most important and interesting questions. finally, kahn himself says that he learned most by talking. now, i don't know how many physicists you all know maybe there are some physicists out there but most physicists don't learn by talking. he learn by doing mathematics and the like and experiments and they certainly don't roam the halls asking questions. so there's something about kahn while trained as a physicist that i think belies the fact that he was a mind of a different character than your normal every day -- even a brilliant physicist. now, there's another criticism of kahn which is that he was never quite original, original thinker. i don't think that's actually fair. i mean, when you go through "the essential herman kahn" you can look at a number of essays and topics that he touched that showed he was quite an original thinker but it is fair to say then on his first major book on thermonuclear war it really was

a compellation of thoughts by not himself by colleagues at rand and he openly admitted he borrowed literally from some of their work and some of his own while at rand. but what can't be denied is that in doing so, in writing the book that he did, he in some ways brought nuclear strategy down from the clouds. that is he was the first to make this a matter of public policy debate. and what's striking about that, in fact, if you think back upon that period -- i was a young tot running around in my davy crockett hat but most of these matters were left either to the military or scientists. ...

>> he often exaggerated points both in his legends and his writing, the doomsday press being the most famous. especially was express grand wisdom in a most provocative fashion possible. but the truth is when you do that, when you put something so starkly or even comically, you force your audience to come to

grips with the underlying hidden element of truth that's in that point. so again, i think by having rhetorical style he did, by having the sort of over the top presentation that he did, he in fact force people to deliberate. which is again, something that kahn i think sometimes gets overlooked for in his contribution again, pushing the public debate and forcing people to come to grips with very difficult issues. i now come on hi his contributis per se, i think for me as somebody who is again not an expert on kahn, but is grown up in the sort of shadows of both his work and others that followed him, i think there are really sort of three things that struck me about the books, essays. the first one, of course, is this use of scenarios. kahn didn't invent the use of

scenarios, but in fact he made it much more of a commonplace intellectual exercise. and is incredibly important exercise. if you ever worked in government, one of the most difficult things to do is get other government officials to think in a concrete way about a concrete set of circumstances, as opposed to thinking about something in the abstract. by working through scenarios, it forces policymakers and others involved in carrying the impotent nation of policy, they think that with its obligations will be as they move forward. they are not always gratifying, but they do in fact usually lead to a few insights that allow people to make judgments and make better policy and better potential policy as they move forward. the other great contribution, of course, that's the title of one of his books and also very much a theme and thinking the unthinkable is, he didn't invent this but he made it much more commonplace, part of our lexicon

when talking about strategic matters is the escalation ladders there thinking about how to use violence, how to use military force, to contain violence was a remarkable intellectual achievement on his part. there's a lot of studies being done, sort of negotiations, but kahn still -- kahn's work still marks the cornerstone for thinking about how in fact he used military force to actually reduce the chances of confrontation altogether. then as a futurist, we can all talk about what he got right and what he got wrong. on a lot of very important issues he was more right than he was wrong. what struck me most about his writings on the future was two things. the first one has to do with his own sense that writing about the future could impact the future.

in other words, he just wasn't in the business of predicting to be predicting. he often thought that if he created a dynamic intellectual dynamic or paradigm, in which people could see what the future might look like, there would be greater momentum for doing precisely are having a positive future, about. as he noted, at one point he said our civilization does more things on a consciously rational basis than any in history. even if its behaviors is not always rational. in short when it came to the future, kahn was neither utopian nor a fatalist. he deeply believed the possibility of human reason. finally, kahn's modesty which is something not easily talked about because the man was not modest. [laughter] >> but what is striking, when you go through the collection, the fact is his constant

preoccupation which begins at random with a limited resource, or the scientific endeavor. and 1957 at rand he co-authored a very short monograph which was meant to be a larger book which never got completed, it was called the 10 common pitfalls for policy military analyst. the point of the exercise was to say here are the things we can do. you're the things that reason might well mislead you about. and so as a futurist, even if he attempted to figure out what the future might hold, decades ahead, he saw his own efforts were at best described as plan muddling through. now, maybe parsons has to do with the fact his initial work as a physicist was as somebody trying to apply monte carlo titrations to h-bomb. anybody would be able to do this but anyone who is brought to the

implications on what a monte carlo guy chelation is, really thinking through realized the degree how much reason, how much reason any scientific endeavor can help you but also what its limitations might well be. so finally, kahn was a man who believed people in the possibility of reasoning but new its limits are limited because of what science or limited because not all human beings will be rational. but ultimately, kahn and i think the reason of why he left rand and founded the houston institute, ultimately he never stopped being the same guy who wandered the hallways at rand questioning everyone one and everything of a serious nature, and it's too ken's credit that he attempted to resurrect kahn spot, and of course, carried on god rate tradition here at hudson. [applause]

[applause] >> and without i think we will let the audience ask any questions you have for comments. sir? >> i am from cia ideas. his prominence in the rise of the '50s and '60s parallels the rise of international relations as a separate discipline or substance. in this country, what would his relations with other giants in that field, like kissinger or tom schelling at harvard who also did parallel work to kahn? >> that's an excellent question, and let me sit as a first of all, herman kahn try to incorporate many of the insights of these individuals by having

them serve on when hudson was found as public rivers of hudson institute. socom's original idea was to try to bring diversity of academic specialists to examine the questions that hudson wasn't easy in those days and he had what he called public rivers of the institute. in those days daniel bissell was a public member, kissinger was a member. a great french strategist was a member, and they would occasionally come to court on hudson to comment on the work that hudson was going to offer their insights. and so he maintained friendly relations with many of them. obviously, he shared some concern about academic over specialization and they need to really step back and look at

things in the broadest possible perspective, which i think some of his academic colleagues were honestly failing to do that they had sort of had some academics suffered from what kahn suffered from what he called focusing on specialized areas. so kahn was clearly a admirer of these individuals but was suspicious of academics to some degree, perhaps rightfully so. >> thank you. can you hear me? iq. when i walked into the room today, i said to ken, is there anybody else here who was with herman kahn, and he thought not that -- summary also also? what's your name? [inaudible] >> so i did not prepare

anything. but ken said he would welcome. i said i would say a few words. i learned a great deal. a little bit like going to a funeral. it's at the funeral, one learns a great deal about the person who just passed away. and i thought both of you really put herman together in a way that i never heard before. let me tell you a few words about my personal interaction with herman. and i was not a big deal back then. i was a very young, just having left the foreign service, somebody -- i was talking with somebody and said i wanted to write my dissertation at columbia university on british nuclear policy. he said the person, and i need a job. and so this individual said you should talk with herman kahn. he picked up the phone in my presence, called herman, and i was hired on the spot. this conversation.

but as often is the case with herman there was more to it than saw. at that time, herman had a request of the ford foundation for sizable amount of money. and eye gouge go to the ford foundation and maybe that helped. and one of the things that herman always was, was a master salesman and fundraiser. i heard once, i don't know if this is pocketful or not come but in those los angeles years before he went to rand he spent time as a salesman at a shoe store. i would not be surprised if that was the case. one of the truth are, he was very good at raising money. from the u.s. government. defense department, particular air force, particular others. there was sort of an army and 80 air force contract, you know,

sort of on the ball. but it was a tendency to use some of the same materials in various contracts. people have pointed that out. and one day, this is a story i did not witness. it took place in the plane. somebody was saying to him, you know that study which caused the air force more than a thousand dollars and so on, it's a lot of junk. there's nothing really in that. and presumably, i'm sure it was true, he picked up the book that he told out the page from the middle and he said this alone is worth half a million dollars. >> and that was very much the way that herman was at times. max singer who was mentioned, tony who is mentioned, they sort of had the task of reining him in sometime. a man who could not be easily reined in. harman was also sponged. it is true he walked balls, but he walked the halls in order to pick up the ideas of others.

and somehow they would come into his head and then he was able to use them in his own way. there's been a lot of talk about herman's writings. i was around herman about for years, and maybe i missed them, but in all those years i never really saw him right. use a pin or use a typewriter, using those days, typewriters. he talked. and his talks were taped. and he had other people sort of listened to tapes and put them into print. and that's the way he worked and that's what he has this long, long bibliography which goes beyond the published books to probably dozens of reports. another way that he sponged was he loved -- i did this several times within. he loved to go to bookstores. the day with the really big, not barnes & noble times, and he

walked around the bookstore with a salesperson and said one of those, one of those, one of those. ship them to me that they were not for books, they were like 45 books. and when i walked into his office, it was just bolting with books. against all the walls. piled up on the desk, everywhere. and i said to herman once, how do you find time to read these books? anti-sort of smiled, and he said, i absorb them osmosis. [laughter] >> and i think he really did believe he could do that. when you walk into herman's office, he had a big desk piled high with books, and a reclining chair. and he was very round. big and round. and then he would lean back in a reclining chair, and all of a sudden his head disappeared like the moon disappeared. and there was his body. that's how the conversation took place.

[laughter] >> i was at hudson 1964 to 68, enabled me to write my dissertation, although it was not a hudson institute product in any way. but most of herman's original work on nuclear war had escalation was completed by that time. there were other very good people at hudson in those years. one in particular i am thinking about is don who died young also. in fact, he committed suicide, as far as i know it was unrelated to hudson if so. but he really was an intellectual father of missile defense. which we are still talking about these days. another was yost, a no widgeon, who later became defense department affairs into what. and then a male couple, not sexually, but working together was bill and ed. they had opposite views.

somehow the french government, i think they got the idea that france more of the way think tanks or a think tank, and there was a contract written up, and hudson created an office in paris which ld for a number of years. bill and ed went there. and they argued with each other i'm sure, bill was is and is very little and ed was very conservative. lots of argument, particular about the vietnam war. i will come back to that in a minute. bill is still in paris. must be close to 80 years old and writes very well. and has a website if any of you are interested. you probably recall, he wrote for about 20 years at the international herald tribune, and los angeles times syndicate. there were two, maybe three

nonnuclear issues while i was at hudson which had much of my attention. the one that didn't get much attention was a vietnam. we had many arguments about vietnam. i was skeptical about the war, as was that. there were others who were gung ho, let's say. but herman looked for what i would go basically a technical solution. and he developed a lot of ideas, sort of ideas about warfare, but also about gadgetry, technological gadgetry. much of his thinking lead but later became known as mcnamara line. in vietnam, which as you know was not very successful. japan took a lot -- i wasn't aware actually of the second book in japan but the first book on japan really was sort of in hindsight, a misreading of where he went there although it adsorb public attention and people

really thought that that was the country of the future. now we're doing the same with china, i think. but i'm glad to hear the second book. and then finally the year 2000, the year 2000 was decades away. 33 years i think the way. so it was really far away, and he had all sorts of little interesting aspects of the year -- what he expected the year 2000. and one was that people would walk around with a box on their chest and they could push a button to get certain things, and one of the buttons was going to be for sexual stimulation. [laughter] spirit and you notice the conversation, things relating to sex came up quite a bit. i couldn't help but think as i was listening to this wonderful mean, how delighted herman would have been at this meeting. in fact, he is up to probably looking down right now. he would have been delighted that he would have gotten a kick out of it and that he would have

asked for comments that the first thing he would've said is is, you got it all wrong. because that's what he liked to say the most picky like the shock. but he did it in a nicely. he is what we call today a nice guy. but he shocked with a lot of crazy ideas, some of which you picked up, and some of which one didn't. i thought that what you heard today brought order into what i knew was a chaos. chaos, at the hudson institute and both of you captured hermanns personality, as well as his impact. his long-term impact. so thank you very much. [applause] >> you added me things, including keynesian insight or the discussion of herman's saying the future of the know,

the future of internet. [laughter] >> john wohlstetter, senior fellow discovery institute trustee of hudson. i think this is particularly timely because we're actually i think going back to the future. what herman and others who were mentioned earlier were doing along with henry kissinger and others in that time in the '50s, was inventing to try to get policymakers to think about how to construct your forces and how to structure your decision-making so the worst did not happen. and by a narrow margin, at least of michael dobbs book in the queue will missile crisis, a guy in some cases by a no margin we escaped that. but ironically, from that time up until recent years, there was

a great convergence between the popular perception which was shaped by the testing and by the strangelove movies and other things, out of control spiraling arms race, and what actually occurred which because of the work of herman kahn starting in 1967 for the united states in the early '80s for the soviets, it was actually a short reduction in arms, way below debating on how you count anywhere from 70 to 90 plus% below where we were in 1967. warheads got smaller as accuracies improved, etc. ironically, we are now seeing with iran and pakistan and north korea, the prospect of a world because of proliferation where you're going to have a whole bunch of countries who have these weapons, who already have them, but the proliferating them, at least north korea's case, where the iranians if they get it, there wasn't anybody over there doing that kind of

thinking. and did you get in the mideast as a result of the iranian nuclear weapon, you could easily get saudi calling up islamabad saying would you guys like to sell if you? none of these countries i waited, both united states and russians the better part of 20 years to do, which was think through these things, learn from some experiences and with the cautions instinct of kennedy and khrushchev and khrushchev had to restrain castro who is ready for nuclear war even if his arms were up literate. we are entering into a world that is closer to midnight -- nightmare. congratulations to. >> thank you for correcting my misidentification of your uncle. >> that's all right. >> i'm glad to begin with the word caveat.

>> i knew herman for the last 10 years of his life. i'm glad to begin with the word caveat. that was his password. but the reason i rose to speak is i wanted to modify what you said about fallout shelters. the recent herman left rand to create the hudson was over the misunderstanding of fallout shelters. the purpose was to create the conditions so if you unknown opponent in the future thought that maybe we're not crazy enough to press the button, we would produce for them news shows of people streaming out of los angeles, newark, chicago, to show these americans were crazy enough that they were ready to press a button. because if your opponent doesn't think you're going to press the button, deterrence doesn't work. so fallout shelters were supposed to be misunderstood because it was understood away i

just explained it, it defeated the entire purpose. i just wanted to set the record straight. >> thank you. >> i'm crisply. i had a question that just kind of occurred to me, ken, when you were getting a history of kahn and hudson. when he left rand, and let's say the first five or six years, that he was, had created hudson, where did his support comes from largely? i know you mentioned the application -- or gary gensler ford foundation grant there but i was just curious. wasn't mostly air force, osd, i -- just out of curiosity, where did his early government support conference? >> that's a good question. there was some support in the new york win the institute moved

to hudson. folks who were close to then governor rockefeller of new york. but the real support, the early support came from the office of civil defense at the pentagon, the assistant secretary for civil defense and was a founding partner of the law firm in washington. it's been a long kennedy democrat, long involved with hudson institute, was one of the main -- was the real first government contract that led to a long size of government contracts, work with the office of net assessment as well which herman kahn's friend andy marshall took over. and then the martin marietta corporation also gave hudson contract for work on air force. hudson in those days he came known -- can't believe kai-shek he did have assailed inside but he would bite the hand that fed us an overview the pentagon

became upset with the famous vietnam study where hudson essentially presented to conclusions in the book at the side kahn favored that he thought the war could escalate and one and then the other side that thought it was time to think about beginning to pull out of vietnam which upset the pentagon, cost us money into a number of defense contractors that were not happy with conclusions of the hudson study. that's where the bunny was in the urges. kahn was a remarkable salesman. what he often told was himself. the institute following the famous 19 -- the famous agreement and academy of arts and sciences developed a strategic environment, corporate environment program that corporations than did not have a strategic planning units found very useful in terms of thinking about the future. but the main product really were these briefings by herman kahn and without, when kahn password

suddenly, there's placed great stress on institutes because he was what the institute often sold. so let me say that by way of a bit on the funding in the early days. >> thinking back to the mid 1970s, another area that herman kahn function, and it was in criminal justice area. he had grants for hudson from the national institute of justice. at that time, i was in position of having to sit down with him and having oversight over the research functions. and i was opposite the desk with him, questioning him about his methodologies because i had to

make judgments about the appropriateness of the validity of these approaches. fortunately i was very a breast with some of the unorthodox ways that he was thinking at the time. and he was speculating and forecasting about the future of criminal justice system, and crime. at that time, not only was i so impressed with his thinking, and the genius of it, but he convinced me of the worthiness of the future research that i took some time away from washington, went out of los angeles, the university of southern california, to study future research. i was thinking about the name of the person whose group. it was burt. it seems to me there are so many

ways that his approaches could be so worthwhile. and i have a question. there is no true answer to it, i suspect, but maybe an opinion that if he hadn't been in the research area as a researcher, as a scientist, how do you think he would have done, using his kind of thinking, and solving the management problems that caused obstacles and problems in the succeeding in government? if he had been able to think through the ways of managing and programs, what kind of difference might not bring? >> i think andrew can produce a he was editor is a bad manager, personally. in some way. i think there was no doubt that he probably, both as kind of a

central spoke and information for all that. i don't think there's any doubt that there are -- that being said by way of antidote, i think arguably passionate he was interested in the systems that you could make the case if you sat down and talk to the role of bureaucracy, what needs to be done to allow through more dynamic of information. the impact that technology would have about management techniques i think he would have had significant amount to add to that area. imagining you know the use of e-mail for example, the way the state department now functions the way it did to cable traffic that he really would have had some significant insights on how technology flattens hierarchies, and i think he would have been concerned about the issues about gold displacement and the like at some of the people are interested in management and examining government agencies

can. kahn given his broad perspective he had on the future, and his focus on both training capacity, getting people out of silos, asking the right questions would have said are we having these folks do the right kinds of things, should they be doing or are they following the techniques of issues that matter 25 years ago when we had a very different structure of government, very different needs for what the agency should be doing. so i suspect he would have played a major role in this field, just wrong on some of his insights. off the top of the head you can imagine the kind of constructs he would've had, the recommendations he would have made, and the kind of broader impact that he almost would have had not withstanding his own letzig management challenges. >> hi. my name is dr. strangelove. how are you? [laughter] >> just a couple of reports that

i conduct research in nuclear deterrence theory that and i think sun tzu said it best when he said war is the life and death of a state that must be pondered deeply, like it or not. so dr. collins research on nuclear weapons was totally valid between the war fighting approach that is a silly with him and colin gray, versus minimal deterrence. which leads to something that was brought up as well. which i think is still very important as a matter of life and death of the united states, which is the connection between extended deterrence and the credibility issues that come up with extended deterrence to other states, and proliferation. so take israel. the united states extends deterrence to israel, in effect, sort of announced that its not like western europe and japan. but that raises -- there's a

fundamental credibility question always with extended deterrence of, would you really trade new york or tel aviv, or new york or wherever? and that's not going to go away. in a generalized sense. so dr. kahn's work in a nuclear weapons theories or threats thereof go on. third, in terms of, there's one other thing briefly about your box idea in silos. sun tzu talked to there being unorthodox and orthodox strategies, okay. and i think that dr. kahn's work has a lot to be extended in terms of, you know, this escalation ladder theory, you have liked police actions all the way up to general nuclear exchanges, it seems to me you could see in the future how

states might employ nuclear weapons sub rosa as a terrorist attack, maybe even on their own territory as a demonstration of resolve, a signaling game, right? so let's say hypothetically speaking, for example, you still will nuclear weapons from the niceties, detonated one on your territory and then followed on with the strike on the other -- on the united states to signal to the other great powers that you are willing to use nuclear weapons to get what you wanted, and maybe trigger civil disorder in the target state. which would then trigger a more orthodox counterforce track which you could rationalize. for example, and the last point about boxes people get in with thinking, john were, i think dr. kahn would appreciate. john had a thought experience

where he would say you have corporate people, academic people, and military people. accepting his thought experiment it was like lake, a park, a ski slope. and so what you got out of that issue breakdown the barriers between them and you get a snowmobile. different parts of the lake, the ski slope, and that. so it seems to me and also for the work of pareto, that rotating people through assignments in the corporate academic to military world, which is not done now, nearly enough, so that people get mentality where they can look at things and say, i know i'm going to go off a cliff doing this, like we're doing right now maybe, everyone knew the real estate thing was bs, pretty much. and no one said anything. why? because if you did, what did

people call you? crazy. why? because everyone's mentality is so wound into the current order. there some thoughts there if you want to share. thank you. >> last question. >> thanks for this really very interesting recitation about our founder. i wanted to ask this question, and i guess it probably would go most directly to gary schmitt's remarks. you know, what you've been describing in one way or another is what is today referred to as thinking outside the box. one of the things that strikes me is, in other words, one should undertake unconventional thinking. one of the peculiarities of this

is that now being unconventional is conventional. there's kind of a convention of it. and i was wondering what you thought kahn's response to that would be, because it seems to resent an additional set of problems for being actually really independent-minded and pursuing the claims of thinking that he attempted to inspire. in other words, is a general promotion about conventional spanking -- thinking has been accepted except now it is a convention. >> yap. i mean, that's a good point, but i think it's actually a misnomer to say he was somebody engage in thinking outside the box in the following sense that i think he always wanted sort of push inside the box to see whether we

the weakest points were and that would let him break through the box. if you look at this discussion and then not all of these are factually as grounded as one would want. i mean, there's a lot of criticism in some of kahn's work because the bases, the factual basis may not be the strongest. but what struck, at least it struck me, he did always begin with a real set of factors, real set of issues. you know, it wasn't something that was, you know, let's imagine. there really was at this outlet and he still was a scientist that he did still try to take things as a practical given and then decide to experiment how you would think about that given in different fashions. so there's always kind of an anchor to i think the thought. and then you are right, i mean,

you can take these to the extreme and wind up with something less than useful. but i think at that particular point in time, a lot of things are judges. at that point in time the system was sold by. when you -- i just finished this book on the development of the icbm that's based on kind of build around general bernhard schreiber career in the air force, and won't go into the details, but what's striking about it, all the discussions about the icbm, what should be done, what should be built that it was such an insider's game and it was an insider's game in ways that were not helpful. it was people who literally did not know how to thank. and so again, any of these sort of mythological things can be taken to the extreme, but i do think in fact, doing what he did actually sort of really did open up the debate in an extremely

helpful way. and going back to the point, he did think outside the box but it was very much start inside the box to begin with. >> let me thank all of you for attending and folks are watching us electronically. but let me also, thank ken and gary who put together in a nosy rich of writings in history in a way that i think of me as a book because of the importance he has not only for where we are today but were we could be in the future. thank you. [applause]

>> seventeen years old, who was a thorough bred arab cross. wonderful, wonderful horse. my mother bred horses. so i've always liked horses. i tend to get up around 6:30 a.m. the counterpunch website, jeffrey, my goal editor, he puts the site up, the material of at

about 7:30. we crack in about 6:30 and discuss what stories might go up on the site. probably a few militant over the previous day and we talk about what's going on and what people seem to be interested in and we will -- and the jeffery gives the site up somewhere between it's a busy time. i'm a nerdy morning guy anyway. i do columns. i do counterpunch material. i do a column for the nation, one i've been doing since 1984. i do that every second tuesday. do a syndicated column. then we are usually working on a couple of books for counterpunch press. those are the birds, which really come the dog or cat and the birds write everything for me. but we try to keep quiet about that. do you want to do with dick tatian here? do you want to write a column? sit down.sits.

sent. good boy. now, your miserable life as a dog. do you want to give me the first chapter? i like, some writers like no. i like animals. because they don't criticize. animals always disappeared as soon as you start talking for radio, they drown you out. so anyway, that takes me through the morning. editing for the kind of books that we are doing, you know, two or three books, projects, but in the middle of all this because i like to garden and i have horses. i'm always running around building things, and so i've kind of searches forward to today. we call this the site house which we put up about three or four years ago. roundhouse is a very old technique of ramming earth down.

i think, i like to build. this is a square building go into a dome, done by my friend and neighbor, greg smith. >> i don't like to write in the evening, and less i have to do something for england. of course, you know, england is eight hours from here forward. if you're going to get something onto someone's desk by eight in the morning, then you can't do it in till late at night. but that's the shape of my day. it's not particularly my flightn the telephone to three or four people up in olympia, washington, who also does the editing on the books. our business operations are run right here by becky grant and dana wheeler. counterpunch books, we started b

that we wanted to keep. our web stuff on the counterpunch site doesn't go et al. about the backside of mars or somewhere in the vast set of black gold, old internety all up in some government archive. god help the people have to go through it. but we felt we wanted to put them in hardcovers which began with a book about politics. we felt it important to have come it was a very successful book. and we did it and we do our assa keypress, a bunch of pretty well organized anarchists down in oakland. and ak looks after the bookshop distribution. we also sell the books on a

website. you know, people write in and we send them out from the office here. it was natural for us to do it. we had a bunch of articles and there we got into two books that we like. again, it's not that expensive if you can sell them and you have a website in which you can advertise them all the time. so we've done five or six books from the latest one is "end times" which is out this time the done by myself and jeffrey sinclair, michael editor, co-author. we've got a book, danny kass' book, how the irish invented slimy. it just shows that much of american slang comes straight from iraq, including words you wouldn't believe like poker, just. it's a really hole hidden part of american language. if you look at, there's like three words from irish. in america today it's complete on since. millions and those of irish people came to america speaking

irish. the words didn't go away. they just transmitted into america. but danny is the first person who's really don't do it methodically and shown how many of the most common words in the american language and slang are straight pretty much straight irish. we have not been shy to criticize the bush administration as we were not shy to criticize the clinton crowd. we were particularly around your. we don't think the democratic party is the answer to everything. so we did a "dime's worth of difference" before the last election basically saying there really isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two parties. which got a lot of democrats pretty mad. so we occupy a definite site. i wouldn't want to say niche because mitch seems to be very

small. but we figure pretty large and what people say there must be more to life than the democratic party, even though we loathe the republicans, there's counterpunch and come over here and we talk a lot about the life and a lot about the world. you know, thatas metal type in newspapers, and my dad was a writer, we're going to publish his memoirs again and counterpunch. you know, there was one telephone line to the outside world from southern ireland in the middle '50s. he would finish writing his articles and then he would jump on his bike and ride 3 miles to the town. and that, the only time he got mad at me and hold my children was when i got fed up with him riding into town instead of

reading me a book in evening. i down the air on his tires. he would beat me. my father wrote on that many years, 1930 to almost the day he died. almost 1980. i must have typed about i don't know, four or 5 million words on one of those machines, as indeed most journalist and writers of my generation did the only person i know who still does i think is routh nader. ralph tells me, i told him i had an underwood 10. he got excited that he wanted to cannibalized it for his. i wouldn't do that. i don't know if he still uses it. so that was my work habits for writing books, and editing and all that. and you know, i remember, i read columns in new york and killed 1984. when i sent an article to england, the new statesman, i have to get on the subway in

manhattan in the middle of the night and go down to the telex office riding on the aa train, the d. train all the way down, take the a train down all the way down to the south end of manhattan. then i moved to key west for a while. and in the early '80s and the facts machine was coming in. thank god for the facts. and we went back and then fedex. it got easier to be a columnist outside new york, actually. and then of course, i really only went online, you know, it must've been 2000 -- no, 1988 or nine. i was late to the game. jeffrey sinclair, i co-author, it's obvious, you have to do it. so what are our work habits now? i put the typewriter away. i thought i would have you out in a little bit. i haven't gotten the portal things that. felt kind of traitors about it,

actually. and enjoy him with a mac, unix, you know, laptop. i may hunt and peck guy, you see. two or three fingers. no rippling with all 10 fingers for me. hammering away at the keys that people used to laugh at me because i used to wear t imagery of, where the characters are the keys because i hit them hard.

>> so we are here with edwin black, and most people know you for some of the bestsellers, some of the books that mitchell hedges referred to. ibm, the holocaust. all of these books bestsellers were written in the 21st century. you have either sent somewhere around 69 different editions published in about 14 lead witches and 61 countries. the question that we are focusing on today was actually your first book called "the transfer agreement: the dramatic story of the pact between the third reich and jewish palestine." this book was published in 1984 so it's been 25 years ago. and at the time that it came out

i remember there was a tremendous amount of media attention, and also it was a very controversial book. it was one there was a tremendous amount of discussion about it. so that's what brings us here today. let's go first to that issue. what was it about the publication of this book, the thesis that you're putting forth? what was it that garnered so much attention and so much controversy? >> the story of the "the transfer agreement" is the story of the pact between the zionists and the nazis that was launched in the first weeks of the third reich in 1933. it began in the spring of 1933 and was consummated in august of 1933. most people don't know that when hitler came to power, the jews actually fought back and they fought back hard and they fought back immediately. hitler came to power on january 30, 1933. the first concentration camp was

actually opened up, a series of them between march 8 and march 10 of 1933. the anti-jewish laws followed shortly thereafter. and by march 27 of 1933, the jewish war veterans had actually started a series of international protests and marches to end on march 27 of 1933, 1 million protesters jammed madison square garden. and there were boycott and protest movements all over the globe, led by the jews, but certainly involving the interfaith community, the labor unions, anyone who wanted to profit at germany's expense and to protest a nazi regime. >> so we're talking about 10 or 12 years before the onset of world war ii?

>> world war ii began at 6 a.m. on september 30, 1939. so hitler came to power in 33. the nuremberg loss in 35. the war in 1939. and most of the genocidal period, the so-called final solution, i guess would have begun in the summer of 1941, the fall of 1941 and then commencing at full speed in 1943, four and five. so what the zionists did was they realize that protest was the. >> let's make sure we define design as. those, what were they doing? >> design is, i believe most people don't know what the word zionism means. >> let's start with that. >> at the end of the 19th century, there were a number of nationalistic movements across your.