>> guest: i think the obama administration has made a shift from the bush administration and recognizing there is an important role for government. but the question is how do you -- what that role is. how big a role ought to be. they all agree they're ought to be able, even the financial sector agree they're ought to be the role bailing them out giving them a lot of money so everybody agrees the government should do something if we are going to give the bank's money. but some of us think it should have a broad role and we talked in this conversation a lot about the role in preventing disasters. if you're going to have to build big hospitals, let's have some preventive care so not so many people go to the hospital. ..

it's a good theory, reason why that's the case. but the fact is that you can't have the advances in tech knowledge he if you don't have the advances in science on which they rest. director for the innovations in there for the growth and unemployment. >> guest: i'll has to rest on a foundation of government. what i found was so disturbing during the bush era was this

constant bashing of the government. the government doesn't do everything perfectly. i mean, any of us look at what happened during the bush administration have to agree that the government often get things very bad. but it's also the case of private sector often doesn't get things perfectly. no government, no democratic government probably has ever wasted on the onset of war on the scale of our your in this crisis. we should remember that. so private sector still, governments fail. we need to have systems of checks and balances. that's part of the democratic process. one of the concerns is that the system of checks and balances may be getting undermined. and that goes back to what teddy roosevelt said 100 years ago. if we allow some economic forces

to get too large, they will shape not only the economy, but also the politics. antitrust law that he advocated successfully was not so much motivated by economic distortions. and i was an important aspect, but it was by how these could affect the political process. i think as we look at what has been happening in the last year, and would have turned in the years before the crisis, we have to be renewed feeling exactly the question. >> host: this book makes a contribution to it as it lays it as it lays out the case and give some very good ideas about the role of government and what we need to do for theater to directory much for tireless discussion. just go thank you.

[applause] >> thank you for having me here tonight. it's really an honor to be at the army navy club. one of my favorite places to go. at the library here is amazing. it's one of the oldest libraries in washington d.c. but the club and what i do is sort of intertwined. it's about preserving the stories of veterans. and right after college in 1992 i started interviewing world war ii veterans and i've done about 3000 interviews with world war ii veterans of flow such as world war i all the way through korea, afghanistan and iraq. and you mentioned we were going.

i was actually embedded in a marine platoon in iraq in the battle of falluja. but it was always about the veteran stories. in the brenner assignment is one of the most amazing stories i ever came across. i was working on my third book called operatives by in tourism which is aired oral assessment of the oss. when i was doing that i would go to the national archives to find research on the book. in the national archives has about three cubic miles of records. and inside the archive the plague drilling for oil. you don't know if you're going to find -- if you're going to find oil or a dry hole. and i was going through box after box after box. and one day i found something called the tacoma mission. it was this dusty old file that had rusted staples on the and i turned to the tacoma mission and

it was page 16 i think i flipped through it in a doctor about how an oss agent was suddenly surrounded a german soldiers. and he was being taken back to a pw cage. and in the process of being taken back, he didn't want to go willingly. so out of his pocket he pulled a stinger pen, which was actually a ballpoint pen that was 22 caliber pistol. he aimed it at the guard and the guard was found, didn't believe him at all and actually raised his rifle. and at that very same moment that oss operative ran like a racehorse and what toward the barn in the back of his calf was grazed by this german ncos bullet from a mouse there. and that story completely captivated me. i wanted to know more about that individual. his name is howard chappell. he became sort of an obsession

in a sense to try to find who he was in a fence and then also to get a story. and for the next six years i would try to interview howard chappell, but i would always get the same line, well, you know, you really need to come out here and i really can't talk to you about it. and it was like so many of the oss veterans they maintained their vows of silence. and it was even worse than that. he had never talked about the war even to his family. so this mission became of real interest to me. that it was only sort of the tip of the iceberg in a sense because this book is about two missions that are combined together, to stories that are combined together, which creates an entire almost world. for me this is the most complex book i ever wrote.

at times i didn't even know if i could write it. it took seven years of research, literally 10,000 documents. i am about ten or 11 of these things at home. these are declassified documents that came from various archives around the world from the national archives, german archives, italian archives and i really devoured this staff four year and read and let it sit and try to absorb it and came around the story. but the key was actually trying to find chappell in getting an interview. in the key to that story was a gentleman who was eighth i.t. in the footer of these two missions, howard chappell's mission and another individual who i'm going to talk about in a second, stephen hall. and that person was albert materazzi. his nickname during the war was

the brain because he was the spy effectively the case officer, that handled these two missions. and his entire basement was filled, you know, it's still there, of thousands, tens of thousands of the documents. and he was an amazing man. but he got chappell to talk to me. and there was three or four years ago i asked albert -- i said to him, and thinking about going back to iraq. he said no, you need to talk to howard. and he got howard to talk to me. and that is an entire story in itself getting howard to talk. digressing to the second mission, what this whole primary assignment is about is that in world war ii there is an area called the brenner pass. it still exists to this day and

it's the main thoroughfare where the highways and railroads, where germany in world war ii main supplies came to this pass. and throughout the war the allies constantly try to bomb it into disk action that they were unsuccessful. so the story begins actually in 1938 where you have a man that sent and over graduate that dropped out of harvard and el and decides to join the uss army as a private. but in 1938 he skied -- was a wealthy wealthy individual and skied at cortana billy dear the brenner pass and decided when the war broke out that this supply line could potentially be cut. so fast forward a little bit as he was a private. he then becomes an officer. he continues to formulate this plan that if you drop me behind

the lines, by parachute the past explosives i can destroy the subclasses that lead into the brenner. and in 1944 after the allies invade italy, and hall is on a train from training as an engineer back from the east coast to oregon, he pens a letter that says to the oss, if you draw me behind the lines, i can accomplish all these things. and what's quite remarkable is that train lines still exist today. it's called the empire builder. and it runs from chicago all the way to seattle or oregon. and on that line train ride, paul wrote a letter that changed his entire fate and destiny. in the oss, just back up for a moment, is effectively the first

cia or central intelligence agency but it was far more than that during world war ii. it was also for operations groups. they do with propaganda. we also dealt with research and analysis which took all the human intelligence that was out there and collated it and then analyze it. and it was sort of an entire agency that had everything under one umbrella. which in many ways, the brenner assignment as well as what's going on today, is a very back to future problem. we are dealing with human intelligence issues and everything else and a lot of people about it to did a need for an oss. again, a hall joins this agency and coasters by turning and is given the opportunity to form his own team. any forms a small team of about four men and they jump back the heinz alliance into northern italy to sever the path for the

small passes that lead up to the past. that everything begins to go wrong even from the start. hall is given his own mission called operation mercury. he is gone in to try to sever these passes and then there's another submission attached to them. he's not given the radio off. her and he sets off on his own. and really one of the great epic adventure stories of world war ii -- he's climbing mountains. his cross-country skiing. during this whole time he is avoiding to assess who is constantly hunting him and the other partisans in the area. but he begins to go sit at a partisan movements and he things up. it's incredible. the reason why i was able to capture so much detail is that stephen hall did sort of the historian stream. he illegally kept a diary on cigarette paper and recorded daily entries of what he did.

everything from eating like polenta with the natives to showing people how to write a motorcycle to blowing up bridges and avoiding the assess. and this is an entire story that's wrapped up behind the lines. but what happens as he separated from the group and they don't give him a radio operator to communicate. and he has to communicate during and written transcript study some factor another radio operator and the hope is always to bring in somebody else. another radio operator and another team. the mets were the second story of this book comes into play with howard chappell. the men that i was talking about with the tacoma mission. chappell was sent to basically help all achieve the objective of severing the lines of communication to the brenner

pass. and i'm going to briefly talk about chappell story now. and it's really incredible because we talk about first special operations teams. this was said. the german operational group in the operational groups within the oss were fact that lead the first green berets. the entire washington area is littered with training grounds for oss operatives and for the operational groups, effectively the first special operations groups to the congressional country club served that purpose. the entire fairways of the club was turned into a training area where men learned hand to hand combat, they learned how to blow things up. in a pliant untracked silent kill people. chappell was given the responsibility is something called the german operational

group. and this is an amazing story. it's about incredible desperados from all walks if there ever was a dirty dozen, this is it. these are guys that had escaped concentration camps. many of them were jewish refugees that had escaped nazi germany, that were here in the german operational group to train. they became nationalized american systems to go back behind the lines. in the current book that i just wrote, they dared return is about that book. it's about five men that are basically refugees from nazi germany that escaped nazi germany and then dare to go back to heinz alliance. and i'm just going to digress a little bit about that group. they have three other missions

that changed the course of world war ii. but what happened is the german operational group goes back into italy and they link up with albert materazzi. and it's absolutely wild. the group gets lost in the shuffle. they go into b-bravo b-bravo. many of the men including the jewish five are going to be cannibalized into a replacement unit to be paratroopers for the division. the mutiny. and chappell somehow finds admission and defines a mission to go back and find stephen hall. and what happens is the fact permission is prepared to give us even ought a radio operator. going back to stephen hall now, with operation mercury, everything is going wrong. he becomes depressed.

his feet are actually frostbitten. he has to pack them increase because it's so cold in the pre-alps and the dolomites. in the scaling mountains and avoiding the german patrols. and what's fascinating is that this work is built around five major characters. hall, chappell and the next person i'm going to talk about right now. all is given a book in the middle of the night, after one of his ambushes and he doesn't understand who it found. in a set time if the scarlet pimpernel, it's a book about the french revolution and how they save french mobility. once you've given the book he wonders who it's from. and the resistance group is less that it's from a friend. paul reads the book in about a

week later he's asked to return it. andy goes in the dead of night across the alps with this partisan leader into the small village of mari sign, which is the mayor of mari son is perhaps the most interesting woman in the brenner assignment. she's actually a double agent. she's french -- choose from the french intelligence service is planned there because they want to monitor the movements of the brenner pass. they want to avoid the stab in the back that occurred in the 1940 when italy attacked for you. but she's also does not the mayor and effectively double agent. and she has the governor of the area under her thumb. and hall goes in the death of the night to return the book and there is a code that she put

that there is no germans in her small villa. she puts a pine branch of the window. and hall comes in at night and returns the book. and she's actually seductively laying on the couch, waiting for him. and this is not something i made out. this is all in his diary. and i actually interviewed the account of his housekeeper, who still is alive. and a lot of this material she explained what happened. it's just absolutely incredible. this is a woman that could easily be angelina jolie in today's. she was able to, you know, handling machine gun, but she was able to seduce the not unturned nazi governor. and she tried to seduce hall. what's fascinating is that half of her house, the upstairs of

her house -- this house still exists to the day. i've been to northern italy. i found the house and then walked in there. inside the top of the house was a room that was filled with sugar and spice. she had a sweet tooth. and the other half of the room was filled with ammunition and machine gun rounds and explosives. and that was the kind of women that she was. and she tried, you know, she talked to stephen hall. and they developed a relationship behind the lines. but this whole time, hall wanted to accomplish his mission and nothing seemed to be going right. and at the same time, the other major character of this book comes into play who was a ss officer, part of the gestapo who

relentlessly hunts every allied agent in the area, including hall as well as rounding up scores of them. as this is all going on, hall's entire network has been infiltrated. and he is losing people left and right and he is just a hair's breadth from being chopper. what happened is a massive snowstorm hit and he realizes his time has come to change the course of this mission. he's not going to sit back here he's going to try to make a change. and he realizes that he can get to the brenner pass, but there's a small remote substation that's about 15 miles away, that's in this heavily occupied german area called cortina. if he's able to get there and destroy it the substation had a condenser that was made of mercury. it was very high-tech for the time. with a light rail system that was electric. it was destroyed would be out of

commission for three months. and the whole part of the supply line in that area would be disabled. the hall decides to roll the dice against the counts as his wishes and sets out in the middle of a snowstorm with a 30-pound pack of explosives to destroy the substation. and what happens is he -- it takes up nearly a day to get there through cross-country skiing and everything else and he developed hypothermia and snow blindness and eventually falls into the hands of the germans in august schiffer. as this is all going on, howard chappell parachutes behind the lines into northern italy to find hall. and then there's this race to find hall before his final mission takes place. and what happens is schiffer actually sort of ethan to the punch. and chappell is surrounded --

his entire hideout is surrounded by hundreds, if not a thousand, ss troops. and he shoots his way out. and it's one of the most amazing combat scenes i've ever had a chance to examine. the houses on the side of the mountain. i found the house but it actually been there with the former members of the resistance and i looked at the house in the exact details and they actually shot their way out of the house and made their way down towards a mountain stream and they trained through this mountain stream that has hundreds of ss troops around them. as they were shooting their way out, they made -- there was a fork in the stream. they had to decide to go right or left. remarkably, it was a decision of life or death. the man that turns left were saved and the man that turned

right were captured. but as all this drama was unfolding, the ss was all around and they were tiny crevasses in the side of the stream, where the men actually. themselves and covered themselves with mud as the germans passed by. and it comes to this point that howard chappell is actually captured. and he is caught by this german soldier and he pulls out the stinger. and amazingly he escapes. he escaped certain death, certain capture and then what happens is he hides for an entire day in the countryside along with the rest of this team. many of those men are rolled up. and he finds himself inside of a barn, a cowbird, near the drop zone where the missionary was.

and he wakes up that morning to the sound of rottweilers and german war dogs, an entire german platoon had surrounded the barn. and he worked his way out of the barn only to feel the jagged edge of a mouse or bayonet in his bag. and at that point, he says comrade or surrender. and he is being walked back to the german pow cage. and for the second time he escapes. and what's remarkable in this is detailed in the mission report. this german guard walks him back. this man that's about six-foot to him as he is walking him back, chappell finds an area that sort of a dead area, where there aren't other witnesses to what is going on. and he lets the german soldier with his bayonet in his bag kind

of bump into and. and as that happens, he takes the back of this german snack and does a backflip and then cracks this man's neck and throws the body into a drainage covert. and what's remarkable in one of the best parts of the story, which is entirely true, is that he finds himself in a situation where he is in an open field and he has to decide how do i cost us open field without attracting the attention of the scores of ss soldiers that are surrounded the field? and he realizes that if he quickly moves, the i will catch that motion. so he does something that is absolutely audacious and typical and takes his field tunic which is sort of british and he just pulled it down and he flexes her

back and he gracefully walks across the field like he owns it. and nobody in the ss notices him. and he walks into a small house that contains women that are actually admitting that day. unsurprisingly these women -- the way he described it as it was like an american officer dropped in for breakfast every morning. they just looked at them and didn't say anything and he just walked right out the back door. and what happened next is really quite remarkable. it becomes a situation where stephen hollis captured by august schiffer. and august schiffer and howard chappell are effectively doing one another behind the lines. it becomes this giant cat and mouse chase as to who will find you first. and chappell is being hunted left and right by schiffer's

men. and tragically, during this time period, stephen hall is tortured, water boarded, he was balled up and tortured. it doesn't reveal much. it's largely an effect it, but tortured and then killed i august schiffer. and what happens is that crime creates this thing called war crimes case number 36, where we have in august schiffer's own words exactly what he did on a daily basis. so this book is in their own words, not only in the american words, but also the worst of the germans as well as the italian partisans that were there. the manhunt continues and chappell does some of the most extraordinary things. he tries to basically -- he

takes out a bridge, single-handedly, where he storms across it, heavily defended ridge with a tommy gun and captures most of the bridge and tried to detonate it but the bond that the plant only destroys part of the bridge. and he starts to work with contacts within the resistance to find schiffer. and at the same time all this is going on, schiffer is trying to hunt chapel. and the war is starting to draw to a close. and schiffer and the other men that were part of the ss begin to use the brenner pass, not as a means of bringing supplies down but it becomes a means of escape. and chappell, what's most

remarkable, works with a countess who is actively trying to find her lover, stephen hall. and the countess provides transportation because the germans had the entire area around the brenner pass heavily defended. she provides a track that's driven by partisan that works with her. and then hide in secret compartments in the truck and they drive up towards the brenner pass. when i first heard this story, like so much of the story didn't believe it. until i went back to italy in her interview the partisan that drove the truck. and i mean, everything in this book, so much of it is serendipity. i would go from one italian town to another to find these old men, the sole partisans that fought in the war. and i'll never forget. i went to the town with the countess lift and i was trying to find the sole partisans that

it thought was chappell and hall. and we found this 40-year-old dan had a cable track and we sat there is no way this guy has anything to do with the war. but he was the only person they are in the person who was with me, roberto castellini whose great uncle was killed was chappell in the band interview this man and they said, my father fought with the partisans, but you might want to talk to the guys house that sort of at the edge of the town. and i never will forget going into the town, going from one house to the next and i found this house that they were talking about. and i saw this old man sitting next to the tv. and i'll never forget i'm not down the door and he just came up to the door. yet one i actually and he looked

pretty angry. he said to me, what do you want? and i said, i said one word. i said chappell. and he said to me, he goes, rambo. and that became the segway into our discussion with the truck driver that drove them up. and what happened is really quite remarkable. chappell accomplished hall's mission and worked with the partisans that were there we find the lines that paul had initially formed. and they set up ambush positions in this gorge that's considered impassable. and hundreds of these persons had machine guns, random machine gun, and the book the bridge that led towards the gorge which is part of the brenner system if you will. it was a sub pass up towards it.

and members of august schiffer's group along with major schroeder who had hunted chappell in the 5:04 p.m. third, which was an elite tiger unit had all tried to break through the past escape towards germany. and chappell's main nemesis decided that after they tried to assault the past and couldn't get through it that they would resort to more nefarious means. every single civilian was in the town was rounded up and placed in the church. and the gestapo said to chappell, we will blow the church if you don't let it pass. what's remarkable is to this day in italy there is a white surrender flag that exists that is inside the church where the germans cannot try to negotiate with chappell. and chappell said to them point blank, go ahead and block the

church. we're not going to do you pass. we will annihilate you well. and then he also added an entire block that there is a parachute battalion that had dropped behind the hills and that they were ready to annihilate these german forces. the major schroeder, his nemesis, along with schiffer, throughout this entire story, said to chappell, well, before i surrender i need to know who i am surrendering two. and howard chappell then physically sad, my name is major howard chappell is the oss. and this man's completely dropped and said i've heard of you. and he also said that i've captured several of your teammates and i treated them very well. chapel knew that was a complete lie because his teammates had been tortured by schiffer and

schroeder. he said to them, yes. and schroeder said to chappell, you look german. and chappell, who was a german descent nodded his head and said well, i expect that you would as a german almost a germanic dissent would treat me like i treated jordan on. and chappell just sort of looked at him and said, of course. what happened next is that major chaim of the 504 tiger battalion decided to do the right thing. he wasn't going to let schroeder pushed him around, who didn't want to surrender. he agreed to surrender his entire force of 5000 men that day to howard chappell. a single oss major. and schroeder then reluctantly agreed to surrender as well. and what happens is really one

of the more amazing stories of world war ii. thousands of ss troops, as well as members of a known the german tiger battalion surrendered to a single individual. and it changes -- it has an amazing impact on his life as well as the lives of the other people there. in many ways, this is exactly what happens the book that i have now called they dare return. were these men who were part of the jewish five go back behind the lines. they blow up 26 strains. and there are captured. the turn the tables on their captors and fred maher gets an entire half of an army group to surrender, along with all of

boston austria. it's quite an amazing story. it's sort of an amazing about the oss is it's about single individuals that are able to take what you expect to happen and sort of bend history and change it. and that's what men like chappell and hall and fred maher did, literally changed the course of the war. and it's why i've been so interested in world war ii. stories of world war veterans and the stories in the brenner assignment. it's about people that have changed the course of things. it's about amazing americans that have changed the course of basically destiny. and i'll just keep it at that and i'd like to take your questions. [applause]

>> we usually take six to eight questions and do i have a question? please. be not i've already read the book. it's a great book and i recommend it to everybody. anyway, you're talking about when chappell is in capri leg when they captured the tiger battalion. this kind of a very short cryptic capture their were you just kind of say the five ss officers were shot trying to escape any just kind of leave it at that. can you elaborate a little more on that? >> well, what i can say is what the documents tell us. and the man, schroeder and his other officers surrendered. in the document say that they were shot trying to escape.

and i guess we'll leave it at that. >> question about how you do your research. do you speak all languages? do you use interpreters, how do you get to the documents? >> excellent question. i just want to say one more thing about major schroeder, who was caught trying to escape. this is one of the greatest war criminals in northern italy's history also. he had hung over 400 men on meat hooks. he had personally interrogated and then also executed people. so this is an extremely brutal individual. and i'm just going to be with at that. not going back to your question,

i was really fortunate. i had dr. paulo who had spent a lifetime studying steven hall's movements. he would walk the area and he had actually watched part of the area with me. and he was bilingual. he spoke english, italian and german. and many of the documents were translated thanks to him. so i had some incredible help from the italians on this project. and i'm very, very happy with that. i mean, they were incredibly helpful. i mean, the institute of the resistance in balloon out is dedicated to preserving the stories of resistance fighters. and they are incredibly -- incredibly detailed am looking

at it from all sides. and i spent weeks over there mining their archives as well as the national archives and walking the job sounds in northern italy to capture the story, which is made of about 10,000 documents. but it's also great told in a very diplomatic manner. >> question. >> what happened to chappell after the second world war? did he get out of the army of the oss? >> yes. howard chappell was initially slated to form a japanese operational group two was sold the islands of japan but that never of course one off. and he then joined effectively the bureau of firearms. a forerunner to the atf. and became involved in taking

out the mafia as far as narcotics related incidents go. and his exploits are legendary. he was absolutely fearless. no, i interviewed him. in some cases he would go audaciously further than his duties ever required which is typical of chappell even during the war as well as after. in fact events at the homes of several mobsters, put machine guns, a tommy gun to their head and got, you know, basically took care of the case and was later sued them yukiko and who is a famous mobster in la for assault. and after the war, howard chappell is really one of the most remarkable people that i ever met and also sort of somebody that i even was somewhat afraid of.

[laughter] it take years to interview him. and when he did say he wanted to be interviewed, it was a remarkable story, a spy story in itself. he said i'd went out to california unannounced and i said howard, i am here. and he's like, okay. i said i would like to interview you. he's like okay, fine. meet me at spyglass drive at high noon at pismo beach. [laughter] and i said okay, sir. i will be there at noon. i drive to pismo beach. i was five minutes early, called him up. i was like okay, good. note that the gas station as he requested in all never forget this large lincoln town car with almost tinted windows pulls up and this man who is 90 years old looks at me, his neck cranes and i just said, hello, howard. he's like, follow me. went back to his house and

that's where the interview began. we went back in time. and i'll never forget, though. he was very sort of ornery and very much in control. and i'll never forget yet a dagger that he used to open up the mail, that he would fiddle with in front of me. and i'll just never forget that's how the interview began. and we went back in time. it was literally one of his last interviews and howard chappell sadly died on his deathbed as i got the story. >> pat, both of your books detailed oss operations in germany. i'm curious to know if you could speak a little bit about the mission that they were signed to undertake as well? >> well, they dared return is the current book that i have out

right now. and it's about oss operatives that were part of chappell's group. part of his german operational group. and they were all jewish refugees that escaped germany and dared to return. they went back. and i think it's really one of the great stories of world war ii, where these men, the german operational group gets dropped off in north africa. and in the military bureaucracy, everybody loses track of it. and nobody knows where they're supposed to be or who they are and they're about to be put into this rapid death of them become paratroopers in the 82nd airborne division. within this group is a group of best friends who i call the jewish five and they are led by a man named fred maher was allowed to this day and he is 89

years old and one of the most remarkable individuals that i've ever met. he takes this group of five and says look, you know, we are here to a mission. we're here to go back. and nothing is going on with chappell's mission here. and they've literally mutiny from that group. and they strike out in a jeep and they find another oss headquarters and they go to the headquarters and they literally beg for admission. and i'll never forget howard, the lieutenant colonel who was in charge of something called the german austrian desk says to the jewish five, you know, what are you here for her. you know all that type of stuff. and fred maher says to him, but, this is more our awards and it's your war. and that becomes sort of the whole premise of their missions. they go back to kind alliance

and literally change the course of the war by getting the entire army group to surrender as well as gathering critical intelligence and blow up 26 trains. >> patrick, i wondered if you could briefly explain what happened with -- >> i'm so glad you're here, bob. it's really an honor and you are the son of the spymaster that was involved in all these missions. it made all this possible, literally thousands of these documents came from that basement archives that were talking about in bethesda. and your father was a great friend of mine. you know, albert materazzi, his nickname was the brain. and after the war, the braves quarreled away literally tens of thousands of declassified

documents and had so many of the contacts that i needed and convinced chappell to interview me and everything else. and it was through your father's efforts that this book -- it was possible. i'll never forget it became tuesdays with the brain instead of tuesdays with morrie. i go down to the basement and i would spend hours in these archives sifting to these old documents. and your dad was quite the perfectionist. and it was all about making sure everything was right. and we would go off to an italian restaurant, drink wine that afternoon and just pour through these documents. and it was through his sort of document boot camp that so much of this is possible.

>> thank you. the one eyed partisan at the end of the village, did he confirm things you at rd known. did he tell you new things? what was that like? a combination of things. he told me new things that were even more germanic than the documents revealed. for instance, the final portion of the mission is really quite extraordinary. the men had to somehow get -- go through 30 miles of german lines at checkpoints and everything else and somehow get towards the brenner pass. so this gentleman was chosen to drive the track to get these guys they are. and the track itself were secret compartments inside it creates an chappell in a six-foot to figure as well as the other men and their weapons on the radio were a seeker did it in the back of the track.

and mario drove this track through every check point. andy told me how on the first checkpoint they make it through. nobody actually pulls up the t.a.r.p. and looks to the boxes. and in the second or third check point, the germans become more suspicious. and they actually -- they come pull over and searched the chart. and they start to see racially full off the t.a.r.p. and tried to block the boxes which contain chappell and the other team members which would've blown this entire mission is the germans have actually uncovered the crate and found chappell. but as all this is taking place, there's this weird rainstorm that comes about. and literally the g-man germans decide they can bring to the

proxima gorge letter by. they rapped on the top of the metal on the track and they waved me through. and that's how the history of the tacoma mission was accomplished. >> thank you for a wonderful speech. [laughter] >> where you're at west virginia university speaking with professor daniel shapiro about is but, "is the welfae state justified?." so let's start at the end if he will. is the welfare state justified?

>> probably not but i should explain a little bit about what i mean by that. first, what i mean by the welfare state. by the welfare state and mean programs like national health insurance, social security, social and syringe programs. and when i say probably not, what i do in the book is kind of interesting i think as i look at the values and principles of people who defend the welfare system. i take the reasons they give so i'm in philosophy at the temporary philosophy of various positions that supportive. i'll just say people appeal to fairness or are protecting the poor, inviting a sensitive opportunity. given their values if you compared those institutions with feasible more market-based opportunities the people supporting them support the alternatives. they come out looking either better or at least as good given

their own values. >> so what are the essential principles or values that drive the creation of welfare programs? >> i think what i'll talk about perhaps the most. one is some notion of fairness. i think that's probably if you ask people why do we need these programs, they probably say because they are fairer. if we let people try to have their health insurance in rome or have pension pants retirement on their own, if they are poor it's not going to be fair to them. so i think those are the values. do you want me to talk about one of my arguments here? >> sure. cinemax and health care -- this came out in 2007 by cambridge university press. so it's not completely current with what's going on, but basically if you look at systems of national health insurance which exists in all the affluent

democracies. we don't have one. with a quasi-system. we have medicare and medicaid. pardon me, half of all health care expenditures. if you look at those programs, basically to put it simply that involve massive massive substitution of everybody. the government has to subsidize everybody and keep the price below what they would pay any market. i what happens is that his sort of elementary. you subsidize something, get more of it. once you get more of it you get a big explosion of demand. eventually when the government has to put a cap. and then you get government ration. when that happens you get lines. who is going to go to the top-of-the-line? i'll tell you who's going to go to the top of the line. people like me. people have connections, people are knowledgeable, people who can game the system. who's going to go to the bottom of the line, poor west virginians. so if you want to be fair, this is not a fair system. now, to do this we would need to

talk about what a feasible alternative, with a real market-based insurance would look like. do you want me to talk about that? >> yes, please. >> we have to turn compared to some alternative here it so by real market health insurance, i don't mean the united states, a system were not the governments are in control and not the insurance company is controlled to give the consumer. so imagine a system where we have a little bit of the health savings accounts. you have an account, tax-free. you can use it to spencerport predictable routine experiences. we limit insurance to catastrophes which is really what insurance should be applied. think about car insurance. as a pay for tuneups, oil and lives. you know the answer to that. if they did it would be catastrophically part of the fun. part of -- if we have a system like this, everybody can be controlling their own health care dollars which is much more

fair and we limit catastrophes uninsurance of an office rationing problem because in my system you would have tax incentives so almost everybody would have a health savings account. who would be just like for the really hard cases and subsidies to it and then you don't have rationing for which you get a national health insurance. you don't have the poor people being shunted to the bottom of the line. if you want to really be fair, have a system in which people are controlled in their health dollars in which we don't get this kind of rationing, which we see in a lot of potential health systems. >> in your opinion, and welfare programs in general achieve social justice? >> well, it sort of depends, pardon what she mean by social justice, if you mean -- something like fairness, a sense of community, i think if you compare them typically social insurance programs, they do a worse job.

on welfare, government welfare i think it's more of a tossup. but if you just want to ask my opinion and not the arguments, guess i would say they do a poor job. given again the values of the people that sunday. >> who would you like to read this book? who will benefit the most? >> well, it's dedicated. it is dedicated to the welfare state. it is dedicated to them. i didn't want to insert my own views in it. i wanted to say look, i'm going to take your views seriously and i want to convince you, rather than i want to convince you that the institutions have alternatives. if you want i can say little bit about what motivates it. as a philosopher i've seen these debates bogged down like somebody say liberty is the most important. some people say fairness says that some people say community has. and then they battle about principles. i'll play the truth. it doesn't get here.

no one's mindset change. instead of doing that, why not say okay coaster from different starting points. we could converge on the same kind of institutions. so i draw a distinction between the principles and the institutions that i try to say maybe despite all the disagreements this is like permissions of hope. despite the disagreements of basic principles we could converge on similar results about what institutions we should have because that's really what it's about, what kind of society and social institutions do we want. so that's why would like to read this book your thoughts or cassie. i dedicate a lot of my friends who disagree with me. we have principles my own view is that much more of a liberty guy. i say even if you're an egalitarian you shouldn't be supporting the social insurance programs are