against. you don't have futile traditions in the same way. >> race and the southern origins of modern conservatism. >> next, reporter gretchen peters talks about the taliban's control of the opium trade and the financing of terrorist groups like al qaeda. this was hosted in new york, it is 45 minutes. >> thank you all for coming. i will read a really quick

passage from chapter iv and do my little routine. my talk. this is a chapter called the new taliban. when the time came for the taliban's treasurer, he was hurtling down a smuggler's hats. he traveled in a 4 x 4 with a regional taliban subcommander. the third passenger was one of the biggest heroin smugglers. december 19th, 2006. a royal air force monitoring plane picked up his trail when he spoke earlier on a satellite telephone. according to british officials the spy plane made contact with the u.s. special operations team hunting high-value targets. they reached out to task force, tracking terrorists electronically. once they confirmed they had him on the phone, a u.s. warplane

took off and launch a precision air strike the moment is vehicle moved out of a populated area. the x -- the 4 x 4 was obliterated, they never knew what was -- what hit them. the military commander for six key provinces, he was at the time the highest ranking taliban official to be eliminated since the u.s.-led coalition invaded afghanistan in october 2001. all the u.s. military officials in the western media hailed his killing, cut the circumstance of his death got less attention. the man in charge of the taliban's finances got taken out. one of the things i hope comes from this book is it helps

people redefine how they think of the taliban and al qaeda. most of us have preconceived notion of what the taliban are like. we think of them as guys who are in desperate need of a pedicure or at least a bath, living in caves in afghanistan. we think of them as illiterate, fanatical, gun-toting, basically backwards and illiterate people. what i would look -- like to put forward to you tonight who have come out to hear me speak, i would like to look forward to another model that i think is useful. i am not suggesting that malo

mark has developed a taste for the issue no or that osama bin laden has started drinking qian the or that they are about to open a new wing of the bottom being, but what i have done over the last five years is to investigate the taliban's operations on ground level. when you start doing that, they start looking more like this. this has to do with the way that they earn money. one of the mistakes the western governments have made in operations in afghanistan is to underestimate them as religious fanatics who live in caves. we need to start looking at the enormous economic forces that are bankrupting this insurgency that is spreading across

pakistan, not just afghanistan. to move through it quickly, the taliban have, for a long time, earned money off of the opium trade in afghanistan. what i found since 2001, they have increased their activities, the drug trade. they collect tax in the southern areas, usually 10% of the drug trade is different from district to district, a confusing situation. similar to your local mafia that operates, this is where the tony soprano model comes in, they force farmers, local residents, local shopkeepers to contribute to the insurgency. they call this protection money or gifts. in many cases as opposed to receiving actual cash, in a rural area, there is not a lot of money floating around, they

actually receive physical items, they get motorcycles, vehicles, mobile phones because the insurgents change funds to try to avoid detection. they will demand the locals provide them with phone units, and the chips that go inside them. afghanistan is a country where the phone system his pay-as-you-go. they provide credit on those phones. even medical care, one of the interesting i found was a hospital in pakistan which is run by a drug smuggler. taliban soldiers can go and seek medical care. they even pay for taliban soldiers to come and take our and our in pakistan. incredibly. the taliban protect drug shipments as they leave farm areas and head towards the border areas.

that will involve providing armed heavys to protect drug shipments as they go down afghanistan's highways and on smuggling trips. involves increasingly, as years have progressed, taliban launching attacks on nato forces, afghan national army forces, divert them to one part of a province, a big drug shipment going down another road. they also helped protect drug refineries that exist along the pakistan border. literally providing protection of many of those refineries, also taxing the output as much as $250 per kilo produced. increasingly, as the years have gone on, we have seen some taliban commanders start to run

their own heroin refineries. we are watching what my researchers who worked with me on this, i found they are increasing their involvement in the drug trade, this is similar to what happened in colombia, with other insurgent groups around the world. top taliban commanders also paid directly to the senior officials in what is known as the ruling council of the taliban. these donations are somewhere to the tune of several million dollars per year from the big cartels that operate from pakistan, that move this enormous amount of heroin and opium out of the region. al qaeda and other extremist groups in the region, one of the things that is so confusing when you talk about this situation, there are so many different groups operating along the borders. in some areas, people who are

involved in the drug trade are local thugs, local criminals. you also have pakistani extremist groups, regional extremist groups like the islamic movement of is point stan. that is a group we don't hear much about, their goal is to take over is pakistan and put in place a taliban style

government. we found that al qaeda and the i am you come into the trade as the drugs reach afghanistan's borders. a tax and protect until they get to the borders, and that is where these other groups come in to play. that is precisely the moment when the value of the drug goes up in value exponentially, often as much as 12 times. that is where you stand to make the most money. which is a frightening thing given that they want to more -- once more attacks against the west. the other phenomenon for that we have seen over the last five years is the expansion into other forms of collective the. lot has happened since the book

went to final print. there's a lot of activity, a lot of criminal kidnapping rings that operate, you see people getting kidnapped in one town, sold up the chain, sold up the food chain. lot of us know a prominent journalist based in the city who has been kidnapped by a local criminal gang and was sold to an extremist group that operates from the north. they also export a lot of local operations, gemstones, one of the things i have been hearing from people read the taliban have taken over in pakistan is they of taken over the emerald mines and started selling emerald's on the black market, smuggling guns and ammunition, something that a lot of these extremist groups have been involved with since the 1980s. human trafficing is another field they get into, robbing

moneychangers. the head of the pakistan taliban, his people rob the cute money changing operation, millions of dollars in cash, brought the money to him in a border area. according to national geographic, they smuggle millions of dollars worth of antiquities out of the region every year. for many of you who have been to afghanistan know that the countries was at the crossroads -- this incredibly rich, ancient history. a lot of ancient sites are being absolutely. lot of it -- most of it is being smuggled out through pakistan. pakistan is always the linchpin in this situation. when i started looking into how the money functions in the insurgent system, this takes me

back to the soprano's model, even though some of these groups that operate along the border region, are only loosely affiliated with each other. the guy at the district level, usually takes a percentage upstairs to whoever has -- everybody pays in, so it is like a pyramid. an upside-down pyramid. it goes toward the top. that would indicate the top leaders of all of these movements are making huge amounts of money off of all of this criminal activity in the region. we heard numerous reports of financial representatives from each of these groups, from al qaeda, the taliban, an extremist group that operates in eastern afghanistan, they routinely meet, usually in pakistan, in

the southwest, i have heard of other meetings in the tribal areas, we heard about other meetings, they meet routinely to divide up the funds. it is like one of those seen you see in a movie where they get together, everybody has to hand their envelope to the boss, and similarly i should add, another reason why i find this very similar to the idea of these groups being like crime families, like the new york crime family, sometimes they fight over -- they fight over the spoils. we hear reports of fighting that takes place between the eye and you and the pakistani taliban, it happens all the time. usually if you start looking into it, they're fighting over money. i will come back to that idea.

the smugglers, the top smugglers from the cartels are usually the intermediaries between corrupt officials in the afghan and pakistani and iranian government and the insurgents. what is ironic about this, what i found most surprising was the extent to which insurgents were actually cooperating with government officials in afghanistan and pakistan. we heard cases of the police pretending to lose a district to the taliban because they had been paid off so much to lose that district. the smugglers tend to be the intermediaries. another person who is often said to be the intermediary is hamid karzai, half-brother of the president, i was shown british intelligence documents that indicated that he is the man who

helped coordinate this whole network. that is the most complex issue of all, because we not only are fighting an enemy that is making hundreds of millions of dollars off of the drug trade but our so-called allies in the region are making hundreds of dollars, millions of dollars off of the drug trade every year, so there is a perverse incentive to create stability in the region. i don't want to bore you too much with the minutiae of these groups but to give you a brief talk about where they all act, down here, i am going to point to this area, in southwestern afghanistan, that is mostly criminal groups that call themselves taliban. that is mostly your core taliban. you get into this area, you get

into the group run by the mujahedin, you get into here and you are into a group run by a really nasty character and many say got his start by throwing acid in women's faces when they started to attend college in afghanistan. in pakistan, you have people like the guy who operates in these areas, all of them are involved in kidnapping, drug smuggling, gun running, human trafficking. the first thing they do is establish a mechanism for earning money, and is usually

illicit funds. the united nations estimates the taliban are between 400 -- turns $400 million a year off of the drug trade. i put that number closer to half a billion dollars a year, but that is because the un's office of drug control does extensive surveys, they do great work in afghanistan. they don't count the donations of commodities, trucks, motorcycles, telephones, they only account the taxes that taken on refineries, the protection money. i put the number closer to half a billion dollars a year. either way, it is an astonishing amount of money ended is for -- far more than it costs them to run the operation. no one has any idea how much al qaeda and the i m -- imu r

earning in the drug trade. they came in at the moment when the drugs leave the region. opium costs $75 a kilo in afghanistan. by the time it >>reporter: pact -- reaches pakistan's order goes up 12 times. when it turned into a crystal heroin and moves to the west has gone up 200 times. if you are the guys who are moving it out of the farm areas, you are making a bit of money. if you are the guys moving into other parts of the world, you are really making a killing. i will end on that note. 9/11 cost $500,000. people often say to me the last thing we want to do is get involved in another drug war.

columbia has been a total disaster, looking pretty messy, why should we bother getting involved in this in afghanistan? i will agree, the things i think need to happen to turn this around are going to be extremely expensive, extremely complex, it is going to take a long time and it is not going to be easy and it will take a lot of coordination which is something the coalition has famously lacked since 2001. but i think the consequences of not fighting this could be astronomical, could be absolutely unimaginable. on that happy note i am open for questions. [applause] if you have a question, please ask for the mike first.

michele? is it on? >> can you talk a little bit about how you collect all the evidence and what your field research was like? >> sure. a lot of the interviews i did myself i collected about five years hiding some of my work in my trips for abc. i also did a report for the u.s. institute of peace which gave me a grant for $38,000, which i spent mostly on local researchers, we surveyed 350 people, might not sound like a

very big number, reaching 315 people who work alongside the drug trade in areas controlled by the insurgents, is no easy matter. we surveyed them and then went back, based on those results, and conducted more interviews. the process of collecting information was complicated by the fact that i had two children during that period. it is hard to bounds down afghanistan's crushing highways when you are six months pregnant. it became so dangerous over the course of my research, there are a lot of places i couldn't go any more. the guys refused to take me, said i was a liability and i was going to get us kidnapped or killed. that meant i had to send them by themselves which in some ways was an advantage because they were able -- i use researchers,

local journalists that were from areas where they operated. they had tribal and family connections, they were able to get terrific information but sometimes they had different ideas about what was important and what was interesting. i will give you an example. i have a chapter, the biggest drug smuggler in the region who was recently arrested, it is in new york on the lower east side. i was getting really frustrated part way through the research because i hadn't gotten an interview with anybody who actually physically knew him. i was getting all second-hand information. it was really frustrating me. so i sent out by researchers with this order to find people who knew him, who had met with him. what is he like? there are such colorful stories

about pablo escobar and his incredible temper, i wanted to know what this guy was like in person. i want you to come back with color, tell me what he is like as a person. i weeded two weeks, someone sent me an interview that said his favorite food is chicken. [laughter] which was really what i was looking for. sometimes it worked to our advantage and other times it was really a struggle to get the kind of information i wanted. i was really sorry i couldn't do more, field research in some of these areas, but it had become too dangerous. >> can you comment on ties to international banking in terms of processing all that money? >> international banking organizations? >> how they process that about of money.

>> i have a chapter on the money trail in the book and i researched this, that is when things get really scary in this whole thing. a lot of the money that is connected to the insurgency basically not an act -- comes through pakistan, it is in real-estate, not just -- anybody who has been to afghanistan or pakistan has seen the explosion of what we call architecture, this huge pink mansion with green windows, really ghastly sculpture. real-estate seems to be where they are parking their money. once you have made a few real-estate sales your money comes out clean, it has a trail. another place it seems to go is through the wall and at work. there are efforts the trade -- anyone who has been in the

middle east knows how hard that is going to be. the karachi stock exchange has grown by 250% annually since the drug trade exploded. if you go down there, there are four or five stockbrokers who came out of nowhere. one of them used to be a bogey for cricket games, who appear to the -- they had a stock exchange, a terrific head of the stock exchange who resigned in disgust and demanded these guys be investigated. i don't know if it is drug money but it is definitely dirty money. they are just flipping stocks. you do a couple stock trades, the money comes out clean. the stock exchange is a sort of

a gateway that money enters the western banking institution. it is interesting to watch over last two years, a lot of banks have opened, western finance companies have opened branches despite the dangers because there's so much money coming through. another issue is real-estate in dubai, the city with 20% of the world's screen. is an oil-rich shake up. what better place to park your dirty money than an oil-rich shake up with 20% of the world's trends. that is something that -- nobody is examining this. some of it on my own for one chapter. within the u.s. government, i am not sure what our intelligence dollars are going for but when i ask people about this in the u.s. government, really? it is kind of stunning to see how much they don't -- nobody

has bothered to work on this. >> do you see any hope for afghanistan as a unified state anytime soon? obviously there are a lot of ethnicities. if not, why not support breaking it up into borders that makes sense to the local population? >> i always think of afghanistan as being more unified as a nation then pakistan. the afghan they're always fighting for cobble. in pakistan they are always separatist units. any number of different movements going on in pakistan. i can see a way out of the afghan problem. nation-building has become a dirty word in washington but all

these communities need is law-and-order. if we established governments we are not going to get rid of the taliban and al qaeda are trying to kill them all, they just make more of them as we do that. if we actually make them irrelevant by giving people a good alternative, that is the exit strategy for the region. people talk about that being extensive and complex and taking years, i don't disagree with that but we are already spending $2 billion a month on our military operations alone in afghanistan. surely not a sustainable either. even though nation-building is a dirty word i will keep saying it because i think it is the only way out of that region. for me the bigger concern these days is the speed with which the insurgents are moving across

pakistan which i do see as a country of tremendous risks for splitting up into different parts and there is an old state department joke, because the pakistani believe that secretly washington's plan is to split it up into four different companies -- countries, and when one pakistan gives us this much trouble, and that we get from four pakistans. i was sitting around talking with several new wrote a book called from wind pakistan, we were saying for the first time i can actually see pakistan disintegrating. the north west frontier province along the afghan border, and the western province that borders afghanistan and iraq, most of those problemss are virtually on governed, there's no governance whatsoever, some form of rebellion or criminal gangs controlling all of the rural

areas. that is a pretty scary situation, that is more than half of pakistan's land area. that is the biggest worry now. >> i am wondering what the involvement of the pakistan government is, if you are falling 30 trails. >> that is another aspect of this story, which is that it is quite clear, i trace this in my book in the history chapters through the present, it has been very clear, we often talk about drug corruption in the afghan government, but the pakistani government has been just as corrupted by the drug trade, and nobody more than them. it was very well-known in the

days of the soviet resistance officers were profiting off of the drug trade. that was believed to continue when the taliban in power. many believe it still goes on today. i was showing u.s. and british intelligence document indicating the station chief where most of the drugs move through as they leave southern afghanistan, that just one cartel was a $2 million every year just to make sure their shipments got through. that gives you the idea of the amount of money you are talking about, pretty scary. >> i have a question i have been thinking about for a while. i am filling a documentary called to is wearing the emperor's new clothes? a lot of things we find in government are propaganda, things are not what they appear to be, it is also a said the

trade of kings was in war. i wonder if in afghanistan and around the world, there are people who benefit by war. we the people look at work, we are the ones who pay for it, but maybe we are not seeing the whole picture, maybe there's some benefit. you mentioned hamid karzai's brother. maybe war is the goal of this chaos. >> absolutely. there is a small population of people in pakistan and afghanistan and iran and dubai who profit enormously off of continued instability in that region. that is the main barrier to things getting better but it is a fairly small population and a lot of their names are well known to western officials. i can give you a few examples, a

terrific record recently in toronto's globe and mail about the fact that many people believe, there is documented evidence, that the deputy counternarcotics minister is deeply involved in the drug trade. everybody hears the story, everybody is about certain officials in the pakistan government that we all hear about being involved in the drug trade, yet nobody investigate them. there's never and in -- and official investigation. no reason we couldn't set up some sort of truth commission working with afghan and pakistani officials to investigate these and if they prove -- if the charges prove to be accurate, which they usually are, they could be extradited and tried somewhere. afghanistan's judiciary system is not equipped to deal with them at this point. >> there's an element of fear.

maybe because they want those elements in place, because that element of fear gives them more power. >> its certainly benefits those in power. overall, we see what is happening in both of those countries. >> for the average person, is there something we can do to help? is it voting? taking a trip? >> for all of you who are really depressed by this and want to go home and smoke a joint, afghan drugs don't tend to get smuggled in to the united states, you

don't have to worry. these drugs are not going to support osama bin laden. i do think the obama administration has the right idea. the question is whether we have enough money, whether we can get enough support from other allies in nato and the coalition in afghanistan. it is going to take not only an enormous number of troops, we're sending out another 17,000 soldiers right now. is going to take an enormous number of civilian officials, a law enforcement officials, people who are agricultural experts, people who can help train lawyers to get the judicial system working. all sorts of stuff. this is a nation that is badly broken, that is going to require an enormous force of people to help them get back on track. if you are one of those people, there will be work for you in

afghanistan. [laughter] is that all? the lead. >> probably minor but i was wondering about the justification behind it all on their end, whether or not -- is it justifiable to them or is this an aspect of their war against america or just out ride hypocrisy? the taliban tell the farmers who are forced to grow poppies, islam banned the use, traffic or trade in narcotics or alcohol, so their justification is it is

okay because this is a jihad against the infidels and we are selling the drugs to the infidel west. very little afghan heroin actually reaches the united states. it is 70% of the heroin sold in europe and the you can comes from afghanistan but the vast majority of afghanistan's drug crops ends opinionated states or pakistan, iran, central asia, countries like has expand have huge hair when problems. it is a bogus argument. >> i am curious, i have been looking at this book on the cia, the international drug trade, and i am curious about the

continuity of your work at your debt to him. and two weeks ago, there was this e-mail, former journalist on charlie rose, i don't remember her name but she was billed as an adviser to general mccarron in afghanistan. two days after her interview, one day after her interview, general mccarron was forced to resign. i couldn't help but wonder if there was the relation between that interview and his resignation. >> i have no idea about that. i don't know how the pentagon makes decision, nor did i see that interview. she has done a lot of great work in southern afghanistan but in terms of these rumors of the cia's involvement in the drug trade, this is something i heard all the time, over and over again, was it one of the reasons the u.s. wasn't stopping the drug trade, because our agents

were secretly involved in it? i even had a governor, no less than the governor of the southern afghan province, he wasn't even a bozo, a fairly serious individual, tell me that he thought there was a deal between the been lavin family and the bush family to move drugs out of the region because the u.s. is not only doing so little to stop it but actually resisting efforts to stop the drug trade. that is one of those great conspiracy theories from the region, like who shot kennedy. i try to avoid getting sucked into these conspiracy theories but it is fascinating, when you start hearing afghans and pakistanis in senior positions who are convinced there is a grand conspiracy going on between the cia and the drug smugglers.

i never found anything to prove it but you hear a lot of stories. >> sounds like you're finding of the cost increase of the heroin as you got farther away from the field speaks to the idea i have heard about plans to, quote, peel off peripheral taliban with financial incentives. >> there are a lot of communities that are involved in growing poppy in afghanistan that could be peeled away from the insurgency. one of the misunderstandings in the west is this idea that afghan farmers grow poppy because they agree are making lots of money. there is a small amount of huge farm, landowners who are making a lot of money off of the poppy trade but the vast majority of the people who work in the poppy trade on the ground in afghanistan are not only barely

eking out a living, they're actually victimized -- the traffickers have implemented this predatory loan structure which means the most people who plant poppy can sell their popped in the fall, they get paid before they plant it but the way the interest structure works, they owe more by the time the spring harvest comes around and you hear these appalling stories of farmers having to sell their daughters to traffickers who work with the human trafficing rates, to the west, at this understanding in the west that people are getting rich off of the poppy trade, there is a very small amount of people who are getting a lot of money, they're very powerful but it is not -- there is an attitude that i hear a lot from u.s. officials that afghan farmers in the south are just breeding, they just want the money and did -- party sales are

ten times more than other things they grow. in my research, this is backed up, other people have done a lot more research on the farmers themselves than i have, it is absolutely untrue. people's lives are being chewed up by this extremism. i actually think, very much similar to the way the sunni awakening brought communities to the side of u.s. military, to the extent that we can engage in obama's old trade and community development, a lot of these places would relatively move off of the drug trade. the province which produces the most of the and in afghanistan, was ironically, the fields are irrigated by this enormous

u.s.eighth irrigation policy. when you speak to people, they are very nostalgic for the days when the americans were there and helping them to grow melons and roses, there are all sorts of produce they could grow, it is very fertile farmland, but it is going to be expensive to try to move them on to alternative livelihoods. the former finance minister predicts that it will cost $5 billion over five years to move afghan farmers to alternative crops which sounds like a big price tag into you compare it to the fact we are spending $2 billion every month just to run our military operations. when you start doing the numbers, nation-building starts to look like a pretty economical way out. anyone else?

thank you very much. [applause] >> gretchen peters has covered afghanistan for the associated press and cbs news. >> this summer, but tv is asking what are you reading? >> "seeds of terror: how heroin is bankrolling the taliban and al qaeda" 11, what are you reading? >> my political books in this honor of going back to the future, reading liberty and tyranny which has become a political mark and i got a first edition set up, 12 volumes, speeches and writings which is fascinating. i am reading the 17 volumes of fins flynn and this new youvinc

author named lisa lots. >> the story of lincoln, darwin and modern life. i take my book about lincoln and fdr, i forget to read but i will do it this summer. >> there will be more summer reading lists and other program information, visit our web site at booktv.org. >> the phenomenon of facebook, the success of this social

networking site and how it for two best friends apart. and part of c-span2's book tv weekend. >> this summer, book tv is asking what are you reading? >> this summer i plan on reading several books, a couple of them that i need to finish. one of them is on william wilberforce, a great man in history, responsible for eliminating the slave trade in great britain. he is one of my political heroes. the abolitionists in america look to him and his example of how to get rid of slavery in the united states. almost anything i can read about wilberforce i try to get my hands on and the book i am in the middle of right now, the one i finished this summer, is a tremendous book about his life and how he brought people together to eliminate the slave

trade in great britain. another book i am going to read this summer is the longest day, about that terribly long day when we invaded europe at normandy, that eventually led to the end of world war ii. a friend of mine recommended it to me and said it is just an amazing book. i am excited about meeting that. some recent books that i would recommend to people, one written by a navy seal about his experiences in afghanistan called the loans survivor. he is the lone survivor, one of the more remarkable stories of human courage, really is a tribute to the courage of his comrades who lost their lives in that time in afghanistan. it is a tremendous book. another great book that i just read not long ago called a great upheaval, fascinating in that it

talks about the french revolution, the american revolution and was happening in russia with catherine the great at the same time, it ties history together better than any book i have ever read, especially how each one of those countries affected each other and so it is one of the better history books that i have ever read. >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information visit our web site at booktv.org. >> book tv sunday, the future of the american conservative movement with direct mail fund-raiser movement, richard vigue viguero. >> joan catapano is editor-in-chief of the

university of illinois press. what books does the university have coming out this year? >> all of the posters on the table top display here, these are all brand new books. as you can see we have a series of new books, african-american history, including this biography of sojourners truth, biography of howard, early civil-rights. >> who is howard? >> conservative civil-rights advocate who doesn't get the attention and respect he should. but he was instrumental in moving forward of lot of black agendas in the south. >> why did you besides the journal truth needed a new biography at this time? >> some of the ones that have been -- it is a substantial

biography. >> what other points would you like to point out? >> the story of the josephsons and their nightclub in new york city. commingling of the races is not a readable kind of book that sort of gives you a picture of the time, the year and the people who frequented places like that. >> what is the focus of the university of illinois press? >> we published heavily in u.s. history with specialization in african-american history, labor history, women's history, ethnic history in general, particularly latino kind of history, american music. >> how is the business model for university press changed in the last couple years? >> our print runs are shorter and our prices are going up as a

result because the market is soft, we are selling fewer copies of books, and it is difficult. >> joan catapano, editor-in-chief of the university of illinois press. >> paula kemen, who is iris chang? >> most known for her 1997 best seller, the race of mad kings, did huge things to raise awareness about japanese atrocities during world war ii. not only that but the massacre, raise awareness about atrocities throughout asia. it became a whole movement rather than just a book in the late 90s. >> was she a historian? >> historian and a journalist. they were not mutually

exclusive. she was good -- a big full of hers was archive, she spent days and days buried in the national archives and other archives and went out and confronted people face-to-face. >> where was she from? >> she was from urbana, ill.. we met in the illinois in the 80s, we were friends -- >> what relationship did you have as friends? >> she was many steps ahead of me, there were very few internships. it was equal on college papers. the correspondence, stories and not front section.

who does that? what to make of her? in this incredible nerf, trying to emulate her instead of being a rival. they were sounding boards. a huge role model of what it meant to be a successful author. they were shocking, she committed suicide which seemed for no apparent reason in 2004, 36-year-old, there were lots of rumors swarming everywhere, the right wing japanese had assassinated her, she had a lot of memories. >> because of her book. >> the history books, political

leaders, rumors that the u.s. was somehow behind it, that she was very active, veterans of the bataan death march to sue japan for their enslavement, the state department was not happy about that but it turned out that she fit a lot of patterns of manic depressive illness or bipolar disorder that got worse after she had her son, that often happens with women. and was exacerbated by a lot of pressure around her. >> what was your last conversation? >> she called me three days before she killed herself, the first time i ever said something was seriously wrong. i realized it was a good buy call. and it seemed like a strange

desire -- bizarre thing, didn't know what to make of it. that was the first time i noticed her as really depressed and disconnected from reality, she was so depressed it was hard to get the words out. in retrospect i see she was explaining why she was about to do is. she talked about a lot of guilt, ways that she had raised her son, she talked about a lot of fears that she had, i had been a good friend to her, it is very disturbing but disturbing as it was i didn't think her life would end a few days later. >> what did you find about iris chang? >> that she was very complex, there was a lot behind the veneer of perfection, basically saw her as having the perfect life, the perfect person to the extent that we didn't want to share problems with her, she

could understand having problems or what that was like, incredibly driven, that helped her to uncover all these tough parts of history and atrocities in japan. with the mental illness, she didn't know when to stop, she didn't know about any kind of limits that she had. she was inspirational in her drive not seeing limits, so that ultimately it was a weakness. not getting treated for mental illness, she refused to accept that she had it. >> is there a stigmatism with mental illness? >> in each culture there's a stigma but in asian culture is really extreme. the agents are much less likely to get treated with therapy or medication. when they do go for treatment it is usually at the 11th-hour, at

the psychotic stage where it is hard to reverse what has happened. what happened with iris chang is she didn't see a psychiatrist until two weeks before her death and that was because family forced her. and she didn't do what he told her to do. >> what happened in your life because of her suicide? >> no one ever asked me that before. i appreciate living in a moment. i am having my second child in several months, and just, i am looking a lot toward the lighter things in life and enjoying them. i am going to return to writing about tough topics, but just know my limits and it is okay to take time off. and not be so driven every second of the day.

>> besides this book, what other books have you written? >> i have written three other books, all in my head about an 18 year mind drain, i am a new york -- newyorktimes and tom. and chronic pain about how that is all in our heads. ..