len colodny and tom schachtman talk about neoconservatives influences presidents. the world affairs council in washington, dc hosts the talk. [applause] >> hi. i'm ray walker. i'm the national security editor at u.s.a. today. proud to say also a long-time friend of len colodny. worked with him since i met him almost 20 years ago in florida, which is where len lives now. been involved with len on this book. worked with tom on it, too. really proud to see this book come out, and i think we will have a lively, interesting discussion, because there's so much in this book that i found

new, and you will as well. i would like to engage tom and len in some questions about what's the book, what they learned, and then about halfway through, open it up for questions you may have and we can take it from there. start off with talking to tom about -- tell us about the broad strokes you found in the book, the main points people should take away. >> first i would like to say, we never covered the subject matter totally, and it's very true in this book. what we set out to do here was to get some sense of how far policy was made and why over the last 40 years, and a lot -- not in a dry, academic way, but in a what of, who did what and why did they do it? we found there were two very large camps, shall we say, of

people, and in one camp was richard nixon, who was a pragmatist to end all pragmatists. when he came into office, he overturned the foreign policy of the previous quarter century in a way that went against prims principles in order to get something he thought needed to be done. so throughout this period there's a whole series of people who are pragmatic in their outlook. and then there were people who felt that foreign policy should proceed on a particular moral basis or values basis, and they found a lot of what nixon was doing initially to be -- an aattempt at detente with the soviet union, the attempt to open up what was then called red china, and the third strand,

which he also decided upon before he came into office drawing the vietnam war quickly to a close. he obviously didn't do that as quickly as he wanted, but on the other two fronts he succeeded admirably opening things up, and he galvanized whole generations of people who were fundamentally anticommunist. they were people on the right, in the democratic party and the republican party and any other party that was then around, who had spent the previous 25 years working their lives out against communism, and the idea that you could suddenly throw that over and open up discussions and perhaps even make concessions to communist countries, this was an amazing thing to them.

and they did more than impact foreign policy. as we contend in this book, there was a strong element of their helping to undermine the nixon presidency in a way that helped to bring it down. the mythology is that the nixon presidency ended because of conspiracy on the left, that the media and nixon0s old enemies brought this to a close. we think that had to be amended, and we show you exactly why in this book. there are many other strands that are in there. one of the most important were the people who opposed nixon because of his foreign policies. not because of who he was but because of the policies. this war, which we call it -- we think it is a war -- continued through the ford and carter administrations where the foreign policy was basically a nixonan foreign policy, a continuation of those thing tuesday, both by carter, the

democratic president, and by ford, who was nixon's immediate successor, a republican president. that calculus -- change until the early reagan years, when people who had been tranche anticommunists, who were known as neocons, came into power. but they didn't come into the first rank of power. they came into the second or third ranks. the first ranks were held by more moderates. and the second term, the neocons were angry. what are you doing, going out there and meeting gorbachev and setting new agendas and this is not what we thought we hired you to do. then the pendulum swung back to

pragmatism under george hw bush, who had a tremendous sense of what was needed to be done in the world. put together a coalition, the likes of which had never been seen before in the history of the world, to take on a specific enemy at a specific time and place. and the neocons were all for that, except that he didn't go all the way to baghdad, and george h.w. bush felt he couldn't go to baghdad, because the coalition would have fallen apart. so the neocons went back into their habit all posture, which is the greatest criticizers of foreign policy the world has ever seen. they do a terrific job of telling you what the alternative is. throughout the bill clinton years, steadfastly all through that time, if you wanted to find an alternative way of working at the world and what taught be

don, neocons were there to provide it, and only during the administration of george w. bush do they really -- were they even able to come to the fore and utilize their power through guys who were not necessarily neocons, bush and cheney and rumsfeld, who were not in the neocon camp of academics, and newspaper editorial writers. and this is the arc that we trace in this book in great detail. and we tell you a lot about some very interesting people, and i think i had better stop now and maybe len can fill you in on the most interesting character. >> many of the characters are familiar to most readers, there's one person whose name has been obscure for years and whose role you discovered during your research. tell us who this person is and what he did. >> when i finished writing my

first book, i came away with this really nagging question, and i didn't have an answer, and i couldn't explain it, and then there was another question that nagged a little bit, but not as much as this one. how did the republican party go from day attendant to to -- day tent and the evil empire in a decade. that's what the 40 years war does, explains how you can go in the less than a decade from detente to the evil empire and it's a fascinating decade. and while there was containment for 45 years, once nixon started down the detente path, and as his enemies coe coe less -- coe a lessed, there was a battle that occurred inside the

administration, outside the administration. and then ford has to support detente or back away detente, and reagan pushing hard on the hawkish side. carter comes in and they again again to attack. what's important to note here is there is a political revolution going on. the democrats had moved left with george mcgovern, forcing the scoop jackson democrats, who would become the neocons in 1980. they gap to -- began to try to take the party back. when they failed from '76 to '80, they coe -- coalesced with the conservatives and impact the next 30 years of american foreign policy in one form or another. so, that was the key question in my mind, and then there was one other question. because i was intrigued by the

way nixon was maneuvered out of the white house from inside the white house by general haig, i kept wondering, who recommended he get haig? how did haig get to the white house? and in searching around in 2006, after bush had been re-elected. i called roger morris who worked with kissinger and haig, and the threw out a name. he said it may be a fellow named kramer. he went on to explain that he was fellow with the pentagon who what henry kissinger's mentor, and his name was fritz kramer. we have modern technology, google fritz kramer. up pops a lot of names. wolfowitz, pearl, on something called the world security network, and they are praising this guy like he is a

geopolitical jesus christ. you would think this guy was -- man, he was everything. and i'm saying fritz crane center i thought fritz kramer was a guy who coached michigan football. i didn't under that there was another fritz kramer out there. this guy is unique, different. not because of his theory of provocative weakness, throwing weakness and draw attack. that's his theory. never show weakness, always negotiate with a battle. and you begin to understand a little bit about this fellow. but it's who he mentored that makes him unique. he has mentored kissinger when kissinger was going to become an accountant and got him to good to harvard. he was like a father to kissinger. and when kissinger became the head of the n.s.e., he recommended his other prized

pupil, general haig. though he was colonel haig. and to colonel haig became kissinger's deputy. haig was true believer in kramer, provocative weakness, and as you see in the book, provocative weakness cannot live on the same feel as detente. and it's impossible. so you have a quartet of players in the beginning. president nixon, henry kissinger, haig, and this mysterious man who is sending memos to the president about the need to win the vietnam war. and so this relationship is really important in understanding how everything goes down in the next decade. and kramer, strengthly enough -- this is a broad view. i would say. kissinger never served again in government after 1976 when he left the ford -- when the ford

administration lost to carter. kramer continued to be a force until he died in 2003. and that's what was so remarkable about seeing names like cheney, wolfowitz, rumsfeld, rumsfeld saying of kramer, the keeper of our flame, and using the words provocative weakness when he was defense secretary. and even see it today in the back and forth between president obama and former vice president cheney, where cheney is really saying to obama. when you use words like war on terror, you don't use the words terror, you are therefore project weakness and inviting attacks. so it its now spanned 40 years, and a casting of many who starting in '69, '70, and then 2009. so that's a key element in

understanding this, and kramer's role is unique. he opens a door to the nixon administration that we have never seen before, and it's allowed to us see battles we never saw before, and how things were done at times to undermine those policies, and in the end, if you think about it, if general haig is as we say in the book, the ultimate kramerite, if you buy that, then kramer is supposed to be protecting the president, but he doesn't. he does almost everything he can to make sure nixon doesn't survive, and that shows on the white house tapes, because in the book we looked at white house tapes after the so-called smoking gun tape, and we saw how time and time again, haig would give nixon advice that would be detrimental to him. and one other tape, it's clear

nixon is guilty, paidgesz 163 to 168, your read that richard nixon was directing the coverup to protect gordon strong who was involved in the break-in. gordon strong was an aide to bob haldeman, so he believed that strong would lead to haldeman so he was trying to keep back a report. so there was a lot of things going on here and i think you will find it an interesting journey from 1969 to 2009. >> nixon did a lot of things to set up his own downfall. can you describe those things? >> personally, nixon reminds me

of woodrow wilson, whom i also wrote about, who simply couldn't follow advice even though he knew he ought to. so that's one aspect of it. the problem with nixon's goals when he came into office, his foreign policy goal -- which were very interesting and good -- was that because of his own history, he felt that he had to achieve these by secrecy. there's a wonderful transcription of a briefing that nixon gave to the white house staff shortly after the -- we're going to china announcement, that was reproduced in the book in part in which he basically says this could not have been achieved without secrecy. had we had a free and open discussion about it. the right wing and everybody else would have come down upon me and we never would have got

on the point of going china. and you can believe that or disbelieve that, but he certainly believed it. and also believed that in terms of what it was he wanted to do with the soviet union and how to deal with the vietnam war. one of the things that we point out in this book, it's not quit a revelation because some information had come out before. but within four to six weeks of nixon taking office, he and kissinger and others in his administration had conveyed to the ambassador and others from soviet union that the united states wanted out of vietnam. would not mind if they lost on the battlefield. would not mind if vietnam went communist, and this is at a point when we were reaching 530,000 american troops in country in vietnam. and i can assure you that none of those 530,000 thought that

behind the scenes the commander in chief was saying, it's okay if we lose this war. the reason why nixon thought it would be okay to lose that war, which he thought was already lost, was so the that he could achieve more detente with the soviet union, that the superpowers must find a way to coexist. and this was on a par with his belief which he expressed in articles and speeches to republican conventions in the year just prior to that, that it was not possible to isolate one day in chinese and have the same world in the future. and it's very difficult for us to say he was wrong about that.

i think it was quite effectively correct about it. but the problem was that he also felt at the same time that you could not have an open, full, free, discussion of these issues and expect to come out the other end with the goals he had in mind. so, i think in that way, nixon got in his own way quite a bit. >> one of the things tom mentioned was the disclosures of the meetings with the soviet am ambassador, which you found by going through some, i believe, n.s.c. records or whatever they were at a university. and one of the things i found particularly admirable and interesting about the book is how well-sourced it is. there are a lot of things that sound far out, but you look through the notes and read the

books, you can see the depth of the sourcing. you mentioned some of the tapes that hadn't been heard before. some are some other things. >> a vast array of books and material. 600-footnotes in this book. we tried to have nothing that wasn't -- that we couldn't point to, that you check this out. there's a site called nixon tapes.org, which is not my site. it's run by a person in texas with the texas university system. you can hear a lot of what we have reported here. so, we tried very hard -- sometimes there's no way to get two sources. sometimes only one person knows something. you can check some things around. so we do spend a good deal of time pointing to our sources

which you will be able to check. i would like to pick up on tom and the vietnam issue. the three issues that bothered the kramerites most were vietnam, not winning it, and they believed we were giving up our arms controlled, projected power. and the opening to china. but vietnam was the real burr in this. we weren't going to win the war. nixon told kissinger to deliver this message, and that was the toughest part of the book to write, because in a sense in order to accomplish these goals, he was bleeding us out of vietnam. he couldn't get the quick end he wanted and as a result he turned to something called vietnamizeation, and it was slow

withdrawal of american troops, and continued battles -- >> withdrawing 10,000 'troops a a month was not my definition of slow. so it was very rapid withdrawal. >> to understand how the opposition galvanized, and why kramer would be so welcome at the pentagon, because kramer is saying, you have to win the war. you can't come out of there looking weak. there is a conversation in the book that we report, which was between president nixon and craner in 1972. and you can hear kramer make the case for why you can't come out of vietnam looking weak, after nixon says, but we will. when he goes to the pentagon and gives advice and spreads his beliefs, it's never again, never going to do vietnam again. it's the genesis for the power

doctrine. if you're going in, go in and win it with offering -- everything you got. so that was in many quarters-that rang well with many people. so the kramer provocative weakness, which i described, when it comes to fruition in the reagan administration, the phrase is just slightly changed for the campaign. though say peace through strength. that was the reagan mantra, and that was the kramer doctrine. needless to say, until we wrote this book, did not know that was the kramer doctrine, but we now know thanks thanks thanks to thd interviews and papers, it was clear this man was a force, and what galvanized that force is what i described, and we describe in the book. >> len mentioned vietnam. we're in two wars now.

we see in the beginning part of 40 years war how the conduct of the vietnam war affected every policy decision nixon made and later gerald ford. what parallels do you see with a 1-888-and the iraq and afghanistan wars. >> the power of the military and the argument for the military to effect the decisions of a president. you look through the last 75-100 years of american history and you see that american presidents were not successfully lobbied from the left. just doesn't happen. it happens a little bit here and there in domestic affairs, but very seldom in foreign affairs. but they are successfully and regularly lobbied from the right. it's very difficult for an american president, who is not a

military man, to say to the military, you can't have more soldiers. you can't have more equipment. we should make a graceful withdrawal. it's a very, very difficult thing to say because of the military and the whole military industrial complexes' power to affect public opinion. it's very, very difficult to gainsay this, and say you're wrong, bus very often you're not wrong. the opinion is it's hard to do, and that's affecting our capacity for decisionmaking in regards to afghanistan. we only have come out of iraq in the sense of not a single american casualty the -- in the most recent months because we

have withdrawn troops and gone behind barriers, and because the president said, i'm taking the troops out, over the objections of everybody else. i don't see that's possible to happen in afghanistan in the next six months. might be possible a year from now. perhaps that's why president obama has been willing to go along with this 30,000 troop surge, even though he had pledged during his campaign not to do things like that. it's part of our theory as the most important pragmatist in foreign affairs since richard nixon because of his outlook. he was perfectly willing to do things that the neocons and bush were not willing to do, which is talk to iran and north korea and efforts to achieve through diplomacy so we don't have to have further military

involvement, but he is not dock doctrineaire enough to say no more troops for afghanistan. the basic problem is, where is the decision making made and how does it get made? the idea that kramer had of provocative weakness is very difficult to gainsay. osama bin laden would say that. he would say when the americans withdrew from lebanon after we bombed the barracks, that showed me they were weak, and we could attack the americans and not get attacked in return. he had actually said that in interviews. that's what kramer had been yelling about for years. so it's not wrong, either. the problem is whether this is the answer in every instance, and i think it suredly is not,

but it's a very seductive doctrine, you can see where it works out, and that's part of the reason that it has been so provocative. just fascinating to me to see how the speeches of donald rumsfeld, when he was president ford's chief of staff, would be saying one thing. gets to the pentagon in 1975 and three or four weeks later is coming out with with -- with the doctrine of provocative weakness. when he left office in 1977, his farewell speech was that, and in 2006, he said, i'm sorry, i have to go back to the same theme i hit in 1977. we have to -- not to show weakness because that will invite our enemies to attack us. just a very, very seductive and

important doctrine. it may by simplistic but doesn't mean it doesn't have a certain kind of power. and it fits in with a view of the world that was quite realistic for kramer, and for general vernon walker and others who were friends of kramer who had spent their lives working at anticommunists during the whole -- the first was antifascist and then anticommunist, and these are great patriots. devoted their whole lives to these things. and they believed more so than civilians did this was an absolute essential strand for american foreign policy, that american foreign policy had to be based on military superiority and on a willingness to use the

military whenever it seemed needed, but to withhold the use of the military was not only a demonstration of weakness but was resulted in certain dominoes falling. >> a lot of this is material that has been written about over and over again for the last 45 years, yet there are many things in the book that are totally new. new documents. you mentioned the tapes. tell us what are the new things you found and how you were able to get them. if they have been hidden away for so long...

>> and if you listen closely are watched closely to the investigation incoming he would have learned that general haig was a facilitating the effort by the military. it was very important part of the president says on this tape is a federal plans of the highest order. we thought that was so

important we put a chapter titled to it. federal offense of the highest order saying the military was committing espionage and treaties against the commander in chief and john says we cannot do anything about that but we have to paper this over. he and medium the yen point* nixon and pierre nouri at orders of cover up. it is a media. may shut down the human being used to actually do the stealing of documents and was shipped off and treated as if it was very normal bureaucratic spying against the president just so they could gain knowledge. not true. they wanted to undermine the policies. they did not believe in the policies. they were doing exactly what the president said.

winnow know that and can put it into context but we describe in the 40 years' war you can understand who the players were and why they would do what they did and how it would come to full fruition. also very important before we could write the book there had to be a george w. bush and administration because we never sought a pure administration following the doctrine to the tv. there was not a john bolton who was the u.n. ambassador. they were a very clear, the academic neocons and those in power and those who follow the kramer doctrine that were not neocons. they believed in it and used the words over and over. there is a whole new setting will hold new

parent -- panorama, the demise-- the rise of the obama administration and i caution rear in the 41st year of the war. does not end with the book titled. cheney is articulating those positions. it is important to understand cheney has the ideology. if you listen to people on television, cable people attack the republican and lack job. no. he has the ideology he believes and strongly believes obama is weakening the country by doing the things he is doing to violate the kramer doctrine. is that new window, old stories and fax surrounded by new facts and a context and allows us to debate more fully ever that i know of any political sense, the debate between the neocon

and a pragmatist and what it was about. there was a lot new "the forty years war." >> we went back to the documents. one of the document three looked at was something, i don't know how many people read it in the first place the republican party platform in the year 2000 the foreign policy plank that runs about 95 pages and lays out in great detail exactly what the administration was going to do when they got into power. one of the most interesting times in the history of the united states is when the administration was in power prior to 9/11 they began to put into practice what they had to do do in the year 2000. also many other documents that we've looked at.

even in bed digitized age there are still plenty of documents to look at and that is of a good idea to try to write the history based on your ideology or liberal leanings or anything like that. you could take a look at what is actually happening then tried to get the sense. we're very pleased that many of the reviews of the book that basically said republicans don't get off easy and democrats don't get off easy because that was not particularly our objective but that is to look at the material to try to you got a way and understand the big war going on and as a grand umbrella and then get into the details. most people don't know any

more six or eight weeks after president reagan came out and called the soviet union the evil empire, he stuffed that phrase back into his pocket because he found out in negotiations with the soviets, it was getting in the way. he could not call them again. he did not repeat it. others did but not him because it was a problem for me. i cannot talk to the soviet leader's. the negotiations are bogged down. we will take that back. years later he finally said you're not the evil empire but six weeks after he uttered the phrase, it was out of his vocabulary. you only find out things like that if you are into the roots of the document and that is what we tried to do. >> if any of us five of the

project for the new century we knew exactly what they daughter what they wanted to do. they took a vantage of clinton's impeachment and pushed on the iraqi liberation act and pushed on money to go for freedom fighters. this stage was set if they took the presidency, no doubt they were going to iraq and every which way, 9/11, it does not matter, it is a good reason to year ago and they left afghanistan a much faster than they should have, did not achieve their goal, created a mess, a blunder to the magnitude we may not know for maybe decades. we will pay for the blunder. but it was the ideological plunder. the 95 pages should does surprise anyone because we went over all of those including the last year he

was secretary of defense and he predicted the future and literally talked in kramer terms of a defense policy. it was not new. while it cheney said buy-back president hw bush not going to baghdad, that is not true. if you look at the signatories, they are all there. the whole cast of characters. they did not hide it but never discussed it with the american people. george of the bush said we will not nation bill. i am opposed by a penny cheney sought a different view of the rope and bush. so you have to step back and absorb fell whole era of that is why we think the 40 year time frame is so important not to take something out of context related to many other e

events looking at document after document what each side was saying and try our best to present them to you in a very tone down way seeking get the feel and make your own judgments. it is important as a history the opinions retry to keep them and also tell the story the way it was talking earlier about the spy ring i am not sure how many people in this room are watching this are are familiar when the whitehouse tapes became available? >> with i was writing my first book that focused that the military had moved against the president and it was called an affair and

being the young men and the chairman of the joint chiefs, and while i was doing the project, in great detail john had a letter that allowed him to go in get things out of his files. he said i am going to washington i have a admiral confession. directing the entire operation. i will try and get it for you. sure enough he came out with a transcription of that confession that delays out the whole case. the briefcases they broke open and he also says cut the sin on their plans and

talk about the data in detail. you still cannot get that document. we have it and have now put it on mine. it was in my first book. it is very important in this context to understand the military, while republicans and democrats go the military's day. i the one to talk about them as though they are one because they are not. some people do not agree but these folks did and they saw this is a very dangerous point*. to the point* they were willing to steal documents documents, they sent to the yeoman when kissinger went to set up in china and he broke into kissinger's briefcase and stole all kinds of things, important documents nixon did not want the military to know. i said why did you run for

policy in secret? he said we never would have gotten it through other wise. i disagree. i think when nixon planned to do these things he should of had a discussion with the public. we had no idea the dimensions of the radical turn he would take so quickly without consent from the congress there is a lot to babbitt do not think in terms of spy rings or espionage is serious not just one bureaucrat spying on another, these are not always feeling they were in the keying for a purpose. >> the jury chief began the espionage as operation because they were cut out of the loop so obsessed with secrecy he would not even tell his joint chiefs the

first they knew of it is the zero men came back after he was on a trip with kissinger and he was briefed before they were about to go into the meeting with the president where he would tell them that kissinger was in china this is the first the military knew about it which is not just scintillate day breach of protocol how can you undertake something that would be so tremendously affecting of the foreign policy of the united states in so many ways and not bring your military leadership? and going back a year and a half to be gone the espionage edge information. most presidents get us a chance to pick departure

they have on the wall. one of those that nixon picked was woodrow wilson because he considered himself as nixon had been a he did not believe in the basic tenet of open covenant >> there is another point* if you are fighting the war in vietnam who was the enemy if not the chinese? i think bill buckley described it this way as if roosevelt had gone to berlin and toasted hitler in world war ii. that is how strongly it was perceived by those in the military given their lives to see the commander in chief. we might have a different view of that but it is understandable you could understand somebody who plus their life on the line, how

they might interpret. buckley struck a nerve when he said that. >> there are a lot of things in the book that show how certain items such as the party platform are out there but ignored. what would you advise journalist mehl looking have foreign policy in the military to do with your experience in mind? >> they have to say we don't know what all. refinished a book covering 40 years and we do not know with all. it is time to step back and not be so reflexive. it is almost knee-jerk as to what each side is saying or not saying. maya vice is open your mind. not just as a journalist but everybody that deals with it. because i've been through these things and many of you have no idea what is going

on for the context i think that is the message of the buck if we could find kramer, of 47 none of us could see, how much is out there that we can't see? kramer opens a whole new window i know there are others out there and historians right now sending the freedom of information act to get kramer's papers and i am told they are substantial. we report on the book between kissinger and kramer you can see and feel the relationship in the book as you read it. of these two men and how they finally split and in the interview for the strong man describes to james

derozan who does not know who christopher is, he asks my question about salt of the military needs assaulting and he goes, i am paraphrasing, describing how he was the father of kissinger and made him what he is and he turned his back on him. cramer detest kissinger today and use that word because of china, arms control, and vietnam. he spelled it out. that is now available on than nixon tapes. that is available to use. that is a very strongly held feeling. you can imagine my never read the reality of the split because we did not understand kramer. i will say this to you. even if you only look at the kissinger and nixon relationship except as a

mentor. you need to look at that relationship through haig because that is the clue to what was going down. nixon and never ever understands the relationship procopius putting star's on the fastest in history he thinks the relationship is a friend of kissinger who is a right wing who sends memos cetus not know he is actively working with haig to implement the ideology or to slow him down. then part of the bush and administration plays an active role and you've followed his role i am not sure but i think maybe the source of the words evil empire in that speech. he went many times the exact

same view as general haig. there's a lot to read and learn about and discovery down the road prepare everything we did was open a window in end "the forty years war." >> one more question for tom then open to the audience. we have been familiar with these topics for a long time. what is the one thing that surprised you the most and build one thing that said we have to do this book? >> what surprised me the most the more we uncover the stronger are thesis became a free ever came across a piece of evidence that said you are full of baloney, the contents are not there, by 12 very surprising the

degree of kramer's influence were felt during the nixon years and after that. we have snippets of conversation but they're not usually a book debt because they don't have anything to do with water gate. her kissinger says i have of paper from a friend of mine. but nixon says i recognize the writing even there you check off the name, that this the paper you sent me last year on another subject. nixon was very smart. wonderful odd combinations of things that happened, a small group of journalists that he liked, that had been with him in the years between the vice presidency and presidency and people who've not had abandoned and

one nablus the name of and it with a correspondent and eventually became a columnist and was close to kramer and wrote a wonderful article in the fall of 1972 that placed him as kissinger's mentor. nixon who did not read most newspapers happen to read that article and said to to eight haig. do know him? let's get him in here. i have been getting his memos for years and henry is out of the country maybe we can talk to him. henry came back and said no. i am going in there with kramer. then he says please do not lecture the president. he says, mr. president, he will disagree with a lot of your policies. they get in there and they

do not do get out it is a tremendous respect for each other. and indeed kramer does start lecturing the president and it is wonderful to behold when he shouts of kissinger knew it is usually not one that is shot up. it is a wonderful moment and very illuminating. and it is moments like that where it is both surprising and eliminating. >> and getting ready to leave kramer says what a great move it was to make general haig vice chairman of the army. greeted while they this is a guy that was with 40 other generals and kramer wanted to be sure he praised haig before he leaves the in meeting. you can listen to the tapes

for yourself. >> open two questions? >> almost exactly halfway the communism false and event that nobody with islands predicted the search for an opponent some of then do you deal with the opposition there mayor can power to the ill-conceived use for the american military now that communism is off the table? >> win, is the fell so quickly we were left essentially without an enemy

>> keira's the meeting down the street 1991 a convention of 45 conservative organizations and "time" magazine and a couple of others attended that the conservatives that communism had fallen and they did not have an enemy to call us around and important people said that is right. we don't know quite what we will do but we will do something. into the breach six weeks later and one of the things that we say in the buck communism has died but anti-communism remains. if it is transformed into a generalized representitive but nonetheless but the

basic problem in our society is if you have a particular enemy. , president and then the communist era have solve this not because they are an average but not entirely solvable. for 100 years prior to that time the united states always have a main enemy to focus on. in the post-communist era, we don't if you look at the ku d.r. at 2,002 after the 9/11 debacle and the obvious need to fight people in afghanistan and iraq, who is the main enemy? china.

in 2006q d.r. is still there. 2010? let's see what comes up. but i don't think that is the good idea at this point* in time but it exists. i have probably gone beyond your question. sorry. >> >> the way that the cold war morphed over decades to regulation and then today we still have the use of those words of communism and socialist and angered to talk of those about banks or health care. did the cold war take on that large dimension of the domestic fear and contest

and almost became a part of what that was about? >> i think you are onto something. there has been a polarization in the last 30 years of our domestic politics as well as foreign policy. the slings and arrows going back and forth you have hit on something interesting talking about terms in the military sense in foreign policy and transposing them to today. it is a very dangerous time for that to be happening. we are a nation of two wars and an economic problem that may be greater than what we know today by at pulling ourselves a par with this terminology, hard right and hard left terminology. it is dangerous. it is dangerous, scary, and you watch what is going on cable tv 24 hours a day and

you shake your head. both sides. there is very middle constructive discussion going on about our problems and how to solve the problems. is it a carry over? i think it is to some extent the reagan revolution crashed 2008 and it is then the feathers of that but also deregulation. and the anti-union position the administration had as they broke up the air controllers. there is a merit to what you say but i don't know if we can definitively say yes, it is this the words and fatone are scary. . .