build houses and sold them and lived in very, very small dwellings. a lot of questions have arisen that it did the family no that he was homosexual? the word did not exist for of course, there has been a long scholarship the nine that walt whitman was homosexual with than saying he sublimated that urge to be with other men i discover he had a very active love life while he was a nurse. . . and walt in the period of 18583 teen 60 lived with another man in his mother's house. every night they wind up together to the same bedroom so the idea that they did not know what was going on was

unthinkable. once i saw that, it is the human drama. i can see them, i can see them in the room and i can see the fights that they had and i think it is quite natural to think of something like that. >> let me say well i am in los angeles that i would love to see a film. >> note to anyone here. [laughter] and they are just so many one example i remember we always ask the lynching of a friend of hers in memphis, she tells blacks to leave memphis, a city that conover protect salmon and oklahoma territory as opening up in this time in 92 and blacks began to leave. they begin to leave for oklahoma, 20 percent of the back population moves memphis in this time leaving in the same -- leaving the city without much black labor or help and

bankrupt. a in the newspapers to get coverage of this, everything in the 19th century particularly great with no political correctness. and the white paper is talk about one day 700 blacks are on the docks, there are at memphis did a relieved because many of them cost and market -- cross of the arkansas river. have everything in the wagon with every belong in the have and with them, with their dogs and their families and there are talking amongst themselves. this is all reported a saying this is right, you need to leave. until there is some justice and i'm going to find kanan. they say hundreds of sinusitis, it is just incredible so short it would be great to see, many of you have voice to talk about

history in that way as well. >> whitmore the third time is up but make a quick. >> the hours of the intersection, thinking of this question at the intersection of the scientific knowledge and the novel of the humanities and the liberal arts. c. p. snow was also a student of rutherford's at cambridge and they were friends and there was going to the dinner at the house together of the head of the english department and snow was talking about how brilliant this man was and what he had written and interpreted. rutherford was extremely well read and said, yes i know he is but don't you sometimes wonder or wish that he knew what it would press a button at the front of the house a bell rings in the back. [laughter] >> with that our time is up.

please chime in thanking the panel. [applause] >> for more information on the los angeles times vessel of books and visit l.a. times.com/extras/festival books. >> annelise and martin anderson used formerly classified documents to contended that ronald reagan believed the destruction of nuclear weapons was tantamount in achieving his goal to bring an end to the soviet union the ronald reagan presidential library in simi valley, california hosted this event. it is 25 minutes. >> [applause] >> hello, i was just thinking in has now been about 34 years finally when i first met ronald reagan and we always like it when we first met him and we still like him.

and as has been said, we have known him for quite a long time. in 1988i wrote one book explaining what reagan was like and when he had done and i thought i really knew about it turned up one pepo left for talking about how he was silly and didn't know what he was doing and was monday. all kinds of things that they called him names and the thing they could not understand was how in god's name to the get all that work done, how is he able to do it? and that idea held up with a lot of people for it. who is actually doing his work, who was pulling the strings? is starting about 67 years ago we will begin to understand who is pulling the strings and the first was of reagan's life of

what he is writing and we discover that he couldn't write and from 1975 and 1979 it was 660 essays that he wrote. he did the research and the writing on them and do everything about them. then later on we got curious and started looking at some people and, indeed, he did. we ended up and found 1,000 letters that he had it written everything from people who called in to people of the soviet union and so forth. by the way in the last few years we have been collecting more and now there are close to 10,000 letters. than what has been done recently with every night before he went to bed he used to write in that

letter as to what was happening during the day. and those documents are incredibly important because they really tell you exactly what he was done and so on. so now we have a situation where we've got people realizing he can write into all kinds of things and he likes to write letters and now he writes in his diary. and the one thing that is really fascinating to me was who was pulling his strings with so one of the things that resulted was -- excuse me, i have a bad cold -- but a few years ago i was on the defense policy board and for that reason i had a top-secret clerk and i talked to some of the people around here and it

took me over a year but i finally got clearance to take a look at what was right in doing. and that was very interesting. so far as i know no one else has had access to accept half a dozen about what is in this. and the millions and millions of patients and one of the nicest things they did was in the help me in doing was looking for and i picked up the good ones and i was very interested in. there is enough in there if someone wants to read 15 or 20 books but will take awhile. and when i started doing this one of the things that struck me is we open up these documents, it looks like most of the meetings, somebody had been set

up as the person who was supposed to read and write down what ever ever saying so while this was going on then there were about 10 to 15 people and they were doing all these things ever top-secret. he was writing down what every single person said. , what casey said, judge clark, all those people. because of what reagan said. so what i have tried to do in this is two go in and find out what reagan did. the reason why i feel very strongly about this is that if you talk a lot about what people tell you i think there are about 300 books written on reagan and it all have a different view of reagan why he is doing something but the only real way to find out what it is doing is to get something he has written or said. that is fine you find out what

happened. and what we are doing we end up with pulling 87 of this classified documents that showed what he was doing and what was happening. and i think we can say now, i think we have the first letter and will show you. that is the first classified document. that is the first sign of it that shows of the various people , the vice president and so forth. and as i was reading through this i open up the second page to and that as you go down about halfway down it shows that reagan is doing and he is saying is very important with cia, and

he tells people what is going to happen and then he suddenly says but i won't make all decisions. and when he said i will make all the decisions it went on for the entire eight years. he was running his own line. he made all the decisions. he listened to these people back and forth, a lot of people argue with them and did not like him, all different kinds of things with their wit and he never wavered. he knew exactly what he was going to do and he stayed with it. he would listen to these experts and had some of the best experts in the world. he would listen to them and sometimes go on the right and left side, but he always 7-up on his side. and what we have discovered material as we go on is that a lot of things that happened, reagan put them all together and

i think as this goes around and other people see them is going to make something different because rarely did anyone realize what he was doing. and some of the most amazing things he did what he did in geneva and so on. the basic problem now is that how you deal with a country with huge amounts of it new york weapons that were to kill you? and he worked on for seven years and he did something which everyone thought was impossible. he got them to pull down and the cold war was over. you finish it up in 1988 and i think the reason why he hasn't gotten as much traction as most people should, they couldn't believe it. how on earth did he do it?

because it seemed so simple and easy, but it wasn't, it was extremely difficult and that is what is this book. the explanation of how he did it, who he tartu and when he talked. now i'm going to turn it over and answer any questions you want. >> well, i think that what we see how as we rated various documents during 1955 meetings of the national security council during the administration that reagan shared and we got there about almost 200 of have mistaken that tells other base san and martin requested classification and got the classified about 85 or 87 episodes a minute two and they

are a great resources on what reagan wasjáactually saying. there are a lot of other stories in those minutes as well of what other people are saying, but what he has to say is very important. and you can see that he is his own strategist and that he is following this over a long time. but i wanted to go and every do something and then he said in 1963 and this document happens to be in hoover institution archives and quoted in our earlier book. is also quoted in this book, "regan's secret war". and he says in 1963 in a speech, the only sure way to avoid war is to surrender without fighting. the other way is based on the

belief that in an all-out race our system is stronger and eventually the enemy gives up the race as a hopeless cause. and then a noble mission for leaving in peace extends a hand it to friendship and says there is room in the world for both of us. no i then that in 1963 is transit to what happened and what he accomplished. the had the vision of how the world might be way back before he even ran for governor of our president -- governor or president and so i think that is an interesting thing to understand that he was a strategist. these documents have been truly a great resource in addition to his letters and his speeches and his own diary. and as we put them together in this book, we realize that he is

the only person who knows. not only what he is saying to the public was not everybody is hearing, and communications with the press are outside of his formal press conferences, but he knows what he is riding at night and what he is saying in meetings that are classified that people can talk about it and he knows what he is writing in letters to the soviets. so he has this whole picture. nobody working for him and no member of the public for the press has a that total picture that he has. he worked for a long time on achieving his goals in these meetings and others that come out in these meetings is that he tolerates, in fact, encourages and wants a wide range of different views. he never shoot the messenger.

he knows that people are going to disagree. he welcomes it and sometimes people say you have got so much disagreement you've got to fire one side of this after the other and he does not do it. he keeps these people who have diverse views, they disagree with each other, he encourages them to express themselves and often hold back and expressing his own view until they have had an opportunity so that everybody is heard and then makes a decision. sometimes right in the reading and sometimes makes a decision later on. off and then he writes in his diary i am going to go with george or this one are go with schulz or weinberger or someone so, it is a good idea. he also talks to richard nixon and lot of what happened in terms of a progress on this happened fairly early on. people think that it wasn't until gorbachev got into office

that anything happened, but, in fact, by the time reagan was reelected he had already met with your minkow in september of '84 and the agreed on a the elimination of nuclear-weapons. he stated in a speech to the u.n. a few days before he met with rave that the ussr continues to favor measures to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear-weapons and it turned ankle and was then head of the soviet union wrote to reagan right after it it was reelected and sen we are prepared to sit most radical solutions which would allow movement toward a complete ban and eventually the liquidation of nuclear arms. so at that point reagan had an

agreement that the soviets at least were claiming that they wanted to do the same thing that he wanted to do and he said let's take them at their word and say okay, you agree with us, let's work on a way to do it. there is one final document. we have the first page -- this is from 1987. from a september 8th 1987. these are the minutes from that national security council meeting on arms control positions and of the next page of that is the summary of some of the things that reagan said in a meeting that we have selected. and i want to read to you as sort of a conclusion before we take some questions, one of the things he said in that meeting which, of course, is 1987 and i think there are preparing at

that time for gorbachev to come to washington to sign the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in europe. both those of of the united states and that we have placed in there and those of the soviet union never aimed at western cities for its longtime. and the president says, you have got to remember that the whole thing was born of the idea that the world needs to get rid of nuclear weapons. we've got to remember that we can't win in a clear war and we can't fight one. the soviets don't want to win by war, but by threat of war. they want to issue ultimatums to which we have to give men. if we could just talk about the basic steps we need to take, to break the logjam and avoid the possibility of war. think about it, were the survivors of the war live? major areas of the world would be uninhabitable.

we need to keep in mind that that's what we are about, about bringing together steps to bring us closer to the recognition that we need to do away with nuclear-weapons. so that is what reagan was doing and maybe what some of our leaders today are trying to do as well. so i think john will lead some questions. >> we have a couple of minutes for questions for anyone that has them. if you do if we get ask you to come forward and stand at the microphone as all of this is being broadcast by c-span and want to make sure they can hear your question. are there any questions? >> if you don't have any questions we will keep talking. [laughter] >> i think we have one right here.

>> thank you for coming and sharing this information with us. i was wondering whether in your interaction with president reagan whether he had, i am a senior professor and i find that most of my colleagues for illegally avoiding the vietnam war by staying in school and so they're going to write things not try to get pretty much credit. did he have a sense of how history would be written or what history would say? i know there are a lot of complaints about his bellicose rhetoric a first term and after the summit leaders stopped dying on him he was able to deal with mr. gorbachev. was something he thought he had to do regardless of historical interpretation? >> i think there are a lot of people that got the wrong idea about reagan and what he was doing at the time when people got upset to in '83 and '84 was that he did something that was unusual. he started planning to gather in

large cache of huge weapons, all kinds of weapons. the reason he was doing that was because of the soviet union was caught trying to get ahead and they were ahead. they started getting ahead of us in december 9th and by the time he took office they were way ahead and kept going further ahead. some people wondered why he didn't sit down and talk with them and his attitude was i will sit down with them when we have arms ready to go and that is what he did. he got enough strong weapons with him and finally said, look, you want to sit and talk let's do it. now, while he was doing that a lot of people got the wrong idea. i think that's it, but then when it turned around and went the other way i remember any of those people saying he had the right away. the summit else want to try something to?

>> thank you. president obama right now has mentioned the desire to eliminate nuclear weapons and that kind of scares me. a country like israel without a clear weapons would be at the mercy of what ever happened to them, a lot of countries out there we could not trust. at all then we can trust south korea. i wonder if reagan intended to eliminate all nuclear weapons and was his desire to do that to obama to prop up his campaign? >> what two say is what everyone believed to be the case but wasn't because what reagan was doing was saying he wants to get rid of nuclear weapons if and there is a big if in there and that is why he wanted where you can bring down nuclear weapons but at the same time the person you are working with, they are coming down. the next problem is with a

cheat? a lot of our people thought that some of the other people would cheat like this. and what reagan decided was he needed to have his star wars and that is one of the main reasons why he had "star wars" is half what he wanted to do was he could make those so powerful and so strong so that nobody could try to come in on the united states. and what he said all the way along. by the way that a succession of what obama is saying now -- he is not sing was to rid of all the clear weapons. nobody wants to do that but they want to get you to reduce the number of weapons you have so you will kill us all. but what you're doing it be very careful. and for the dow you all go is going to get tricky and delicate. so that is what is going to happen in your absolutely right. two have time to ask one more? did we talk about the pope?

>> this was an interesting thing that we ran across while going to the classified documents and iran across some letters that the pope had sent to reagan and reagan sent back to the pope. i asked about that that i would really like to get some of those, but you can't get them because the vatican has got them locked up. maybe some of the vatican can tell me what happened. i believe that it was if they die and then you had to wait for 50 years before you could see them which is higher than the cia, but while we were going through these documents we did find some that will show you what was going on. and reagan and the pope for very tight. they got together and december december 15th, you work on

that one -- i will tell them what happened later. >> on december 15th in 1981 cardinal asset value was the secretary of state to the vatican came over and met with ronald reagan and they met in the map room of what was a secret meeting and they also as someone there who was the voice from the vatican ii the united states. and they talked about poland where martial law had just been declared, but they also talked about nuclear weapons and about nuclear strategy. of the cardinal it really makes this statement that the united states is the sanctuary for the world. he is expressing the view that the united states can do certain things that the vatican cannot possibly do because of the

united states position in the world and reagan says i hope i am able to fulfil your trust in me. and so there was a close relationship. pope john paul ii to who is really terrific. reagan had written a couple of radio commentaries on the pulpit on to poland in 1979 and so reagan was already familiar with some of his views and the fact that the pope was not only anti not see but also anti-communist so reagan and the pope shared an anti totalitarian view of the world and the view that freedom to worship and to choose one's line of work and to travel and to have dignity especially religious freedom in the case of the pope of course, but also for

reagan were very important and they share that. and i also, the pope i think came two certainly understand reagan's view of what he had to do in order to bring this soviets to the bargaining table and ultimately achieve a reduction in the threat to of nuclear war. >> tell him the letter he gave us an. >> reagan sent the pope a letter in january following a the meeting in december that expressed the view that he had already taken steps and viewed it as a first depp in eliminating the threat of nuclear war and reducing nuclear weapons and he had already proposed to zero for the soviets benazir for the united states on into may range nuclear forces in europe. ..