materialism. he said it is not about that. and i think his view from the outset is it is not about economics but about values and it is ultimately only winnable

if our values are seen to transcend theirs. charlie: then, does he practice our values in how he sees the world as well as how he acted as a power? this is an educational story. a man who learns by experience as well as by study. a good example of this is the case of south vietnam. in the late 1950's and early 1960's, kissinger like many thought of this in terms of self-determination. south vietnam did not want to be ruled by north vietnam in the united states should go in to bat for it as a free society to avoid further dominoes falling to communism in southeast asia. once he starts looking closely at the problem, especially when he goes there in 1965 and 1966, he changes his view and comes to realize that whatever the merits of that argument was, it is not possible to rescue south

vietnam, certainly not by military methods. his view on vietnam changed and it changed early, much earlier than people realize. those that think he relished prolonging the war have to reckon with the fact that he had already given -- charlie: the same peace treaty was much earlier. niall: that is a key question that i have to address in volume two. and to be completely frank, i have not made up my mind of about it. i am in the midst of archives trying to figure it out. thelie: let's talk about central relationship, with family. you had gone through a divorce going through the writing of this so it was anguish for you writing this. he went through a divorce. niall: it was a deeply difficult time for him. and it was probably the thing that he found hardest to have me write about.

outi could not leave it because it was clearly absolutely crucial in his life. charlie: how so? his first marriage he entered into reluctantly to please his parents. his first wife was part of the german jewish community. before he returned from europe, he insisted in letters to his parents that he did not want to marry her. he had been dating her before the war. it happens. and i think it happened because he really wanted, in some measure, be reconciled to his appearance. despite his loss of faith. it did not work out. he spoke to me on this subject .ith great feeling after all she was the mother of his two children. the marriage ended painfully and almost on an impulse. he found himself having walked away from everything he had expected on the basis of his

parents experience to have for the rest of his life a stable family, a home with his own special study, he walked away from it all and started his personal life again. that, i certainly could relate to. after all, part of the exercise of writing history is to embed -- empathize. interestingis an point about writing history. frequently people will say -- and actor will say this about playing a character. you have to find some empathy. some. niall: it is impossible i think to write a biography without achieving understanding. onenderstand everything -- is not in that sense the counsel for the defense as sometimes people assume. the exercise of historical writing is an imaginative one. one is trying to re-create path

that and recapture what it is like to be henry kissinger at each stage in this story from 1923 all the way through to this halfway mark in 1968. that i think is a very difficult thing to do if you despise the person you are writing about. historians that have tried to write books about people they don't like sell them pull them off. i have abandoned projects when i did not like the subject matter. one ultimately has to be able to identify and off or empathize enough to re-create that passed thought process. to me, the exciting thing about writing the book was discovering that the thought process was so different from what i had been led to expect. i was going to call it -- american machiavellian. i learned that machiavellian was a real -- irrelevant. ♪

charlie: how would you describe between in the 1960's, his ego? lot abouthought a this because there is a reputation for arrogance. -- occasionally occasionally, and his contemporaries referred to it. i was struck by how much self-deprecating humor there was from early on. not just late in life when he

grew more sophisticated but even when he was in the army. there were was a sort of groucho marx sense to his one-liners. it is a style of humor that is very much from the wartime generation. and you say at a meeting, the illegal we can do immediately, the unconstitutional takes longer. when you take that quote out of context, it sounds terribly shocking and a generation that came of age in 1968 has been getting indignant about that quote for decades. when you look at the original document it comes from, it was obviously a joke. and there are a great many jokes like that. i talk about kissinger's sense of humor at the introduction that can be taken out of context if you do not quite get the style of humor that he is using. are trying to disarm people. here you are, smart, jewish -- very smart. he was one of the most i have everpeople

had to deal with. i can think of very few people who aren't that smart that i have encountered. summers is a lot like that. you know you are in the presence of a formidable intellect. and they can probably beat you at any mental chess game that you may play. it is rare. when you are that smart, you have to devise or in ways to disarm those people around you or they will not let you. charlie: how about insecurities? niall: it is fair to say that kissinger is not a hugely self confident individual even today. there is a thin skin there which i have come to know and understand. if one thinks through the theraphy, the experience of early years, maybe it takes someone who has actually been a which iat age 15,

certainly was not, to understand what it is to be entirely uprooted. what it is to then be thrown in to the u.s. army when you have only just learned english. those types of experiences shaped him and i do sense that there is more insecurity in henry kissinger then there is arrogance. and i think if i had to choose between those two qualities, i would always prefer to be with an insecure subject and an arrogant one. book is about the harvard. where i have spent 10 years of my life. when he was in the army, his mentor said you have to go to when youe ivs -- ivy's go back because you are worth more than a city college. only harvard admitted him. from that moment on, harvard had an enormous impact on him. his academic mentor, a big,

bluff southerner named william elliott steered him in the direction of the philosophy of content -- kant. stanley hoffman. charlie: a great friend of this program. niall: with whom he was great friends in the 1960's. and then they fell out over the war, over cambodia over stanley hoffman's very critical review of kissinger's memoirs. harvard is a big part of the story. the riff-- the risk -- between himself and his former colleagues -- charlie: nancy kissinger. niall: one of the things you cannot find about from the documents is his love life. andss you are very lucky your subject kept diaries. he did not write love letters.

i thought i had figured out a lot of this, particularly about the events of 1967 when he appeared to be involved in an extraordinary effort to try to begin negotiations with the north vietnamese. he spent a lot of time in pairs. failing to establish contact , and i thought this was all an elaborate diplomatic gambit that failed until nancy kissinger asked the question -- what you think he was really doing in paris in 1967? it turned out that she had been the real reason. she had been studying there and i could never have known that if i had not been told it. charlie: did you ask him? she told me in front of him. it was one of those moments very late in the day when i had finished the book, and i had to go back to amend it. it was humbling because it reminded me that no matter how many documents you look through, and i went through tens of

a historian cannot find out everything. charlie: nelson rockefeller was another huge influence. niall: yes. and one reason -- thelie: the connection to new york and washington establishment? first when kissinger encountered rockefeller in the late 1950's he was charmed by what he saw as the aristocratic charm of this man who had inherited power. charlie: a man of power and art who had huge ambitions. niall: grand houses. from a littlees apartment in washington heights. the glamour of rockefeller had its appeal. but kissinger was fascinated by this man who had such ambition to be president. shot for the presidency, italy's for the republican

nomination three times. it occurred to me as i was following this story from one defeat to another at there was something puzzling about it. it henry kissinger had been the ruthless seeker of power that some people portray him as, why did he did with rockefeller through three failures. he was loyal. he saw: no evidence that out nixon but that nixon saw about him? niall: absolutely. publicly he did not want him to be president. nixon unexpected when made the call and offered him the job. so much so, that when he first offered him the job, in the late -- in late 1960, he did it so realize hehe did not was being offered the job. his thought was that nixon might offer rockefeller the department of defense and they spent a lot of time thinking about the role that kissinger might play as an

assistant to defense secretary rockefeller. but nixon had no intention of having rockefeller anywhere near his administration. that is an interesting story. it would not have been something you would have predicted even in the middle of 1968. charlie: i guess he went to rockefeller and said --what should i do? niall: he did. he did that place. he had done it before in 1960 when tenet he had approached him. he had been an advisor to rockefeller in that whole campaign but when kennedy went to the white house having defeated sin, and offered kissinger a job, the first thing that nixon did was to say to course you do. when the president of the united states asks you to do something, you do it. they have the same conversation in 1968. saying: do i hear you that all of those people who

formed an opinion of henry kissinger because of this public life as national security advisor, as secretary of state, --a man who had that who has who has continued to have a public role. not with this president but with george bush 43. do i hear you saying there unanimous judgment about him is wrong? that he is much more idealist than they ever knew? and it was not just an idealism that went away when he had power, but it is still a part of his core? niall: i think that is right. i say thati think -- i think that is right is that i still have the second part of his life to write. charlie: you have done the research. niall: i have done about 60% of

the research and i am still accumulating material. this book took 10 years. and then i my way through it and try to decide. i still have to keep an open mind at this point in order to do the second volume in the same spirit. charlie: fair enough. henryhe second volume b kissinger, 1968 until 2015, the journey from idealism to world leavecs> niall: i will the reader to infer that is a possible subtitle but maybe realist would be a possible subtitle. i would not be surprised if the surprised me again and gave me a completely different story from the one i am expecting. or was expecting to tell. charlie: i am sure that you note that some who read this book point to the fact that it is over 870 pages. niall: not including the

footnotes. charlie: the footnotes take you to 900. niall: it is longer than eight tweet -- a tweet. he is a figure of importance and he is the most controversial secretary of state and national security adviser in the modern era. it merits a thorough, scholarly biography of the sort that one might expect of a president. in postwartimes american history where henry kissinger had near presidential power. i can think of few people -- the period when nixon was dealing with watergate. it seems to me that he is worth this kind of scholarly biography. few men have shaped american foreign-policy as a superpower as much as he has very not only during his time in government. even as an academic, he was

shaping nuclear strategies. that is the argument for the long book and your viewers will have to forgive me if i impose a long, arduous reading session on them. i hope it is relieved by some of his injures witticisms or some reasonable writing on my part. and there is this. he has written well in book after book because he writes well about his own life. niall: every biographer who deals with someone who has written a large memoir is engaged in a curious kind of counterpoint because the memoir the time in- covers government. in volume two i will be inevitably having an argument with henry kissinger and his version of events and juxtaposing that with mine will be part of the fun and the challenge of writing that second volume. charlie: great to see you. volume one of, kissinger from 1923 until 1968, the idealist.

you for joining us. until next time. ♪

♪ >> hit and miss, surges the most in two months as cost cuts take effect, but disappointment for goldman sachs. yum brands jumps after appointing an activist. hugo boss details plans and due to slow down in asia. angie: welcome to "first up with angie lau"