>> good morning, everybody. we're here at our beautiful sunny tucson arizona looking out on a great looking audience. of course, everybody joining us at home on c-span groggy having lost one hour of sleep except here in arizona were we don't have daylight savings time.

that is why i am looking at bright eyed and bushy tail so let's day gaulle of the people from the festival it is a two the amazing event here in teeeighteen starting out to become a premier book festival in the country. of course, the great part of what is going on here in arizona. let's give them a big round of applause. [applause] . .

[applause] he is a truly great historic figure and anything perhaps an interesting bookend. i think today's conversation about the american military and the differences in the military. doug stanton is a master storyteller. yesterday career of bringing people to places all over the world, a writer whose words on travel and adventure and entertainment stories. in his own book about the world war ii. has done things like playing basketball with george clooney for a story or taking act and tips from harrison ford. and of course his boat they were here to talk about is "horse soldiers," about the really

first days in the opening days of the war in afghanistan in the air after 9/11 that we for now living with for the better part of a decade. and so we're really lucky to talk to them. they join me in welcoming doug. [applause] and were all excited shira about "horse soldiers" and i think everyone from the root action i just got wants to hear about playing escrow with george clooney and acting tips from harrison ford. >> really. >> okay, so give me the popularity of how to make a living as a writer. >> i attempted to do that by working for magazines for a number of years. affected travel around the world and at a facility for writing celebrity profiles. you always want to do something with a person is going to be a

magazine cover that you think is really nifty that they've never done before. i think i might have reached the apex of that what i asked harrison ford how to teach me to be angry on screen. he said i don't want to teach you how to do that. in the process is telling me he didn't want to teach me how to be angry, he got very angry. [laughter] on purpose and i thought wow, that's quite amazing to see someone who so in control of their own facilities and police. and how did i get from back to afghanistan is kind of the thing and still trying to figure out. but i think would've was inside never treated those famous people. i was once know what they look at what no one watching them. and that is kind of how i approach my boy think is a storyteller, trying to tell stories to people about people that we don't often really get to see or eclipse. first it was world war ii book

called in harms way about the sinking of the uss indianapolis towards the end of that war. i was so moved by my experience working with those veterans who when i called up on the phone were often home and it wasn't easy for them to talk about this trying time. if you remember in the movie jaws, captain quinn was the fictional survivor of the indianapolis and decreasing the movie when a section about delivering parts of the atomic on country bomb. when my editor at generals magazine says he should go to minneapolis to meet these folks, i thought he was kidding. i thought they were made up in the movie. that's out of touch it was and how out of touch america willing was with this book end of world war ii which ends the war essentially because they deliver the atomic components which are later dropped in japan and they have pearl harbor to be the

front. i should say this really exist. as you know, delving into this world of a guest would be our grandfathers generation or great uncle, going to reach kitchen table around the country and going to the interviews and then tell me what happened then, it's really a story about men. and later on their wives facing the supreme at the essential moment to in figuring out who they are and how they're going to survive. and that sets the course really for the rest of their lives. some of these guys were 16 years old. sunk in the middle of the pacific, left for five days without any rescue by the navy, a series of flukes. finally picked up after 900 men are out of 1200 are essentially killed by the torpedoing or eaten by sharks or their grievances. take that the captain is short punch or court-martialed.

the first time it's happened under the circumstances. he commit suicide in 1968. so in the kitchen tables, always the wise were standing at the sink to in the ditches dishes it turned out. this must be something you do when you get older and do the dishes. but the reality was they were actually hearing the story for the first time two. and so, they would say i think i got out of the navy and then removed and then alex okay, no holland, that's completely wrong. that didn't happen, beget the same time that they tell me how i what happened when the ship sunk. it's not like getting money out of the atm. and the room would go quiet and the story would begin to emerge adjust to these men were as human beings, as american

citizens, as our fathers and grandfathers really touched me and i try to tell it from their point of view. so that when i came to 2001, i think the challenge is that for myself as can you do that with the modern soldiers as well? what i didn't understand and you may have found some of the same challenges that when you interview people who are of the generation, they're typically retired when i were to interview with them that was to the out to dinner and paid for it at the red lobster and they were my grandparent. calling a man in his early middle-age who is part of his special forces group out of fort hamilton kentucky as part of the u.s. military that really almost never cooperated with any writer in any kind of way that i wanted to do, would likely have done with with the world war ii officers, which was i don't care what kind of batteries you use. i mean, the caliber of the most interesting, but i want to know

what did you do before you deployed, that day october 19, 2001. and so they were taken aback that is because he was a question about their humanity and how this had changed them as fathers and sons and citizens. because to me that the central thing we need to maybe digest and ponder as we are our own citizens and taxpayers. or who are we sending overseas to fight these wars that i think we sometimes don't fully understand how complex and really what the issues are. we see them from our point of view, the u.s. centric point of view, but what's happening on the other end of the world, what are the afghans, what do the pakistanis think. so that in a big nutshell explains how i kind of moved for a ready magazine pieces to world

war ii into the modern soldier. to tell a story that you're hearing it on the kitchen table and it was athletic and yet their instrument and personal about a subject that you probably wouldn't even pick up a magazine to maybe read about, the special forces group united states early.com, spec warfare. i mean the mind reels at the acronyms in the impersonality of all this. so i wanted to strip all that away and send this story, you know, some are called to the hearts and minds of us because i think after 9/11 -- i mean, i know why wise. i mean you probably do too, getting coffee, getting on my track and stopped. and i thought well how do i tell this to my children? "horse soldiers" is my way to articulate a language to understand violence in the

21st century. why was it created? how is this not quite what do you do to neutralize it? these permissions i had as a writer that you may not even kind of glanced when you're reading the book. >> you do that very well. let talk about some of these guys that you got to know. and as he said, you remember where you were on 9/11. i do. i'm sure everyone in the audience watching at home to. for these group of people and these are people who came into afghanistan when the invasion wasn't in the 100,000 or the thousands. it was in the hundreds and the dozens. and their lives were about to change. where were they on september 10th or 11th and what was going on in their lives and what were those first days after 9/11 before they deployed? >> sure, it's a great question because that's really what we're reading about now and where our

tax dollars are going. so we maybe need to understand who these folks are. when we say things like unconventional war or unconventional troops, we're really setting up a dichotomy with the conventional army which would think of the 101st airborne, the 82nd deployment large masses, armor, moving forward in a symmetrical line and fighting an enemy. the special forces are really an untold part of our united states army. it really hearken back more to the oss in world war ii which is another reason the story attracted me instead of being dropped behind enemy lines to form among disparate groups of people who may not have similar aims, beget have a common enemy, as we did in world war ii, or what the, they were dropped behind -- into afghanistan and try to get these warring tribes to stop fighting each other what

long enough to point at the television. in and their mission is very clear and kind of unprecedented for two reasons. special forces had never been deployed as a lead element in the united dates history ever. i mean, they always were an add-on for the thing that came in after where they operate in off to the margins out of the spotlight at the news. so everything you read in the book we didn't know was going on at the time. this means on september 11th, they are training on a river in kentucky, doing an infiltration whether shooting on a helicopter from the one 60th special operations aviation. the blackhawks are really the best in the world. and i was able to spend about a week with them that there had orders in fort campbell and their story was amazing. so they're doing this routine mission of dropping kodiak off

the back of this biggish.com a double bladed wing and then they're linking off with another team and going home. and we got calloused unfair, a guy now that he's deployed maybe a love than 12 times since 9/11. he's well over 40, he's a chief warrant officer, smart. they get caught in the fog in the river and almost get run over by a tugboat and have to anchor and they forgot to bring their winter clothing, so they're basically just kind of hanging on the raft trying to make it through the night and get home and get some coffee and cal wants to go home and have a martini and set on the couch and watch his favorite tv show. now, they think that they're headed for the philosophical united states army. there's really no place for them in the world of tanks and armor and a cold war kind of setting.

they get back into on the radio and suddenly hear this thing happening and they know immediately do something now is going to happen to them, but they don't know what it is. if you remember back then, if you went to the pentagon and look to the a's on how to invade a country, there was no aid for afghanistan. the plan b. would have been to 60,000 troops in a neighboring country and deploy them in with supply lines, invasion of iraq. >> 1991. >> however, political pressure and the need to do something soon seemed to be america was behind this move. so we have to do something. so tony franks plan without the window into some engineering within the special forces community, these guys got the job. they were told by then colonel john mccullen and lieutenant

general that their job was to go into afghanistan. their job was to kick the taliban out of the country and make it safe for the taliban, capture the city of marcia sharif. if they captured months are they could go to kabul and kandahar and the whole country would follow in this domino effect. i forgot to mention that he was talking to only 12 guys. [laughter] cal spencer, one of them who is six weeks earlier had been this routine training mission and was thinking i'm getting too old for this stuff and i've got to go. so in the end, the accomplished what planners might not take a year and a half and they did it in a little more than six weeks, involving about 300 personnel. it's not exactly accurate because the reality is thousands of conventional people followed

on shortly thereafter it. but the reality is that it costs roughly 100 million bucks here at the beginning and they didn't push the taliban out of afghanistan. they did go after these training camps and they did it in a way that probably none of us in this room, could we don't fully know about what these guys do, can really describe her talk about, which is really the point of the book to make that real. >> let's talk about how they did it because they really were poor soldiers. in the technology of planes they were riding on horseback. it's interesting thing about america fighting in the world at least in the past century, large numbers of american forces fighting guerrillas that are. care of these reversed. >> we were the guerrillas. yeah, we've are the insurgents in afghanistan which is amusing

for us because we don't think of ourselves that way. they link up with a very important people in the story, part of the cia current military teams who had gone in earlier and made things happen with these desperate warlocks because with lines of communication still open. without pointing these people in the right direction and getting these guys to stop fighting each other, you couldn't have fomented this resistance among the local grassroots level to go after a common enemy, the taliban. so it's true. the united states and the afghans were the underdog spirit didn't have have the armor, the air. we had air but it came in later. so how they did this is the story of the book. and they did it by, i mean, if we look at this room and we were coming here and say we're going to take control of this room.

well, in a benign way. we would look around and say, you know, this gentleman over here, his issues are of this. he wants that, he's fighting with this person here. i would know what language you speak, what language you speak good i would know who your children were. anyway, i would know so much and that's the special forces are trained to do in the area assessment and language skills to just basically walk into the battle space can be hooked to understand for the centers of property are in the levelers. so really mean to you approach conflict and violence from the point of view of a diplomatic, anthropologists, sociologists. because you understand, as many people in the book told me, that

it is the roots of this violence in this insurgency are social in nature. as one of the people and the book said, it's more like teen pregnancy and drug abuse that it is a bank robbery, which also has its roots. so if you understand that, then as readers and americans and taxpayers stand back and say, so the go here's not just to go in and kill everybody in bonn this country back into the stone age. is it worth it in afghanistan to create political and social change? that's the question you have to ask yourself. if your answer is yes, then you may want to take a look at some of the new thinking coming out of the military and the army and i have to say, andrei, it was interesting to talk to these guys and some of their thinking was so forward in so kind of leveraged in the anthropology

and sociology and awareness seem to be missing in our american society. in other words, the people who wanted to say get out of afghanistan immediately and that's the debate nowadays. have they really stopped us. what would happen if they really do do do? was the person living at the other end of that idea and what do they want? what do women want in afghanistan? i mean, that's really a key question? with the women and children want? what is the unstick return to achieve here? >> i'm sure will have plenty of time to get to 2010. but anyway, let's talk about the book more itself. in terms of -- you talk about going to these people's homes, sitting down with them, but you had asked a variety of sources of information that nobody else

had had before you came along. talk about the actual research project of peace and a book like this together at a time there were still a war in afghanistan. >> it was a challenge. the book took five years to write. again, i thought it would to be like going out to end interviewing at red lobster. i was naïve. there is no stupid question when your writer and a journalist. in fact, i don't think it's a stupid question in general because it was clear to the people that i was trying to interview that i was truly interested in the character, the humanity and the nature of their ideas and their mission, that it wasn't just a shoot them up book. it was aimed at many women in the united states would they rather would understand something i thought was very important after 9/11 in a way to neutralize the conflict.

now, people in 2010 are still talking about afghanistan. another shining moment in history, it did work for certain reasons i thought that was an important story to tell. i mean, people in often look at the mechanics being a writer. i had a sub for which was successful and read widely. there was some nice reviews and i felt like the book had done something in the way up obviously my magazine pieces never would do. and it showed me that being a storyteller, you can actually move people in a way that i found important, you know, that it was a book about community ultimately. so i shipped back to the country in this we all stopped her for near fort campbell, kentucky and got on post. i called the press affairs officer at a special forces

group and there wasn't one. i mean, this is how kind of unprepared they were to actually even be in the spotlight. and after a while, and made repeated trips on the post and after a while when you first show up, and everyone i have to say when your reporter and you're dealing with people like movie stars, you can never really figure out anything that's going to happen that they say. but dealing with the united state military they say they're going to be here contract there at noon to do the interview, they are there. it's very refreshing to do these interviews. and i just kept showing up and i saw that i wasn't crazy, i think, and pretty soon the headquarters which is just off the parking lot in the way church there. he said, just walk around. i mean, go in the team room. i said i'm looking for

so-and-so. i have no idea. and to go in a team room and knock you know if they are and i am looking for so-and-so. i say he's not here, who argue? went back to the question i want to write this book for him. after about ten minutes he said well that's me. [laughter] doc found him. and he said okay. so it was a lot of shoe leather. and i asked questions that i think i remember asking now colonel mark mitchell and major mark mitchell. i said what did you do the afternoon before you got on the plane to fly away? and he said well, we went to burger king and then i came home and watched the disney channel with his daughters. and i thought, wow, i didn't read that in the paper. that to me is an interesting detail because that makes him real to me.

it makes this whole global conflict, the bloody chaos real to me. and i want to know the character and nature of this man who is now tasked with this mission. he's part of a large mass of people who america answers to 9/11. and the preparation before he gets on the plane in kentucky to fly overseas, he goes to burger king and watches the disney channel with his daughters. back to him, if you can bring -- if you can touch on those details, it is something, mysteriously, it it shows our commonality, even something as innocuous as that. >> absolutely. i think it's shining the light on making these people real. and again, we look back over the past ten years and we've seen everything happened. per from the people when he was

sitting at home watching the disney channel, he had no idea what was coming next. and this is september into october 2001. all this was just beginning. part of the book is special forces. the big part of the book also is the cia, which you mention briefly as well. i think of a lot of people when they hear cia they say analysts sitting at the high computer think james bond. that's not what the sky were. these people were in there literally days after 9/11. it talked about the cia side of the story. >> is very important because they have these language skills and these lines of communication with the peres, that respects, the tajiks who are operating in the north. and if you can't get everyone to get along, then you can't form your resistance and overthrow the bad guys, which in this case

is that halibut. which by the way the afghans did not want to support you if they do not want the taliban and and even if the support may be 10%, maybe 25% in some of the more southern provinces. so they are they are in the head by days and weeks and his helicopters, people talked about mitchell. he comes in a little later. but they get in the helicopter in pakistan where they're based in colonel mulholland says good luck, i don't know if you're going to come back from this. some of the guys thought that he -- that kind of blew their back a little bit because they knew it was real. these guys are trained to actually maybe not be the strongest people in the room, although they often are.

but what's so interesting about their training and i think this goes back to your question about the agency military teams that they're trying to recover more quickly than the other person from failure. it's such an interesting idea which is why i so thought the story was so interesting. if you keep putting a person in situations of failure over and over and over and you watch how they respond to that, do they just crumble and collapse or do they actually rise up and kind of prevail among the circumstances? that the person you want. and in some ways it felt like being a writer. [laughter] i mean, i remember driving from camp mccall after he took part in something called robbins staged, which goes back to your question about what is the business they do? and i robbins staged, afterwards almost all the special forces teams said they were perfectly prepared for what happened in

afghanistan. so i started to study this. at the least a one-week, maybe a two-week, 24 hour live-action scenario of being in a foreign land called tideland where the politics and auxiliary operated outside the guerrilla camp. and you have the guerrilla chief who translates for afghan warlord and someone in bosnia. a professional belligerent or you have to get a with in order so when they don't kill you in so that social change can happen. so i'm thinking about this and i'm reading up on it and i hear that if the warlord, dg chief as they call him likes to be given to a spirit so i go to the store and buy a thermal brinkley and a lantern and i packed this because i'm going to live in this camp and observed his father join it and kind of watch and learn.

-underscore into kind of absurd the central idea that kind of an emotional level. so these young captains are going to be dropped off a helicopter. they get out of the back of a pickup in the night and have to navigate their way to words over thousands of acres with the complicity of the locals who act as the underground, just like a real guerrilla war. so the farmer and his kids will drive-in on an atv and bring me from the outside world. and the sf team along with the local resistance will say what's going on? whets president so in so doing? what's happening in tideland? and so they'll repeat this scenario. and the medic who's never done this in the real world is doing fake dental work from the kids. he is looking in the mouth of the young child and the farmers son or daughter, you know,

they've got doing this is going along with it even though they don't really understand. so tell me, so you've got a cavity here. well, i can take care of that. but listen, tell me, do you hear that so-and-so over in that part of the county, what does he want? so they're gathering intelligence as they're giving back to the community. now their names in the community names and ancillary names are all one so it's all moving in the right place and the right way. bcl that works? is different than walking in, kicking down the door, tell me what's going to happen. so the pilot team prepared military teams have the same report. report the report is the very big word in this world tiered welding report with the people around you so that you are on the same page. >> part of these people they

were encountering and afghanistan of course is the television. one of the characters in the bug that many have here is the american taliban, john walker lit and and you really tell his story as well at the same time you're telling folks on our side. who was the? >> john walker lynn grows up in california and he decides -- it's interesting you ask that because dgc the news today about jihads gene following on the heels of g.i. jane and then again new jersey was really a somalian i think who went to the same town in yemen to study arabic as well. in fact told his american peers he needed to go to yemen to study real arabic and get it from the horses mouth, so to speak. so john walker lindh is far

ahead of this curve here. and he ends up in the cross hairs of the afghan war. he is going to study arabic in yemen and beyond that because he doesn't -- he actually ends up in bin laden's brigade and end up in this fortress in mazda sharif that forms one of the last part of horse shoulders, discovered in the bible the shocking world about how the young americans were in california and that the this fortress. and so, he's in there because he represented at the time i was writing the book in their story is less unusual i guess it's what i'm trying to say today because we're finding out that more people are soon to be attracted to this or he, driven

by these ideals. it's so interesting that he left a very permissive environment in california and ran straight into the arms of probably one of the least permissive environments. and i don't know. we can speculate on all this, but furans tragically, tragically, you know, one of the first people to be killed after 9/11 was an officer named mike spann and he comes face-to-face with lindh and that journey was one of the arcs of the book as well. >> are there any questions from the audience. i'll ask people to start lining up at the microphone here to my way. as they do, let me fast forward a bit. and you end the book with a quote from sergeant pat x. who says he won't be over open to say today or tomorrow if that

was the right thing what they did in 2001. you're going to have to go back to afghanistan in ten or 15 years from now and say with this right? we are now in 2010. next year will be ten years from that initial invasion. talk about what's happened in the past ten years and when these guys look back on it, what are they saying thinking now about whether it was right? >> i think they would say yes. i think that some of the first people to talk to me about iraq and what was going runner and was also going right where the special forces soldiers. in other words, the very tuned and aware of the social nuances of a certain group of people on the globe who want to do you harm. i mean, if you want to boil it down, that's what this is about. so how do you deal with that lack i think that more people need to be leaning over these

ideas that were going to solve them. i think that the people who want to work for peace need to study war as much as the people who study wore the tooth of the piece because it's like playing only the black or white keys on the piano. right? i mean, this is a problem to say you don't believe in war. this is not part of your question, but i was thinking about it the other day because i like to write an op-ed about it. i don't believe in fire, but thousands earning down. it doesn't mean i'm trans matter if you believe in war. we need to come to terms and grass and do things in our own small way to move the needle in one direction or the other. so what's fascinating and heartening about telling what this community is that these people have thought deeply about why people fight and i think that's one of the journeys of "horse soldiers" has been my own

education and not. now today if the lake at december 1st, president obama speech and the announcement of 3000 more troops. general mcchrystal's request earlier in august for those troops in the insurgency program. you don't see a map program upfront and bold headline, much of this talk of an unconventional approach to this as a quote social problem. but i think those things or they are. i think karzai, president karzai going just last week to help me with tribal elders. you've got to remember, this would be -- i don't even know how to describe this. the fact that these people are fighting and fighting with the taliban is because they don't think karzai even knows they exist. and the folks he has in power there, they feel are so corrupt that any money they give never trickles down. for him to show up as a symbolic

act to sit on the fourth 400 of these guys and they tell me what your problems are is an earthmoving kind of symbolic gesture. i think you're going to see more of this approach. we are hearing british foreign secretary miller brand so that we need to deal with the taliban and, the ones that work for the dollars opposed to the ideology. the $500 million package that was announced in london in january with the members of 70 different nations to kind of, you know, peace and reconciliation fund. there's another community defense initiative that's going on. all these things are kind of trickling. so when i'm saying to a start reading the news. you can heighten your radar little bit. what's the nugget of what's happening here? how is change being created and what do i need to know -- what do i need to read to address the

situation? >> i know there's questions coming, but i want to pick on that point because it brings us back to when i introduced the pearl harbor scenario at the beginning of this program. because when i was writing the candy bombers and i was writing at the same time we're watching what was going on in afghanistan and iraq i got the sense that there is a difference between winning a war and winning a piece. and when we were able to do as a country in the berlin airlift was when a piece and to be able to basically win hearts and minds that it was really more complicated than that. it was really changing the psychology which is what you were talking about as well. history was one of the things we having have been able to do in afghanistan has been to change the psychology of the past ten years. do you think the reason we are still in the kind of situation we are now is because of a lack

of work on the security side, that we pulled away troops into iraq or is it because we have not been able to change the conversation really in the minds of people in afghanistan? >> number one, when people say we been at war in afghanistan for ten years, the reality is that snatcher. we've been in there for handfuls of months with any concerted focus. even in june 2008 when the monthly death toll exceeded what was going on in iraq, no one seems to be complaining. and suddenly when the president asked for 3000 troops everyone wakes up and says it's been going on there for so long, why are we doing this now? when i was working on the book, often people as they were receiving in afghanistan? it's hard to think of now because it's dominating news. so the question is, what is the end state? what was interesting about the "horse soldiers" and this vessel

services personnel in the conventional troops that were there as they never wanted to turn the place into minneapolis. the point is that it is afghanistan and these people do not want the taliban in power by and large. so if i want to pitch in our mind with going on, it is a country that you can go to school and, that girls can go to school in. greg mortensen has done some fascinating work in this area. he basically is a civilian social forces kind of person. in other words, he writes books and you observe them and you understand them. just install those. that is the nugget also of what some u.s. military are using to create change. so the idea is that instead of going from the top down and hitching your wagon to a corrupt government in kabul which can't reach into the hinterlands come, you go tribe by tribe, valley by valley, person by person. it's very old-fashioned.

it's very -- you have to speak the language and knowing whole bunch of stuff were not training as a matter of course in the army. so we're catching up with that. but how long did it take for anyone to march to selma for civil rights? it took years and decades. so the question is, what is their timeline here and what are we willing to do as taxpayers and a fellow citizens to support it? i don't have an answer. it's a rhetorical question right now. that's why think people should look at it. it generational, social and it's not going to end up looking like minneapolis, the little girl standing on the side of the road was meant to shield eyes because somebody in a black toyota truck is going to drive by and throw acid in their faces as they are young girls going to school. you know, that's the kind of stuff that gets me excited.

>> clearly, we've gone through the situation in a country where i think there's a lot of discussion right now about our role in afghanistan. and that wasn't even true a couple years ago. it seems to me there was a lot of division in iraq whether we should be there or not. but there is a fair amount of unanimity that afghanistan was the right war, that just work on the place where we should've been bipartisanship on that issue. and yet in the lead up to president obama's decision in december of last year and in the months since it seen as boylan today. what do you attribute the change to? >> a lack of understanding of what the real problem is. it is not wars and politics by other means. what americans have to come to

grips that is that war equals also political change and there are certain parts of our society that use violence and chaos to create that change, but that's not what this problem is about. step back and say this is about a country that is strategically placed on the globe in which the whole globe as interest and is not devolving further into chaos and unrest. in our own self-interested people there would like it to be different as well. that's getting stuck in the mindset that when i hear some of the debate on both the left in the right we do need to into the stone age or just pull out next week. well, okay, fine. what about the little girl standing by the side of the road? what are you going to do about her? do we have a responsibility so she doesn't get blinded by

cupful of acid? it's a question we really have to ask ourselves is what do women want in the country? in totality, they probably want the u.s. out and they want to jyoti south and they want karsay out. they want the misogynist out of their way to treat them as chattel and so on. >> and maybe a simple question, but who is -- who are the taliban? how do they get to be in control -- how are they different? are the indigenous to the afghanistan? and how is it that they're different and how did they give in to be such an oppositional thing to what you describe as the majority? >> well, the taliban and -- it's joining the club of fundamentalism that you believe the afghanistan should be

governed by a certain set of laws. they're not only pashtuns and they're forgetting the tajiks and that respects in the other part of the country. you have to ignore borders for a moment and think about in the corner with the pakistan in the corner so they're being fed either from pakistan or growing within afghanistan. they are afghan citizens. by your question really is that they're not popular, how are they in control? they do it, these to send the vietnam war the adjust your preferences at night by coming in and slitting the throat of you or your family and terrorizing you so that if you read david rhodes pieces in "the new york times" after his

release and a television had more pan era impulses and also that they were providing goods and services in the hinterlands that government could do. so if i want to come in and terrorize you and at the same time run up legal system in the banking system and give you a job and employ you, then i guess you're just want to kind of live with that. until something comes to neutralize the desk death grip you kind of out of my life. >> i'm not sure you can answer this. you probably have been an opinion. in view of the success of the cia and special forces troops just after 2001, why wasn't this strategy and tactics followed again when we went back to afghanistan, when the idea is to win the hearts and minds, especially through a

reconciliation instead of sending and 30,000 troops? >> well, it wasn't employed before the plant for 35,000 more recently is because we've been talking about this and it continues to some fascinating to me, but it doesn't sound so fascinating to a lot of people within the u.s. military. what you're really saying is this kind of thinking is more decentralized. it is not about being conventional and your approach. so what i'm trying to tell you if it was a hard sell as a doctrinal kind of approach to solving this problem. so when people say what happened there? well, basically removed or resources to iraq and elsewhere. the power vacuum opened up and the taliban rushed in and controlled about 34 provinces. and just go back to this other gentleman's question, by adjusting everyone's preferences and create in the shadow state which allowed me to kind of live and breathe another day. but i do want to say and said

to's question to wear going back to the question. you leave here today and go back and read the newspaper and just look for this stuff. people are saying this is a social problem, political problem. we want to work for the taliban, stop working with the taliban. another word for $10 a day folks and so on and so forth. it's going to take a long time and the question is, what their patients? and you're right, i don't have an answer. >> yes, sir. >> hi, i've been writing down and i could ask you about 16 questions, but i know i'm not allowed to. >> keep it at 15. [laughter] >> i will mention subjects quickly. the first one is about the language when the special forces first went there, how did they deal with the language problems. the second is about bora bora.

we had a correspondent who was here was in the middle of the cattle and it was a few years ago and he gave a talk year on sixth avenue, a first-hand account of what happened there. third, charlie wilson on one degree of separation from him so i know someone who helped him. his bat. involved in afghanistan for long time ago before the 9/11 or anything else. the question i'm going to ask is about women. >> about what? >> about women. i feel very strongly for women's rights. another was in egypt in the 1920's or in the oil strikes. [inaudible] i was on my way to kuwait to visit and i was there for a

week. on my way in, i found that i had met an american engineer from texas who from the time of saddam hussein and he was flying to iraq, but he couldn't. he had to fly from kuwait and their commute to iraq. and i met him on the way back. he was there to fix what had been damaged by the iranian. and he came back. he was sort of amazed on how liberated the iraqi women were. he had an iraqi woman engineer in blue jeans and t-shirt going in front of him up and down. so while we might have fixed some things, we have really [inaudible] other things.

>> we have women, tora bora and the language. the language, to the good question because the reality is there weren't a lot of dari speakers. they speak russian, arabic, french. so these translators. they had to use work in a lot of drawing in the dirt to figure stuff out. and again the cia was very key in being that liaison and helping out in this way. let me just jump to the women thing. because it is -- it's half the population of the amnesty and so it's amazing why they're being treated this way. let me ask you, how do you stop this? this is -- the question is how do you create change so that

women aren't treated as second-class citizens in that country and were not going to get to the bottom of this right now. but just so some of you know, in some part, were sri lanka is being enforced and paving your windows like the men walking outside can't see inside to see any women inside, it tedrow. it's turco in draconian, it's not even in the last five centuries. >> is a very complex question. the reason egypt went the way it did became more concerned. egypt when is a long wait of progress and noise. european and they're moving that way. and then instability happens with wars and once this happens, the army took over.

and interrupted or distracted the progress of what's happening. and so i think stability is a very important thing. >> someone asked earlier about the taliban and, where they come from. and basically they arrived out of the cauldron of the hellacious solo war that riced the social fabric of the country after the u.s. and soviets pulled out in 89. so you're right. in the absence of stability, we tend ironclad rules for models, jakarta and measures are put in place to control people and to codify societal rules and so one of those worth. anyway, it's a good question. >> thank you. >> do we have one more question? there somebody else coming. all right.

>> you are talking about what we can do to help out the division of women. my snotty answer is seven over one over there who believes in the sharia law a day cannot get yourself. not everybody there must be so intolerant. and i wonder if it's possible to draw something that someone here suggested about how to lessen the affluence of the really right wing radical thinking people is to draw the moderates of whatever group you are lucky not into some kind of project where you share values. and i wonder if that's possible there. i don't know. it must be kind of test and you're afraid someone's going to come in and slay her throat. in my original question was anything you were mentioned work and tried diatribe from the

bottom up. is that still going on by anyone? denied well, it's going on more at the hyper level, yes, with forces in their working. but afghanistan is a country built on consensus. they loya jirgas and they sit in a circle and they'll figure out what it is they're going to do and then they tried to do it and often they change and people don't do it what they said they were going to do. it's a consensus making. afghanistan likes a winner too. to go back to the question about the taliban. typically a mass society the one with the winter. so what's going on right now at the counterinsurgency deploying et cetera is that karzai in the afghans have to seem like more of the winner than the taliban have been believe it or not and operating the government and not one of the things we asked about why the 30,000 troops? that's fine to create the top

down in the police force and army which can provide security, but then from the grassroots of the bottom up, then you work at this person by person, tried diatribe. as a case in point, the shema we tried so that they were so disgusted with the taliban a couple weeks ago that they were going to fight them no matter what ended the u.s. wanted to help out, great. but they were sick of the guys coming into the village and extortion in terrorizing. it turns out just recently this last week the two subtypes are now fighting each other and they stopped fighting the taliban. so this is again a problem that they have to solve. so what we did in 01 and we've done throughout is that little note of discontent there would be ironed out by the special forces thinking. >> will take one final question.

it will be speaking in half an hour about the berlin airlift and the candy bombers. >> i very much enjoy it, thank you. how much is the opium trade having an effect on the economy of afghanistan and how is that intertwined with our task of changing the psychology of people whose lives depend on it? >> that's an excellent question. i mean, recently there was $100 million aid package to bolster back pakistan. some people who were in the book have been communicating with me about and they think it's very important. here's why. like in marjah, everyone is using it as a cash crop. you go back to the social.

if you can replace the poppies with something else in the government and this comes from the government, you legitimize the economy company therefore legitimize the government and the people either have to get with the program or not get with the program and that would mean that they would start to cleave away from the taliban and the opium and get a legitimate. so money while it's very expensive is cheaper than the alternative, which would be to hammer at this from the outside with bombs and bullets all the time. so it's a two-pronged approach. ..

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> this is both tvs live coverage of the tucson festival of books. we just saw discussion with doug stanton, filmfest or founder and author of horse soldiers. will take a short break and they return with more live coverage. when we return a panel on how to write missing for popular audience. the panel includes outside magazine editor at large hampton sides. former fort worth star-telegram editor at large, jeff guinn. and literary agency founder james donovan.

>> host: glad to have your the story. >> guest: thank for having me. 's. >> host: first of all you say. cabinet of tacks cheats, crooks and croneys it is his and his alone. judge him by the company he keeps. >> yes. guest: i have to thank david brooks for inspiring this. the culture of corruption opens with a column he had written not long after the election day and just sort of foretelling

this klick of achievea-trons and how phenomenal he was impressed that obama brought with him the best of the washington insiders and praised their ivy league pedigrees, and really this was sort of a repeat of, you know, this idea that somehow these smarty pants were going to come in and change washington. and well, it didn't take long before the obama administration disabused us of that notion in a very big way. and i go through all of the botched nominations and then a lot of the nominations that actually went through, barely by the skin of their teeth. obviously tim quite they are in comes to mind. everybody knows about him, but there are many others that i document and one of the most important and relevant chapters i haven't talked about yet and if you look at the front page

of "the new york times" you can see how well known this is a lot of the officials tied to golden stool and citi who are now reaping enormous bailouts from tim quite they are in and henry paul son preeling proceeding him helped engineer. >> and you wrote host: few january terse >> host: with regard to meeting you write janitors in newsrooms across the country worked overtime after barack obama won the presidency. it wasn't easy clean the drool off the laptops and the floors in the offices of journalists covering the greatest transition in world history. and at the "new york times" you say that this "new york times" which exalted the financially troubled fish wrap of record. it sold $2 million worth of obama themed merchandise. the times has a vested financial interest in popping up the obama administration. >> guest: i certainly think so.

and that also helped me feel, gave me feel to write this book. i did it in a very concentrated time period. in juneau while i was digging up all of the stories and documenting conflicts of interest and cronyism, my colleagues in much of the rest of mainstream media was laughing over the greatest transition in the world history. but even there, that was quite a mess because the speed at which the obama administration put people into place was no better than the reagan administration. there was a lot of hype about unprecedented this and unprecedented that. and in the end what i concluded was that what was what was unprecedented with the amount of failures and lapses in business as usual that came back to office under the guise of hope, new change. >> host: let's read some of the twee comments. this says you were present at a

record low approval, and your side lost. get over it, get a life, and get a real job. >> guest: change the subject. change the subject. if anybody is late with my work, particularly writing about bush in the last several months, of the administration, he would know how hard, probably harder on bush than i have been on obama i was. especially when it came to think architects of these failed financial bailouts, and i think there's quite an irony that are to be appreciated by this particular tweeter of obama who promised not to continue the old tired failed policies of the bush administration, and get as many of the treasury officials who helped initiate those policies. now with his own administration. >> host: do you tweak? >> guest: i certainly do. you can find me at michelle malkin. and the four i cannot ever know that i would be here, and i

follow at c-span and at c-span w. j. >> host: we are quite happy. the numbers on the bottom of the screen to give us a call or give us an e-mail. you mentioned some of the individual in the administration and you take aim at the cia director leon panetta quote the perfect illustration of the beltway swamp creature. you referred to vice president biden when it comes to ethical self policing that puts taxpayers interest about electoral and special interest, joe biden doesn't have a serious bone in his body. and to refer to the attorney general or eric holder as a crime common corporate lawyer. >> guest: i do. and i provide all the evidence for people to judge for themselves. i think the thing that runs throughout culture of corruption is that it is a massive gap between the obama administration's rhetoric and the reality. i'm not arguing that influence peddlers and powerbrokers should

be outlawed somehow. everybody's got to make a living. but the point is that team obama came here on as high a horse as we've ever seen in to washington to change the way that they do business. and yet they have people like leon panetta who parlayed an entire career as a government servant into a mass of private wealth. you've got people who came from a hedge fund indices for butler's. these are all the prototypes that barack obama condemned, and michelle obama, for that matter. and yet they fully embrace them in their administration and don't seem to acknowledge the hypocrisy there. >> host: you have moved to colorado springs. how does that affect the way you view this down? >> guest: i've always had sort of a mental and ideological detachment from the beltway. that's just an outgrowth of my own political views as a

conservative. but i think it's much easier to do it from the outside, to have my ear to the ground in the grassroots, and the mountain west. i feel really liberated out there. and the air is literally and figuratively fresher. >> republican line for michelle malkin. good morning, good morning. god bless you, dear, the show. for putting up with the abuse. one quick thing. i just bought your book that i've had a chance to read it. but what drives me crazy is that democrats, i want to say first of all obama's in everyday you get to keep their private interest that i'm in the private insurance business. i read the bill. and grandfather and private and health care insurance that goes into explain how within one year of the legalizing of this bill

private companies will not be able to sell their policies. people will not be able to go and get their own insurance within one year of this bill passing. and becoming law. and yet the president gets up there and bald-faced lies continues, you can keep your private interest. well, private insurance is going to be in business long enough if we can't write new business. and another footnote to all this, a bald-faced light. congresspeople don't, haven't even read this bill. and they feel perfectly justified in not having read this bill. i put them there. and they are my servant. and get this wonderful plan, none of them are going to even take this plan. >> host: your response? >> guest: yeah, a couple of things. it is galling, the content and the duration with which members of congress, in particular have responded to members of the public about this question of reading the bill.

and the story of steny hoyer, the democrat leader essentially laughing when the question was posed to him, tells you all you need to know about washington's commitment to deliver to democracy and transparency for that matter. i know that a lot of people who call in to republican line are as upset as i am that this president essentially admitted that he hadn't read the bill either. when he was asked specifically about a provision first pointed out by investors business daily. that individual, the individual market would basically be destroyed. he admitted that he hadn't even heard of that provision. and i think that this mirrors the outrage, and we saw during the stimulus debate, of these massive programs getting rammed through. and then the american people only discovering and after they have passed and signed into law

that they are not getting what they were promised, and that in fact every single one of these has turned out to be a slush fund for special interest. and i think that's another reason why it's important to write the book because when these things, and when they are rammed through, we do have the power to say stop and to ask and demand to know who benefits. i have a section in my chapter on czars about the health care czar, nancy deparle. this is somebody who, if she had in part by her name would have been roundly condemned by team obama as a profiteer in the health care industry. in the last couple of years she made upwards of $6 million lobbying and working for various health care companies, hospital companies. and there has been very little disclosure of her activities in the white house because she is a sort. should be on congressional accountability. she works in the dark. we know, thanks to a left

leaning watchdog group, crew, here in washington, that the white house was made with these hospital executives. and only under threat of lawsuit did the white house finally disclose the list of executives. they have not, however, told us which white house administration officials were in those meetings. but guess what? nancy has financial ties to some of those executives who were enemies. i'd like to know the public should know was nancy deparle and those meetings, and if she was why didn't she recuse herself? >> host: good morning. >> caller: good morning. this is what makes politics i don't even know why in the middle of a peace plan, you know, i'm wondering ms. malkin, where you were when bush sent

all the troops, you know, said he did know anything about it. where was he? any idea? what about all the scandals? where were you when that happened? >> guest: you can just google my name. you can look at my blog and you will see that i was one of the loudest voices criticizing cronyism and nepotism in the bush administration. you can find many left wing blog saying even michelle malkin is criticizing michael brown at fema, a lot of dhs nepotism, which i desiccated and covered and uncovered myself. and also, you know, you can take a look at my files and see even most recently all of the work that i've done criticizing the pork, don young and ted stevens. i think -- i think that my

critics suffer from a moral equivalency when they can't take a look at the book that i've written in their in the response is where were you? without it for themselves of exactly what was. guess what? bush is not in office anymore. barack obama is and that's why i wrote the book. >> host: let me ask you specifically about a couple of the photographs that are inside the book. first of this with the former governor of illinois. the mayor of chicago and president obama. >> guest: i think was very important to set the stage for a the atmosphere, culture, the political machine that barack obama grew out of. and there is a section in the book specifically on the episode involving barack obama, battery jared and his senior white house adviser and consiglio a from chicago. and the connections to the rod blagojevich stand up and i go into great detail also about the

service employees at the national union which was involved somehow, was roped into blagojevich is poised to try to trade favors for that senate seat. >> host: you write about michelle obama quote but neither cultured pearls, sleeveless designer dresses, and false eyelashes applied by her full-time makeup artist, michelle robinson obama is a hardball chicago politico. the first ladies long ago showed a willingness to employ accusations of racial oppression as a defense against criticism. >> guest: yeah, and apparently this chapter two of the book seems to be raising a lot of hackles among my critics. because i'm very tough on her, and she deserves it. i've been extra and annoyed at the softball kids glove treatments that she has gotten. i think that people are cowed. they don't want to be criticized as racist or female bashing or somehow mean to this glamorous a

first lady. but she was deep in the politics of patronage. her father was a patronage appointee of the data administration. and then she herself went, flowed from the daily administration to a cozy job at the university chicago medical center. i've a very interesting chart that a blogger compiled that i put on page 65 of the book that shows the skyrocketing of her salary at this cozy job at the university of chicago. between the time she was appointed and the time that barack obama won his senate seat. and the salary nearly tripled. and, of course, they say, that's just a miracle coincidence. well, after barack obama won the white house, she left that job and they thought it was not important to fill again after she left. i also talk about, i think, an interesting episode that happened while she was serving at the university of chicago medical center. because it has relevance to the

health care debate now. she engineered what many consider a patient dumping scheme that bus or minority patients out of the university of chicago emergency rooms to community health centers that supposedly would offer them better care. well, a lot of local activists didn't think so. and neither did the emergency physicians associations, which did condemn it as illegal patient dumping. the person that she hired to sell the plan was none other than david axe arad, susan sure who is now her chief of staff at the east wing was also involved as well as battery jared, a senior white house adviser who, at the time of this incident was on the university of chicago board of directors. >> host: this is an e-mail and you get a lot of attention because you're contribute to the fox news channel, but this says fox news has been very critical of this president and the democratic party.

generate your sense about the role of fox news place in the dialogue here in this town. >> guest: there are many different parts of fox. and i think people confuse that in which he sang it in till we're blue in the face. and people don't appreciate that yes, in prime time you have those who have very strong opinions, sean hannity, glenn beck, bill o'reilly. but even among those three that are very diverse opinions on basic policy matters, and on how hard or how soft to treat barack obama. and then of course there is a new side which i think is unfailingly fair and balanced. so again to level an ad hominem attack, fox, that discredits a 400 page book? is ridiculous. >> host: the guest is michelle maltin. >> caller: it is not who wrote your paycheck.

and i wanted to know if this book, what is your answer to all these question have, what is the answer to the corruption in washington? you have a book at what you have any ideas? >> guest: i think that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and i think that disclosure will help reduce close your. and i also think, very sadly, that knowledge is power. i think that the american people have not been fully informed about just how much an illusion hope and change, the air of hope and change has been. so i think the book is part of the solution. >> host: another call from the book, this with regard to secretary of state hillary clinton former president bill clinton. the clintons have always had a knack for attracting the dregs of society to their donor rolls and even at a greater talent for avoiding the kind of sustained media scrutiny that would ensue were they republicans.

>> guest: yeah, i think they're the perfect illustration of a couple of things. one, the double standard in the media. and two, the antithesis of how can change. and i understand the political strategy that went on in trying to neutralize hillary clinton by giving her the secretary of state position. but the lack of transparency of both of the clintons throughout the political lifetime really should give pause to honest progressives out there who thought that barack obama was going to do differently. and i don't -- is not a -- the chapter i wrote about the clintons not a retread of all of the past scandals, you know, travel gate, whitewater do, the secret health care task force, et cetera, et cetera. what it really does is go through the massive amount of conflicts of interest between bill clinton and his charitable foundations, many of their still undisclosed donors.

we know about some of them. for in state government, very shady businessmen, and in some cases convicted criminals. and the kind of work i hillary clinton does now. you know, the administration tells us, and hillary clinton told us after she went to the nomination at she would recuse herself went there were conflicts of interest. it's a difficult to say when there wouldn't be. and basically they reduce apostle is trust is. >> host: george from table for their good morning and walk into the program. >> caller: good morning. i read your blog all the time. i think it's great, especially more sick him he's a great writer. >> guest: thank you, kind like to become what happened to the cars are? he seemed to bless our public and i don't know why. did they find something wrong there? i do believe your book is going to be an ongoing project because

of all the changes in the administration with all these crooks leaving at. >> host: we should point out again there's a photograph, all from the book that michelle malkin has just completed. >> guest: e.j. just leave over the last week and i think that's proof of my thesis that if there is enough sunlight you can have accountability. he was under a card from the minute that barack obama appointed him a cars are because his former company, quadrangle has been involved in a long standing out sec investigation of financial shenanigans. there's also a very strange incident involving the production of a movie called church, and a potential pay for play scheme in which ratner a parent has an dealings and promises with the directors relative, involved with the movie. i did dedicate an entire chapter

to the czar because i think that's what's most troubling aspects of the administration. every administration of recent memory has had source to granted drugs are come home and security czar, et cetera. but it really is unprecedented at the scope and the breath of the czarist that barack obama has appointed. and by the blogosphere's account there may be up to 44 of them now who've been installed by presidential authority. they don't have any congressional oversight. and in many cases they're completely superfluous. we have a secretary of housing and urban development. why do we need and urban czar? a lot of people don't even know we have him. we have a secretary of health and human services. why do we have a health care czar? nancy deparle who i recently mentioned. and i think one of the reasons is that the obama vendors got into so much trouble during the formal nomination process that they just threw up their hands

or somebody public policy idea of completely circumventing it in creating the shadow cabinet. >> host: going back to the issue of fox news. the problem is that hannity and o'reilly don't check facts and promote lies. >> guest: there is cannibal as anybody else. and they know that the rest of the mainstream the, the fox bashers are going to be on them like white on rice. and that a lot of these left wing blog organizations that dedicate their entire lives to combing through every sentence that is said on fox news are going to be those kind of reports are then regurgitated almost word for word by a lot of the mainstream media. so the idea that they are not held accountable for what they say on air is ridiculous again. it's just -- i -- i have choked on my blog about fox derangement syndrome. and i think it also serves as a convenient distraction from what's going on in this administration, and noted how

disappointed i love these obama supporters are. >> host: were the focus in the book is also the current white house chief of staff, rahm emanuel. would you please comment on obama's chief of staff and his dual citizenship? i voted for obama but i knew he would be no better. the very nature of power attracts those who should not have it. >> guest: dual citizenship of rahm emanuel? it doesn't bother me. >> host: next call is john. good morning. >> caller: good morning, good morning, good morning. c-span, i think you need to do a little better job. i may, everybody has their head in this young lady need to be on book tv, not c-span. excuse me, let me make my comment. if she is a word about this and what about that, write a book. stating that, hey, health care and all of that good stuff, put it and let people vote on it. instead of going for all these

changes. if you don't like something that's been in office all these years and doing all this crazy stuff, put it out there, let the people vote on term limits are you sitting there and you going on and on, everybody has opinions. but beyond, let me borrow some of my opinions. >> host: you're on right now. we appreciate it. did you have a question? >> caller: yeah, that's it. >> host: thank you. >> guest: all i will say is i'm really glad even after all the years, because i think the first time i appeared on c-span was, i don't know, six or seven years ago and it is referred to as young lady. i appreciate that. >> host: this is also another tweet us this brothel, big fan written articles and town hall. how did his book on together? >> guest: it was over after the inauguration, and not long after that i really just bore down. there was a lot of leverage between what i do in my

syndicated column. i've been riding it twice weekly syndicated column for creators since 1992. and then i blog at michelle malkin.com. i've been doing that since 2004. and then my guys, somebody mentioned and morrissey and i have another anonymous blogger. they're both wonderful, wonderful colleagues and they blog at hot-air every day, and that blog has been operating for a couple of years as well. and the synergy between everything i do made it very easy to hammer out the book. you know, a lot of people, that's the first thing they know, even though mainstream reporters do this all the time. every instant books on michelle obama and the obama administration in january. and so but i think was interesting was that up until the very last second that went to press, i was updating it. every day in the headlines there's a relevant story that i

think, that points to the deficiencies. because i would see a store that sort of glossed over am not of the conflict of interest or only ties. and we need this book, we need this book. it definitely has the backing, i think. >> host: you are on the today show truth is we. reaction to that interview? >> guest: i was shocked at all they had me on, grateful for that opportunity. and he graciously reprinted the entire introduction of the book on their website. but you know you've got three or four minutes to try to get your point across. and most of the question had nothing to do with the book. which is fine. but every think there was sort of a game of trying to beat the clock, and any and i think matt lauer got beaten. it was a very entertaining experience. >> host: thanks for being with us on c-span for a full half-hour. >> guest: i appreciate i

>> host: the book is called "culture of corruption: obama and his team of tax cheats, crooks, and cronies." >> michelle malkin began her career as a journalist at the los angeles daily news before moving on to the seattle times. she's appeared on fox news channel, "nbc nightly news," and 2020 among others. she's the author of several books including inpatient, and unhinged. >> a panel on how to write history for popular audience. the panel includes outside magazine editor at large hampton sides. former fort worth star-telegram editor at large jeff guinn, and literary agency founder james donon.

>> i want to welcome everyone to the tucson festival of books. it of course is even livelier and better attended than last of the guy was done by the success last year. and this year is absolutely wonderful. so we want to thank the festival and all the people that work so hard to make it a success and to keep the book live in america, which is something everyone up here on this panel is dedicated to. my name is paul hutton. i am a professor at the university of new mexico, which i hope you won't hold against me. [laughter] >> i am the executive director of the western writers of america. and our topic today is indeed the american west, and history

as a seller. this particular session is sponsored by the alliance bank of arizona. we want to thank them, and the presentation will last approximately an hour. and we will go about 40 minutes. will open it up for question. if you do have questions, you need to come up here to the microphone and ask your question at the microphone. so i will give you kind of a high sign and you can form a line if you want to. and we need to do that, because we want to welcome c-span2 hour session. they are broadcasting this today. and we of course are internally grateful for c-span and all they do to keep the book a lot and literacy alive and especially american history alive. in our country. and so we welcome them. at the conclusion of our session, please join us in the office at the signing area, which is area one. and it is 10 to be.

we ate may want to write and when you are writing down and reaching for events, we turn over internal cell phones off, too, if you would. it i so remember to do my. and anyone, tent b is located southwest and the authors will be autographing their books. let me introduce to you our panel. all of whom have have had great success recently. recently, with history books. and books about the american west. at the end of the table is jim donovan, the founder and president of jim donovan literary, literary agency in dallas, texas. he as a graduate of the university of texas. we take that kind of art in new mexico were iphone, but that's all right. he has worn many hats in his life in the publishing business beginning his career in publishing and and awesome bookstore back in 1981, moving to douse any for to become a

buyer for a retail bookstore chain. he's been an editor and he is an agent and even more important for our purposes, of course, is a best selling author with his recent book a terrible glory, published by little brown on custer and the big one which los angeles times said was the last word on the last stand, somehow donovan and i both know that's not true. it will never be the last word on the last stand. and now since he is absolutely evidently infatuated with people invading other peoples countries and getting wiped out, he is doing the alamo. [laughter] >> i always like to come you go to someone's backyard and they shoot you and then you are a hero. it's very good. >> jeff guinn has written 15 books in his career. is also a graduate of the university of texas.

researchers used the book editor at the fort worth star-telegram, and he just informed me that his publisher has informed him that his book, the autobiography of santa claus a list in 2003 has now sold 500,000 copies, which is pretty sweet. so congratulations on that. and actually won children about santa claus and had a huge success you would want to write about psychotic killers. and so -- [laughter] >> just been turned to the true untold story of bonnie and clyde, published by simon & schuster in 2009. he is currently working, decide to switch sides and go with the law after seeing what happened to bonnie and clyde. is now working on wyatt earp. and at the end of the table is hampton sides, who did not go to the university of texas. but did barely crawl through yale university. [laughter] >> and it acts within the paper. i didn't believe it until he

showed it to me. he is from memphis where he was born and raised. he's had a very successful career in journalism. is editor at large with outside magazine, which i know many of you read. his book, ghost soldiers in 2001 about the but and network and a i wrote rescue attempt in the philippine campaign was made into a motion picture. and, of course, his blood and done, the story of kit carson and america was published by doubleday in 2006 has been an enormous success. at that sort of resurrected the name of kit carson and american history. hampton is now, he was it in santa fe. he phoned kit carson west and south i it did for a while. and he is just completed held down on his treo, which is the story of the king assassination and the manhunt for the assassin which will be published by doubleday next month. so we are all looking forward to that.

i think a good place to start discussion like this and we would just start with jim, is why did you select this topic? i actually know why donovan selected. he has the same tactic addiction that i have to custer. there are no 12 step programs but you're doomed for life. but how in the world do you take something that you love, a story that you love and that you have always been fascinated with and turn it into a bestseller, nevada, convinced a publisher that they need to publish a book on something that everyone believes they already know about? >> are you finish? >> i am done. you are on. [laughter] >> we might get a word in edgewise here. i had an early book, a coffee table book on the subject of the battle of a little bit corn. as you know coffee table books are not by nature very extensive

or in death. but doing that book about 10 years ago, i realized it had been so much written, so much research done on this battle recently in the past 20 years, especially archaeological, forensic results. that had been integrated into one narrative. and, of course, once you get going on custer you get hooked. so that's the answer to that. i persuade my publisher that even though there had been, oh, i don't, four zillion books on the subject? >> five actually. >> that one more, the market could bear one more. spent about four years, three or four years researching the book. and i'm totally hooked now on the last stand, as you can see. >> speaking of last into people didn't quite make it out of the building, jeff, why in the world did you go from santa claus -- i believe everybody in this room

likes -- to a controversial pair like to bonnie and clyde? >> although i didn't realize it for a long time, all of my books seem to be about the reality of a person or people and in this that go up around them. and i think it's important for us to understand, not just that, a lot of the history we believe is mostly mythology, but what it tells us about ourselves that we created these myths, but we believe in them and love them. in the case of bonnie and clyde, i was wondering how could two of the most inept criminals who ever lived, and they were inapt. most of the time they had to break into gum machines for their meal money. but you take these two kids from a desperate dallas slum who are doomed the men of professional lawmen really decide to hunt them down. and how did we come to believe in them as these glamorous

figures that seem to represent a romantic version of depression america? that was the question that i wanted to and go and that was the book i ended up writing. >> in hampton, you and i of course know that christopher kit carson is indeed probably in terms of american history the most significant of all of that great quartet of frontier heroes, bone and crockett, carson and cody. but he is the ones least known. in fact, i had about six month before your book came out published cover story in truest magazine entitled why is this man forgotten. and, of course, he's not forgotten anymore, thanks to blood and thunder and now hollywood is pounding on your door. to pass make it into a movie, which will finally bring the carson story to an international audience. why did you pick kit carson, and how did you sell that idea to your publisher? >> well, i live in santa fe, and anywhere you go in new mexico you see kit carson's name. get carson national forest and a

pink house with his believe there's carson park and carson avenue and all over the west, carson city, carson pass, rivers, streams, trails named after this guy. is sort of a jack-in-the-box of american history, sort of a zealot figure or something. and i was just, i am stupid question. who was this guy. i really get know who he was. was he a villain, was he a hero? i've been to canyon dishy in arizona and heard one version of events which was he was a genocidal maniac and he tried to reconcile that with what little i remember from reading juvenile biographies, i think, he was supposedly a great intrepid hero from these books that i vaguely remembered reading. so i was interested in how to reconcile genocidal maniac with a great american folk hero? of course, found along the way that truth was somewhere in the

middle, that he had this incredible buried and sort of getting to which we talk but with bonnie and clyde, you know, he was alleging, he was a myth in his own time because of all these blood and thunder books that were published that these books that way since a the first dime novels, the first mass literature. and he was invariably portrayed as this action figure hero, you, 10 feet tall, always won the ladies, it was said he would kill to indians before breakfast. and this was considered a good thing back then. and so there was this myth even in his own lifetime, herman melville actually in one passage of moby dick compares him favorably to hercules. so in his own lifetime he had to live with this mythology, and i guess, like jeff, i was interested in sort of the contrast between the myth and the real person. and that's what really fueled and animated the book.

>> we're finding in the time in which we live that the story of the west and western history is a much contested ground in america and it's part of what a lot of people call the culture war that is going on for sort of the hearted soul of our national identity. all of these characters are western characters. i consider bonnie and clyde along with pretty boy floyd ann dellinger, who was captured actually by the arizona authorities not far from where we are sitting and sent back to india. i survey consider bonnie and clyde the last kind of western outlaws. and they were identified with the west that but all of them are steeped in the kind of controversy we see in western history today and so of course it certainly custer, is at the center and has been 50 years now this sort of struggle for ownership of the story of the american west. how did you do with that, jim, how did you deal with the controversy of custer?

>> well, i was -- what i want to do was tell the story and samuel l. that morrison, one of the great nonfiction history writers we've ever had he said a good credit history should observe three things, accuracy, vigor, and objectivity. i thought that if i tried to write the story and research it thoroughly, and let the store till it sells it would kind of take care of itself. i think if you start worrying about what group, you know, which of these groups is going, you, bothered by what you write, it can just get in the way. what i wanted to do besides tell the story, in my research for the earlier book i had read a lot of books that were out there, and noticed that a lot of them had kind of just assumed

mistakes and parts of the myth and the legend that were just wrong. one person writes its own breast, some else right to, incorporates it into a sort and after what it is accepted as truth. i want to kind of scrape off those particles off this vessel, the battle of the little big or. and, of course, one of the things that his most lasting about this though is it's a misty. i think that's one of the reasons that it's been written about more than gettysburg is that there's a misty about what happened specifically with customers battalion of five companies and how to get massacred. there were indian witnesses, but for 100 years nobody took those seriously, as paul notes that they're just got dismissed as being irreconcilable. a lot of work has been done in the last 20 us to sort of examine those and realize they did have a lot of very reliable information to tell about the battle. and that's the other reason i wanted to write this was to see

if i could find that what really happened to custer's command, specifically. and how they actually got to where they ended up and were massacred on that hill. and i think i did. and i think there's enough material from the indian account that were taking suzy for a hundred years, and also a new forensic and archaeological research they have done over the past 20, 25 years to do that. >> with custer you confront a character who once was highly regarded whose reputation has fallen precipitously and now is almost used as a sort of a punchline and late-night comedy. bonnie and clyde are just, and you treat it quite positively. >> not completely i hope. >> but not as a buffoon. but bonnie and clyde their sort of the opposite and there is a whole aura of romance that surrounds them of course, all of the stricken by hollywood and even that they done with warren beatty movie was not the first

about them. they have long fascinated artists. your book kind of brings them down a bit. how did you deal with that, jeff? >> i don't know if it brings them down. one of the mistakes i think a lot of us make when we're writing history is we tend to try to apply modern perceptions and modern beliefs to a time that may been an entirely different. and so in writing about bonnie and clyde, i tried to keep in mind that i wanted readers to have contacts. you don't just write what people did. if you do that you have written a textbook. would you try to help readers understand is how they did things and why they did things. and to do that you have to try to understand the time and the place. and yes, the more modern-day bonnie and clyde barrel gain fans believed they look like

warren beatty and faye delegate but the fact remains that bonnie and clyde gain their initial notoriety in america. they were really the first electronic media icons. because with wire services, those goofy pictures they post were, could be in newspapers all over the country. so what you really have to do to understand their initial appeal is they were the late 1920s early 1930s ancestors of branch alina. [laughter] >> and everybody was just speculating on their love affair and the close bond were anything else. so once you understand the time when you understand the attitude to the time a little better, i think it always gives us a clear perspective of who people really were. >> hampton, kit carson of course may have been forgotten before your book around the country, but serving in new mexico he is kind of a searing memory and is not a positive figure at all.

and so, you begin a journey that let you do have to reimagine carson and rewrite that southwestern myth. >> well, i think it's possible that carson has eclipsed custer as the most hated man in india america. is like kind of a shorthand for genocidal campaigns, or scorched-earth campaigns, the round up of the novel people. but carson is just a very, very interesting guy who is full of surprises. this great indian hater, supposedly, spoke sunday like six or seven indian languages. his first wife was indian arapahoe. they had two children. she died in childbirth. our second -- his second wife was cheyenne. that marriage didn't last very long. she kicked him out of her tv, what they call a shy and divorce. nonetheless, this was a man who

understood american indian culture and lived much of his young adulthood, more like a native american in a white guy. but he also spoke french and spanish and is third and final wife was spanish. he converted to catholicism and lived in taos emerge into this spanish going. this is canada's multicultural guy before that was ever a term. he just was very easily and very organically through all these different worlds. the plains indians, he was particularly close to the ute indians. so this great indian hunter becomes much more complicated than this person who has eclipsed custer, becomes a much more interesting that i think when she began to see the totality of his life, and not just focus on the one campaign, a novel campaign that has really eclipsed his reputation has become so intimately tied to that one campaign. really interesting guy, i also used in almost as, he was a way to talk about the larger story

of manifest destiny and the conquest of the west because of this one guy, this deliberate backwoodsman from missouri who had run away at age 16 is like this is delicate do. he keeps cropping up and he keeps bumping into history and intersecting with the destinies of general zamri hers and all the movers and shakers of the west. he is of this sort of little through life. and it's kind of a joy for a wired to come across a character like that who can kind of pull it all together. and so he's not a biographer that "blood and thunder" is a story about the american west in which he is the central throw line or the person who sort of connects the dots. >> all of these characters, and i think it's something we knows what they thought of western characters seem to be self-conscious. carson perhaps the least, but

one of the things that struck me in jest book was in the famous dakar route with both were bonnie and clyde were finally shot down by that policy. there was a copy of walter burns biography, brand-new biography of billy the kid in the back seat. and by of course talked about jesse james at one time in some poetry. it like all three of you to talk about that self-conscious nature of these characters. you want to start, jeff? >> nobody loved their notoriety more than clyde barrow and bonnie parker. they wanted to be famous. they knew that a lot of the stories written about them had no basis in reality, and they were still pleased. [laughter] >> the only thing they were good at, and this was clyde, was stealing cars. and they would steal a car every few days and they would abandon it.

the police would find it, and in the car they would always find the latest newspapers and true crime magazines with stories about the barrow gang. they tried to encourage the right perception of themselves. bonnie was appalled that people really thought she smoked cigars. clyde actually sent a threatening editor to the fort worth star-telegram saying that if you ever put another story that says mike underworld made smoke cigars, i know where you and your reporters live. [laughter] back in the star-telegram, until after the bodies were certified as dead, in louisiana never printed another mention of bonnie with a sigar. but again, they were trying to overcome who they really were. they were both crippled. in the last year of their lives are clyde had been crippled ever since he got off to his own toes

to get out of prison duty. and bonnie actually could not walk the last year of her life because her leg was so terribly damaged in a car wreck. they lived mostly in filth, camping in their cars by river so they could take baths. and to them, the was that at least they were known for something. they knew they were going to die. they expected it and just want it to be a spectacular run right up to that. which of course wasn't the case with kit carson or custer, i don't think. jim? >> will, of course i think we all know that custer was kind of a glory hound, love the attention ever since he was a young captain in the civil war, who was bumped right up to brigadier general a few days before gettysburg, and adopted. that was back when you could

dress a little differently and he certainly did. summary described them, a fellow officer, as a circus performer gone mad be because it bright red credit and kind of a sailor's top suit in a way. but he was the only one that was like the. jeb stuart was his counterpart in the south, a great cavalry commander, also dressed quite strikingly. but i think you guys taste for the press been because of course they love coming in because he was so colorful. and this was before they published photographs. that was until the 1890s in newspapers and magazines, but they used woodcuts in harpers and frank leslie's -- is that right? -- and, of course, people got a sense of who he was. in newspapers and magazines loved him because of that and fed off of it. and he actually became a very good writer. his material was still easy to read.

it's not too overburdened with those praetorian his sons that make some of that stuff most of us have unbearable now. anything before about 1880 or 1890. on his last campaign, the little big horn campaign he actually filed stories for a new york newspaper, i think was the herald tribune, anonymously. so he was very aware of what the press could do. >> carson i think was in a lot of ways the anti-custer. he was very uncomfortable with his celebrity for most of his life. he didn't understand that he did understand what it was coming from that people back east need this he wrote to personify manifest. he didn't know what manifest destiny was. and he said he didn't use that word because to higher return for him. he was also illiterate. so he couldn't read these horrible books. i dare you to read these blood and thunder. they are terrible but i went to the house of -- library of

congress. they are pulp fiction books. precursors to the modern western, but he didn't get them. he didn't even understand why these writers were writing the stories that didn't get any money from them. he didn't get any consent to use his name. they painted a caricature of him that he essentially spent his whole life trying to lead them. and then there was a clipper ship named the kit carson. is a steamboat named the kit carson. they were broadway plays. there was the mention in moby dick. you know, the thing just blew up, and i certainly in his career he realized he needed to kind of seize control of all of this press. and he tried to hire a writer to tell his story. washington irving came very close to saying yes to doing sort of a definitive book about kit carson. if he had it probably would have never written "blood and thunder." instead a series of hacks that kind of worked on a story.

and he also wrote, dictate i should stay because he couldn't write, a and autobiography which is very, very bare bones. but this is kind of like the opposite of custer, or maybe the opposite of buffalo bill. someone who was never successful in turning his same into something bigger. he died essentially a popper. he could never seem to capitalize. nor did he have the inclination to capitalize on his same. of asserting something that he spent his whole career grappling with and try to figure out why does this country back east that i ran away from seem to need a superhero to personify this movement. >> is of course good that custer wrote his autobiography when he was 34, since he is dead at 36. it's good to get the record in before you could check out. >> not as early as one to bear travis, who wrote it about 24 and 23? >> well, his was a direct to.

but yeah. getting a plug-in for your next book. will get to that soon. [laughter] >> spent i say there's a mention by someone else who clerked for him that he had written an autobiography, a short autobiography at the age of about 24 but it's been lost. >> is always good to get those done quick. [laughter] >> now i am in a business, i mean the academy, and often times i'm kind of struck by the fact that many of my colleagues, a large number seem to believe if you would sell a book, in a bookstore, to like really humans that want to read, that you have sold out. you have betrayed your calling him and, in fact, the kind of commercial success that these three gentlemen have had as writers went pretty well do in the career of any academic historian. . .

>> as different from your academic colleague historians. >> well, i did go to yale. and at the time it really had one of the heavy weight history departments. it probably still does. the four years i was there i do not recall ever hearing the word "pleasure." ever being uttered. history was not supposed to be pleasurable. historians are very deadly serious people. we put on robes and we commune with dead people.

we're druids essentially and, you know, go -- we have secret methodologies that no one is supposed to know about and that was sort of the way it was taught and the writing of history and the appreciation of history as it was taught to me in college was essentially argumentation -- you have an argument. you have a thesis and you state your thesis and then you marshall your evidence and you argue your points. and then you build towards a summation. and you have your closing argument and again, you have to go gefore your professor and defend your thesis in person. this is very legalistic. i think a bunch of lawyers early on highjacked the history departments of most universities. and the idea of telling stories, the idea of actually having stories that have plot and

character and suspense and dialog and all these attributes of story telling that we know from fiction and from movies and television and all the other modes of communication never really have entered very well into the history departments. although i know two things. one there are a lot of academic historians who do secretly go home at night without telling anyone and they read shelby foote or david mccullough or nathaniel fullbrook or barbara tuchman and i don't even want to admit this but paul does. so the hostility that is between historians and popular historians i think really is -- it's kind of contrived. it shouldn't exist. i think there's a place for narrative history in universities perhaps as a multidisciplinary approach if you get a major narrative history that would be english department -- like a mixed major

or something like that. i think there's a place for it. and i think hostility that exists is unfortunate and there's a place for all kinds of history and i think also the history as we know it is going to die as a discipline unless we do sort of inject some life into it by having a greater primacy of narrative history within the overall academy of history. but that's just kind of my own -- my own private theory. i don't know if you guys kind of see it that way or not. >> i think there's two different things. all of us who write history have to keep in mind the first thing is we're not writing books to prove how smart we are. we're trying to write books that we can share some information that we have in a positive way that will interest not just other avid historians but general readers. in a lot of cases i think what happens to folks who are

academics is they are extending their doctoral thesis or whatever and they're writing something that they believe they will be able to defend to their colleagues on the faculty. and not writing a book on a fascinating subject for folks who know something and who would like to know more and expand their own knowledge. if you write to impress your friends and yourself, then just keep a blog online. [laughter] >> or a diary that you xerox and send around. otherwise, try to remember the folks that you're writing for who are interested in a subject. who want to know more. who have day jobs and maybe only have 30 minutes to read at night or going to try to grab an hour or two with your book on a plane on a business trip or on a vacation. if you're not trying to reach out to as many readers as you can, if you're not trying to share information, spread the word.

get people thinking. and i bet everybody in this room reads because you like to think. and you like to learn. if you're going to -- if you're just going to try to impress the people that you already know ad make yourself look good to them, it seems to me it's an invalid exercise. writing history is story telling and you want to tell the story to the widest number of people and share it in a positive, informative way. >> one question, paul, did you wear that tweed jacket just to provoke us? [laughter] >> and i, in fact, hadn't put a tie on in years being a southwesterner and i decided to look like a professor. you three make me want to defend the academy which is a very uncomfortable position for me. [laughter] >> well, jeff touched on a few things. i'm also an agent and i deal with this a lot.

and one of the things that good writers of popular narrative nonfiction in history, 'cause we're talking about that -- we have to -- it's to pay more attention to the things that make it more employing readable. -- interesting and readable. the main things are story and character. those two elements and how they're handled. for instance, i know some of us -- the best writers use somewhat novelistic techniques and i don't mean making things up as in fiction. i mean, paying more attention to how a story is told, how it's structured and particularly character because i don't know about you. but i think i speak for a lot of people that read, if i don't care about who i'm reading about, then i'm not going to read very long. and if you don't concentrate on character and make us at least care or understand about these people and their motivations and reasons, then it's history textbook and i don't know many

people who read history textbooks for fun. for instance, we're talking about character, what i try to do in my books is humanize the story and when i research i have a file -- i had a file for every one of custer's 31 subordinate officers. and after three or four there's just -- you just don't get much information. when i'd find a nugget about what a person was like, it went in the file and somehow i blended it into the narrative. and it gives you a little more information about the character. it makes you, i hope, care about the character a little more. >> and i might add to that also is the style. i mean, you know, when i was in college or -- whenever i've been in an academic setting, i felt a hostility to the idea of style. that a historian should have any style. of writing. or of voice or a sense of unique way of getting their ideas across or telling the story. and what i found what you have to do if you come out of an

academic setting you have to have -- this is a scientific term. you have to have known as a corn cobectomy. [laughter] >> you have to -- you remove the corn cob because it does effect -- i assumed. i've gone back and looked at my college papers and you assume a voice -- and this isn't just history. this is all academic disciplines. you assume a voice that's not yours. it's somebody else's. it's some proximation of an erudite person that you envisioned in your mind. and you have to remove that and just start telling stories in a much more organic and much more natural way. >> big words. >> probably the easier way to say it you don't want to write a book that's a lecture. you want to write a book that's a conversation with a reader. >> i had to stand up because my corn cob was hurting me as i was sitting on the bench here. [laughter] >> how about the other one?

>> i did want to talk a little bit more about style. and all of your books, which i ought -- i ought to hold up for the audience, "donovan's a terrible glory." "go down together" about bonnie and clyde and "hamton's blood and thunder" all available alt your local bookstore or off the internet or right when we sign after this session is over.nup but all are written very clearly, very forcefully. dare i even say in some cases gracefully and lyrically. all of us -- >> keep going. >> yeah, all of us -- many of us, many of the viewers and folks in this room -- we want to write and we struggle with writing and writing is very, very hard work. this does not come naturally to you. that you actually do have to work with this? >> i was up at -- about a week ago i woke up at 4:00 in the morning.

nothing to do with the corn cob. i picked up a book of david mccullough's "1776" which is a wonderful book. and in some ways it has some similar structure, character, themes as what i'm working on the alamo, a revolution, a ragtag army, some leaders. i picked up his book then and i spent about an hour just looking through the first 100 pages to see how he handled attributable quotes. i spent an hour to see how he did it because he's one of -- you know, he's one of the models. he's the gold standard here although mr. sides is approachly approaching that point. >> i'll pay you later. >> jim, you're my agent. could you -- [laughter] >> for this i give him 15%. [laughter]

>> you got a secured ego. hamton does. >> yep, i went to the university of texas so that means i got my credentials right out there. [laughter] >> and this was in the '60s and i vaguely remember it. [laughter] >> i don't think any of us who write and who kept writing and having some success don't have the same head battering heads. there are days when the magic works and there are lots of days when the magic doesn't. my own technique is when i can't think of how i should be saying something. i imagine i'm having dinner with my wife nora. if i was telling the story to nora instead of writing it, what are the things i would want to tell her so that she would understand it. and then i go back and try to work those things in. it is god awful hard work but i do think i speak for everybody. and there are some other wonderful writers in this room i

should point out some folks who have done valuable, valuable work. that what could be more fun? what could be a bigger thrill? than trying hard to learn about things and writing them and sort of carrying them on a little bit and sharing them with people. the joy does overcome the pain but sometimes it hurts a hell of a lot of the. -- a lot of work. >> my 7-year-old son came to my office one day and watched me holding up a document. and i sat the document down. and then i type a little bit. i pick up that same document. look at it again. set it down. pick up another document put over on top -- this goes on for hours and my son is watching this. you know, thinking my father is supposed to be, you know, a successful writer. this is maybe something i would want to do one day or something but he looked at me and he just

said, dad, is it always like this? [laughter] >> i think my kids think watch -- watching me that it's the most deadly dull profession in the world and they would never in a million years want to do it because it's really hard work. you know, you just scratch your head and you're thinking about structure and you're thinking about plot. you're thinking about when did i last introduce this character? you know, the writing process, not just the research, but the writing is agony at times. but in the end, is, i think, a dream job. even though my kids don't believe me. >> some day. >> of course, the suicide rate for writers is pretty high and there's nothing really way to work on your self-esteem so much as looking at a blank page for two or three days and coming to realize what a total and complete failure you are. which has never happened to any of these gentlemen. and not only have they published these bestsellers now they're off on new projects and we ought to talk about that.

hampton, your book is coming out in a few weeks. >> yeah. it's a book about -- well, i grew up in memphis and i think all writers at some point want to go back to the place where they came from. and i wanted in this case to go back to the pivotal moment in the place where i came from, april of 1968, in memphis and the confluence of forces that brought king to memphis. my father was a lawyer. and he worked for the law firm that represented king when he came on behalf of the garbage workers who went on strike in the fall of -- excuse me, the spring of 1968. but i got kind of captivated by james earl ray. and this story really became not so much as the story of the assassination but how the fbi tracked down james earl ray, the largest manhunt in american history at that time, $2 million, 6,000 agents, four different countries. he was finally caught by scotland yard in london two

months after the assassination as he was in route to become a mercenary soldier in rhodesia. somewhat like bonnie and clyde, ray has his own mythology and ray has his own self-conscious qualities, you know, trying to be kind of a folk hero, i guess. a very -- a very dark character. someone who i guess in a way is a consummate villain in this story. the villain becomes the protagonist because it's how he gets out of these different situations. how he assumes different identities. and almost gets away with this crime. so and you want to talk about what you're working on? >> and the title is? >> it's called "hell hound on his trail" and it's coming out at the end of april. so i'll be going on a book tour and talking about that a lot in the months to come. >> and jeff we're in your new stomping grounds.

we're north of tombstone, arizona and your next project is wyatt earp? >> one of the things that surprised me about clyde barrow who saw himself as the heir of the great western gunslinger. i mean, clyde's heroes in life are jesse james and billy the kid. i wanted to know more about the era that spawned that sort of mythology about the two-gun-toting law men and the bad guys and everything else. and i'm having a fascinating time working on a book that's tentatively titled "the last gunfight" which my new york editors thought it would be this heroic showdown on the streets of tombstone but what they're learning in my draft chapterers is the fabulous history of southeast arizona and the whole westward expansion of america. again not writing so much about what people did as how they did things and why they did of things.

and i do want to say to the host city of tucson you have some of the best historians i've ever run into here. folks who are dedicated to trying to find out information and who share it very generously. this is -- this is a fun project. and when you're trying to decide what to buy every relative and friend you had for christmas next year, do keep it in mind. [laughter] >> for this year copies go down together. >> and jim you're moving right on to the alamo which is pretty fabulous material for a texan? >> as you know -- i think someone needs to interject here if you don't know paul hutton is also a wonderful writer himself. what i wanted to write after this -- i wanted to write a book on the titanic. as you can see i'm the literary equivalent of the guy in the car ahead of you who slows down with a horrible accident.

there's something about the -- i guess, i'm fascinating by. and i spent several months writing a proposal and my publisher liked it but they thought, well, you know, there's going to be a lot of titanic books coming out in 2012, the 100th anniversary so do you have anything else? you know, you did a great western book. is there another subject? well, you know, this thing happened down here. i live in dallas. you know, told them a little about it. i don't know, maybe people all over the country aren't as fascinated as texan because it's religion down in text. -- texas. the holy trinity is crockett, bui. he jumped out of his seat and he was dancing in his office when i told him about the alamo and so now i'm doing a book on the alamo. i'm not doing any more last

stands, or anything else. i want to do a subject preferably where there's some people alive still where i can talk about it. it drives you crazy as a historian writing where everybody has been dead for a while because you just think, why didn't somebody just ask this one question that would have cleared up everything. >> not just dead but good and dead. >> right. >> how did you phrase this, we work in the -- what was that phrase? >> i don't know. the pain cave. >> don't tell me about the pain cave. in got out of it. >> we deal in the sepia edge of the spectrum. those kind of subjects that are back there and you see the photos in sepia tone. >> some people have, in fact, suggested that historians are so antisocial, of course, they spend all their time locked in rooms. they can't deal with any humans who are alive and appreciate more the dead who don't usually talk back. if you have any questions,

please come up to the microphone right here and ask from our panels. we have about 10, 15 minutes left. yes, sir. >> first of all, thank you all for coming. i think just to speak on behalf of some of us who have been involved with the festival it's terrific to have you here so thank you. could you speak a moment about your -- how you come up with ideas? how many ideas are ahead of you as you're thinking about what you want to write about? and also do you think about tv and movies as you're writing? would you hope to see your ideas come out on different screens? >> i think about -- i think about movies and cinema kind of in the opposite way. i think that i'm a product of modern culture. and i have seen a lot of movies. and i think i think and influenced by film so i think in terms of scenes. i think in terms of character-driven plot. and so my stories tend to be

very -- i've been told very cinematic. it's not that i'm writing for the movies in hopes that it will become a movie. it's that i'm actually influenced by that form and that mode of storytelling and i think probably all modern narrative writers to a certain extent are. we can't help it. if you go to see thousands of movies over a lifetime you're going to be influenced by that. so, no, but as far as, you know, thinking about -- i mean, we all hope that a movie can come out of a story. it's nice. you're not supposed to get too emotionally involved, though. you're supposed -- i think it was hemingway who said you're supposed to go to the nevada-california border and you go to the desert and you hurl your manuscript over and they go that their trunk and they hurl the money. it's nothing but heartbreak. >> we don't give much thought whether our books will be turned into movies and they'll give us lots of money. no, not at all.

[laughter] >> i have a degree in film from texas, not yale. and that's a good point. all i want to reiterate is what hampton just said because i like to think seeing those thousands and thousands of movies and writing about them and examining them in detail may be contributed to my, quote-unquote, expertise in storytelling in a good way. >> the one other thing is that when you undertake a book project like we do, you're going to devote two or three years to it. so you better not just come up with an idea i'm going to do this book because i think i can sell it to the movies 'cause if you hate what you're writing about or you find it boring, it would be two or three lousy years. the thing we have to start with is something we are interested about and a story we want to tell. >> yes, sir. >> good morning. thank you for coming. appreciate it. what event or person inspired you to become writers?

like for each one of the panel plus mr. hutton to answer that question. thank you. >> mr. hutton, you should answer it first. i'm sure you've got a good story. >> well, i will tell you, it was walt disney's television show davy crockett starring fez parker. i didn't see the show. i was actually in england at the time but i got the comic book and i read that comic book. it truly -- it sounds corny but it inspired my whole love of history and i went from there to custer and just kept going following the donovan road. and i decided i'd become a historian 'cause i just loved history so much. and it's been a great choice. it's been a great ride. a great profession. >> well, for me it was tarzan. [laughter] >> well, that was the first -- when i was sick one day when i was 9 years old my mother bought me tarzan and, boom, over the next two or three years i read every book that existed and read nothing but fantasy and science fiction for the next several years until i was about 16.

now i'm allergic to elves, dragons, wizards, all that kind of thing. but that got me hooked. i don't know how it led here but i found i was a decent writer in high school. did the usual newspaper thing. didn't follow into college as these two gentlemen probably did. but worked in bookstores obviously and somehow got here. >> i had the meanest fourth grade teacher whoever lived who pointed out my faults regularly and she had a right to. one day she made us write a paper, a 250-word paper in the fourth grade. and we all complained about it. and when i got the paperback it was the only a i'd ever gotten from her and she'd written in red ink you should be a writer. and because she and god were on personal terms and were never wrong, i was 9 years old and decided that's what i had to do or else she'd find me.

[laughter] >> we're still in touch. in my acknowledgements of every book i write i always thank her. >> i would say the formative experience for me was the first writer that i ever met was this bearded sage that you may remember from the ken burns civil war documentary. the great civil war historian shelby foote. he and his son -- well, his son and i were friends. his son's name was huge. the names in the south are rather strange and we were in a rock band together and we were in a room that may or may not have been full of smoke basically cranking up the hendrick to prevent shelby from finish his 6,000 trilogy on the civil war and he would say huge turn that racket down.

i'm working on apomatic. and i was like right and he really gave me some very, very great ideas about what narrative history can aspire to be. >> discussing fast felonies on national television is usually not a good idea, hampton. [laughter] >> i said may or may not have been full of smoke. >> yes, sir. there's a custer book out there entitled "glory hunter." could you paul and jim, comment on "glory hunter"? >> it was written by frederick who's a novelist. that was the era in the '30s -- a lot of -- what's the phrase, paul -- >> the debunkers. >> that's it. there was a lot of debunking going on. and custer's wife libby who outlived him by 50-something years. she died in 1933 believe it or not lived at 71 park avenue.

she was six days short of her 91st birthday. she died in '33. he started the book a couple of years earlier. that came out in '34. it's a good book, well researched. but i think it's pretty clear -- it doesn't take long to show that he was slanted against custer and at every instance tried to show he was just lucky at gettysburg and lucky here. that's "glory hunter." >> it's a wonderful literary biography and it certainly was the key book in changing custer's image in the united states from this very heroic martyr to our western explanation into kind of villainous indian fighter who brought death to his own men in his own search for glory. yes, sir. >> thank you. i have a comment for hampton and a question for james. but first of all i would like to say -- they say reading and writing history is like going to

a foreign country and i want to thank you y'all for snapping our passports today for doing that. a comment for hampton is, oh, probably several years ago my wife and i were taking a tour of taos on a beautiful fall day when all the trees were yellow. and the tour guide took us by this little gift shop on the way out to the pueblo. and we saw this little old man behind the gift shop chopping wood. and he was doing it very skillfully and very forcefully. and i just couldn't believe for his small size how well he was chopping wood. and the tour driver said that fellow is a survivor of the baton death march. and i know there's a connection between your two books because the arizona national guard -- excuse me, the new mexico national guard had gone over to the philippines, i believe, for ghost soldiers, you know, and the -- anyway, between new mexico and philippines there's a

connection definitely. >> yeah. >> the question i had about custer was -- i belong to a study club up in denver and, of course, people occasionally go up to the battle site there. and came back and they were whispering. there's a rumor that custer had two soldiers available after he won the battle of little bighorn to take off to the nearest telegraph station to report his results to the national republican committee who was -- they were starting the convention, i believe. is that true or not? >> well, a man named craig repast wrote a short little book called "custer for president," which he takes on that question. and i think he does a pretty good job of showing that there's really barely a shred of evidence. there's never a mention in any newspaper about custer. never a mention at the convention. it didn't work like that anyway.

and there's a letter from libby custer, who he shared almost everything with, written about a week or two before the battle. he never got it. but she spends a paragraph or two discussing the candidates for president and never mentions, you know, the candidacy of custer. >> yes, sir. >> thank you. >> i have a question for jeff guinn. jeff, i'm wondering in your research and in your writings so far, what has surprised you most about the story as you've uncovered it? >> the things that are amazing me the most are some of the history of southeast arizona and the absolute combination -- sort of -- it's almost a drug-inducing atmosphere and so enticing of tombstone, elegance

and decadence at the same time that i think so many folks out there have -- have misunderstanding of what the town was like. what arizona territory was like. there's so much more to the story than i ever would have guessed and there's so many people who have very strong opinions about all of it and at least half of them no matter what i write will decide i'm an idiot and probably evil besides. but that's what makes it fun. there's so much more to learn in this story than i had originally thought. >> and yes, sir, one final question. >> yes. this is for jeff also. ever since the 1920s people have been writing books about tombstone and i know you had to approach a lot of authors and researchers. some of whom don't quite agree with the other ones. and how did you manage that? how did you get to be able to talk to all those people? >> my rule is always that i'll talk to anyone who might have useful information. i've had a couple of people say well, if you talk to so-and-so then i won't talk toi.

and my response is always well, then i'm sorry you and i aren't going to get a chance to talk. there are many strong opinions in this field. and hampton runs into this all the all the time and jim runs into this all the time. once you start talking to someone who has a genuine deep interest in a subject and has done a lot of research, they want to talk about it. and if you're polite and you're persistent, people will talk to you. as i said, it's always after a book is published that half of them decide you're an idiot. >> well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming. again the books are -- [applause] >> love and thunder by hampton sides and, of course, go down together by jeff guinn and they will be signing books in area 1, tent b. thank you all for being here.

and -- >> thank you, everybody, for coming. >> thank you. [applause] [in a [inaud [inauditible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv's live coverage of the tucson festival of books continues shortly with retired

general anthony zenni discussing his book "leading the charge." >> next a portion of booktv's monthly live program "in depth." on the first sunday of each month we invite one author to discuss their entire body of work and take your calls. "in depth" also includes a visit with the author to see where and how they write their books. that's what you're about to see. >> a typical day for me begins with mass in my parish church. breakfast here at home and then i spend the morning here. i mean, this is my bunker. this is my study. this is where most of my working materials are in my library.

my files, et cetera. i work from outlines. i think when you're doing complicated things like the biography of john paul ii or trying to make a serious argument on a public policy matter, it's good to think through the sequence of things before you actually start writing. and then the writing becomes the telling of the story within that outline and i think that gives it some liveliness and some freshness. so it all happens right here around this desk. i don't think anybody can really write more than 3 1/2 hours, 4 max. then you need a break. so my -- my best writing times are like 9:00 to 1:00 in the morning. and maybe 4:00 or 7:30 or 8:00 in the evening. there's other parts of my life that i have to attend to in the middle of the day. i'm a great believer of naps.

i think naps are a great invention or the greatest contribution do human civilization. so i write in two periods of the day. and 8 hours easily. no one can really do more than that and expect to be putting out something that's coherent. and in that period of time i can usually get 20 to 25 double spaced pages done and then something approaching readable form. i had never taken on a huge project like the biography of john paul ii before. i had spent a year and a half talking to people, talking to him at great length, gathering materials. and it seemed to me that if i didn't sit down and get a really serious outline in place, the beast was going to be writing me rather than me writing the beast.

so i went to a friend in south carolina and spent a week locked up in his church rectory and produced 165-page outline of what became "witness of hope: the biography of john paul ii." in the case of my recent back "faith, reason and the war against jihadism," that book began as a lecture. so i had 15 points i wanted to make in that lecture. and that became the spine of the book and you simply fill out the points in book form. i read a weekly column in the catholic press in the united states. that is primarily a question offof jotting some notes down. but for longer things, essays, books, et cetera, i think an outline is a good discipline on an author.

any kind of extended writing i find the book starts to fight back at certain points and takes on a life of its own. and you're only going to be able to guide it in the direction you want. if you've got a track for it to follow. i'm very old-fashioned on organizing research. meaning i'm a paper person. i do have electronic copies of interviews and notes and whatnot. but i generally work with paper and on paper. and then -- actually when i was about to start writing "witness to hope," my wife designed this sort of wrap-around desk so that i can -- you know, i can have the materials i know i'm going to be needing here, the outline is there and the computer is here and the printer is there so everything is within an arm's

span reach and you can layiit out at the beginning of the day and work on that all day. >> your first book over 20 years ago, did you say? >> yeah. >> if you took a look at the way you wrote a book then and now could you describe the difference. >> it's the difference between a k pro 4 and word perfect 10. i mean, the technology has moved multiple generations over that time. we used to have this huge floppy disks that really were floppy. i'm using the same word processing program in its tenth iteration that i was using 20 years ago. but dealing with publishers is now an entirely electronic business. which i'm afraid has cut down even more on the amount of serious editing that goes on. i actually like to edit my own stuff.

i'm not an agonizic writer and i i do that hand and i print out copy and edit on it and the craft on that is something i really enjoy. i have had good editors in the sense people making good suggestions to me. but most, i would say of the nonfiction, which is most of what i read, badly needs editing. editing is an increasingly lost art. >> when you are working on the revisioning and the editing, how do you know when the book is done? >> it's not a rational thing. it's a sense of feel. it's a sense of -- i know i'm going to hit this pitch. i know i'm going to hit this jump shot. i'm going to throw this pass perfectly.

what i tend to do with big projects is to try to leave some time for the book to ferment, marinate. it's good to get away from a text for a week or two 'cause then when you come back, you'll see it with a fresh eye. but most of what i write that sees the light of day in journalism, newspapers and books, i have worked over six or seven times. so it's a constant process of cabinetry, i describe it. i mean, writing is like blocking out a piece of furniture. editing is making it beautiful. editing is getting it to look exactly the way you want it. >> a young first time author

comes to you and says, what advice can you give me in a couple minutes of how to approach writing a book? >> i don't think anyone should write a book without writing other things first. i mean, i think you need to start in smaller media, essays, articles, reviews, et cetera. there is no way to learn how to write except to write. that's the oldest of cliches. but one of the things about cliches is they tend to be true. i was very fortunate early on in my writing career to have an editor at the seattle weakly who was very good who took personal interest in me and i wrote all the time. i had to do one or two columns a week. that discipline of just having

to get it done was a very good one. i also think -- when i look back on it, that i developed a voice by letter writing, which is another totally lost art to me. my wife and i moved to seattle right after we were married. we were 3,000 miles from where we had met and grown up. we didn't have any money for long distance phone calls and there were no such things as phone calls so you wrote letters. and i think i developed something of the voice that appears in my occasional columns, reviews, essays in the course of learning to write letters. i write for international audience. i mean, anything i do is likely to be translated into two, three half-dozen languages so i'm very

conscious of not using imagery or terms or phrase that would be difficult to translate. that will confuse a translator because believe me translators can get terribly confused. and even the best of them. and make a real mess of things. so i think that's the difference. it's not -- obviously, when you're writing -- when i'm writing in "newsweek," i'm writing in a somewhat different voice. i mean, first things i'm writing for -- if not the choir then at least a community of conversation where everyone has a pretty good idea what the reference points are and so forth. with "newsweek," i'm writing for a general educated audience. in my weekly catholic press column i'm writing for a particularly catholic audience in a very short 700-word format. when i write 1,000 page biography of john paul ii i'm

writing for the world literally. and i think you just have to kind of keep that in the back of your mind when you're doing that. it's interesting to me that there have been enquiries of "faith, reason and the war against jihadism" which i wrote as an explicitly american book. i mean, i had no interest or desire in having this book appear abroad. i wanted to talk to my fellow americans about a certain set of problems. in their language. and yet i think by the time we're through, that book will be three or four language editions as well. >> finally, you said napping, what other ways do you recharge your batteries or unwind in the middle of writing? >> to quote my friend joe epstein, the great essayist, i

have the disease. the disease is sports. i spend an awful lot of time watching primarily men throw, kick, catch, hit spherical objects in the fall. so that's -- you know, that's an ongoing interest. but i must say my life has providentially have fallen out and what i do professionally is what i love to do, which is to make arguments and try to explain ideas in ways that people can wrestle with them. and that i've been fortunate enough to be able to do that through books as well as my various media engagements is a great blessing. and so i have fun with what i'm doing.

this is the theological part of my library, the literature and another place, philosophy, another place, history and biography another place. and these -- these are the materials i work with most of the time. a lot of this is obviously has to do with john paul ii including several things that he gave me or signed for me. >> could you show us something? >> let's see. this is the address to the united nations in 1995. there's his dedication and signature on that. this is a curious little thing over here. this orange hat was given to me as part of an honorary doctorate

at a university in barcelona in spain last november. if you've never tried to give a lecture with orange fringe flopping in your eyes, i assure you it's an experience not to be missed. the only books of my own that are on display here are the various language editions of "witness to hope" so we've got english, french, italian, polish, spanish, czech, portuguese, slovak, slovian, russian, and romanian, this romanian is the most recent edition. i took a copy of this in my office and everyone looked at it and said it's a boy. it looks like a birth announcement here. anyway, there's one coming. chinese will be done later this year. >> can i ask what this --

>> this was -- harpercollins very kindly did a special binding of the first edition of "witness to hope" of which a copy was made for the editor, for the pope and for me. so it's done by a book maker on long island and it's simply the hard back edition with the normal color stripped off and this rather beautiful leather cover put together so that's -- there are only three of those in the world. >> i see a lot of church history here, obviously. where do you turn most frequently for history of the catholic church? >> well, i mean, there are any number of sources. my papal history materials are over here. and there you've got everything

from the -- the standard reference work, j & d kelly reference dictionary to popes and studies of historical periods and history of the vatican. church history is not as fluent or as fruitful a field as it ought to be these days, i'm afraid. but there is -- there is good stuff, and i'm happy to be -- happy to be in contact with them. >> how about this map over here? >> that's a map of -- that's a medieval map of jerusalem. jerusalem is all over our house. jerusalem is a city very close to my own heart. it's also a metaphor for the kingdom of god come in to its fullness to have jerusalem looking over your shoulder keeps

you with a sense of historical perspective. and right beside jerusalem we have this beautiful baltimore oriole up on top of that bookcase. and right below it is a basic autographed by brooks robinson. so we have different forms of sanctity present in my study here. that's a hand-painted icon of the black madonna, the great marian image of poland and she keeps an eye on me as well. as does over here. this might be of interest. this is a representation of edith stein the jewish convert to catholicism who became a carmelite nun and was martyred in auschwitz and that's a relic

and that's a part of the wedding dress she wore on her final profession as a carmelite. i got edith stein and the blessed mother and john paul ii and then two of my heroes archbishop john carol the first catholic bishop of the united states and father john courtney murray, the great jesuit theologian of freedom who appears to be tilting a bit here. maybe we can straighten father murray out. >> can i ask you about all these medals down here? >> well, some of these are awards that i've been given. some of them are just decorative. this is perhaps of interest. this is called the gloria artist gold medal it's given by the republic of poland for contributions to polish and world culture. and i'm very proud of the fact that i'm one of two nonpoles to have received that since it was created.

and then i think this is just one of the great photographs of our time here, john paul ii putting a prayer on the western wall of the temple in jerusalem. my theological library is arranged alphabetically by authors. and it just moves over here and wraps around. there's an enormous amount of ratessinger and there's been an extraordinary number of small books of his put out. and joseph now benedict the 16th is an remarkably small hand. that was his christmas present in 1997. a very concise handwriting.

>> the bible, what version do you turn to? >> it's not easy these days. most modern translations i find are flawed in one way or the other. i generally use the revised standard if i do not like the rsv i'll make my own translation. but generally i stick to the rsv which i think is both for accuracy and literary style. still the gold standard for contemporary translations. not the nrsv. the rsv. the old rsv that came out in the late '40s and early 19 '50s. >> so the revised standard edition -- >> revised standard version was done by the national council of churches in the late '40s and early '50s. and that's the one i will -- that's my default position citation source. if that seems to me to be a

clunky translation or misses something, i'll do one of mine own. >> do you have one here? >> an rsv? >> yeah. >> i have multiple rsvs all over the place. my wife has stolen my desk rsv or borrowed it. here's an interesting one. i mean, we have -- here are eight different translations side-by-side. so you can either compare riches or compare horrors depending on your point of view. but my -- i see my wife has got my rsv upstairs. >> the new revised version, what's the problem with that one? >> it's got politically correct problems with various, you know, twistings of languages to get he, him, his, et cetera, out of there. here's an rsv right over here. >> is it hard to find the rsv?

>> it's -- it is hard because -- this one is completely unopened rsv. oxford university press had a sale of back issues of the rsv a few years ago and i must have bought about 10 of these and give them away to various people. it is hard to find an rsv today, which is too bad, because it's, as i say, the best. it's not particularly good on the psalms but for new testament stuff, i think it's generally the best. that was 1995. my wife and i had been at mass in the pope's private chapel and i had a little chat with him afterwards. it's about that time that i got the idea of writing "witness to hope." he and i had known each other for a time before that.

he was in the course of that visit that the idea came into my head full blown. >> is this a picture that's taken by the vatican? >> yeah. yeah. they had the official photographer for the vatican paper must have taken millions of photographs of john paul ii of which one of the most moving is, of course, this one as they have turned the casket at the top of the stairs for one last display to this enormous throng at the pope's funeral april 9th, 2005. ♪ >> "in depth" airs live at noon eastern on the first sunday of each month on booktv on c-span2.

log on to booktv.org for information about upcoming guests. >> booktv's live coverage of the tucson festival of books continues shortly with retired general anthony zenni discussing his book "leading the charge." [inaudible conversations] >> welcome to the second annual tucson festival of books. my name is bruce beach and i'm going to be introducing general zinni for this presentation. we would like to thank the william and mary ross foundation for sponsoring this venue and sun mechanical for sponsoring the author.

this presentation will last approximately one hour including questions and answers so please hold your questions till the end. please go to our website to complete the survey for the session and the festival and please everyone turn off your cell phones at this time. it's an extreme honor for me to introduce a "new york times" bestselling author and one of america's true heroes. general anthony zinni. general zinni served a distinguished career in the united states marine corps including two tours in vietnam where he was severely wounded as well as operations in the philippines, turkey, somalia, kenya, iraq, and the persian gulf. he has received 23 military service awards including the defense distinguished service medal with oak leaf cluster. he's also participated in numerous presidential diplomatic missions. his latest book "leading the charge: leadership lessons from the battlefield to the board room" includes a visionary

approach to leadership and challenges of the 21st century. this is a book about what future leaders must know. and they must be effective in our dynamic and rapidly changing environment so please welcome general anthony zinni. [applause] ..

the book "leading the charge" cannot unintentionally. several years ago i wrote about called the battle for peace and it was a book about how the world was changing around us ever since the collapse of the soviet union, sort of a confluence of names, a perfect storm. the soviet union collapsing, changing the power structure, the rise of globalization, the information age, mass migrations of people now seeking greater opportunity and a whole side of things that i watched for i last ten years in the military and then tenures out of the business world academia and other places. and it struck me when i wrote that book that we weren't getting it. at the world is changing so drastically and in such a major race becoming more, complicated that were messiness and were still operating under the old ways and systems in organizations. in the course of going around in the book tour for that book, with audiences like yours, and

in the q&a period, review questions and comments about leadership. and it struck me because of the number and frequency of those kinds of comments and questions in the just of what people are saying is it's not just a matter of the world changing and our environment changing, our leaders are failing us. they don't get it. and i walked away from the weeks of the above two are saying, you know, this has been impressive by just the nature in the consistency of those comments that i wanted to see if that was really more than the anecdotal information i was picking up. people really feel that way, is there a sense there is a crisis in leadership. so like a good writer, you research everything. i went online to a number of organizations that do leadership surveys and that for years, harvard university and a number of others that take the pulse of people in the united states about the views and views of

leadership in every aspect of society. i was shocked at what i found and this is late 2008. but from 2008 on back to see the beginning of the century, continuously there's been a rise in the percentage of april do feel we have a crisis of leadership. in 2008, 80% of americans polled said we have a crisis of leadership. and not just in political leadership or where you might expect that events might drive the third opinion, but across the board. as i delved further until down into the research, when they were asked about different aspects of society, the clergy, business leaders and military leaders and all others, in the 2008, not one group achieves higher than 50% approval rating. in that particularly struck me personally because it was the first year the military leaders dropped below that percentage. and so, i went to look at how

globally people felt about leadership. united states american phenomenon or is this the way people feel around the world by its several surveys i found, i found that not one political head of state had achieved above 50% approval rating by his or her constituents. and so to me it was a clear indication that there is a sense, it's not a factual realization that leaders are failing us, why? i wanted to understand what is happening. we have created such phenomenal leaders in the world, in our own nation, in the past in almost every field here so why is this out there? and not everybody could be failing. i mean, obviously their leaders that are making it your are particularly wanted to look in areas where the vast majority of leadership was rated very low. why do you have the one standout that seems to go against the tide and people feel are strong leaders?

what makes them different? so the gist of the book was about my views are observations as to what makes good leaders today and why other leaders are feeling. and i broke it down into about 11 areas. my partner on the bug, tony, about halfway through says or the epicenter even a supposedly there. i don't use are a few of your views in here too. so i took them up on it and solved it a little bit with my own personal views or experiences on leadership, good and bad, trial and error, over half a century. that particular part of it made me think about leadership in another way. at the same time all this was going on i was asked to teach a court fight stanford university at their leadership centers was preparing for the course. i decided to look at how i was trained, if you will or educated to be a leader, not just the experiences, but what did my service, you know, the military

due to train and prepare me bikes didn't work, did network? takeoff need to look at leadership development programs in business. and the chairman of the board of a major company and we have a leadership program and an involved and several others. how do we develop leaders now? and the other sites i want to look at, something very strange that struck me because of something i read, the history of leadership. you know, it's something we don't think about, but we really decided we needed to create leaders from the masses about the beginning of the last century. if you think about history, that's about the time monarchies and dictators and other things were beginning to fade for most of the world, certainly not everywhere. but about the beginning of the 20 century, we realized if your democratic your representative government, if ever going to be given a fair chance and you can rise in the ranks, then obviously you have to figure out a way to tame it. it's not a bloodline, not a class of elites.

so what did we do about that? clearly they could look at business and industry, you could look at military and other large institutions in their approach and the approach is interesting. in the beginning of the century, we felt if you build a good character, you build a good leader. if you look at our training early on, you can see was character building to build leaders, it was the boy scout traits. i remember when i join the military i got a card that all the traits of a good leader. i too memorize those traits, carried around with the fear that the platoon sergeant to make sure you memorize all that or else. but this idea of building good or was the first approach to leadership. and certainly there was nothing wrong with that. we wanted people to be leaders. then we found out about several decades into the century there's more to it. we begin to educate leaders and we found out towards the end of the century there's a third component and may be the most important and not giving potential leaders experienced.

you look at the military and the surge in the military, you know of a couple of years we have to pack up and move. you're going to have a different experience, indefinite assignment, you're promoted you'll go to a different position in the purpose is to give you a variety in and a breath of experiences to develop you are the few that we're going to keep into that senior leadership mode. business does that now. i can tell you in my company we have an extensive leadership program which is built progressively from the junior leaders to the mid-level leaders to the senior leaders here do we actually rotate them around. we rotational positions in marketing, finance, where we try to give them wide breadth of experience. one of the things that we don't want to see is what we call tall thin people, that isn't an anatomical criticism. it's people that come and do well in one area, like an engineer and you see potential in the person that he or she could be a leader at the top

level, but they stay because they like what they do in one area, they are so narrowly developed they don't have breadth of experience that you want across the board. so the latter part of the last century, we began to emphasize this idea of experience. on the first problem you run into is how much experience can you give people? i mean, how many different jobs and moving them around in the disruptive nature of doing that sort of thing? we learn how to do it vicariously. certainly the military we did. you know certainly if you haven't been in the military, a field exercise is computer simulation, tabletop games, and other fields have gone into this. how can i create training environments come experiential environments aren't real, they're temporary, but i can expose you to a variety of positions. so all this came in to looking at leaders today. and what i found is i'm going to go to the things that our most

significant about success and failure in leadership today. but what i found basically is that some of the trade that you would naturally think leaders should have, certainly have demonstrated in the past to carry over to today, but some of them should be emphasized or need to be emphasized more and/or certain other kinds of traits or characteristics or application of leadership that are unique to this new century. now let me talk about some of this. first, i want to talk about the leader himself or herself. we have been invested a lot lately in almost every field and building leaders. in the past, we kind of sad, you know, the good people will pop to the top. there's something natural and a leader. there's some sort of born to lead weird give them enough experiences or give her enough different decisions and to see it come to the top. there's the realization that it's become much more complicated arid and the breadth of knowledge and experience as i mentioned necessary to lead

requires more than that. so you're seeing now more investment and what's being turned leader development in almost every field. in the fields are the places where you don't see that, you tend to see some of the problems. obviously, the theatre development programs are done in a way to expose potential leaders to several things that they might not otherwise get. one of it is mentoring. it's sort of that access to senior leaders who have succeeded, that offer their time, that offer relationship to a young leader, that helps that later developed, but as a sounding board that offers advice to offer critiques. if you look at business now, when we look at a young leader that may be a something he or she needs to work on, we assign a coach. there are people that have consulting agencies that do coaching and they very specifically select coaches for different areas we want these leaders to improve on and to work on.

i have a friend of mine who recently retired as the co, chief operating officer of the bank of new york and i asked him because of his 40 years in the bank business, i said don, but the biggest change you've seen from the time you came in tell now? is that the biggest difference is the amount of mentoring and coaching that i had to do as a senior leader and we demanded of our senior leaders and our young up-and-coming leaders wanted or needed. so that's one aspect of the leader development program. the other others i mentioned, tried into that broke every spot a leader coming up and give them those experiences. the third part may be the most important part, is to provide a means for that leader to reflect on who he or she is. when i taught my class at duke and when i've done leadership coaching and counseling, i have a little drill i put my students through. i give them a piece of paper and

i make them believe i'm going to collect the piece of paper. i have a place at at the top of the line top-of-the-line defense name and i said be sure you print your name very clearly so i can read it. i have aligned to the center of the paper and i said there's going to be two questions i'm going to ask the you're going to answer on this paper, one of the top and one on the bottom. the first question your 15 minutes to answer, who argue. and of course students look at you like another weird professor in the room, who are you? , going to answer that? i don't think any hand grazing country and raising her questions or comments. and they diligently way too they are. at the end of that i stop and say okay, before we get into the second question, i want to tell you i am not going to collect the papers. i'm not going to call on you to say which are in various. that question who you market it been answered in many different ways. there's no right or wrong. we're going to talk about that. now you went to the second question at the bottom of the paper. who am i? and you're answering this

question to yourself. and they diligently right. and at the end i offend you think about what they wrote on the top of that paper when they thought i was going to collect it and what they wrote in the bottom that they were honest to themselves as to who they were. and we get into discussing the class to which you can answer this. you can describe yourself by your profession, set of values on the family, interests, there are many ways. but what does it say about you and is very different than the top when you may be selling yourself, without your resume? what was at the bottom if you are being honest about yourself? these are the sorts of things that allow individuals to understand themselves better. many certainly in the military and certainly many businesses and other areas we give personality test, myers-briggs and others. the purpose of osas are to understand who they are. but a mathematician's? what are my strengths? how do i get circumstances? how do i think wexler may

values? and i think you ec and successful leaders today and much greater sense of reflection and appreciation and a way of constantly improving themselves that they see, continued education, the ability to modify and improve and develop their leadership style. in the military, we have all our young leaders, officers, ncos, write a philosophy of command. and our businesses and schools would teach leadership, we have them write a philosophy of leadership and we encourage them to develop their own philosophy. this is sort of a rubberstamp for a template everybody gets. what is it that you want to become? what are the leadership traits, the values, how do you want to run an organization? how do you want your people to feel about you? and when you write that, as i used to tell young officers and those that i've worked with the universities, when you write that, go back and look at it at least once a year or more, see

what you've learned. have you lived up to it? could you have done better? and get feedback. again, part of these leader development programs as feedback. feedback is tough does when it's critical it is tough to take. then the mentoring comes in. you have to sort of a safe way to receive that criticism, someone you trust, someone that necessarily is famous for a score or great, this is for you. and where that person feels comfortable in expressing, i haven't done this so well. i need to improve in this area. so the first thing i would mention of the traits of the leaders that are succeeding and maybe the need for those that are not as the sense of concentrating on being a better leader, improving yourself and being part of some sort of a development program that continues your education and your development. the second thing is the realization, there's a chapter i have in the book called the lad, could we lead? very new leadership talk about

those we lead. the whole purpose of leadership is leading people, an organization made up of people. today that's mature difficult for a number of reasons. the lad are much more diverse and different. there's obviously diversity that we understand what i call horizontal diversity, ethnicity, race, place of origin, orientation, there's a whole bunch of things that you can see that make us different. and more and more, a different group of lad is entering any field of endeavor. and so that leader now has to be sure that they can connect correctly communicate with a lead and maybe come from a remarkably different academic background. besides the horizontal diversity is what i call a vertical diversity. i'm still in the workforce. i'm 66 years old going on 67 which tells me something because

i always thought you retired at 65, but you don't anymore. we're health care, better, poorer, so we have to work longer. and if you work longer the number of generations in a given organization is greater. i am from the silent generation, pre-baby boomer. you know, we were born before the baby boomers. then you have the baby boomers and generation x and generation y., the millennial generation and another generation about the silent generation about to enter the workforce or organizations. and so you have about six generations in the workforce. they were named because they're exceptionally different. you come for my generation and with a son or daughter of depression era of parents and they've taught you about security, financial security, job security. if your young person today, maybe not so much. you're willing to take risks coming are willing to move. and this manifests itself in many different ways. i mentioned in the book an incident of someone i know who

works for a major mutual fund company and he was tasked with coming up for the awards and incentives program for the company. and so, he decided he would pull all the employees to say, what do you want? if you do a good job and work which recognize them in this company, what is that you want? what he found that the older generations have put it in my paycheck. the younger generations were saying i want a picture with the bath, a certificate, shaking hands. i want recommendations. we can come the older employees who were settled on, were ready to move, one of job security and believe me i know this from being in the business world for the last ten years you're liable to find some young person come in and say boss i'm out of here, and moving. why? what did we do wrong? nothing, just think of going to dread the west coast for the east coast. we would've never heard that from older employees who sought security. so the approaches are different. so you look at this diversity

out there that comes in many different forms and change. and now a leader has to touch every one of those people. you know, just to communicate in a way that's very different. this first strike me in a job i got right after retirement and i looked outside my hallway and looked at all the people that were out there in the different cubicles and offices. and i'll tell you what looked like the united nations or the bar scenes from "star wars" or whatever was so different out there. and it struck me that you have to be there, a person for all seasons and has to be in touch with all these people. the third thing i think is very important today in what i think will resonate with you is the importance of values, ethics, character. you know, moral behavior. there've been so many failures in this area. probably a lot of reasons for it. one is of much greater scrutiny. right now the media inspectors, the ability to see everything that goes on, to get into the bowels of an organization,

obviously there's much more scrutiny. there may be more to it than that. i would hope for not losing our sense of values and our sense of ethics. but i find now if companies are beginning to realize organizations, institutions that good ethical behavior, a strong code of conduct, a good sense of doing things not just legally, that's the minimum. but ethically and morally is good business. and the demand in the anger from the customers and the people that want this and are appalled by what they see now are really make you most important. i sit on a number of boards of directors and i have since i retired. and now each for a director of the governance committee, an ethics committee that is responsible for ensuring that this act. and this has become critically important for its success in business. you know, there are only three ways that people get canned if their leaders. one of their incompetent and can't get the job done.

the other is they misbehave personally. in the third is that somehow they don't treat their people while. so i mean, if you think about it, everybody that we have fired or sent to quit under pressure with either because they couldn't get the job done, they lacked a sense of personal behavior and accountability that was expected of them are in someway they mistreated people that they're responsible for. those are the three reasons why people fail in a leadership position of responsibility. i noticed the new leaders today that they think differently. they now have to deal with, as i said at the beginning of this talk, with very complicated and complex issues of problems. the world has exploded around them. you get a problem or an issue every five seconds that's delivered to your doorstep here at and by the time the problems come to the top, they're not easy once kids are all solved by the leaders below you. i do detect an or a problem?

now in our universities and in the military were actually teaching how to think. you know, we break it down into three areas, critical thinking which is the ability to analyze the problem, break it down into its parts and then put it back together, supersize it in a way that's useful, that allows you to approach it. systems thinking which allows you to look at the issue of the problem and how it fits overall and everything else is going on in a very complex system or system and then finally created. how to think creatively about solutions or resolutions to these problems here and i was iraq november a year ago and i was there at the request of general zero dear no ambassador crocker. we were doing an assessment, an objective set of eyes on their plans for how they were going to operate in a turnover. and while i was going around to the different cities and towns in the military organizations, or other government

organizations come up iraqi ministries, really came across something that struck me more than anything else. as i was sitting in general zero dearness headquarters i told them i can close my eyes and listen to these priests and i wouldn't know i was in the headquarters. i said you monitor the date palm harvest, the recreational cement pools. you know, you had these groups that connect to the tribes, to hear their issues and concerns, to work with resolving their disputes. i mean there was very few military things that they had down pat. it was all these things dealing with the economy, with the social structure and the political structure in iraq. and he smiled at me and says general petraeus would go around and say, you know, we can do the military security piece. if nobody else there is improving the iraqi people, for not turning this around and demonstrating how the many took it upon himself to do it. creatively, getting into things that i believe along with a

surge of troops to get the attention, maybe more importantly began to turn things around. that ability to see outside your normal paradigm for your normal box which you operate in. and that kind of creative thinking, that open-mindedness i think is extremely valuable and where you see the exception to the rule today, especially in industries and places was enormous failure or mediocrity. the other part is how decisions are made. we now work on giving leaders how to make decisions to make analytical process at work and into the ability to ride at the right decision to find a problem, get it done. their three kinds of decision makers in my view. the first, these are good decision-makers. the first is the analytical decision maker who needs time, works a lot, works hard at breaking things down, analyzing apart and putting them back together leading to the right decision. the second is the recognition

decision-maker. david has been around long enough, had a lot of successes and experience and can be see patters. they develop into a sick sense i can make these calls. when i talk to my students about this, i talk in terms of quarterbacks in the nfl. the rookie quarterback you just drafted that got the clipboard in the head forwards, that's the analytical decision-maker. he is learning how to analyze, listening to the assistant coaches, plotting every play in the quarterback comes out and listened to the discussion with the coach. the starting quarterback is the recognition of decision-maker. he's been around. he's not a starter. he can walk on the field and we're the defense very quickly. he contends the momentum in the game. he does things because he sees patterns. in the third, joe montana, dan marino, they're the hall of famers, they are the intuitive

decision-makers. you know, they have developed the skill with something they possess they can see it, they can sense it in a way no one else can and maybe even can't quite be coached to that level to bring it about. another important factor is a loss trade or art, the ability to think strategically. one of the greatest price i hear is, where are the marshals? you know, you think about the end of the cold war -- i mean the end of the world war ii comedy and of the cold war, harry truman, george marshall, arthur vandenberg, republicans and democrats, different views of things decided we are entering a new phase. we've just come from a huge success. we would've the nurse of the major superpower, if not the only one at that time. and yet the foresight future, a different world and a need to operate differently. they did a bit in our history since then were truly

remarkable. a republican congress working together which was truly phenomenal if we think about it today. secondly, they reorganize government. 1947 national security act. the last time we do we are cassation of government here at a joint nato, created it, george washington, thomas jefferson had to be rolling over. we enjoins entangling alliance. they created the world ranks the national security council, structures and organizations to face a new world. they create a strategic view of how we had to deal with threats that would come out to communism and elsewhere, deterrence and attainment. it doesn't happen anymore. we don't have this future orientation. if you want to make a lot of money, go in the business of being a strategic consultant, helping companies, organizations develop their strategies. this art is lost. i have a personal eerie because if you look at our young people you see they're doing two

things, communicating and receiving information. there's no processing that goes on. they're constantly on cell phones, blackberries, at the computer and are constantly receiving a flood of information and communicating with their pals. if any processing going on? that mentality now with seeping through those generations and there's so much information to be processed, there's so much communication that goes on, and you know, how are you going to take time and stop and think and say where am i? where am i headed? where do i want to be in ten years? and now my going to get there? it's amazing how many organizations and businesses just operate day today and don't have the future orientation that we used. i think another part of successful leadership is mastering the organizations. you know, the old bureaucratic organization that has survived unfortunately to this day, particularly in government is so outdated on a soap opera, so

bureaucratic, so that you can be left in the dust. when you look at the structure of an organization that is blocking wire diagram, block at the top, two blocks at the bottom, sub blocks, christmas trees. that organization doesn't work anymore. if you see successful companies out there, they're flattening, streamlined, their web organizations, networks. they're structured much differently with multiple lines of authority and in communication and they morph and change with the environment demands it. we go back to generations like mine. we don't like change, we want to know the bosses, clear lines of command. it just doesn't happen anywhere anymore. in the course of writing this book, i ran into an individual that was on the board of a software company, up-and-coming and doing their successful who runs are a bunch of young people. he said the organization within a large factory, an old warehouse. no partitions, no walls.

all their furniture was on wheels. the dust, the filing cabinet, and every day they came and they decided how they should structure for the current contract, the current mission or whatever. and they loved it. they moved around, just it, turn things into a reporting structures. they were very different from the day before, the week e4. we do that in my generation in that spot coming out of her ears. we don't like that kind of change. look at this loaded bureaucracy. it's tough to get things done, get decisions made to move on things. it is an arcane piece of structure that is probably a century out of date to deal with the problems than the speed and the necessity for getting things done in to adjust an environment that we have out there. it is the speed. and this is brought by technology. you know, all of us now have to carry around something like this. i've got two of them. i don't overuse them. [laughter] you know, my company gives them

to me and gets off if i don't answer the phone or text back or whatever. i fly out here, i go to the gate and everybody there is banging away on some piece of electronic hardware or talking into it. and the people that scare me in the beginning before i realized this as i thought they were nutty people walking around talking to themselves. and when you get on the airplane they give you all the instructions of the god other piece in the magazine to read about what goes on and which mode. i don't know. and when the plane lands. i mean, when i landed flight 1877, every puts these things on and starts talking. and i've got to get a break by not become like i'm talking to somebody. somebody cares about me landing in tucson two. last night but these are people that operate with the stuff in the stuff is dominating our world. it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad. it's reality. you know, when i went to command

a u.s. central command two years ago i had forces in hawaii, the west coast of the united days, the east coast united states are the way over to the persian gulf and pakistan. now when i had a video teleconferencing and everything you like that sort of personal touch. i don't know which times on these people were and if they're awake and we're trying to run a large military organization over that span of time and space. and all the electronic assistance and aid to do that, which makes everything moves faster. you know, we're fighting a bunch of guys that live and throwaway cell phones and operate off the internet and can maximize their use of these things. the speed at which then it's demanded to make decisions, analyze problems is greater. the environment we're in, as i said at the beginning, has changed and grown.

i was talking to a group of people. they were food distributors from the midwest and the united states and i was talking about how the environment has changed. everybody's world is expanded. you don't do anything now whether it's your private life for your business or your occupation in a small contained piece of geography. and after i described all this, i had an individual, to me who had inherited the food distribution company from his father who i converted from his grandfather. he said, you know, when i first took over this company, you could draw a circle round parts of three states in the middle of the united states. that was my world, my business world, my suppliers, major distributors, my customers all right there. he said to dad gets his flight from all over the world. i have customers all over the world. he said if you go online to place an order with my company i have an outfit that in india that processes that sort of thing. all of a sudden his world makes

them worry about a drought summer of the world. the political situation somewhere in the world here at the economy somewhere in the world. as the medication he us to operate. he exploded like we all live. globalization, the borders are coming down. tom friedman says the world is flat, the planet is changing. it is a complicated world out there. nothing like it used to be. some small thing that happens in the middle of some remote part of the world that we never even heard of and access directly. somebody burns down the rain forest. you, somebody grows coca leaves or poppies. some institutions fail and they become a sanctuary for extremist. somebody decide they can make it here, i'm packing my bags and coming to your neighborhood whether you like it or not. everything now in the world is important. you can't isolate yourself from it. and if you don't understand the world you live in, the successful leaders today are also great communicators.

remember when the robber barons and those real leaders, they were sort of face as you might see on the newspaper or a picture of them. you didn't see them everyday upfront. they stayed at some oak paddle office behind the scenes. now who do you see? you see the ceo of biota coming across the pond to sit in front of our congress. you see the three automobile makers in the united states arrived, though, larry and curly to sit in front of our congress. you see when something comes from all of a sudden it's the ceo or the chairman of the board here at believe me having been through this, you are communicated. you want to see the leadership out there. some of the extra documentation, its internal communication. you have to be the face of the organization, the personality of the organization. leaders today cannot isolate themselves. they can't leave from behind. it has to be upfront leadership and you have to be able now and skilled enough to communicate what the organization is, what

it intends to do, who you are a master work inside and outside. and finally, every organization in this very complicated world, very complex world will face crisis and/or change. and i put them together because changes like crisis here at and you have to be able to lead through crisis, lead to change. where leaders fail as they commiserate with their own employees. they feel sorry for themselves or if you know, or they try to cover it up for the delay getting all the information. i can give you the list of things they will do wrong when they get smacked with a crisis or the need to change drastically. they're a million and one consultants out there who will tell them what's wrong, give them the list and they'll still do it that way. they still don't learn. when crisis hits, that's probably the most significant time a leader will vanish fast his or her ability to truly

beat. how do we get through this quest this is when everyone is looking at you. i have one question that i ask anyone i'm talking to about leadership students or young officers or whatever, what is the one most important leadership characteristic or trait that you want in a leader? and this is an interesting question because of the company or the organization and the unit is doing well, the answers become backward from students who really didn't have a lot of experience in organizations and leadership. they don't come back, i want a leader that cares about his people. i want a leader that charismatic unapproachable, you know, and those are all well and good. it's strange the first time i asked that question of a bunch of corporals insurgents coming out of vietnam and i said, what did you want from your lieutenant, your officer? what is the single most important trait? and those young marines said to me, i want them to notice stuff.

marines don't say that, but i use it here. i want them to know stuff. almost every one of them. in the end, incompetency. i want you to be a good person i once you have values and treat people well, but the heart and soul of leadership is that you're competent, and you know your stuff. i can get you through this crisis. i can lead this company or this unit to success. i can accomplish the mission and bring you back home. i can make you successful. and we have too many leaders that we either select or arrive at a position that don't possess the competence. and that confidence today with our list of whatever field you're in is extremely difficult to achieve because virtually every organization, institution, every aspect of our society has become much more complicated, complex, difficult to be. and we can invest in leaders without the experience, the knowledge, the demonstrators were formant to be able to come

in and to take that organization, that part of our society that we count on to where we want it today. i thank you for your attention and i'd be glad to take any questions and answers. and again, thank you for coming. [applause] >> i am a catastrophic irony when total and permanent disabled vietnam veteran, former marine, personal bodyguard for lyndon johnson. the issue that i have that i wish to forward in this the phone to use her that i find to be the greatest challenge at the moral issue in our country is that for over two years the average of 20 veterans from this war commit suicide because they cannot take the degradation of what happens to them when they go there and they come home and they see the disconnect.

and so, the question i pose to you, sir, is what level of readership would you impose in this country that could assist these people because suicide in my understanding is just about one of the greatest since a soul can never commit. thank you, sir. >> this has become an alarming problem and it's growing. and frankly, the services in the military that it invested a lot in trying to understand it and prevent it are not as successful as they would like to be. the numbers have not gone down in the ways we would like. i think that there's several reasons why that's happening. one of the reasons is we are just now beginning, within the last 90 decade or so, to acknowledge the sorts of problems. if you remember back into the world war ii era or world war i era. my father was a world war i vet and my cousins were in world war

ii. this was a battle shop or something that was either temporary or was that that is some flaw in the human being. you know, it wasn't like that big you were a problem. only so recently did we acknowledge that the mental strain that combat would find an individual is so great that it could cause problems that need treatment and attention just as physical injury does. the second problem i think is continued to grow and maybe really we begin to see it in a major way in vietnam and others, as we have different kind of force today. this is not the good work. this is not the greatest generation's war, where if we were attacked and it was clearly coming you know, as we know from the arizona and displays here. pearl harbor, the country was behind it. it was unconditional surrender. you know, everything went exactly like it was supposed to

go in our image of how we take up arms and defend ourselves and then even in the hand reached down to the defeated and the germans and the japanese and rebuild the society to probably where it's never been. everything about that was noble and good and turned out in a way, you know, obviously the parthenon on the ground but in the general sense is dead. and ever since then, we are trying to repeat that. and the kinds of conflicts we found ourselves in, whether it's a vietnam, spent two tours there as bruce mentioned, whether it's in iraq and afghanistan, whether it's in somalia, these are the same kind of conflicts. in the word vietnam our soldiers did not come home. the crowd appreciated them and gave up thursday on an airplane. we couldn't wear uniforms by the way as those few who are vietnam veterans might remember. we are least learned a lesson not to turn antiwar or entire particular war to anti-military

that happen once to our shame i think in our culture and we go out of our way not to let that happen. but we have to remember the kinds of conflicts today put that greater strain. i sat at a table at an event next to a man that had received the medal of honor in world war ii. and the extraordinary heroism this person generated as an officer was beyond belief. and in the course of the discussion, the speakers were talking about somalia, viacom and these other wars that come after his time. he turned to me and said i couldn't do that. i couldn't do what you did, meaning young people were out there in the audience. i said you've got to be kidding me. your legendary in the core. he said you know, i knew who the enemy was, i knew where the front lines were. i knew when we were going to fight and stop. and he said to know that you

don't know, you don't know that individual is the enemy, you don't know if there's a rear area or a frontline. you had the continuous pressure on you 24 southern of not knowing if you have that's unbelievable feeling when you try to do something good and noble when it backfires against you, when someone doesn't appreciate what your intentions are, when somebody themselves up here at when you take a young person at 17, 18, 19 years old and anywhere and expose them to the carnage and brutality that some of us in this room have seen. that goes against everything the guy might experience and the difference between right and wrong and what should or shouldn't be, what is morally correct and incorrect all begins to blur and trying to piece it together and understand it. and i think only now are we beginning to recognize this and were just at the embryonic stages of understanding how to treat it and prevent it. we put our young soldiers,

sailors, airmen, marines under tremendous pressure and expose them to things that are unbelievable, things that they could never imagine in their young lives they would be. and you try to take them from that environment within hours by them right back and put them back to into civilization, into a family, into the quote normal life, that is tough for 18, make team, 20-year-old to put altogether some cases. i think we are beginning to make the right approach is an understanding and appreciating first of all that these issues need to be dealt with in the chain of command, the leadership is there mention. this is not just the doctors are set idriss problem. this is the leaders of them. they have to see that their leaders understand, their leaders want them to do well. their leaders appreciate what they're going through. because in the past, to admit to something like this was on soldierly, was unmanly. we have at least taken that down

now here's maybe not in all occasions but we've at least recognize this is as much as a problem if you had a physical injury. but we have a long way to go in the spirit this. >> just one question of what is the individual that may be the most important and other success of that organization. i have been in management my entire life and i came up with the idea that there is one to guide them and interestingly enough i have not heard that word from you. and this word is stress. unless the people working for you can test you, you will not be able to get the idea even if you have great ideas.

if the people working under you don't trust each other, the organization won't work. and if your boss doesn't trust you, you are doomed in the organization. so i think that trust is probably the most important they are. i would like to hear your views on that. >> first of all, thank you and that's an excellent point. my question would be, how do you build trust? through confidence in proper behavior in the right way to treat your people. that builds trust and i think i said those were the three things that people failing and leadership. if you accomplish those, it begins with confidence. i'm not going to trust somebody who is not competent. that person may be the nicest person in the world, maybe the most honorable person in the world. you know, but do you know the old the same good old dog, but cantons. i want that person to know what he or she is doing because the success of the organization, my

personal success, a combo should be a mission is going to be based on that person's competence and confidence. trust is given an trust is only given if you earn it. and i should've used the word. i take your point. but i think the things i mentioned competence, moral and ethical behavior, doing the right thing and treating your people well are the three ways you are not trust. >> general ziinni, speaking to your point of organization adapting to the present realities, perhaps terrorists and cell phones, whatever. in terms of roman history for the roman army switched from a conventional army fighting army in the conventional battle to doing border work type patrols

and change its capabilities. do you perceive the danger is the u.s. army for example reorganizes to optimize their structure through terrorist, that we lose the ability to fight a conventional war with tanks and bombers? >> i think what you're hitting on is one of the most significant problems that our military faces because of the budget constraints and where you invest in other issues of how you get resources. what kind of military should we have now? one of the things i've always said is you never fight the war you prepare for. you know why? because you're prepared to fight and nobody wants to take you on. so the corollary to that is always prepare for the war you don't want to fight. when we didn't want to fight the soviets and the faulty gap and

exchange nuclear weapons, we prepared ourselves in the weeds made statements of policy like first use. we created a tremendous arsenal, all of which is my god what happened? but it deterred the bad guy, the purpose of it was deterrence and detainment. in so no one wanted to get into that. what we have now in the military is they are facing a decision and you used the term optimizing. you're going to optimize the one and and you're going to hedge at the other end. so where do you optimize and where do you hedge? if you optimize and invest in the conventional or worse thing, because you want to ensure you don't have to fight it, you want the capability to deter adventure by potential enemies, is going to leave you not as prepared at the other end. and so, you're going to be doomed to fight those kinds of wars. if you go back to the cold war, the way our enemies, communist front page is used to three. and so they wanted to make sure

those never blossomed into a confrontation that could lead to something bigger than china, the soviet union and us in the west. so we fought them in via non-and south america and other places and through surrogates into her own. and so the enemies we face today are going to look at where we are best or least prepared. and so that becomes a tough decision. you're not going to invest tremendous amount of resources and something that maybe is less an existential threat to your very existence. so i would predict that he'll probably see some major programs cut, like we've just seen at the f-22 was cut, the army's future was cut him about will still preserve enough of the advantage of these areas to make sure no one gets to adventure some. we have to be careful of the risk because if you cut your advantage to close, there could be a surprise from the anomie

that jobs a generation to a head. and we will handle these other kinds of conflicts, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism as best we can within the content that isn't to say we won't do things to at least trained, organized and equipped to meet that. but the priorities will be to the larger more dangerous potentially existential threats i think in the long run. but what you have done is exactly what the secretary of defense, chairman of the joint service chief, all the combatant commanders have defaced. where do you optimize and where do you hedge? there's not enough in terms of resources we know to be all things to all people in both areas. thank you. >> general, i wanted to ask a question based on your experience of rising to too high command in the military and now onto boards of directors for ten

years. about the crisis in america and business leadership. we have the example of ceos that are paid 20 times what people on the floor are paid due to compensation committees and boards of yours. we have the enron case, were the smartest man in the room led a large company right off a cliff and of course we have our current banking crisis, where the same thing happened. did you learn anything in the military that would help american business? >> certainly. and i think and i can speak for the companies have been responsible for. let me take those individually. leadership compensation, i don't think anybody should be -- especially when it comes to the area of bonuses and other things that go on top of a salary, those things should not be given unless not only are they personally earned, but the organization and the company has met its goals. in other words, you know, you could say well, here's tony

ziinni piece to commit an 80% bonus to this amount. when a company has not met its members, its goals you do did often that it's taught by north bottom line. the leader should not be compensated in a different proportion to the success of the organization. to me that the definition of leadership. and a lot of the excuses you hear now that well, he did a great job, the company did so well but because of other factors, the economy, doesn't matter. again going to your other point, the person on the floor is going to fill that. there'll be layoffs, salary cuts, maybe not bonuses pays or phrases. the top in the bottom by the boards of directors, by the stockholders have to be held accountable in the same proportion. and they grew too. the extraordinary about the salaries and bonuses and other awards that are not rated aced

on the performance of the companies have gotten out of sight. the second thing i think which is a reality and were going to have to face and i think is necessary is we need more regulation. we need more inspection, we need more regulatory organizations, we need the securities exchange commission that really has teeth in and goes after it. i also think in some industries i see this not as much as i would like. some industries are beginning to self regulate, create regulatory industries that are independent, that can come down on the industry of nonmembers in the industry about their purpose. now we have to be sure it is their monitor, they're insured not to have people in their net someway benefit from protecting or covering for not investigating. but unfortunately, we've arrived at positions in almost every area where we need this kind of scrutiny. we do have no greater media scrutiny and all this. we do have no overall better

informed stakeholders, meaning for the direct heirs and stockholders and others that are becoming more demanding and all this, which i think is good. part of my job and the company and what does the parent company that is british, but we have the americans to the area. it is my job on the board as an outside your is to ensure that this company not only complies with american rules and american ethical standards and regulations, but it's also complies with our security and other things that we do. so they hold outside direct yours of the board accountable, the u.s. government. i want a government security committee that reports to the defense security forces to answer to this. and that's kind of unique because the given structure. the idea that board members now, much of ceos the board members held accountable, things that have been passed, that's a good

thing. because in the past you at a forbidding figure, listen to what the president said, voted yes on everything and collected or checking what home. now days you better have insurance to protect yourself because people are going to see you. stockholders will see you, there's government regulation and maybe that's where we need to continue to put the effort to secure the things that don't happen that it shocked us all. fortunately, these kinds of things, just as you mentioned, are coming out and is forcing the industry to correct it. my advice to people that i talked to is you are the ultimate controller of this. don't buy something from a company that you don't like the way they do business. don't put your savings account from your cds, don't do business with a financial organization. you have the greatest power over all this. you know, put your money and your investment and your busi