movies out of their stories@@ú@ú a book but i would like to talk to him and maybe we could do and article and one-sided the magazine article and wanted to write a book for sure. >> interviewing and getting the

story so vastly different writing the book before your other book most journalists are relatively short for writers especially, jeff, in your case covering the trial as i have done in many of our colleagues have done, it is short form, fast form there isn't a lot of time to be thinking about this. talk about the difference in how daunting was it when you had to sit down and start writing this book? >> it was very daunting, except the right. the newspaper experience with this trial there was so much going on and so many different characters it felt like at the end of the day it was an exercise deciding which 80 or 90 interesting nuggets to leave out. [laughter] the book i could sit down and do whatever i wanted and go through it. but yeah it felt like i had a room full of material and all i was trying to do is make these stacks of paper into something that looks like this.

so it was a different experience going from the reporting into book writing. i guess just to do whatever i wanted and communicates something i had experienced. >> but narrative nonfiction writing i think is an underrated craft. i think it is a very difficult craft and both of these books in similar ways read like a very fine novels. the characters in here and the dozens of characters in their our people i daresay dickens couldn't -- joe we've the clown bomb vara, that might be a little bit to verify for the c-span book thing. [laughter] but that is one thing, jeff and jason, you must have said my god, am i lucky to have found these people. >> for me especially i was sent there by the paper. [laughter]

it was -- wife felt as a writer there was so much good material, number one just don't screw it up basically. it is a curveball, it's going to go. but the biggest challenge for me is i was taking the best of the trial try again to stretch it out and use it as material that would be in more of an narrative form especially the testimony of the main player in the case is a guy named nick calabresi who is the first member of the mob to testify against the organization and he testified several days in chicago and poured out tons and tons of interesting information and wonderful stories and anecdote after anecdote so the biggest challenge for me was to keep the chronology of the case but not have the reader gets to make calabresi in chapter nine and tens of the early part of the book i am pulling a lot of the material for work to create

a flow. >> jason, for you in my history in chicago instead of looking for books to write i always roundup to give myself in the head when eric since copies i love karen of sin in the second city and i think to myself with this book it was another kick in the head. why didn't i know this? why didn't i know this story? why didn't i know this story, jason? >> because he was good at what he did, he kept quiet many years. the crimes he was committing. i think he didn't want you to know it so that is why. >> but even after the fact of all of that stuff why isn't this kind of character and he's a very careful wifely tortured human being why isn't he famous in chicago? do any of you notice, can you tell me any counterfeiting story about chicago?

>> he's famous in bridgeport. >> and they don't talk to each other. >> yeah, you keep your mouth shut. >> in doing this to do believe him immediately? there is a con man who anybody would seemingly get into the counterfeiting game is not only a high class criminal but there is the common element, you know what i mean, they must drifting to personal life. >> he's a very charming guy, a great storyteller and i definitely had my defenses up when i first met him and threw a very gradual process of interviews and meeting his friends and learning it was all true and there were things i didn't write in the book because they were too crazy no one would believe them. but i think i had to meet his friends and his family come and talk to some law enforcement

people and at that light i really started being incredibly gratified by the fact that i was writing about this guy and from the story. >> one of the elements that ties these together is the notion corrupt as it sometimes may be is a family. jeff, why don't you talk about the book has again, shall all of these nice people so they can buy it, family secrets. talk about a rogues' gallery of modern characters on the front of the book. >> sort of a disturbed mob. >> none of them look very happy, that's a mother telling thing about this family, but it is -- the reason it is called family secrets ase -- >> there's a rift in the calabresi family, which is they were part of the 26 street crew here in chicago suitcase gets started when there's a hit man named frank calabresi sr. who killed 13 people for the outfit

and he has a terrible relationship with his sons and brothers and a sort of tolerate each other for a long time, but the sun at one point had enough with this experience with his dad and feels like it is damaging his marriage and he writes the fbi out of the blue after the bureau made a case against these guys in their nineties and offers to the tape his father in prison so they began the taping process and i go through how the case is built in the early part of the book and at the same time they have physical evidence from one of the murders they cost frank sr. talking about with his son and through advanced dna testing they go back and are able to get a profile for nei calabresi, the main flipper in the case and they go back to him and because of his relationship with his brother he decides he's not going down for the whole show basically and becomes the witness of a lifetime for the feds in chicago.

>> when you serve a lifetime you mean something quite specific don't you? i'm dead serious, that this was the first -- >> absolute become the first to testify against the organization but the trial was interesting because rarely do you get to hear from a member of the mob. it's always the code of silence but in addition to him testifying to other guice testified in their own defense we had a trial where three members were on the stand and that was joe meek the clown testify for himself and frank sr. tried to talk him out of his. >> when you think of the history, the colorful history of this organization, chicago is just beyond stunning. jason, you appreciate this. doesn't that amaze you on some level? >> absolutely. when i was medellin the writing of this book when the family secrets case broke and laufman, i would love to write about that one, too, because you can't make that stop. it's incredible. >> we have we overlaps. >> we were talking earlier.

>> they didn't plan this apparently, but the secret service in chicago was bent out of shape over mr. williams beat rolling stone and tipped me at the federal building to his sentencing in his last case so i covered the sentencing in chicago and it would have been 07. >> but you guys were in the same courtroom. >> i wasn't here but he wrote a letter to the judge. >> talk because this character is little known compared with someone like jolie the clown in chicago and mob figures. talk about his life before the people by the book to read about it gives them the rough outlines because this, too, has to do with family. there's a real psychological thing. >> that was more fascinating to me than counterfeiting aspect. the counterfeiting aspect and

drew me in because it is a crime people don't know a lot about but it was his family situation that compelled me to pursue the narrative more than anything else. art williams grew up the sum of a paperhanger and actually did a little work for the outfit, too here and their stealing cars. >> haven't we all. who in chicago isn't touched by this? [laughter] and his dad was in and out of prison when he was a kid. he was a brilliant kid comedy skit to grades and education and schooling was sort of how he what preserve his own sense of self in the chaotic upbringing that he had been traveling around the country as his dad scam people, and his dad left the family when he was about 12 and this was about the time the mother was diagnosed bipolar

schizophrenic so they wound up in the housing project at the bridgeport homes in bridgeport and very quickly he sort of dissented in to the crime. first to support his family come stealing parking meters he invented a key he could open the parking meters and all that, the geniuses of the little kid turned him into the criminal direction that the results were of course devastating. and eventually, the most compelling thing about art is he decided he wanted to find his father years later and it's that pursuit that leads him down. that pursued for probation fascinated me and there is a father saw an element to the story. i wanted to explore that more. i think that was the most sympathetic thing about art was his desire for the connection with his dad. >> even though it was his

stepfather that taught him the art of -- that is one of the stunning things about this book and i know you think so, too, jeff. one day generally you're father or stepfather will come in and help you read a book. instead it's like how would you like to make a copy of this 100-dollar bill. >> he wasn't a stepfather, it was his mother's boyfriend to be cleared and he salles or was stealing cars and selling the chop shops and he was also in a gang and he pretty much had to be in a drawing gang if you grew up in these homes so his mother's boyfriend and he was a smart kid and he was eckert himself, a counterfeiter. counterfeiting is something where you always learn from somebody when you first do it. it's hard to pick it up on your own. it's printing -- >> that would be so interesting because it literally wasn't about the money, he was a craftsman and artist and the process and can i beat that more

than he was carrying about -- >> having grown up in an impoverished background i think once he had a tool to make money, the skills, once he was able to do it and he knew he could do it well the desire to get rich was never there. it was the desire to have enough money to survive and have fallen. >> in a relatively lavish way. [laughter] no fool if you got that skill, linscott skill. this neighborhood has played a small but crucial role in your book. >> we were talking earlier. this spot is the most appropriate place on the planet for me to talk about this book. because art got his first paper when he first broke off from the printing house on printer's row and he worked in their posing as i think a sunday school teacher that time saying he needed some

paper. no, he was a think a high school student that time, he needed paper for a project that was going to go all over the jim and he asked for something called a joint role of newsprint that presses use and rather than letting it run off they will take off early so they can control the process and one of those can weigh hundreds of pounds so he, april out of these printers right here on dearborn street and of course, you know, the printing industry of chicago, the largest in the world in the 200-mile radius, all of his equipment came from here and -- >> it was a completely store-bought operation though, right? anybody can buy all fees' tools? >> sure, especially in chicago there's a lot of press is out there on fortunately especially now. >> many of the people in your book, jeff, family secrets, arnold this artistic or@@úep0ñ,ñ sits down

and freezes and such an introspective quiet by we took to the time he had more of the personality of a watchmaker or something but then as he describes murder after murder he can see that part of who he paused went into the planning he

was so meticulous about falling people and knowing where they were going to go and where they were, you know, going to grab this person and get away and they would plan months sometimes. >> being in a courtroom and seeing and in the trials are nothing like they are on, you know, law and order, they are long occasionally very tedious. being in a courtroom with those people who did serious evil, is there any palpable sense of the evil? you know what i mean? you think to yourself their must be something about this person if he has killed 13 people -- >> there was a little bit of curiosity about that where you would it just kind of look at the guy like jolie the clown and know all of his history and the things he's been involved in you kind of looked at him and watched to see how he talked to

the lawyer, what is he looking at and i was spending so much time taking notes and paying attention to who was looking at which other person in the court just because of all of their relationships that i was sort of struck by that at times just trying to get a sense what are they thinking about this because especially the guys that testified were going to make public statements this wasn't true, that you know, frank sr. tried to play himself off as almost a community banker first as a loan shark. he would help the guys in the neighborhood that couldn't get a loan and he would push somebody around the was late on their payments so when he is hearing the other story how he put a rope around somebody's neck what is he thinking? is he trying to make his face still and not overreact? is he trying to control his emotions? you couldn't see much in his eyes. >> and jason, too, you are dealing with someone who is a criminal.

>> a charming, but a criminal nonetheless. do you -- >> i spent a lifetime with art and so much time i didn't really see the criminal right away, i just saw the man that art -- i had to interview him in depth to get all the criminal stories out of him and i think in his case buy always joke well it's not really a joke but i would tell art he wasn't a criminal, he went down a criminal path and if he wants to get back on the right path he needs to remember the 12-year-old boy he was who was this ingenious little gem before his dad left and everything went to hell with his family because i really started to see that a lot and empathize with him and the criminal in this case art isn't out there killing people and exercising violence on them you know, he's out there passing money at the

mall and selling things. >> you think of the great imposter who did this stuff. >> frank, jr. islamic being a counterfeiter seems like the playful end of the spectrum, but i still -- when you break laws there is something -- >> dad. >> you know that you're doing it. did you have an element of not trusting him and he will give you parts of the story? you must have had to check stuff out. >> almost everything i would check out and the funny thing about it was or what tell me a story and i would call in one of his friends to check it out and yet that happened but didn't he also tell you about x and x would turn out to be crazier than anything are to have ever told me. art was actually holding himself back. it took him a while to trust me and i was constantly peeling

layers of his kirsanow will be off and i would always be surprised by what i found next. >> why did he do that? what is in it for him? >> i was talking with someone about this yesterday, i think he wanted to quit by confiding in the journalist story -- >> stop me before i kill again -- >> it's criminal societal to talk to a journalist and that proved true in his case because he went back to counterfeiting after i did the rolling stone article and we, that article blew his profile up so much. >> they were not pleased with the guy. the call i got was screw this guy at rolling stone, d want to watch the sentencing? this is the room to go to. >> what did they want you to do, jeff? >> they wanted to show that they had read aloud the, quote, king of counterfeiting. they were interested in seeing in the papers he had stopped again to sort of rub their noses

in it. >> it's interesting you talk to him 12-years-old being maybe not confronted with the path that drawn down one path and he might have gone down another. jeff, in the case of many of the characters in your book, do you think there was in each place for some of these people when, let's say they were 12? the book is family secrets but it's also kind of a family business, too, you know? >> i think for the calabrese family there probably was to place. that wasn't a crime family. their father was not somebody who came up in the organization and especially for nick he didn't really get in on till he was middle-aged basically and he started trying to make a little extra work with his brothers loan shark business and kind of gets drawn in. it was a slow sinking to the types of crime he winds up doing where he is first driving around

collecting money running sports books, that type of thing and graduates into helping with one murder and at that point there's nowhere for him to go and understand he communicated many times just the level how trapped he felt and a lot of the murders he did he knew even to say no to the order would have meant his own death so he felt like he was completely not in control of his own life. >> what is the state of counterfeiting if you know and you must be able to make a good guess. my theory is these craftsmen much like newspapermen are dying out and they are now teaching the way they used to and the art is fading away and the bills are becoming technologically difficult to malkoff. it is a vanishing art. >> absolutely it is a daunting art and this is one of the reasons i wanted to do the book is to capture at this moment

where he learned from a master when he was 16 and that guy also learned from his uncle and who knows how far it goes back. these days counterfeiting is on the rise right now mainly due to the economy and the quality of the notes counterfeiters are putting out is horrible. >> like xerox. >> they spend a lot of time chasing teenagers, the most elite agents in america. is your son home? >> there's technology on that end, too, but lead to that crazy -- >> i remember when to the secret service to sort of learn more about it and seeing some of the bad ones, just numbers of center and they had a couple examples they would laugh where the president's face is on both sides. >> or your he rose or something.

so, these crony things, but it is going to fade out where there is like art, the master at what he does. >> i think if the knowledge isn't passed on there's certainly the chance we won't see any more. there's always calling to be someone that is going to want to do this and it might be decades between counterfeiters but this is a old tradition in the united states. you know, ever since as long as we have had currency and claims there of been counterfeiters. i know at one point after the civil war some people say as much as one-third or half the currency was counterfeit so this is a theme and they did in history and will always come back. the next version will contain these little things called micro lenses where it will be an image or denomination that it will look like it is floating above the bill, this paper thin bill like a hologram almost and when i heard that i said that's the

end of counterfeiting and i asked our to williams and i said what do you think? that's crazier than anything you did when he had the water marchand security strip and he said there's always a way. [laughter] >> like start licking his lips. jeff, your book, family secrets, and hold it up again i want these people to see it, and you too, art -- some people speculated this is the last sort of last call of chicago mob. i've seen it for so long and i know the history that i cannot believe i see these my god we are going to have video poker games new did mobster's coming out of the ground. [laughter] talk about that. >> i don't see that eckert -- it's never going to fade completely away, no way. it is too ingrained. too much of the way this city works and operates is about stuff that goes on behind the scenes they are too ingrained.

but i think there are sort of pauses and this is probably one now in the wake of this case where i think too important things happened. number one, the case was built the way they used the conspiracy statutes where they charged the outfit as an organization and then plug these acts before they would say this murder was committed and sort of do a straight away when you build a conspiracy case like this you prove the organization exists and then you can plug any act and called it a furtherance of the conspiracy pity and i think it's easier to get major convictions that way. it's easier to get much higher sentences that way and then the other thing we saw here this was a breach to have a made guy turn on the organization like this, so nobody wants to wise up and be the public face. i think chicago is known for part of what makes it unique is

the mog operates under juan boss, always somebody everybody knows as the guy. nobody wants to be the guy right now in full week of this so they kind of retreated into the core businesses, sports books and things and are trying to lay low but are never going. >> before we open for a question i'm assuming we have many questions here. what is it about and i will give you the press in the early part of the center helped romanticize the mob, we gave them nicknames and there were funny characters and you will still meet people on the street that will say my al capone opened soup kitchens across the city my grandfather would be dead if it will send for el cajon. we don't romanticize so much anymore but there is something inherently romantic about

mediates the cowboy culture, maybe it's these people are doing things everybody aboard to. both of you talk -- i'm out now but does it not fascinate -- i mean, you are here. >> it's part of the chicago culture and everybody accepts that is part of plug makes the city work. i think we are obviously a city of neighborhoods and a lot of these guys and the decades past were the big shots of the neighborhood and got a lot of respect and everybody knew who they were and they were looked up to in that with the vagueness >> of the americans are fascinated by crime in general. i think it's almost, you know, kind of a shakespearean release we're within all of us most of us are law abiding citizens but there is something of underdog worship that goes on in america in the case of a lot of

criminals where the guy is getting away from it and bucking the system i think it satisfies the urge for all sophos, the fantasy urge almost and why also are we so fascinated by this. >> and also tell me if i'm wrong about this, certainly the proverbial outfit as we know and the guy like art in this book operate on it maybe a skewed and screwed up moral code, you screw up, you buy, as opposed to the random killing we see when street gangs are having fights. that's chaos and am i wrong about that that we can easily understand the hierarchy because it looks like the trivium company you do this and isn't called -- there is a structure to it and everybody coming on criminals can kind of identified don't you think? >> we talked about that before in