that this not be used as a foreign for propagandizing the policies of a man. instead, for equal commentary from both sides, to explore -- >> host: patrick, you think all three of these historians are pro-president george w. bush? >> caller: my experience in listening to each one speak is that even though they're willing to trade him for small things, the real -- the subjects of real importance are not questioned. >> host: all right, very much. perfect their julian zelizer of princeton, why don't we start with you? >> guest: well, i don't agree with the caller. i think we've raised many issues that are small, you know, the potential of manipulating data and evidence, which is the

rationale of war. failures in katrina and economic policy. those are small potatoes. and so we've dealt with i think a lot of the big issues. and i think there's probably disagreement on this panel in terms of evaluating the presidency. i think this is one of the challenges of studying presidency is in a polarized age. i think many of the people listening, many of the people interacting in conversations kind of read into comments then they read into what they see instantly, their own politics. i'm often i find it difficult to have really thoughtful discussions in that environment. we have to. we have to because i think this is a crucial part of our democracy to study, to evaluate, to debate would have been during different presidencies in our history. >> host: tevi troy come you did work for president bush. >> guest: i think we've had a healthy disagreement and i've been critical at times and the

other people prays that sometimes. one thing i say about the book is just so funny it is. there's one story tell very quickly about my friend jim toohey who was mother teresa's lawyer before coming to work in the white house. president bush said in a litigious litigious society would mother theresa needs a lawyer. >> guest: i agree with julianne on this. i actually think when you get into trying to assess the whole president, you do end up really with whether there's some good, some bad, some pretty horrific, some i wish i could change. but i think a fair assessment, some are historical on academic perspectives really does try to take the full measure of the man, not just one aspect or one decision. >> host: very quickly, what haven't we talked about you would want to bring up? >> guest: the thing we didn't talk about with all this work in africa, you know, what she was

involved with at hhs. >> host: she writes about in "decision points," julian zelizer. >> guest: the line where he says that mitch mcconnell, the senate republican leader in 2006 -- 182,006 was saying that troops should come back from iraq and this is that a moment the republican party is really going to go out for the democrats for proposals for withdraws, deadlines. i found that an amazing offenses, the difference between what some republicans say privately what they say publicly. >> host: julian zelizer at princeton, thank you. lara of villanova and tev -- set fair. the booktv bus is is here as well, and now we're pleased to be joined by another author. her book, "intelligence: a novel about the cia," susan hassler is our guest.

susan hassler, what's the storyline on your book? >> guest: well, it's the next big terrorist attack. it hearkens a little bit back to 9/11 in flashbacks, but this is the next terrorist attack and what happens in the cia counterterrorist center before, during and after that attack. >> host: who is maddie? >> guest: maddie james is a counterterrorism analyst. she's been in the agency for 15 years, and she's, she's probably been there way too long. [laughter] >> host: really? why do you say that? >> guest: well, she's angry, and she -- her personal life has fallen apart, and her entire life is her job, and she really needs to probably get away from it for a while, but she won't. >> host: well, susan hasler, you spent 21 years working at the cia in various positions. are you maddie? glg i'm not maddie. there are a few differences.

she was a tiny little ballerina, i'm not. she spent 15 years in the counterterror center, and i was only there for the last four years of my career. >> host: so why did you leave the cia in 2004? this. >> guest: there were a lot of reasons. i was tired, i had a lot of stress-related health problems, i was completely disgusted with our decision to go into iraq and what played out in the agency after and in the government after 9/11. and my husband was retiring, and so he could retire, and i would still have health coverage, so i decided it was time to live. time to leave. >> host: now, this is a novel about the cia. >> guest: right. >> host: if people read this, how much reality will they get in this book? >> guest: they'll get a pretty good idea of what it's like to be a counterterrorist analyst or

what people do. people mainly know about the operational side of the cia, the direct rate of operations, and this is on the analytical side. and these are about people who spend their lives looking at reports and trying to figure things out. i mean, the analysts go on trips and they go abroad, but most of their time is spent in their office in front of their computers. >> host: now, you worked at the cia, but this is a novel. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: did you have to have this approved and checked by the cia before you could release it? this. >> guest: i did. there's an agreement you sign that says if you write about the agency or any subjects that you studied at the agency, you have to have it approved, so it was approved by the publications review board. >> host: now, did they take anything out that you had put in there? >> guest: nothing. >> host: our guest is susan hasler. her first full-length novel is "intelligent: a novel of the

cia." for 21 years she worked at the cia, but we wanted to put the numbers up on the screen so you could dial in if you had a question or comment. 202-585-3885 for the eastern and central time zone, 585-3886, mountain and pacific time zones. in your book you write about the cia. one hard lesson i've learned, ass covering trumps national security every time. >> guest: i'm afraid that's it. i mean, there are a lot of people who it's their first, their first priority is national security, but it gets caught up, for example, immediately after 9/11 the first thing i ended up doing was compiling a list of all of the intelligence we put out because we knew we were going to be called before congressional committees, and we knew that investigations were coming up, so while you're also

trying to look out for another terrorist attack and what might be happening, you also have to, you know, you're immediately -- you immediately have to go in defensive mode. >> host: so when you hear the term flawed intelligence from inside the agency, what's your perspective on that? >> guest: well, the term flawed intelligence has also been used by people who have no idea what the stream of intelligence looks like. in retrospect, it's -- you can match up what reports foretold the attack, but often those reports are hidden in thousands and thousands of other documents that look very much the same. a lot of reports are false, a lot of reports come from people who have an agenda. and so it's a much harder job than i think people realize. and sometimes, frankly, the

intelligence community gets used as a scapegoat for what i would call played policy. flawed policy. for example, saying that we got into the iraq war because of bad intelligence. well, we got into the iraq war because the administration would only look at certain intelligence, and they really only wanted to hear certain intelligence. and the agency, frankly, didn't stand up enough to the administration, i think, and say, no, you can't say that. but, you know, how do you stand up to the president? this it's very hard. >> host: a vice president in your novel does not come out very well. >> guest: no, that's true. >> host: you don't write very nice things about the vice president. is that based on min?? -- anyone? >> guest: quite possibly, yes. most of the characters are based on composites. beth mead, for example, is based on three people smooshed

together. we did spend an awful lot of time answering the same question over and over and over again. answers, so they asked it over and over and over again. >> host: one of the things you write about in "intelligence "is the piu. what is that, how many resources go into putting that out every day? >> guest: i call it the piu, it's the president eat daily brief. president's daily brief, the pdb, and a lot of resources go into that. that's what analysts wrote for. it's actually a rather small publication, it's one that i have rarely seen in its entirety. not many people got to see it. very closely held. i wrote for it for many years, and i have to say i haven't seen maybe three or four times the entire book put together. >> host: so a lot of resources go into that? >> guest: a lot of resources go into it. it's kind of -- we have all of the analysts working, and then there's a big pyramid.

you've got your operators, your operatives and you've got signals, intelligence and the press and all of these forms of information which are filtered out to the analysts, and then they're filtered into, you know, an article for the president. it might be a half page long. it might be a page long. they're very short articles. you're subject -- if you're working terrorism, your subject matter might come unfairly quickly. we have what are called current accounts and accounts that are more long term. but if you're working a hot account, you might be writing the president's daily brief a lot. but everything is very condensed, and can it's a long process. you write an article for that, you're going to be there very late that night and have to come in very early the next day to work on it. >> susan hasler, how did you get involved in working for the cia? this where'd you go to college, how'd you get interested, and then the trajectory of your

career at the cia. >> guest: well, i always wanted to be a writer, actually, and i went to college, i was -- i majored in the russian language in literature, and i went to uva and then uc berkeley, and after i got out of berkeley it was 1983, and jobs were voir very ho come by, so i had good russian language, so i answered an ad for the cia. they tested my russian, and it was quite good. they put me through a lengthy polygraph, as you can imagine coming from berkeley. [laughter] and then i ended up as a soviet analysts, and then after the coup i realized we had too many analysts. and then i moved around a few other places and landed in the counterterrorist center. >> host: did you, for the most part, enjoy your work at the cia? this did you feel you were making a contribution? >> guest: i did. it's kind of an addictive place.

you're working with a lot of really smart people, people who really challenge you every day, and that is quite addictive. you know, you're working with the world's expert on whatever, and you can have really fascinating conversations, you know, anytime of the day, and you're at the apex of this huge flow of information, and you can direct it. you can send requirements out. so, you know, if you're academically interested in the subject, that's why a lot of people come there. that is the place to be at the forefront of whatever subject you happen to -- you know, if you're working in if foreign affairs and you're an expert on india, if you want to really be in the place where the work is being done, you go to the cia. >> host: what are the white minds? >> guest: the white minds. i came up with my own language, for one thing because the language in the agency changes, and for another because i wanted to make it easier to get through publication review. the white minds, that's the analytical part of the

intelligence agency that i write about. >> host: susan hasler is our guest, here is the cover of the book, "intelligent: a novel of the cia." first call for her comes from albany, oregon. go ahead, albany, oregon. oregon, are you with us? in. >> caller: can you hear me? >> host: yes. where are you calling from? >> guest: albany. >> host: okay. please go ahead, sir. sorry about that. >> caller: yeah. the speaker mentioned being against the war in iraq, yes? >> guest: yes. >> caller: and the special, special operations in afghanistan like the jaw breaker teams, they did pretty good. do you think unconventional warfare in iraq would have been better than conventional? this. >> guest: in iraq my feeling is that we shouldn't have gone into iraq at all after 9/11 because

it took the attention away from afghanistan and bin laden. and it, it was a recruitment boon for the terrorists when we went into iraq. and it also convinced a lot of people in the muslim community that we were not just anti-terrorist, we were anti-muslim because we had gone against -- we invaded a muslim country that wasn't actually, they didn't perpetrate 9/11. >> host: now, on the back of your book, former inspector general of the cia and author of "why spy" who's been on booktv, by the way, writes this: susan hasler cuts too close to the bone of real life politicalization of intelligence. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: is it pretty politicized? >> guest: it has -- i feel that most of the people that i worked with have a pretty strong work

ethic in that they do not want to politicize intelligence. i mean, our job, i think -- i can't remember which former directer, it might have been colby, said our job is to be the skunk at the garden party. we tell policymakers things they don't want to hear. and after 9/11 policymakers didn't want to hear things. i actually heard a senior boss say the president doesn't want to hear that when i had something i'd written for the president's daily brief. and at that point i think we were, we were moving dangerously close to politicization. if we're censoring ourselves because the president doesn't want to hear it, we're moving into politicization. it's a hard road for the agency to travel because you want to still have your boot in the door because your intelligence is useless if it doesn't get to the policymaker and they don't listen.

but on the other hand if you give predigested intelligence, it's not useful either. >> host: published by thomas dunn division of st. martins, "intelligence" by susan hasler is the novel. san antonio, texas, you're on the air. please go ahead. this. >> host: go ahead with your question. san antonio. >> caller: oh, yes, okay. sorry. i was in the middle of cooking lunch. first of all, thank you for taking my call, and i just wanted to say about a month ago i just finished reading your book, and i found it not only entertaining, but very informative, and although it was fiction, it did seem to shed some light on what an analyst does. i guess i have a -- well, two questions. one, with what you just said about analysts being basically sent back to redo their essays

for the administration, whatever's in power not agreeing with it and basically saying, say it this way, how is the value of an analyst to be appreciated more if every time they analyze something and it's presented, it's said, o oh, no, you're wrong? in okay? that's the first part. the second part, my russian instructor in high school was a person who actually helped me, i guess, develop a like or understanding of more world politics and look at the world in a bigger sense of the picture other than the u.s. are there any teachers in your past who, i guess, developed that analytical spirit in you that caused you to join the cia? >> host: thank you, san antonio. could you hear both those questions? this. >> guest: yes, i could. >> host: great. >> guest: the first one was about -- >> host: redoing your reports if you're being told to redo them.

>> guest: usually analysts in the first place, we go through -- to get a report up to the president's daily brief is a very tough coordination process. you go through everybody who has any sort of connection to the subject you're working on, and you have to get it approved through all of these people and sometimes through other agencies. so we're used to fighting for, fighting for our language. and politicization is usually a rather subtle thing. it's not go back and write your report so it says this, it's more like, well, that report is kind of false as a threshold, we're not going to run it in the president's daily brief today, or it's more subtle than that. >> host: teachers in your past was the second question. >> guest: teachers. i was, you know -- >> host: did you want to expand that to mentors, somebody who

got you to answer that ad? >> guest: yeah. i can't think of anything, i mean, what inspired me to go to the agency was really needing a job in 1983. i came to, i came to like working there and to be balad i worked there, but i didn't go there because i read a lot of spy novels and was attracted to it or because that's what i wanted for a career. i came because i needed a job. [laughter] >> host: susan hasler, where were you on 9/11 then? >> guest: i was in the front office of the analytical group of the counterterrorism center, and my office was right next to the office of the head of that group. and an analyst came running down the aisle of cubicles and said a plane hit the world trade center, and it looks bad. and after that all hell broke loose. of course, we were expecting something, especially since

massoud had been assassinated two days earlier -- >> host: so you were not terribly surprised by that because of the assassination? >> guest: well, i mean, he was always a target, but what we were worried about was that we had indications that al-qaeda was planning a major attack, and the fact thattal maas pseudowas assassinated indicated to us that maybe something was up was he was the leader -- because he was the leader of the northern alliance, and of course after 9/11 they were expecting us to invade afghanistan it's a bone thrown to the taliban, their host saying, okay, you know, we're bringing this all in, all down on your country, but we'll get rid of massoud. >> host: did people aren't -- around you at that time, at that moment know it was bin laden or al-qaeda? >> guest: oh, immediately. as soon as the plane hit the

towers. because that's what we spent the entire year expecting something. >> host: and your book looks at that issue too. >> guest: right. >> host: this is the book, "intelligence: a novel of the cia." corpus christi, texas, you are on with susan hasler. >> beaumont, texas? >> host: go ahead, texas. >> caller: okay. susan, i haven't read your book yet, but i have a question. the movie "fair game" is coming out, and valerie plame's position in the cia. is it, how is it similar to the position you had and that you write about in your book and how is it different? >> guest: it's completely different. i was an analyst, i was an open employee, i didn't have to hide my cia affiliation. i wasn't -- you know, i didn't offer it voluntarily, but i didn't hide the fact that i was

cia whereas valerie plame was -- her connections to the cia were covert, and she was an operative. she went out and did the really very difficult work of trying to get information on the ground. >> host: did you know her at all? >> guest: i didn't know her because she was a covert employee. she wouldn't be hanging around headquarters. >> host: were you covert? >> guest: no, i wasn't. >> host: so if somebody asked you, where do you work, you would have said the cia? >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: not only have you written this novel, but your bio also says you wrote for cat fancy magazine. [laughter] >> guest: i entered a contest. i've always liked writing short stories, and i used to be into cat rescue, i had cats, and i thought, you know, this is a contest for cat fan is i, probably not a lot of professional writers are writing. so i entered it and won a year supply of kibble which lasted

two months. [laughter] >> host: all right. got a few minutes left with our guest. caller, where are you calling from? please, go ahead with your question. tell us where you're calling from. caller, you're on the air. where are you? >> guest: corpus christi, texas. >> host: all right. go ahead, sir. >> caller: well, i was going to ask her about valerie plame's outing, too, but you just answered that. so does your vice president in be your novel -- >> host: one more time, sir? what about the vice president? >> guest: are you saying is, is he a character in the novel? >> caller: yeah. does he out your character in the novel? this. >> host: go ahead. >> guest: the vice president is mentioned briefly in the novel. he's not actually a character, and it's, it's an a vice

president unnamed. [laughter] >> host: now, are you political? are you a democrat? >> guest: i'm a democrat. i wasn't terribly political before 9/11. it kind of turned me political because of the war in iraq. >> host: the war in iraq did. >> guest: the war in iraq did because up until that point i, i never had anything that challenged my ethics as an analyst. i had not run into politicization. i worked happily for the first bush. i had, you know, i voted because i always felt that was my duty, but otherwise i wasn't political at all. agency employees are under the hatch act anyway, so i really wasn't that political. >> host: bruceer, new york -- brewster, new york, go ahead. you're on with susan hasler. >> caller: hi, susan. i haven't read your book yet, but i was interested if you had

an opinion on if the church commission had any effect on things like 9/11 and how the church commission has, you know, the cia's investigation around the world? >> guest: well, it's not just the church committee. i have seen throughout the course of my career generally there'll be congressional investigations, and generally things will shift too far in the other direction after the congressional investigation, and then it will, you know, i've seen it ping-pong back and forth. probably, you know, after the church committee hearings things went too far in one direction and after the, you know, various other sets of hearings you see how rules come in and they have

unintended con -- consequences which cause the next problem and the next committee hearings which in turn bring a bunch of other solutions. i mean, i think it happens in a lot of areas, not just intelligence. >> host: susan hasler, what do you think about the new dni system that the u.s. has? >> guest: i think that it was another bureaucracy plopped down on top of the bureaucracy we already had and ctc, the cia counterterrorism center, had the same charter as the new bureaucracy that was put in place. and the cia had the same charter as the dni. the cia was brought in to, brought into being to pull all intelligence together, centralize intelligence so we didn't, things didn't fall through the cracks. and then essentially that's the dni's charter too. we're going to centralize intelligence.

and it's, in my view, an unnecessary bureaucratic >> host: one more time, the storyline for "intelligence." >> guest: it is the next big terrorist attack, and it is a bunch of counterterrorism analysts warning, and the warnings the administration doesn't really want to hear the warnings because it's an election coming, and they've just been saying how much safer we are. and a terrorist cell has been rolled up, and they want to think that was it, that solved the problem. and it didn't. >> host: now, we were talking before we got started here in miami, and you said that you're working on another book. what's that about? this. >> guest: it's along the same lines. it's set in the same place, and it has a couple of the same characters. >> host: does maddie return? >> guest: maddie returns, but she's not the lead character. mn with another author. >> joining us is richard rhodes,

winner of the pulitzer prize in "the twilights of the bombs." richard rhodes realistically speaking is there a prospect for no nuclear weapons on the planet? >> i think so. they really lost the utility since the cold war. they cost us $50 billion a year. it is official u.s. policy that we move towards zero. it's just a matter of working out some of the security relationships that are standing in the way. >> with regard to working out those relationships, will we be able to come to agreements with countries like north korea and iran who seem to be on the path to making their own nuclear weapons? >> they do. partly because that's the only way they can -- they feel they can defend themselves against the major nuclear powers like the united states. but each of them has -- has security needs. if we can kind a way to satisfy