ethnic cleansing and communism, we have succeeded in building a better future for the world. and today, it is decision time and we have to make sure that we no longer vacillate and remain indecisive. we have to help iran free itself. it will be good for the iranians and it will be great for the world. >> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org. simply type a title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. ..

>> host: welcome to washington, d.c., mr. president. it's wonderful to see you. i was wondering when you fly in here and you go over these monuments you go over the potomac river, the tidal basin. what do you think when you're flying into this town? >> guest: i think about the wonderful times we had at the white house. we fly over the canal this afternoon, as you know, douglas, one of our great justices of the

supreme court. that's where i used to run every afternoon. i was running about 40 miles a week which is a lot in washington and around here and camp david on the weekends. so i just think about the good times we had and i think about the congress and how grateful william now that i had this broad bipartisan support that existed back in the 70's which doesn't exist anymore, so i think about the similarities and also the differences. >> host: is there a republican in congress and the senate that you really personally learned to enjoy working with the you became friends with? >> guest: senate her baker from tennessee was a minority leader in charge of the republican side and he was a great personal friend of mine and still is. and i got wonderful cooperation from the republican side and of course, michael and the house

was a minority leader in the house of representatives. and while my michael was a great supporter of mine. so during the last couple of years i was in the white house, senator kennedy was running against me. so he kind of took away a lot of the very liberal democrats to support him. they didn't much want me to succeed on some of the issues and so i turned to the modern conservative democrats and to the moderate and conservative republicans and that is how we were able to have such a good batting average for the congress. >> host: what about sam nunn, helen part and has even? >> guest: he was important. he was a young senator then, and he was kind of my floor leader on some of the key issues like the -- things that apply to nuclear power. and he was very knowledgeable about it and he was working his way of to be the chairman leader on of the defense committee in the senate. but sam, being a friend and the

legislature when i was governor of georgia, worked for a closely with me, and i have to say, by the way, then senator talmadge made it very difficult choice to vote for the panama canal treaties, which was the most courageous vote, i believe, that the u.s. senate has ever cast. as a matter of fact, there were 20 senators who voted for the panama canal treaties and 78. we were up for reelection that here and all of the 20, only seven of them came back to the senate the following january. sam nunn and talmadge were to move the senators that voted with me. herman talmadge, although he was very popular of the time, was leader defeated in his next election. i say one of the main reasons is because he voted for the panama canal treaties which is a very right to vote but also very unpopular of the time. >> host: it went 50 slash 50, the vote, correct?

walter mondale had to be the -- >> guest: it requires a two-thirds vote so we actually got 68 votes and had to get 67, so that is what took so much. i had to get a large number of republicans to vote for it. in spite of the fact that at that time ronald reagan was making the nationwide crusade against the panama canal treaties so it wasn't easy for the republicans to vote for it but enough of them did. >> host: why do you feel ronald reagan and john wayne and some of the conservative leaders were so vehemently opposed? >> guest: john wayne was for the panama canal treaties. one reason is he disliked ronald reagan very much, john wayne, and another he had been to panel -- panel several times, so john wayne let me know quite early he would be in favor of the panel can now treaties and wrote me a

letter accordingly which are used with national advantage against the opposition of ronald reagan. >> host: i once spoke to talmadge who felt it burned him out, the canal treaty, just what you are saying. do you feel you post the issue to quickly if you feel you had to do it over -- >> guest: even during the late stages of dwight eisenhower's term that had become an increasing amount of dissatisfaction not only in the panel with the latin america hemisphere against the unfair treaty that we had formulated back in the early 1900's and then when johnson was in office, the the big altercation, and a group of people were killed, and the panel vote for the united states and other leaders in the

sphere organized a third world power, and so all over the world there was an opposition to the united states because we were violating the human rights as you may or may not remember the panel canal was signed in the middle of the night. i think john was the secretary of state in washington and none ever saw the treaty. it was negotiated by frenchman who hadn't been to panel for 18 years but plan to be speaking for pan am also it was an unfair treaty from bavier beginning and almost everybody recognized including as i said two-thirds of the u.s. senators. >> host: you went back to panel as the ex-president to monitor the election and called noriega as a fraudulent election. do you think the fact you were the architect of the panama canal treaty gave you a credibility in panel and the rest of central america, latin

america that otherwise wouldn't have been there? >> guest: there is no doubt about it. after i left office, one of our first very important elections was in panama, and noriega, who was the head of the so-called military, the national guard, was a crook and tried to steal foot election and since was monitoring the election and i knew the box was stuffed a publicly announced the whole election was fraudulent and we narrowly escaped called by the national guardsmen and noriega's orders and also here is the candidates with the stuff the ballot box declared to be winners than ever took office and eventually of course he was arrested and put in prison for a long time and the next free election was held again and it

was an honest and fair election and now panel is one of the democracies in the hemisphere. host could do you feel that noriega should still be in prison? >> guest: he was there for 40 years and i think that he was qualified for a pardon, but he has been rearrested as you may know because some abuses he perpetrated against citizens of france, said he was extradited from france, another crime after he was finally served his term. >> host: has he ever reached all to you in any way? >> guest: no, noriega is not my friend, but he was one of those that got involved in a worldwide basis monitoring the elections, and at that time we were innovators in monitoring the elections from outside and now we just finished the 81st election this past month and

before that early on to read some of the major e elections and the palestinian area, and we did the first to the elections in indonesia when they changed from 50 years of dictatorship and to a democracy, as we have had a very exciting time holding elections and i have to get noriega credit he got me started on the election because i had to denounce him. [laughter] >> you were looking at the white house and jogging in the white house diaries whether you are on the campaign trail in texas you are going on a job and then when you were inaugurated you did the famous clock on your inauguration. how did the idea of walking for your inaugural come about? >> guest: one of the incentive

is talking about physical fitness and he suggested that we might walk as a symbolic gesture, and then as the time approached for the inauguration, i could see that there was a great deal of distrust and even animosity between the people of america and the government in washington, very similar to what was the case this past election with a tea party and so forth, a lot of disillusionment with washington. so we discussed it and finally decided that we would just to show that we trust the american people you have to remember back in those days when i ran for the president in 76 we just experienced the disgrace of watergate and the defeat in vietnam and it hadn't been long before that when bobby kennedy and john kennedy were assassinated and martin luther king jr. was assassinated and the so-called church committee and the senate had revealed the president's and the cia perpetrated including murder

against the elected leaders in the foreign countries wouldn't approve of their policies. one was in chile and one was in iran as a matter of fact so all of these things cause americans a set of velte to the integrity of the government and the confidence of the government, so i wanted to on pennsylvania avenue to show the american people i was one of them and they could have trusted me. >> host: you use to mention douglas. he used to do walks along the canal and used to jog around. did you have a route that you would run around? do you see the parts or was it too hard of the secret service to keep one jogging route? >> guest: we were able to keep it secret. sometimes i would jog in other areas, for instance we laid out a seven michael jogging a aretas inside the white house by making several laps through the rose garden and that sort of thing and then on the weekends would be jogging at camp david but it

was the best place to jog and that is the beginning of the national park as you may know sponsored by douglas and the extent is 100 miles from downtown washington all the way to west virginia and this canal used to be major traffic adjacent to and sometimes in the potomac region was very important trade route back in their early days but they had a 12-foot wide path that the horses used to walk on down the canal and that's where i jog, so it was a wonderful and isolated place. >> host: in all aspects of your presidency i think that history is going to treat well but people don't seem to know about it right now is jimmy carter's conservationist and, you know, working with the

detroit of energy but also, putting solar panels on the white house with the solar panel and the solar power part were you upset that ronald reagan took them down? why did he do that? >> guest: well, there was a total difference of philosophy between he and reagan. i thought that the american people should pay attention to excessive dependence on foreign oil, so all four years i worked to get a comprehensive energy package passed, and i did before i went out of office. when i was inaugurated we were importing 8.6 million barrels of oil per day, and within five years because of the energy package we reduced that by half and the 4.3 billion a day and when ronald reagan came in he said america doesn't have to conserve. we can use as much as we want to. we are a city on the hill. we don't have to defer to anyone

else and so, we do away with all of these foolish things president carter imposed on the american people as constraints, and so i had put these solar panels on the white house. i think there were 36 of them to provide hot water, also symbolic proof that i wish them to do something and as soon as reagan was in office he with great publicity removed the solar panel and said this is a waste of money and a waste of time. as a matter of fact, i believe in maine they purchased the 36 panels taken off the white house and they started a crusade about a year ago and found in in this president obama to put solar panels dhaka on the white house and last year, well, this year earlier i was in china and the major producer of the world now is in china and they had bought

one of the panels that used to be on the white house, so when i was over there they showed me the panel and told me about it. >> host: are you still high on the idea of solar or are you studying wind power? how you think we need to go? >> guest: i would say what we used to call is often sources is and leal premier li, but to use coal, clean burning coal in america as good as you may get you can't make it clean burning, but reduced its dependence on certain foreign sources of oil is a major purpose of my goal, so we put in all things are still permanent. we require electric motors and refrigerators and stoves be made highly efficient and this degree of efficiency. we had passed law that require houses to be insulated for the first time. the law was passed for the first

time and we also imposed a very severe restraints on automobile efficiency. but unfortunately we left a loophole in that so the president could back out of it and of course when ronald reagan came into office he got out of it and so when obama came in the efficiency of automobiles was dull almost as low as it was when i went into office, so there were some things we never dreamed a president would do that ronald reagan and his successors did, but the laws are still on the books, so we still have efficient refrigerators, stoves, electric motors and homes. >> host: do you worry about eisenhower had the industrial complex speech? are you worried about big oil and the government and what do we do to control the oil industry better? why are they having so much power? what can americans to?

>> guest: the arms manufacturing industry and the oil industry and others of that kind are extremely rich and influential in congress and even in national elections and they have always put as much money as they possibly could in to campaigns, and this includes others not related to the energy like the health industry, and i think one of the most stupid things the supreme court has ever done was a ruling last january that took off all limits on the corporations and making contributions to the political campaigns and even remove the requirement they had to identify themselves so now even in this election from 2010 has been a massive influx of money from corporations totally secret

without always being identified and almost all of it goes through republicans of course to defend oil companies of the major interest of that kind, so that is what has happened with the election and it's changed the whole character of american politics. for instance, when i was running for office against incumbent gerald ford, and later, four years later against governor reagan, we never dreamed of using - commercial. we referred to each other as my distinguished opponent. and i think that the reason for the escalation and almost universal use now of negative advertising on television radio has become the cause of enormous influx of money into the campaign, so if congress gets a $500,000 from the leal company and so forth, then they spend a lot of that 500,000 on destroying the character and reputation of their opponent,

and so it happened on both sides. i don't mean just to blame republicans the the democrats to it, too and also the american people disagree with that procedure, it works. so by the time the election is over, one of the candidates prevails and both sides have pretty well convinced the public that neither candidate was worthy of colin office and so by the time to get to washington they still carry over that highly partisan animosity that didn't prevail all when i was president or when president reagan was first elected, certainly when bush was in office. we had a wonderful bipartisan support in and cooperation. now there is no such thing. the congress is much more polarized now than in the time in history. i would say even in the months preceding the civil war if that's possible because as you know, on some of the major

programs as obama has put forth he didn't get a single republican vote in the house or the senate. so the republicans have acted almost completely irresponsibly during the first few months of president obama's term. i think after this election, at least after some responsibility because they benefit from the house of representatives which would be an improvement of what it has been up until now. >> host: what about the s.t.a.r.t. treaty right now? >> guest: we are worried about it. it's a wonderful treaty. it's good for the soviet union, it's good for europe, it's good for the united states. start a downward trend in the excess of arsenals of the nuclear weapons, and i think in an ordinary time, say when i was in office, even when george w. bush was in office, it would have been approved by a overwhelming majority of senators, but with this boy, you might say of the republicans

against president obama, and a purpose of getting reelected in 2012 he is going to be lucky to get enough republican votes to put it over but the s.t.a.r.t. treaty certainly should be passed. >> host: what should president obama do it despite? shorty guilaume country to executive power more or does he have to find a way to work with congress? if you were president in this political climate, what card would you play? >> guest: i think what he is likely to do the next two years is to be much more result, much more determined to stick with what he wants to get done, and stop trying to induce very few republicans to support his position. as he has said it is not going to permit an extension of ferre and george w. bush tax breaks for people that are very rich

and i feel he ought to do that. but he said he was going to do and maybe have one vote in the senate to grant an extension of the bush tax reductions to people that make less than $250,000 a year. that's what he said he was going to do during the campaign, and one vote only had not permit any possibility of extending the tax reductions for the very rich people. but if he does things like that, i think he will have a good bit of success. it was only when he used, as you know, a very well known technique that george w. bush used many times, reconciliation that he was able to get the health bill passed, well, that is playing it tough and many have the democrats now say they will do better in 2012, i'm speaking as a democrat, if the president does hang tough, and i think he will.

>> host: back to conservation. can you just tell us, by december, 1980, you did this remarkable alaska lands conservation act, and it's putting aside over 50 million acres and it's going to be a legacy of the world gets more populated and there is much more while the space is your name in conservation you're going to be on the short list with fdr and maybe tiahrt, fdr and lyndon johnson. how were you able to succeed so wildly on the conservation field? >> guest: first of all it took me four years to do it, almost four years and i memorized enough of alaska and about halfway through i saw that we were not going to get any support from the two alaska senators, one a democrat and the alaska member of the house is one. so, my secretary of interior came up with a idea of using a

bill that passed the congress in the early 1900's, i think 1907. it was called -- it was designed to save monuments, and how they value things to the future that should be preserved and he gave the president almost the unilateral right to do so. we used that legislation on large areas of land to visit made them as national monuments to be preserved, and there was nothing the congress did to overwrite my decisions. and eventually, the amount of land we set aside as the national monuments in alaska and other places was as large as the state of michigan to a tiny income and the enormous amount of property. so i had that to use. >> host: and would you

actually have map of alaska's -- >> guest: absolutely, i did, and the house of representatives very famous house member who was my partner and others as well in the senate but it would sit around the table and the president's cabinet room and said this is very precious so i would set it aside by the struggle to save it and the senator said permanently as a national monument although i think the original bill referred to just one specific building or something like that. we use it in vast areas of precious land, and it was that leverage that i used on members of congress and alaska and also others who were reluctant about the alaska lands bill to prevail. so after i was defeated in the election of 1980 that is when the alaska bill passed, and we actually set aside an area

almost as large as the state of california, the total. we doubled the size of the national park service and triple the size of the wilderness areas in america and the one bill and although i was very unpopular than in alaska because they convinced than i was taking away alaska land, this is not become one of the popular things i did even with alaska people because they see how much this meant to their state. >> host: what about sarah palin and the drill baby drill with the arctic refuge to you think it should never be allowed to have leal? >> guest: never. >> host: have you been to the arctic? >> guest: absolutely. >> host: what was it like and white you say never? what do you say to people that say that it's empty tundra and nothing there? >> guest: i have stated in front of the so-called porcupine

herd, and this was a herd of route 140,000 animals, and my wife and i have gotten in front and when they see us they go by. we have actually flown over an area there was a wolf in the head for the whole of sand we just went off the coast of northern alaska on the same trip where we observed a group of oxen and when they were disturbed they formed a circle of nails facing court to protect the females in the middle, and we go fishing in alaska quite often, become quite familiar with alaska and many of the state national parks that i created up there in 1980. and i think that they will be preserved but there's a tremendous pressure from the oil companies i would say to legally drive members of congress to

take this beautiful area up there and to me get a available for exploration from oil. this was an area that was first set aside, and it's only the alaskan national wilderness region by president eisenhower in the 1950's, and i just preserved what eisenhower first set aside when alaska became state, and when i left office the only way you could do that is if the president and both houses of congress voted to let oil exploration be done in anwar and i never dreamed we would have presidents in both houses of congress it might do so but president ronald reagan and george h. w. bush and president george w. bush tried and sometimes came within two or three votes of getting the required legislative support. i hope it never happens in over a period of time i think more and more americans and alaskans are realizing we need to

preserve the special area. >> host: what about offshore drilling i believe shell one storch orloff of the refuge. would you agree like offshore -- >> guest: i feel we need it because that's where some of the islands are and we saw on the peninsula that went out on that region. when we passed the alaska lands bill in late 1980, we opened up 95% of all of the coastal areas of alaska for the oil drilling. we only preserved 5% which is a special area we are talking about where we prohibited the oil drilling and i think that the 5% is not too much to say because it's just like god needed and i hope will be there for my grandchildren to in july. >> host: why do you feel sarah palin and alaska is becoming so much of the public discourse? is it her personality, have you ever met her and do you have in the view is what she's

contributing or not contributing? >> guest: i've never met her but obviously i watch on television many times a but she's one of those most dynamic and attractive speakers we have ever seen. she knows how to appeal to the crowd. she's extremely eloquent. she has a very clear-cut i would say political philosophy that she expresses and she appeals highly to the enthusiastic group of supporters. i think within the republican party and within the two-party element of the republican party she is going to be a formidable candidate if she decides to run in 2012, and i wouldn't be surprised if she could get the republican nomination. however, even with the republican party as you know even a majority of republicans don't think she's qualified to be president, but she does have the capability in my opinion as an extreme outsider even to get

the nomination. host could you see any connection to yourself? she was the governor of a state in georgia and nobody in the dhaka, seemed very odd and kind of came out of nowhere and you went into iowa and new hampshire and the peanut brigade. do you feel sort of although you are obviously coming from the democratic side of the kind of populism d.c. any connection with what she is trying to do or not at all? >> guest: i finished my term as governor. [laughter] >> host: de think cutting will hurt her? you never put cox ronald reagan never fit. >> guest: income the particular large group supporters don't hold that against her. i feel she's already proven that. so, no, i don't see a parallel between me and herber i do see a parallel between the times that i ran for president in 1976 and this past year for the tea party movement because it is primarily a group of well-meaning people in my opinion who were

completely dissatisfied with what was happening in washington. and i have to admit i had the same kind of benefit when i ran for office again stay wonderful group of other candidates who my opponents most of whom are u.s. senators, very distinguished and i was able to prevent, to prevail because i kept that dissatisfaction that was one of the driving forces for the tea party this past year. >> host: would be swift years to the middle east. with the iranian hostage crisis. they eventually all came home. do you ever hear from any of them? >> guest: quite often. when i go on a book tour, usually one or two of the hostages on the book tour will say ahead of time they want to meet behind the scenes and and i will give them a free book and shake hands and have photographs and i am very proud of the fact they are doing quite well.

this is not as much as it used to be right after i left office where a good many of them would try to planes and let me know in advance and we spend a few minutes and thank me for the fact they did become home safe and free. so i've had a good relationship i would say with all of them. >> host: iran was part of your administration in the book and the diaries and you talk about things only to white houses. there's the carter white house and then there is dealing with the hostage crisis white house. in retrospect is their something you would have done different for about the course? i know you said on extra helicopter on a mission, but can you -- with a drawl and look at the polls situation would you wish you would have done something differently? >> guest: not really. if i had known completely what was happening and what had been

in the future i might have done something different but i don't think so under the circumstances because that was the last holdout on my top management team in letting the sharnak come to new york infrequent of his terminal cancer. and henry kissinger and dr. brzezinski and all of my advisers let him come. it's a humanitarian thing to do, and so i contacted the president and the prime minister of iran, and i told them i was contemplating in having the shawl, free treatment, and i wanted an assurance from them that they would protect the americans over there and at that time there were about 8,000 americans in iran working in different forces including 66 members as the embassy staff and they sent me the word they would guarantee that nothing would happen to americans of the shah came to me were provided they

would pledge not to make any sort of a political statement while he was in america and the shah did give me that assurance. and then, to the surprise of me and i think to the surprise of the president and prime minister of iran i think it was the zazi if i remember their names right, the militants took hostages over coming and when the ayatollah after three days supported the captain and holding of hostages, then in both the president and the prime minister resigned in protest. but there was just the beginning of a long ordeal where they held the hostages. so we don't really believe, the main advice i got was to attack iran to bomb iran and so forth but i was convinced then and

still am convinced to have done so. i would have killed me the 10,000 innocent iranians and they would have executed the hostages. >> host: does your religion, your love of christ, did it ever come into making big decisions like that's a very profound thing to think that you could take out to a thousand people's lives and inform your judgment in your faith? >> guest: i think so. i worship jesus christ as a prince of peace, would result as the president within the bounds of the finding my nations security and try to preserve the peace. we went through four years of extreme tension and sometimes i would say political

confrontations. i was able to go through correa, we never dropped a bomb, we never lost a missile, we never fired a bullet and we protected our own security, integrity and not only brought peace between us and potential lever series but also brought peace to others around the world. one of the things i learned to do is start the process of eliminating apartheid in south africa and we were successful [inaudible] in fact my daughter was arrested three times for demonstrating against the apartheid in south africa. we were able to form a peaceful relationship with china. the result of the potential

conflict with panama and south american country's peace in egypt and so forth. good on the list of things that is what we try to do. >> host: at this point in your life you've broken the mold as the next president and or if the individual and marched to the beat of your own drum. could you ever imagine being arrested like your daughter was? let's say somebody is going to drill in the arctic refuge. would you be willing to go to a protest and actually be arrested? or do you draw a kind of flying from something like that? >> guest: i would say that if the issue came up that i felt was not tough moral conflict with me, i would certainly consider being arrested because i know that i wouldn't be hurt. i might just be arrested as a pro forma thing and get a lot of publicity so that would magnify my ability to bring publicity to the unsavory act i might do it.

but a amy filter deeply. we didn't have to inspire her to vote against apartheid. she felt deeply like i did that it was wrong. >> host: in your diaries and the white house there's a section about you reading the bible what might in spanish and also getting your hair cut with a portrait in barbour and he would practice the spanish. was it because do you believe that the being bilingual is important in today's america? >> guest: when i was a young person, at the naval academy high studied spanish and when we would have a chance to go on vacation we journeyed place finish speaking country, often seen as our favorite place to give the kitchen. and still, in fact, last night i read part of the bible when spanish while she listened, and

the next time we are together she would read a portion of the bible in spanish, and this would give us a chance to practice in between times. and so she's got an ipod and i think 85 spanish lessons on her ipod. so i think that being bilingual is a great advantage and it turns out spanish speaking is important not only in plan structure we have 85 who don't speak english, so we are kind of the alternative of the church, so it is a wonderful second language and also just to have a second language is very important. >> host: and do you use a laptop, do you write your own of letters to people? >> guest: i never have dictated a letter in my life and i never have dictated in the of my books. about 26 books are doing a lot of my riding myself and --

>> host: why is that? is it because you want to have the control over it? roosevelt used to dictate them and people would type in but you kind of keep a personal -- >> guest: it goes back to my childhood. when i was in plains high school in eighth grade, i took typing and i took shorthand, so all the way through my college years i took my college notes in shorthand so i became you might say a good stenographer on my own. i'm not bragging about it, there's nothing wrong with dictating to others but what i was in the white house a lot of people read messages like my secretary of state would write a letter to a foreign leader and would come to me and i would edit and approve it and a sign a final versions of i didn't hand write everything from the very beginning but for instance when i wanted to come to camp david for negotiation, i can't wrote

the letter and had them delivered so they would know it came from me and maybe that is one of the reasons they both accepted the invitation. >> host: you have had written to people around the world who are political prisoners asking of world leaders to release people. do you keep an eye on that as an amnesty international? >> guest: they have a huge program and i have a staff -- she in the staff monitored the most of regis uses of human rights and quite often they would prepare a draft letter for me to send to a foreign leader who is abusing people his or her country and i would send them a personal letter. we get at emory university to

double check the legality of what i'm doing so i don't do something foolish and then i said the letter and i say i have heard that you are doing this to such and such people in my name them in prison without a proper trial the might be a old and need to be released and who this is contrary to your nation's constitution and own commitment and i would like to have a report from you on a personal basis about what can be done to alleviate their suffering, and i would just hope that this particular matter didn't have to go further and to the public news from and it's surprising how many times the dictator will send me a letter back and say i've looked into this and people have been released from prison, something like that. so we still do that and we have an annual meeting of the carter center we call with a meeting of human rights defenders. we have people about 40 nations

to come to the carter center. human rights abuses take place in their country and our heroes fighting against human rights abuses and sometimes the dictators won't let them out of the country but we meet with them and discuss their problems and then about seven or eight of them were the most eloquent sit around a table with me and an interlocutor from cnn and ask questions about the human rights abuses and in that same group travel to washington without me and the meat with the leaders of human rights specialists in the administration and in the congress, so we do that every year. >> host: i once went with the carter center and kind of follow you to haiti and i noticed a twist about yourself you very much of the second longest military clear after dwight

eisenhower and you're very punctual and very -- but when we got to a village where most of the people had each of you are hiv-positive lysol the whole tough jimmy carter site of melt in an incredibly emotional way that you are touching people and helping the children. is that your -- do you have to -- you seem to feel the suffering of people like your mother, miss lillian who took people's leprosy. is it hard to have that much compassion for the corps but then having to keep a hard shell in order just to get things done? >> guest: i don't feel it difficult. the carter center which was organized has a commitment to eradicating the most terrible diseases on the earth.

the world health organization calls them neglected disease because they no longer exist in the rich world and they have flicked hundreds of millions of people still, in africa and sometimes latin america so that is what we dedicated the carter center to do as its primary purpose is to control or eradicate the neglected diseases, so she and dhaka, my wife and i go to latin america or primarily to africa to do with those kind of disease is so they are not even known in america [inaudible] and so forth and these diseases can be eliminated. we have already proven that because they don't exist in the rich world and we also deal with one major disease called malaria which everybody knows about but we don't want to have it here so

for instance in ethiopia the carter center helped put to remarkable new did mix in every home and ethiopia that had malaria and mosquitos. this took 20 million mets and the government of ethiopia raised $70 million. i raised $3 million to buy the others we needed for the 3 million we put them in homes, so that is the kind of thing that we do around the world now. so it is a matter of you might say a professional commitment of the carter center to help people and i guess it comes natural to me. >> host: i know when you were a younger man you use to talk about harry truman that you liked him quite a bit. now as an ex-president at this point in your life thinking about what you know but having been one of the few people in the white house is there a

precedent that you draw inspiration to now that might be different over the years you have read more biographies, brought about american history more. is their something you think believe there was the president that all i can truly respect? >> guest: i haven't changed my mind when i'm asked that still the common question i guess i still would say harry truman in my lifetime. i don't remember, obviously i'm not interrogating abraham lincoln and others, just during my lifetime. harry truman affected me personally. when roosevelt was killed i was a midshipman at annapolis. i cried when i realized this unknown vice president would not be my commander-in-chief and leader when i was on the submarine, harry truman in 1948 decided to do away with racial segregation in the military forces. and the army navy marion's air force and coast guard and it was

extremely unpopular for him to do and the congress warned him do not do it. a lot of his military leaders said don't do it and he did it any way and that affected my life greatly, and was eight years later that rosa parks sat in front of a bus and martin luther king jr. became famous supply still give harry truman credit for being the pioneer in this country of doing away with almost 100 years of racial segregation so that changed my mind, my life, and so i've always thought he was a honest and courageous and very intelligent -- >> host: do you identify as a navy man, yourself with dockery and war at all? >> guest: i was a submarine officer during the korean war and not a part of world war. on was in the pacific when the korean war started and up until

1950. and then i was transferred back to the east coast so yes, i still feel personally involved in curvy and in fact i just came back from north korea. coast guard wanted to ask in the white house diaries u.s. about listing correa when there was a huge crowd like 1 million or more people. why did you have kind of a crowd in south korea? i mean, it was an extraordinary up to 2 million people in south korea, you think closer to a million in the book, and tell me about what you have learned. i know when used the press like alaska or the middle east, korea has been a big part of your life. going on there now and would you today jimmy carter be willing to go to north korea tonight, tomorrow, the next week and try to negotiate some kind of settlement after this recent back-and-forth going on?

>> guest: i hate to say this but the number three income trust me, 15 years ago, we were faced with a prospect of the korean war because kim il-sung who was worshiped in eritrea, i'm not exaggerating, he's a combination of jesus christ and washington for the north koreans, because of the various reasons i don't have time to go into, he decided he would expel the international atomic energy inspectors and start reprocessing the nuclear fuel from that ancient atomic reactive activity and the united states started trying to impose much more severe sanctions on north korea than there had been since 1957 the korean war was over. they announced if that happened he was going to attack south korea, and the fact is then and

now north korea could almost totally destroyed seoul, the capitol of south korea. i decided to go over and fight to resolve the issue and i got reluctance approval from president bill clinton. i went over and negotiated with kim il-sung successfully and the united states put it into official agreement by negotiating in geneva, and that is what clinton, bill clinton did. later and kim il-sung stopped the nuclear process and we were well on our way to the peace treaty with north korea. when president bush came into office, that intel process was undone in his inaugural address, president bush declared north korea was an axis of evil, and to make a long story short, north korea began to process the nuclear fuel and now they got six or seven cable nuclear

explosives. so back in july the north koreans asked me to come over again because they wanted me to deliver a message to the u.s. government. again, they wanted to negotiate and deal away with a nuclear weapons and to have a permanent peace treaty to replace the cease-fire that existed now in far 29 states in north korea yet. so that is what i have done, but if president obama asked me to go over i would certainly be glad to do so but i wouldn't presume has a private citizen. >> host: with the carter center at all work at this point if the tensions get to double what looks like a war could break out between the north and south. would you go with you were not asked by president obama simply because you believe you could perhaps stop what could be a -- >> guest: i would go but only if i got permission from the white house. i never have been on a foreign trip into a troubled area without getting permission or approval from the white house. and always make a report to the

white house when i get back. sometimes i have to say the president was not enthusiastic about my going but it's just a matter of my commitment that i don't go unless i get permission and co, and especially when i am in office i got permission from the white house and the have made it clear that i was going to represent the carter center and not represent the white house. they didn't have anything to do with the trip. i went on a private plane and when i got back i made a full report to the secretary of state clinton. >> host: george w. bush axis of evil speech including north korea, was that a mistake that he included? >> guest: i think so because at that time our victory and the united states had good relations which to flee speaking. secretary of state madeleine albright had already been to pyongyang to visit on an official basis with the leaders and president clinton had decided to go to north korea in december of 2000. but he had to cancel his visit

because of the standoff between bush and nobody knew who was going to be the president so he couldn't read but that was a situation not relative accommodation or communication between pyongyang and washington then. when president bush made his speech classified in north korea as an axis of evil, then that was a signal that the bush administration was abandoning the agreement that i had negotiated the president clinton had concluded with of the north koreans. >> host: your administration within chow ping was first to recognize, not nixon, people often get that mixed up. were you treated as a special person when you go to china or do they greatly respect to? >> guest: i am. host could you have a plan on working on the u.s.-china relations? >> guest: i work on the carter center relationships and we have

major projects in china endorsed by the chinese government, they have 600,000 small villages in china but not part of the communist system and the carter center has been asked by the government of china to monitor the elections held in the 600,000 we do that and we've done that now for maybe 12 years and all. so my wife go and represent the carter center full time to make sure that we help the little villages have honest prayer, open and free elections, and they do. everybody in the village is automatically registered to vote of 18-years-old, men and women. the candidates don't have to be a member of the communist party and many of them are not members of the communist party. there's a secret ballot and it is completely a space process. and i have been hoping it would move from the little to look to the higher levels where the

takeover. the communist party in china takes over the large cities in the towns and provinces and the provincial people go every five years so that entire governmental process is involves the carter center as a major monitor of the chinese government and to bring democracy at least on the local level. >> a final question because we are winding down. i could go on for hours. the issue of global warming. we talk about conservation and the department of energy and your long-term concern about getting off of the fossil fuels. are you all concerned there seems to be this global warming for a while, seems to be this concern and now people don't mention it, do you have a midterm election in both democrats and republicans are staying away from it, are you deeply concerned but global warming? >> guest: i certainly am, it is happening. in fact i read an article today

that the american cities began to suffer norfolk virginia where i went with my life when we were first married they got an increase in sea level i think it's it 16 inches already and people have lived on dry land are not having a to leave their homes in norfolk and in alaska the abandoned several of the native villages along the coast that have now become inundated and the ice is melting that used to protect them, so i am very much concerned about it. i will say bolivia is going to be the first major country that will suffer from the global warming because they have gotten their freshwater supply for people to drink from the melting glaciers with the snow in the wintertime, now the glaciers are melting and they will be part of the first major country that will have a