is a good thing. why in the world should the west keep kind of supersizing itself and bloating itself up instead of doing what the germans are doing which is selling to the developing countries? selling to the chinese, selling to the brazilians? let them have a stake in the world economy rather than us just, you know, turning our kids into versions of prussians as they sit in front of the tv and blow it up and, you know -- the west has to figure out a way to consume less and to maintain its economic standards in a way that brings up the standards of other people. and that is sort of one of the aspects of this german model, selling to the chinese, selling to the brazilians, selling to developing countries. i think germany would be doing even better if fourth world were doing better. you know, if they had more money to buy german goods. that's the kind of model we should be looking at, one that talks about some kind of

restraint here while we lift up people in other countries. it's one of the things that people interested me about the book. >> that seems to be a good place to move the discussion to the wine table. [applause] ..

>> as joe mentioned we are just thrilled to have these folks here. gerald blaine, the author of "the kennedy detail," clint hill, one of the special agent who was here in dallas at the time, and writer lisa mccubbin. lisa is the one who put all these stories together. and those of many of the other agents. welcome codels and welcome to the sixth floor museum. >> thank you. >> i need to remind folks we need you to turn your cell phones all, not just put them on silent but turn them off. there's a lot of radio interference and we want to make sure the recordings come out well. there are two cameras here. those are from c-span. the program is being recorded for c-span and they will broadcast this probably in the next week or two. we don't have an air date yet. our associate curator is recording also for our oral history program which now totals over 800 people. while we are chatting, the biographies of our guests will

appear on the screens behind us. also some photographs, ones of the kennedys come from the national archives and white house photographers. and the photographs of the kennedys that you will see in dallas come from the sixth floor museum's collections. let's see here. will also have a q&a session. many of you have filled out forms already. if you don't have a pencil or pen to write with, hold up her hand and our people come around and give you a pencil to write with. i have prepared questions but i know i can cover everything. we will see that we can do. towards the end we'll get to the q&a. let's get acquainted first. we like to do that with these programs. ratio hand if you remember the kennedy assassination weekend. raised your hand if you were here in dallas at the time. fascinating. fascinating. i wanted to make one point. we are here because of a very

sad event, but we don't want to make this a sad occasion. it like to pass on to a story that came to me while i was about halfway through the book. it did not occur to me until i read a passage of the book, let me take you back to denver, colorado, and both jerry and clint worked in the denver office but not at this time. in 1963, i think it was, i saw president kennedy, and at the time we lived next door to one of the top executives at the local lincoln mercury dealer. he came over one day and told my dad and i, president kempe is coming to town, and we're going to service his limousine. he's going to come right by here. we just lived a block away from a major east-west street. i know when the coming by. if you go out there on sixth avenue you'll be able to see him and waved to him. so i went out there. there is no one else there because the road he was taken from i think lowry air force base to downtown denver was not published.

i'm the only one out there. and i saw the flashing lights, here comes the big limousine. i wait and wait and way. he went right by. he never saw a. he was reading something. it occurred to me reading this book that there were secret service agents in that car wondering hey, how does that guy know? [laughter] and who else knows? there's probably something in the file so what does is find out about that kid. your book, "the kennedy detail," is getting an awful lot of attention. one of the stories that's been talked about a lot is the moment when you, jerry, almost gunned down a brand-new president of the united states, lyndon johnson. you were at the white house, take it from there. what happened? >> i was at the white house. this was about to 15 in the morning after the assassination,

and we were all kennedy detail agents that were standing watch. and president kennedy, if he came outside, he would notify the security command post, and we will get the word around that the president was out moving. the vice president, before he became president, usually only have about two agents within. one would be inside, and maybe the other one out. and so he had no idea of the protocol. i hadn't slept in about 40 hours. i was hallucinating, and when i relieved the four to 12 shift agent, he was still just emotionally wrought from dallas. and so he pointed to his submachine gun that we had on post, and so we placed them all there. not knowing what it was a conspiracy or not.

we were pretty much on edge. what i heard a noise coming from around the house, and all of a sudden i had the weapon to my shoulder, my finger on the trigger, and i don't know if you notice it, but you can recognize lyndon johnson's profile. fortunately, i noticed that right away. but it was close. i had nightmares over that are a long time afterwards. >> those of you who have been here before know where we are, but, of course, the c-span viewers might not know. we are actually on the seventh floor of what used to be the texas school book depository building. the building is now owned by dallas county, is the dallas county administration building at the museum has exhibits on the sixth and seventh floor. we are in a separate area. it's a saturday afternoon. in today's 1147 years since

president kennedy was killed. right outside of these windows. jerry and lisa, where has this book been and what has it taken so long for the story, from you guys to come out? >> let me start with the motivation first. when i retired, i started looking on the internet and started reading stories about agents that we have served with that were accused of being part of a conspiracy. the driver turning around and shooting president kennedy. although, if you look closely, he would have had to have shot mrs. kennedy in the back of head in order to get to the president at that time. and just doors that were defaming the people -- just stories that were defaming the people. i read a story in tampa, i went back and looked at my records and i said it's time to set the

record straight. there are not many of us left, and we are all gray-haired and we won't be along -- around very long. so we wanted to leave a record. to find somebody, i must've written probably about seven books to tell the story. but to find somebody that could put the heart and soul to the book, lisa mccubbin who wasn't even born at the time of the assassination, joyce, my wife and i were friends with her parents. she graduated with my son from high school. so lisa in the course of this became an aging, and i think i will let her discuss her feelings as she put this together with me. >> do you want me to talk about that a little bit? >> assure. >> first of all, it's been an honor and privilege to have been involved in this project.

i feel extremely lucky that somehow the stars align and jerry and i have known each other for all these years, and it was the right time. and we came together to work on this project. and it has been just fascinating for me because i was born in january of 1964, and you know, in history class it seems like when you take u.s. history in your junior year of high school, you get to about world war ii and it's made and things are winding down, and i had never studied the kennedy assassination, you know, of course i knew of it but didn't know much about it. what i knew was when i used to go to the blaine house for christmas eve they always had a great christmas eve party down in the basement. they had these great photographs of jerry with lyndon johnson and eisenhower and kennedy. and i was always fascinated by that. but been 12 years old at the

time, or 16 years old, i didn't ever really feel comfortable about passion asking about it. so working on this book i feel like i got a rare window into history, like no one else has. >> was this your first book? i know you've been a journalist much of your professional life. >> yes, this is my first published book. >> as i went through the book i could tell where were leading me. and sometimes when you read books like that, it's kind of annoying, but with your book i was enjoying getting there. i knew what you were leading two, and emotional moment. and it was enjoyable to follow along without a trail wound around her how did you decide to write a book in the way you did? >> well, as jerry said, he spent many years putting stories together and had contacted a lot of the agents already. so i had a lot of material to work with in terms of all of their various stories.

and we came up with the idea together, how to put the story together. and to me, what was really fascinating and was important in this book was to show these men as human beings, not just these nameless, faceless man, dark sunglasses. to me, secret service agents were always very mysterious creatures. as i've gotten to know that i realize, i mean, they are human beings and the stories i read from the various ages, and as i started interviewing the agents, was just so poignant that to me it was important to make the reader understand who these men were and to love them, and to understand the close relationship they had with the kennedys so that you know, you know what's going to happen in the book to everybody knows what's going to happen, but you kind of want to know where, now you start caring about jerri blank and you want to know where's he going to be when this

happens? what kind of want to build that dropped into it. >> clint, you are somewhat reluctant to get involved. you've heard very few times over the years. more so than most of the other agents the. how did you get involved in this book? how to jerri talk into it because i don't jerry since 1959. he replaced in denver when i got sent to the white house. he called one day and asked me if i was willing to contribute to book you driving. he told you what is going to be about, and i was not enthusiastic at all. i was very apprehensive about it because i've been offered many chances to write about, contribute to books, they're on television, various things. and i just didn't want to do. so that he told me this book was going to be factual, no gossip, that information would be coming from the agents that were involved and material that they had. and then he said that i could check it for facts.

once he said that, then i agree to contribute. as long as i could check it before it was published, which i did, and i have read the book six times and i know what's in it. and it's factual, not fiction. >> you mention salacious material, and some of the kennedy legacy is the talk about his personal life. there's not a lot of that in your book. why is that? >> well, we in the secret service give the president and his family as much privacy as we can. when they get to the second floor of the white house, that's where they live. we stay out of there in less we have to go there or are requested to go there. what happened in the second floor, same thing goes when they are in residence away from the white house. we provide them with an environment which they can function safely, but they live their lives as they want to live them. we don't interfere, and we don't

talk about it. >> for several months on the assassination you continued with your assignment, which was jackie kennedy. at some point do people come up to you, like after that "life" magazine came out with friends from the zapruder film where they could see running up to the car, did they come up to you and said you're that guy? did that happen? >> rarely, because i try to make sure nobody knew who i was. but i stayed with mrs. kennedy for a full year after the assassination and tell november of 1964, and then i was returned to the white house. >> did that make it easier or harder to deal with what happened? the personal relationship with jackie. >> it made more difficult because i had to go through the grieving process with the family, which she and her children, christmas of 64 was an absolute horror because here we are with these two young children who just lost their father and a widow had just lost

her husband. and try to make it as a merry christmas as you can, but just impossible. >> did you to stay in touch after that? >> that was 1964, they threw a growing -- a going away party for him in new york which was living at the time. she had moved to new york and i live in a hotel room in new york. they wished me well. they thought i was going to be transferred to wyoming because they thought for sure they would never let me back on the white house detail. i haven't been with the kennedys. i saw her in 1968 at the funeral of senator robert kennedy, and i talked to a few times on the telephone because the intra- shiite inactivity surrounding their children. and that was the extent. >> all three of you i assume spoke with many of the current and former agents at the time about this project. how did those conversations go? what kind of responses did you get, especially from those who

would not speak or participate in this project? >> there were, i started off really by calling gerry blaine's wife, and gerry had passed on and he was our agent in charge. i talked with her, told her that i was thinking of doing that, the second person i touched base with was floyd. surprising probably too many of you, but we never discussed the assassination with each other. after the assassination occurred, there was no trauma counseling precocious an awful lot of work to do. so we were left to do the work. and our working life was 60 hours a month over time on average. i think i calculated it out. we made up $1.80 an hour, and we

just were constantly working. and you would work and the only way you could relax is take an hour or two after you got off and spend time relaxing or drowning down with the agency were working with. so we just somehow kind of swallowed our emotions. we got wrapped up in the new president, and we had no idea what impact it was going to have on us, the rest of our lives. they were to agents that i talk to, but they told me they did want to participate. and one was jack reed. and it great deal of empathy for jack because he was on the president's side of the automobile. and when he heard the first retort, he turned around and looked up from where the shot

came from. and clint, explained later, as his eyes scanned over he knows the president's hands go to his throat. and so clint took off immediately. and jack then turned around, you know, for all of his life you want to jump off the car at the follow-up car driver had pulled over and jack even attempted to make it. he had been run over by the car. but then there was a movie in hollywood has played a big impact on office. in the line of fire, they had clint eastwood's figure pasted in where jack reedy was on the carpet and a team of the money was a failed miserably at his job. that was the theme of the movie. you know, i'm speculating, but i think that's probably what impact of jack, and he just said

emotionally he couldn't participate. a second agent, don lauden, who was assigned to do the departure here in dallas, we were so stripped-down of agents on this trip, there will probably be another question, but dawn was a senior agent and you needed a senior agent to handle a departure. so he was left behind. you may have seen movies that some of the theorists say he was being told to stand down. don was just getting his turn to run by the car, and he knew he was going to have to stay there. but not being able to be with the president in dallas that day really impacted him spent one of the things that comes out very clearly in the book is the day-to-day routine of the

agents. endless hours, day in and day out at just standing and watching. how do you do a job like that? >> sometimes you're looking out into blackwater out there somewhere say jeez, what a waste for years going to college for? [laughter] but the rest of the time unit, our agents were pre-technology. we used hand signals with each other. we had no radio communication. we had three by five cards with photographs of people who have threatened the president, and on the back of the three by five card we had their biography and so forth. and we would memorize those pictures, and then people would always ask is why we wore sunglasses. because behind the sunglasses

your eyes can look right and left. and so if you see one of the individuals, and you bang on the side of the car and the other agents do that, and you do a quick turn over that way. they've got their eye on him. and if you feel a threat is there, then you notify the driver to move on. but that was our technology. >> is it okay for the general public to know that now? [laughter] >> we had a budget i think in 1963 of 4.5 million. i don't think we had that much, but we had probably 330 agents. there were 34 of us on the white house detail. there were two agents on the first lady, and three agents on the children. today, they had a budget probably conservative, 1.4 billion, and have somewhere in the neighborhood of about

3500 agents, and 7000 employees in the organization. so it's an altogether different game today, but the weaponry is much better, too. when you get sniper rifles back into head shots at a mile away, and some of the other technologies and larger groups use of suicide as a weapon, didn't you still have a serious problem. i'm positive the agents today at the same hard and so we do. -- the same heart and soul we do. >> the business is so much compensated now, that makes me wonder, did you have to show the manuscript to the secret service before it went to the publisher? >> why don't you take one -- >> no, they did have to receive approval at all from the secret service. however, gerry allowed me to

take a book and talk to the director, mark sullivan ,-com,-com ma about it. and he read the book and he called me up and he was very enthusiastic about the book. and he invited us to come to his office and have a luncheon with him last monday, which everybody did. and he indicated that he thought the content of the book should be read by every new agent in the service because it would help them understand exactly what had happened in the past, and they could use that information to what they're doing today. >> and i might add to that, clinton did notify the director sullivan while we were writing the book. he wanted to let him know that it was being done. and at first what did he say? spirit he said oh, no, not another book. [laughter] >> but then he said he found out that frankie was involved and he said, if clint hill is involved we don't have a problem with it.

we know it's going to be worthy of trust and confidence. >> can't get much better than that. >> gerry, after you left the service, you did mostly security work but you do for a while here in the dallas area. were you here when word first got out that there was going to be a museum about the kennedy assassination here in town? >> no, i worked for ibm for 27 years. i started -- i left in july of 1964, and i ended up working on law enforcement intelligence systems, and helped design the fbi national information center, the wallet system for the cia, and mobile terminal fingerprint scanners. my frustration, and i think one of the reasons i left was it almost seemed like a futile job unless we had the type of

equipment needed. so i worked quite a while on that, and so it may be called to the secret service because the fbi system could check for one of the people and we had no way of keeping track of where these potential threats -- threat cases were. and so they had a new data processing manager at the secret service, and so i said, well, why don't you just tie into the national information center and run the parties through, and if you get a hit, at least you'll know where they are. and he said, that would be an invasion of privacy. and after going to the assassination, i just couldn't take that. so i went into the security side of the ibm. and here in dallas i worked for argo international, as you already had to be up and runni

running. >> and clint, you stick with the service for a while. but then he retired and dealt with your personal situation. what's kept you busy since then? >> well, i tried a number of businesses, none of them worked, i was if at all of them. so i just kept busy with my family. that's about the only thing i've been able to do recently. but i did stay with the service. i was returned to the white house detail in 1964, and i was assigned to then president johnson. the first thing that happened was president johnson went to his ranch in stonewall texas. and i was down there and one day i was walking between the house and the security room, and president johnson saw me. he recognize me as having been on the kennedy detail. i had met him personally in new york.

he knew who i was and is to see someone he called, talk to the agent and charge and said he wanted it removed any to accommodate mommy to be assigned to the detail within because i had been with the kennedys. and he was sure i was a kennedy loyalist. so mr. youngblood went into talk to him, and after about 30 minutes he convinced him that i should stay. and so i stayed and eventually within three years i became the agent in charge of his protection. when he left office, he asked me if i would be willing to come down to his ranch and run his protective detail, and i told him i didn't think my career ladder should in at the river. [laughter] >> he accepted my denial going down there to take that job, and i went on to be the agent in

charge of vice president. and eventually went on to be the assistant director for our protection, and then i retired in 1975. >> in 1975, that was the interview on one of the earliest episodes, or earliest 60 minute programs and you've got a phone call at one point, and i know this is a detail in the book. this was a moment when you first talked on camera about the kennedy assassination. and people have remembered it ever since. of course, now it's on youtube everywhere. do people ask you a lot about that adherence? and what do you tell them about that no? >> they do asked me about it because it's one of those situations where i completely broke emotionally. 60 minutes actually did the

taping twice. the first time they take it everything went fine. when they got back to new york, apparently they didn't like the way they did because they didn't get into my emotions enough. and so mike wallace called me up and said hey, we had some technical problems with that we have to shoot it again. and so i met him for lunch at a hotel in washington. they shot it again, this time the questions were quite different than they were the first time, and he got right into it emotional baggage, and i broke on camera. many times people have asked me about that, if i have recovered. and yes, i can say i have. but actually i'm glad it happened the way it did because that was the first time i ever really let loose of any of that emotional baggage that i had stored inside me. >> and me. >> and you had another moment when you and your wife came back to transeventy.

>> in 1990, the ages have an organization called the association of former agents and u.s. secret service, held a conference in san antonio, and my wife and i decided to go to that. and i decided that ever since we're in the dallas area, i didn't tell anybody does, but that we're going to go to dallas and san antonio, and i was coming to dealey plaza. i had not been here since the assassination in 1963. so we came to dealey plaza and i spent some time walking houston, observing all the angles, looking at the trees can how much they had grown, what was different between 1963 and 1990, looking at the way the school book depository was situated in relation to the streets. came up into the sixth floor. you a just opened it as a museum at that time. looked out the window to see what the view was and realized how close it was.

it was a very easy shot, and i came away realizing that i did what i could that day, i couldn't have been any more. it was a sense of relief to me to know i've done everything i could have done. >> you heard three shots. three shots all came from the same location. >> evenly spaced? >> no. i didn't hear the second shot. all i heard was two shots. the first shot came from my right rear. and i was looking to the left in a grassy area on the left hand side of him straight. where i heard the shot, my vision took me to the strike -- right to that shot, and so do my eyes went across the president carpet i saw him grab his throat and he started to lurch to his left. didn't go too far but these are going to islam. i knew something was wrong. so i jumped off the car and started run to the presidential guard. trying to get, try to get up on

top to cover. because what we try to do is cover and evacuate. i was trying to get there to cover up so nobody could do any further damage to the president or to mrs. kennedy. about the time i got to the car, just before i got there the third shot i heard, and i fell because it hit the president just about the right here just here, blood and brain matter were spewing all over the place, including on me. about that time mrs. kennedy came out of her seat onto the trunk of the rear of the car. she was trying to retrieve something that had come off the president said and went to the right rear. i slipped a first time to get on the car because the driver accelerated the car. i got up on the car, helped her get back in her seat. when i did at the president felt over into her lap and i could see the upper right portion of his head, and partial about the size of my palm. looked like someone had taken a scoop and remove brain matter and donate around the car.

there were particles all over the car. his eyes were fixed. i was quite sure it was a fatal wound that i turn to follow car and gave him a thumbs down to nothing of it was a dire situation. the driver accelerated the car. were going towards timmins freeway. we got up alongside and just pass the lead car would have been driven by cheap crude. chief of the dallas police. we were screaming at him to get the hospital and he did that. he got in front of the car and let us to the nearest hospital which turned out to be parkland. >> from the book and from some of the interviews that i've seen, you are convinced that there were three shots, one hit the president, one hit governor connally, and a third shot hit and killed president kennedy. >> that's correct. >> now, you know that is contradicted by the warren commission. they concluded on the first shot

at the kennedy and comment. the second shot missed, struck on your biased and after shot killed him. >> i recognize that, but two of us believe the second shot hit governor colley. the other person who believe that was nelly, who was sitting beside him when he was a. i think i'm in pretty good company when believing the second shot hit the governor and the third shot was the fatal shot. >> i believe there were two mistakes in the warren commission made. that they did not call santini who was a driver of the follow car, r. emery roberts, a shift leader. because santini had to keep his eye constantly on the presidential limousine. and sam saw all three shots find their mark. and emery saw all three shots find a market unfortunately they were asked to testify.

>> laser, it must've been amazingly difficult keeping up with facts like these and trying to separate facts from some of the silly stories that are out there. how did you do it? >> a lot of long days. gerry and i talked about this a lot because i would read something or read reports, and i would say gerry, this contradicts what you are telling me, or what bank it is telling me. and i came to realize these were the guys that were there. and their memories are so vivid and so clear. and as i would talk to other agents, they would corroborate the stories. and i realized that this is the truth. and the other people that are writing these other reports and all these researchers that have studied this endlessly, they were there. bashing they were not there.

so you can take some of what is written, but what i believe is what these men have told me to be true. i promise that we would do a q&a, and i got a bunch of questions already. if you still need to fill out one of the cards, please do so. if you need something to write with, hold your hand and our people will come by. here's an interesting one. this is a tough one. this is for gerry. you are spending so much time promoting the book, so how is your golf game coming? [laughter] >> about the same it was before i started promoting it. that's all i can take. it's not that good. >> if you folks are 99% certain that there was no conspiracy, what might that 1% be? >> well, no, i would say 100%. i think any good investigator realizes that a conspiracy where

one or more people, or two or more people participate in a crime, that lasts probably 60 days at most. it's been 47 years, and there has been no evidence whatsoever of a conspiracy that has been proven. no proven facts. there is a lot of speculation, but didn't they just ignore the facts. i've gone through all the volumes of the warren commission and read through, and i have not found anything. i felt a real injustice was made when the house select committee on assassinations studied and investigated a number of the conspiracies. and they finally said, well, we can find no evidence of a conspiracy. however, we feel there was a conspiracy.

now, if that isn't a befuddling solution to a conference, i don't know what is. >> here's a question that we did here at the museum a lot. why wasn't the building, the book depository, why wasn't it secured? and which buildings pose a bigger threat arcs that really goes to the heart of how you guys did your job and the public perception. >> the agent that did the advance here, i think everybody on the detail that agrees that it would have been no better agent than winn. we go back, 11 experience agents leave and the two months prior to the assassination. and so we have to take all of our experienced agents and put them off in advance.

and toby had a good secret service school and walt was in miami, and then he went to san antonio. so we had all of our resources out. usually there were only about five agents with the president at any time, other than if they were another function we're going to. and then one of the agents, say the four to 12 agent, shift, would cover for the day shift agent. so you would probably have 10 there. but with five agents our job wasn't to go after assassination, assassins. our job was to cover the president and evacuate him from the area. and i've got to comment on clint's ability that day. the vehicle was going 11 miles an hour. there were 85 feet four clint to catch up with.

he then basically about 15 miles an hour to reach the presidential car and got there after the third shot hit. there was no way anybody could have done anything to save john that day. >> this question was just handed to me. it's part of one that has troubled me, as one who has questions about some of the events of that day. the question is written, where were the secret service people positioned in dealey plaza? not talking about a motorcade, where were the in the plaza? >> we had no agents in the plaza whatsoever. everybody said this was the ideal place, this isolated building. but you look at the county jail, court house across the way, the other buildings, there was nothing unusual about this area.

and, you know, there wasn't always air-conditioning at that time so all of the windows were open. and people were hanging out at them, and we didn't have the resources. transit, he did most of the advance himself, and dave grant came in to help them finish the last three days. so you have to rely on local law enforcement, and local law enforcement did not have the resources. i mean, we all knew that the moving platform which, by the way, the president rode with the top off by preference everywhere he went. it was only if it rained or if the wind was blowing and mrs. kennedy was accompanying without a hat. and that was the only time the top went on. so we knew that we had that isolation, or that problem of exposure. and even the night before president kennedy talked with

kenny o'donnell and mrs. kennedy, and she asked questions about protection. and he said, you know, it would be very easy to kill the president, just by taking a shot out of a window. but this is a democracy. we didn't have the resources. the resources, in fact, were the same that they have after the blair house shooting, and we had no threats whatsoever, or attends against president eisenhower. >> so that's one of the things that change as a result of dollars spent absolutely. >> presidents and don't ride in open cars. >> that's why. i had an opportunity at a luncheon to take a look at president obama's car. i hardly had the energy to open the door. [laughter] >> it's not obama's car. >> it's the car that is prepared

for the president of the united states who happens to be obama. [laughter] [applause] >> clint, you're going to add something? >> you mention this particular building, why was this building secure, with the windows open or close? we came down main street, all the windows were open on every window -- going down main street. people were on rooftops. which buildings should we have secured on main street or at the corner of houston and come. you're only going to that billy secured, how about the rest of them? so you just couldn't do it. >> is it to from the public perception is you guys check out windows. but in reality. you don't. just a way. >> at that time were unable to. today it's different. there are ways that they give major checks on various areas that have motorcade of course they don't ride in an open heart these are. >> let's see, actually question.

how well or not well at all the agencies work together and share information at that time? >> that's probably the answer right there. [laughter] >> we had pretty good cooperation. including the fbi. i will say anything bad about the bureau. they did the best job that they could. there was a lack of exchange of information sometimes, but for the most part that was good cooperation between the secret service, fbi, cia, whatever you want, nsa, all of it. we all were in this together and we all helped each other. >> the problem in this case, as best i understand, is oswald was not really on anybody's list. he had no history of violence. just because he didn't like john f. kennedy's policies, which he freely espouse, doesn't put

anybody on the list. >> the fbi talked with him because of his defection, but he really didn't have the kind of record that would cause them to notify the secret service. he might be a threat. >> one of the questions that comes up a lot is, was the limousine driving too slow? was there a minimum speed that you had to stay above ask is that some regulation that says you can't make a tight turn like the one off of houston onto elm street? are those all in the manual, in the guidebook? >> no. there are no guidelines like that. there was a difficult turn that they made out here, and i've heard comments of the witnesses that say the car stopped. and i think one of the big mistakes, if you watch the

zapruder film going at natural speed, you'll see how fast this happen. it happened less than six seconds. the first sound, which sounded different to build greater and roy kellerman in the front seat, bill wondered if he had had a blowout? so he tapped the pedal real quick to see if there was stability in the car. but if you watch the zapruder film you don't even see he is slowing down, of the car. >> it was difficult making the turn because it's greater than the 90-degree turn. when you go out or you'll notice houston turned onto elm street is a pre-sharp turn. and that's a pretty good-sized car. doesn't have a great turning radius. and so he had a slogan incredibly. so the motorcycle outlaws had a difficult time keeping their bikes upright as they made the turn. and when we get going he was

starting to get to 11, 12 mother which is what we were when we came down main street. they had to slow down even more, but that was generally what we were running spent and can be striver had not driven that route before. he arrived with myself on air force one. >> but he knew follow the car in front because he would know the root. >> that was his instruction. >> lisa, is this your first time at dealey plaza and what did you think the first time you did get your? >> no, the first time i came was in january of 2009, is that right? or was it this year. it was an issue. fisher fisher, 2010. we were in the middle of writing the book, and i say to gerry, i have never been to dallas. and i think i need to go. so gerry and his wife joyce and i came here, and it was really

invaluable. and i'm sure my comments were the same as every also gets you. you say wow, it's a lot smaller than i ever imagined it was. and then to go out to the museum on the sixth floor and just see, like a clint said, the shot and how easy was and how close everything was. now the trees are taller, quite a bit taller and more mature than they were in 1963. it just gave me a great perspective on just, how to describe the situation, and how to give the reader a feel for what it was like for those people who haven't been here, as i guess most readers haven't. so that they feel like they are seeing everything as the agent saw it. as has been mentioned this was their first time on this route, and they did know what buildings

were around the corporate only the advanced agents had been here and knew the lay of the land. >> i have a question here, it refers in a way to something that has bothered me. and if i could come if i could ask you gentlemen to speculate, one of the interesting stories is that within a minute after the shooting a dallas police officer, joe marshall smith, ran towards the parking lot, toward the grassy knoll and stockade this area. and he encountered a man and smith had his gun drawn, encountered a man who identified himself, that he was secret service. there were no secret service men on the ground. any idea who that person could have been? clearly he had some identification of the official to the officer. any idea what that could have been? >> i have no idea. >> going to have to keep

digging, art i? >> it wasn't a secret service agent. >> there were no agents in the area, other than on the motorcade. >> there was a story out, somebody passed a story that somebody had lost their identification. and so the secret service we issued in 64 new commission books. that is absolutely false. >> president kennedy's car was stripped down to the frame and rebuild and was, i guess, i assume bulletproof our leasable resistant. and it was used by president johnson. did he ever comment about having to write in that car? >> not to me. i wrote in the front seat when he was in the back so he made -- he never said anything to that to me.

>> how did you feel? >> it was a little emotional. like you say, and they had stripped it down and it was now armored. i can't recall exactly how, when the strength of the armor was that it was sufficient. that was the first armored car the secret service own. after the assassination, secret service -- the only one could find was the one being used by j. edgar hoover. [laughter] >> who happen to belong, which happened to be a car it had been used by al capone. [laughter] >> we got that car. it was really, could barely stop handgun. at least it had some resistance. >> as you prepare this book, and searched through your mind to come up with the information and the stories, has it been

helpful? was a painful to go through all this? >> well, painful from the aspect, i operated mainly on the internet. and i found out, i really wasn't touching on the items i wanted to. so i started using the telephone, and a five minute or one question would go to an hour 15 minute telephone conversati conversation. and all of a sudden i started detecting the emotions and the difficult thing was bringing the emotions out, people who carried that burden all the years. it was very, very deep inside. and i found out without the trauma counseling, everybody handled this differently, but actually had an impact on their

lives. >> what do you hope people take from this book? >> what i want is a balance to history. lisa ran into an article in "usa today" that said that the young between the ages of 18 and 29, 82% believe it was a conspiracy. and i realize that people don't like to think that a president can die at the whim of one individual, but there were some circumstances that came through. i think one of them, slowing the zapruder film down, because everybody create a history. but this is what i call a blame society, because people come up with a theory and then they blame the lousy right wing or that lousy left wing, or it was the blacks or the hispanics, or

cuba or russia, or organized crime. it's a sad tribute. you know, when you look at something like in chile where the miners were trapped, they didn't ask to hang the mine owner or bring a government agency in. they said let's bring these people out there. that's the way we used to operate. and i think when president kennedy was assassinated, it was the end of the age of innocence. >> you asked a question what we want to do with this book. first and foremost, what gerry just said is the most important point, but for me i just felt it was a heartbreaking and heartwarming story of people. they were a band of brothers, and they've all said to me that all of these guys, it was a very small group of men and they spent more time with each other

come with the kennedy family than they did with their own family. they ate together, they slept together, they played together, worked together. and they were a band of brothers. to me that was a very important point to get in the book. >> another question here, some folks are wondering if the book is going to be turned into a film that actually there is a tv special. >> yes. the discovery channel has filmed a documentary based on the book, and we actually filmed it here in dallas in june of this year. and it was a reunion of seven of the agent on the kennedy detail. and two of which are in the audience, toby chandler and walt cochran. and it was the first time these agents had ever come together and talk about this incident. so it's a very compelling film and i hope you all watch it.

it is airing december 2, 9 p.m. eastern spent it was originally scheduled for this monday night but is has been moved. >> i would love for there to be a filter i think the book cries out for a filter so there any film producers in the audience, come talk to us. >> end this note here may some things up quite well. this is from diana the rights, i am glad you are here. thank you. you did all you could. thank you very much. [applause] >> gerry and clint and lisa will be here for book signing. you are welcome to stop by. let's see, i have a note here. what are we supposed to say? thank is so much for them to the

sixth one is in and enjoying the program. >> for more information about the book visit kennedy detail dot com. speak we are here at the national press club with tranfiftetranfifteen, npr host and honorary chairwoman of the press clubs book and author not. she asked her what her new book "life with maxie." can you tell us what the book is about? >> maxie is a little long-haired chihuahua who came into our home seven and a half years ago when we had a big home with a big garden. and then we had to move to a condo. and it's all about life with maxie, and that move and the impact he has had on our lives. is such a special dog. >> what are some of the changes

that maxie have to become accustomed to? >> well, for one thing he wouldn't walk. he wouldn't walk on a leash. so i had to push him in this story before we left the house. he was king posher. you know, and i was the one getting all the exercise. but since we moved to the condo, he has finally learned to walk. he has become friendly. he used to nip at people. and it is about a stock in the world. i could have brought him here tonight and he would have gone up to everybody and allowed them to pet him. ..

♪ >> coming up next, booktv presents "after words" an hour-long program where we invite guest hosts to interview

authors. this week pulitzer prize winner john dower examines military talks in his new book, "cultures of war." the former mit professor explains the attack on pearl harbor, the bombing of hiroshima, the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of iraq, finding commonality in these major events at an institutional level. he discusses his findings with institute for policy studies sanho tree. ♪ >> host: professor dower, it's an honor to be here. i've an admirer of your work for two years now. your work is so sweeping and so impressing and i want to thank you for sitting down to be able to have this conversation. >> guest: thank you.

>> host: could you start by telling us how -- you're a historian of japan, both imperial and post-war japan. how is it that you came to write this book that links both pearl harbor, hiroshima, 9/11 and then the iraq war. what made you give those linkages. >> guest: i think it was that moment that all of us remember exactly where we were. it was 9/11. i happened to be at that time n invermont, in rural vermont. 9/11 occurred. i saw in a store in a little town. and then the newspapers came out, the local newspapers, and both newspapers had headlines saying infamy. day of infamy. and i work on japan. i've written on world war ii, pearl harbor, japan after the war. and, of course, infamy is the pearl harbor word. and suddenly everywhere the word

"infamy" was coming up. i think if you go back -- and i did at one time look at all the newspaper headlines that came out on september 11, september 12, september 13. i would say 12 or 13% use the word "infamy" or president roosevelt's famous phrase, a date which will live in infamy. they reduced the whole phrase and so there was the immediate association with japan, stab in the back. and because it was airplanes crashing into buildings, suddenly we started talking about kamize attacks and it had nothing to do with pearl harbor. and then you begin to get things like, we will never forget. there was a billboard outside of

chicago, for example. and on one side it had december 7. on the other side it had september 11. and in the middle, we will never forget. nobody needed a footnote to understand that, pearl harbor-9/11 we will always remember these dates, which is true and there is a great sense of revenge. we will pull together. and, of course, if you thought about it and what was very clear at the time, there were real similarities. the surprise, the shock, and the fact that when pearl harbor happened, president roosevelt was presiding over a very divided country, isolationists, people who felt we should do more in the war in europe. and when 9/11 occurred, president bush was just beginning an administration after an election that had really fractured the country and so the country pulled together

on both occasions. so this was this was the first thing where people were using japan and al-qaeda -- the poor japanese, you know, they had tried for so many decades since pearl harbor's, six decades, five decades since the end of the war to be our good friend and suddenly, voom, again, remember pearl harbor. what came on the heels of that infamy was what a colossal failure of intelligence on the part of the united states. so you had another level there where how could the americans have been caught? by surprise in this manner? and then you started getting other people coming in with different things, nonwestern country, non-christian culture, nonwhite peoples have attacked

us. and you began to get into the rhetoric of the clash of the civilizations once again. this is a great clash of civilizations. clash of cultures. and i found it interesting because you could see why it was that there were all sorts of problems and the problems got more complicated when suddenly 9/11 and its great symbol, the world trade center, became ground zero. now, i've written a lot on world war ii. i've worked on the war. and i come from the japanese side. but i've also worked on the atomic bombs, as you have, in great depth. and i've seen it from many perspectives. and to me, ground zero was a

world war ii term. and ground zero meant ground zero, hiroshima, and nagasaki and if you went back to the test of the first atomic bomb in new mexico in july 1945, for years thereafter there was a little wooden sign saying, ground zero. and we always used that word for -- ground zero meant hiroshima, nagasaki. suddenly it had been appropriated and almost expropriated for the world trade center. and the funny thing was i kept someone to say ground zero, weapons of mass destruction. historically, where has this word came from? of course, it came from world war ii and weapons of mass destruction, that terrify us,

come out of that experience. but no one made the connections. it was as if we had just taken it and there was no way of thinking about the original ground zero and then you begin to have the language of terror bombing. now, any historian of world war ii just routinely has used the word terror bombing for world war ii. and it occurs primarily in conjunction with the anglo american air war first in europe and then finally in japan that culminates in hiroshima, nagasaki. and it's a concept that we address in terms of psychological warfare. in modern war, you must destroy the morale of the enemy.

that's one of the weapons of war. you destroy the industry. you destroy the armies. you destroy the morale of the enemy. and it became standard operating procedure in world war ii, to deliberately target densely populated or urban areas. so we tend to think of hiroshima, nagasaki, if we think of them at all, in isolation. that was the culmination of a campaign that began against germany. and then was carried out by the americans in japan, that targeted over 60 japanese citizen before the atomic bombs. but that kind of thinking of terror bombing in terms of what we do in our modern wars, part of the culture of our modern wars. that did not get into the

discussions or the discourse. what you did instead was say, this bombing was done by nonstate actors and this made them different than the past. and if you go back to right after 9/11, i mean, it was a ghastly crime against humanity. but all of a sudden into the present day, you keep having people writing that shows us the barbaric nature of islamic culture of the koran and of the islamic fundamentalists. they do not respect human life as we do in our western tradition. this is a true clash of civilizations. and so there were so many issues coming up here for me, i've got to try to sort all this out.

why do you have the -- you know, the real similarities, the failures of intelligence? why do we have these faults analogies? why -- what can we make of ourselves as people in the modern world? and the way i had come to think of it over the years but was crystallized then was not in terms of clash of civilizations but in terms of or clash of cultures but that modern world itself is a culture. we're trapped in the coils of war. we're in wars and wars and wars and wars. the technology is getting more and more sophisticated and that's why the book i wanted to do was called "cultures of wars" 'cause i wanted to sort this out. it doesn't mean it's all relative. obviously, it's not all

relative. but there's a dynamic in the modern wars. and this threw me into it. and so i said, well, i'll do a little book after this after 9/11. and i had written about world war ii. i have written, and i avowed never to deal with war again because as you know, when we throw ourselves as researchers in this, it's nothing like what we have in time. but it's exhausting. it's so exhausting. and i didn't want to go on, but i did. >> host: no, this is wonderful. you talk about recovering memory which is what history is in many ways. and you point out in your book that the terror bombings actually began prior to the u.s. entry into world war ii. that the japanese bombs, chinese cities, germans bombing, and even the zeppelins in world war

i were a form of terror bombing and they were universally condemned as terror bombings but as the war progresses, the allies powers do precisely that. can you talk about the cultural shift that takes place? >> guest: many years ago, in the 1980s, i finished a book which was about the u.s. and japan, world war in the asia pacific. and i called it a war without mercy. i almost got into that book by accident. we often stumble into it by accident. i sat down to write a book about japan after world war ii and i started out -- i said i got to write a few paragraphs about, you know, the war and the prelude because it was wonderful that japan and america became friends and allies after the war. this was wonderful because it

was such a horrid war and then i said i better write a few paragraphs about the war and then paragraphs became a chapter and the chapter became a book. and i called it "war without mercy." one of the things that was stunning to me at the time was to go back into the response of the western world to the terror bombing, the targeting of civilians by the germans and the japanese in the late 1930s. and our most famous recollection of that in the west probably most burned into our minds is picasso's painting which was the bombing in spain of civilian -- which was the bombing in spain of a civilian community. the most famous photograph that convinced us that the japanese were barbaric and which is

reproduced in "cultures of war" which is a photo of a chinese babysitting in a bombed-out railway station in shanghai in 1937. and many people have called that the most powerful propaganda photo of asia. because that's what made the americans say they are barbaric unlike ourselves. and what was fascinating at the time for me as a young researcher was to go in and read the condemnation of german bombing and fascist bombing, and japanese bombing of civilians by the league of nations, by the united states president and state department. the u.s. wasn't in the league by winston churchill and the british government and it's very explicit.

directly targeting civilians is beyond the pale of civilization. this is barbaric behavior. and then a great sea change took place as america became involved in the war in europe first as the british began to regain an offensive against the germans and as the concepts of strategic warfare began to develop and as concepts of psychological warfare and total war began to be concretely expanded, it is not enough to just go in and target factories and military-related industry. it's not even efficient. it's very hard to hit those targets. so we've really got to do carpet bombing in these areas. but also psychologically this will destroy the morale of the enemy because the fighting force

knowing that the wife and children and family back home is being destroyed, will be demoralized. the people will withdraw their support from the government. and doing that will also boost the morale of our side. and so this became a standard ingrained part of the war in europe. and then the british led it. the americans participated in it, in europe. they were deliberately going after urban areas. those were the targets written. the urban areas of this city or that city. then they would rewrite them somewhat for public relations. we were attacking the railway city in city x or the shipyards and city y. but the reports were clearly urban targeting. then it moves to japan.

and the americans very early began alone in japan to target the cities. now, while this is going on, the americans were -- and this was something that comes up in this book. they are doing their experts in how to develop napalm and how to develop fire bombs and they begin doing these experiments in 1943. and 1944. and they do it particularly in the proving grounds in utah. and they bring in people to reconstruct the homes of ordinary german and ordinary japanese workers. and this is way before the news of baton and the -- this is way before -- this is beginning very early in the war because there's a momentum in this thinking. we have this capacity. and they bring in people to

recreate in the case of japan workers homes that are like the workers homes in japanese cities. and they actually go to the extent of bringing in tommy straw mats in hawaii. putting in cushions that people sit in, in the houses. recreating the storm doors and testing what it's like when the explosion takes place when they're open. what it's like when they're closed. trying to find wood that is as close as possible to the kind of cypress and all the fir trees that the japanese use. getting stucco that is as close as possible to the southwest as close as possible to japanese stucco. they are making workers homes, ordinary people's homes. this isn't collateral damage.

this is part of the deliberate targeting. there's been quite a bit of writing in europe about the air war in europe. none of this has anything to do with minimizing the atrocities of hitler or the holocaust. it's just the way war was conducted. and the numbers -- you can never get the numbers. but the best numbers for europe, 400 to 600 civilians were killed in the anglo american air raids. i did mostly from american documents, i did the same kind of calculations for japan. the 60-plus cities that are bombed before hiroshima, nagasaki, plus hiroshima, nagasaki, the numbers come out roughly the same. about 400 to 600,000 civilians were killed in the air war in

japan. so a total figure is about a million civilians were bombed in those two wars culminating in hiroshima, nagasaki. had i been living at the time, i have no reason to think i wouldn't have supported that. but when we suddenly learn the terror bombing or here the terror bombing is something peculiar to an alien culture, that it's those people who don't respect individuals; whereas, we do. that they have different standards, i think then that's where we have to really start asking deeper questions. >> host: and yet to take an 18-year-old, whether it's a u.s. or japanese or german or chinese and be able to turn that 18-year-old into someone who is capable of doing truly horrific things to complete strangers for

reasons of state is a very unnatural act. it takes a lot of conditioning. and so there's a lot of dehumanization going on both of the perpetrator as well as the victim. and i think it carries over into the way -- in order to do these things you have to dehumanize but if you dehumanize, you can't really get into the mindset of your adversaries. and if you can't get into their mindset, you can't understand what's motivating them and if you can't motivate them you can't get them to whatever it is to stop doing in the first place. so can you talk about that process of misunderestimation of the psychology of the adversary if i can quote president bush and the wars and how we deal with these mentality. >> guest: in the book i go under several concepts and this goes back to our failures of

intelligence. and i have a chapter called the failure of imagination. and this is where i go back to pearl harbor. and why did the americans' failure to anticipate the japanese attack? why did the americans' failure to anticipate the japanese military capabilities? you can turn that around, which i do and say why did the japanese fail to imagine the american response. they totally missed how the americans would respond as well as our capacity and will to remember pearl harbor and get revenge. that was one of the posters of revenge of pearl harbor. that was a standard phrase. and the same thing occurs in the case of al-qaeda and 9/11. and then it transfers -- and this is where my book, which was going to be a short book,

suddenly became a big book because i began trying to wrestle with these various different questions before the u.s. invasion of iraq. now, when the u.s. invasion of iraq took place, 18 months after 9/11, in march, 2003, we had another colossal failure of intelligence on the part of the united states. and a colossal failure of imagination on the part of the united states. so if you come back to the u.s. perspective, you say there was an incredible intelligence and imagination failure in 1941. there was another in 2001. and instead of that getting us to think about who is this adversary, to know the enemy, we

get into a more disastrous war in the case of iraq where the intelligence failure is simply colossal. and that involves an inability to imagine the other side. and it is not to sympathize with the other side. that's not the point. the point is to imagine the other side and one to imagine the nature of their grievances. and, of course, the argument after 9/11 and still pretty much is, they hate us for our freedoms. they have no legitimate grievances. the argument was, you know, the iraqis are under a brutal dictator, which they were. they will greet us as liberators totally overlooking the nature of that society and the fact that nobody likes to be invaded

and occupied, you know, totally missing those kinds of things. and the second thing was a failure of imagination. to imagine the capabilities of people we looked down upon because they were materially inferior and that's where racism and ethnocentrism comes in. we went into the war on terror and the war of iraq still thinking we could win with big war. and we could win with shock and awe. and, you know, shock and awe, which this is where all of the things started ricocheting in my mind and that was trying to publish it. but to write something -- to figure it out myself, shock and awe, is one of the key phrases comes iraq. in journalism, everywhere.

we will go in. we will so shock and awe them with our massive display of firepower, that they will cave psychological warfare. shock and awe is a doctrine that is kind of a bible in pentagon circles. it's a formal book and study. very well known. and the model is hiroshima, nagasaki. explicitly. not necessarily using nuclear weapons. but our superior firepower will so intimidate these other people, that they will give in. they will realize it's hopeless to fight against us. we're not able to imagine insurgency movements. we were not able to imagine people who were motivated not necessarily by islamist fundamentalism but by hatred of being occupied.

we were not able to imagine the way they viewed recent history. right or wrong, the way they remembered history is very important. and it just didn't enter into planning and thinking at the topmost levels and again, you get the way into people think the way they do and why -- people at the top fall into these patterns, these apparently rational people fall into patterns of thinking which are irrational and then i began to grasp with rationality and irrationality. the japanese in world war ii, the americans in, you know -- in the bush administration. they're smart people. why was it so irrational? and then you get into a concept

which fascinated me which is -- >> host: that's something i want at the end because that's one of the most important chapters in your book, it's short and it's beautiful and so rich. but again, we fall into this pattern of thinking that our bombs are virtuous bombs. our bullets are virtuous bullets. people won't mind if we accidentally bomb them or destroy their homes or their wedding parties or whatever and they'll forgive us and they have a way -- bombs have a way of uniting people under a common threat, to experience a common trauma as 9/11 was to the united states. to have bombs drop on your head in some other countries is also quite unifying in many ways. and just the psychology -- if i lose electricity from a thunderstorm in my building, i get furious. if i lose water pressure, i'm upset. i can't imagine what it's like to have bombs fall in the city and destroy your infrastructure and have to live through that for year after year. but we're going to cut away for a short break and we'll come back and we'll pick up on these themes.

>> "after words" with john dower and sanho tree continues. >> host: so when we think about the kind of tactics that were

used in iraq against the united states, the occupiers, we think of asymmetrical warfare as being a fairly modern phenomenon, ieds, terror tactics and terror bombings. can you talk a little bit about those parallels? >> guest: well, the more you dig into this, the more astonishing it was, the more to me at least. and the type of things we chose not to remember. and the extent to which we became involved in a kind of what i call in the book "faith-based secular thinking" in which we had our certain dogmatic ideas, which were almost religious ideas. they weren't religious but they were secular but war-making. the whole issue of

underestimating the enemy. we can take this way, way back in history and, in fact, you know, some of the people came up belatedly with their counterinsurgency ideas. they go back to ancient china, you know, to say, wait a minute, we forgot all about this. how we the person can be successful against the stronger person. one of the striking things that emerged even after 9/11 was that the americans -- the american government -- i must make a distinction here. it's very -- it's a mistake to say the americans and the japanese and the muslims and so on. one of the strikings things was there were many people in the u.s. government all along at lower levels who were saying this is crazy. first, we should be doing more against al-qaeda and then after 9/11, they were saying invading iraq is crazy.

and they're saying this in the cia. they're saying this in centcom. they're saying this in the defense college. they're saying this in the state department. but it's not reaching the topmost level of government. one of the ideas that they couldn't get through was the whole concepts of insurgency, counterinsurgency, what we refer to as the weapons of the week. what it is that will mobilize people to, in fact, fight and die for a cause not necessarily being religious. one of the major things is being occupied. which is exactly what americans would do if a foreign power attacked our cities and occasionally obliterated a wedding party. we would go, rightly so, we would become outraged. we would mobilize. we would mobilize and give our

lives to drive out this person who was occupying us. in the united states -- and this is now clear in the people who are doing counterinsurgency doctrine, and this is a questionable at her in itself, point out the fact that the united states was defeated in vietnam, essentially. and it was defeated by materially inferior forces. and those forces were driven in very, very great part nationalism and by effective tactics of opposition. after the vietnam war, the u.s. ceased to teach counterinsurgency in the military academies. it disappeared. the books were not rewritten. there are insurgencies going on

all over the world. we don't study it. vietnam, we got to put vietnam behind us. we will only fight big wars in the future. we're not going to get involved in that again. then we get the soviet union and afghanistan. i mean, what an example, this colossal power comes in with conventional military power, moves into afghanistan, causes enormous loss of life and destruction in afghanistan and is defeated. the soviet union collapses, you know, almost immediately thereafter. we don't bother to study how could these people -- i mean, ronald reagan calls them freedom fighters, you know, we're supplying them with weapons, but we don't study it and then we go in to afghanistan. the united states goes into iraq and there's no thinking about

any of this. why do these insurgencies come up? why are they successful? and it becomes -- it's just an amazing level of irrationality on our part and an amazing inability to put yourself in the position of the other side and understand why they are acting as they are. why they may regard you, not as a liberator but as an oppressor? the japanese made exactly the same mistake. they go into china, you know, in 1937. they go into china. the emperor calls in a general in 1937. he says how long is this war going to last? the general says we'll be finished in six months.

four years later, they go in and they say, we're going to attack the united states. and it's totally irrational, and they totally -- the japanese totally missed the element of nationalism on the part of the other side. they totally missed the way in which guerrilla movements and insurgency movements and the weak have weapons of their own that can be extraordinarily effective. and so there is a kind of -- and here, i think, what you get into is the concept of holy wars. every war is holy. a jihad is holy to the islamist terrorists and fundamentalists. the japanese word meant holy war. they were out to protect their country and to liberate asia.

americans, general macarthur at the end of world war says the holy war is end and george bush and others talk about our holy war against terrorism. and in holy wars, you get into a black and white world. we are innocent. you are evil. we are pure. japanese or the islamist -- we are pure, you are the corrupt. we are the innocent. you are the evil. we are the victims. you are the victimizer. and nobody is able to understand how complex all of this. i write in the book about the evil. i believe in the evil. i just don't think anyone has a real monopoly on it and i think it's a very powerful force. just mentally. >> host: you talk about kind of a religious faith, not religion but a faith-based ideology that

people believe in their conviction so strongly that it's almost like religion but this idea, you know, when we go to war in iraq, it's kind of the pinnacle of neoconservative nomination of american thought. and a lot of think tanks including a lot of liberal ones, not my own, but most think tanks in this city bought into this war as did most of congress and a lot of other people who -- many of whom may have been private dissenters but the group-think takes over. and i think one of the great tragedies if i were a staffer in the security council during the run-up in the war i could wake up and get my news from fox news. i could get my newspaper and read "washington times." i could drive to work and listen to right wing radios and when i get to work there's reports on neoconservative think tanks all but effective at constructing their etho-chamber

and it took over the narrative. and there are dissenters as you point out. could you talk about some of the patterns of dissent and how group-think takes over. >> guest: it's fascinating at me at two levels. because i have sent so many years doing research on japan -- the favorite phrase for japanese is, it's certainly in the war years was heard behavior. the obedient herd. that was probably the most popular phrase. and it's the old notion, you know, that the japanese -- there's no dissent. their homogenous. you've seen one, you've seen them all. there is no room for individualism. there is no room for dissent. whereas, and this is part of the clash of civilizations. whereas, we, particularly we

americans -- the japanese are unique in their groupieness and their backwardness at times. we are exceptional in our virtue. we're exceptional in our values and what is one of the keys to that is individualism. what is one of the keys to that principal dissent. what is one of the keys to this really rational give-and-take that you listen to various ideas and you rarely debate them. and if someone comes in and really disagrees with you and it's a principled disagreement and you listen to it and it didn't happen and the fact that it didn't happen at the highest levels of government is really interesting. we speak of the imperial presidency. as someone who worked on japan, i'm very familiar with a real

emperor system. we have all the records from 1941. we survived all the war, almost miraculously. all the meetings of the top leaders including meetings with the emperor. we have all of those and we don't have the same thing for the bush administration. and probably we really never will. but we can recreate from memoirs, from leaked documents, from a variety of sources in the bush administration. and i did a lot of comparison of just how the decision-making went. and i saw the japanese as certainly no -- very similar to the bush administration. in other words, a very rational men, they could give you many, many reasons why it was necessary and no dissenters

tolerated. and this is true in the u.s. government too. dissent is called lack of patriotism. dissent -- it's first you don't have the secret information we have. why aren't you going along at this moment of national crisis? to the point where dissent becomes near treason. near treason. you're not going along. and in japanese terms, it's les majesty. and in that kind of environment, lower level people were simply squashed out. what was fascinating to me was how many interesting -- you know, lots of people outside the government, academics, and that were writing, don't do this. i wrote an op-ed piece don't go into iraq. >> they were doing better stuff inside the government. cia and others were saying -- much the same arguments were there and they couldn't get to the top. and then what was shocking was the mainstream media in the u.s. just bought it hook, line and

sinker. >> host: and the simplicity of the argument that somehow we had these -- the magic beans of democracy. that we'll go in and remove the top of the -- the head of state, plant these beans and democracy will flourish not only in iraq but in the middle east and it will spread without the soil conditions, whether there's water or sunlight or air or whatever. that kind of lack of thinking through what happens after the initial kinetic operations which we usually succeed at. but when these wars drag out, the periods of months and then years, the group-think and the quagmire is almost inherent in that system. and yet when i compare it to the post-war planning or the occupation of japan, it was a completely different experience. i remembered walking in the archives and looking at the civil affairs documents. they are massive files starting as early as 1942 as you were

saying. they were thinking very thoughtfully how are we going to occupy japan? can you talk about the contrast? >> guest: one of the books i did before this, the other book that took away much -- way longer than i had dreamed it would take, was a book on japan immediately after the war. when the americans occupied the country. and so again because i'm watching what's going on in the u.s. and how history is being used, we're fascinated as historians by the uses of history and by the way memories, so-called memory is used. >> the bush administration and many people used pearl harbor and world war ii constantly as a proper analogy to the war in

iraq. it was an absolutely improper misleading analogy but then before the invasion of iraq, beginning around october 2002, so maybe five months or so before the actual invasion of iraq, the government, the bush administration began to throw lines like iraq will be like germany and japan after the war. that we can turn this horrendous authoritarian, brutal dictatorship into a peaceful prosperous ally to ourselves and model for the middle east. and that became another mantra. and it was a misuse of history. and i at that time, but let's of other people, the military was doing their own studies of occupations and occupied areas.

japan and germany were special cases. incidentally, not a single g.i. was killed in the occupation of germany or the occupation of japan by hostile germans or hostile japanese. not one. we look back on that now and it's just unbelievable. but we said at the time, look, people like myself but many of these people in the government, they did terrific work. they just couldn't be heard. japan -- iraq is not japan. and, in fact, what you see that made japan successful or germany but particularly japan -- japan was a great image because it was nonwestern, iraq can be like japan, it was nonwestern. everything that made the occupation a success in japan is absent in iraq. the occupation will not be legitimate.

there will be no existing government to take over. we're going to go in and decapitate the government. who's going to take over? what's going to -- who's going to take over? there was no real tradition of civil society to keep going. there were all sorts of things. in japan, everything carried on including the emperor. it was a formal surrender. the entire world saw that occupation, including japanese, as legitimate. it was formal. it was all missing in iraq with its sectarian schisms. its lack of a real democratic tradition comparable to what germany and japan had. it's lack of an ongoing administration. it was all missing in iraq. and that was clear before. but people use history as they wish to use history. you know, the old saying is the -- that the politician uses

history the way a drunk uses a lamppost for support and then illumination and this was also coming from a lot of people who were middle east and iraq experts. they were coming in -- they were saying, al-qaeda is, you know, an atrocious threat and al-qaeda has to be defeated. but what's that got to do with iraq? saddam hussein is a brutal dictator, but for this, this, this and this reason, you cannot go in and expect to have just a smooth takeover. and so when i look back thinking, you know, of all the things i've read about japan and other places, the people in the bush administration are saying, well, here's our war plan. here's plan a.

we're going to go in, topple iraq, and get out quickly. in quickly, out quickly, leave a small footprint and maybe the existing government will take over. there is no plan b. i've really read extensively and everything we can get, you know, there will never be a u.s. investigation of iraq the way there was after pearl harbor. we'll never get all of those documents. but i've read -- a lot of it has come out including people like douglas fife and others who have really pushed out a lot of documents. there was no plan b. it sounds like that general who said we'll get in and out of china in four years. i mean, the joke was plan a is to get in and out quickly. plan b is to hope plan a works. that's very close to what the records suggests. >> host: and yet at relatively high levels there were two very thoughtful individuals who knew

better and who saw a lot of these problems coming, you know, well in advance. and i'd like you to compare the two of them. one is yamamoto and the other is colin powell. >> guest: you're very astute. it's a big book. and i actually threw away one gigantic section in the book in which i compared japan's holy war with the islamic holy and antiwestern sentiment. i mean, it took about a year and a year and a half and i decided it was too much and i threw away paragraphs here and there. one was comparing the japanese policymakers and the american policymakers to show the diversity and the capabilities within each side. and the natural comparison which i then removed from the

book was colin powell and admiral yamoto the man who conceived and masterminded the attack. and the point is in both cases you have very, very small people. who on principal were opposed to the wars. admiral yamamoto said you're absolutely making a terrible mistake. he tells his superiors to go to war against the united states. you can't win. and yamamoto had been to the u.s. as a naval attache. he knew washington very well. he was an old pro and he went back to the russ-japanese war in 1904-1905. he was also a very innovative tactician. he says you're crazy to do this.

and, of course, others can speak to colin powell and others also had grave reservations. when the japanese said we're going to attack america, yamamoto says if you're going to do that i think we have to attack pearl harbor because the japanese really wanted to control southeast asia so they could prolong the war. quagmires produce quagmires. there's never an end to this. and yamamoto if you attack southeast asia there's the philippines and america in all likelihood will come into the war. we have to have a preemptive attack of pearl harbor so that we can delay the american fleet from coming over.

and i think if we can pull that off we can delay the american response for six months or a year. that will give us time to delay in southeast asia and i hope it will the americans and instead of pursuing a long war against us in asia they will cut a deal and leave us for some of the things we need for our national security. but he made it very clear that he thought it was a big mistake. once the war had been decided upon, and he could not control that decision, he would do his best to ensure success in that war. his great contribution incidentally was he was an aircraft carrier advocate. and most of the japanese navy were battleship admirals and it was yamamoto who saw it with air

power and the aircraft carriers and persuaded them this daring, incredibly bold attack on pearl harbor. now, of course, the americans said technically the japanese aren't capable of doing this. my impression of colin powell who has been such an great american hero in many ways -- i think he says this, he says this, well, i talked to the president. i told him my reservations once. >> guest: on one occasion and it was true i was not going to when and when your president says you can do something all you can do is salute. get into nationalism, love of the country and patriotisms and once the machines get going the people get on board. and then we get into the whole machinery of gearing up to war

which is both material and psychological. and at a certain point you're supposed to get on board and principled criticism is not acceptable. and i think that's another culture of war, you see? and unless we grasp these machineries of these pathologies, well, the coil of war will be with us forever. >> host: now, that's a depressing note -- we have 5 minutes to wrap this up and that's what i want to focus on is this intersection we have not only the group-think and the bureaucratic momentum the sheer size of the pentagon and the way we waged war, combined with the viciousness of our domestic politics now. we're in election season, the kind of smears and negative ads and attacks that go on back and forth makes it very difficult for legislators who are

concerned first and foremost in getting re-elected. in dealing with serious problems and the most serious problems are the ones that very often have counterintuitive solutions. that are difficult to communicate to the electorate. one of my favorite philosophers bart simpson runs for class president in one of the episodes and he begins by attacking his opponent in a speech and he says my opponent says there are no easy answers. well, i say he's not looking hard enough. and that in a nutshell is kind of the problem we have with domestic politics today. that they are playing to the lowest common denominator, the knee-jerk solutions are the ones the electorate will understand and that will get you the most votes and the counterintuitive discussion is you'll have common theories. is this new or is this -- has this always been around with us? and what lessons do you have for the future and our politicians today?

>> guest: i wrestled with this a lot. because the more -- i worked on the book from -- shortly after 9/11 and it just came out now. so it took quite a few years. and i really was trying to puzzle out a lot of this. when it came time to wrap it up, i was trying to find a way to say this is -- this is the path that can be taken. and i couldn't -- i couldn't find it because the concepts that kept coming back to me were words like pathologies. pathologies of an institutional nature, pathologies of a political nature or a dysfunction if you want a play on the word. that the difficulties -- the world is difficult to begin with, but the political, the institutional, the psychological, the ideological

constraints on really sitting down and working out rational policies even within the government, let alone than with other governments who are facing this, was so extraordinary that i came up with a sense we have to understand these things. and the hope is that's what we try to do. that we can try to get clarity on this. there are lots of things. lots of lessons in having made similar mistakes or witnessing the mistakes made by others. but somehow if you just step back, you say but this war. and you can say war is always with us but it's becoming more and more high tech. the weapons of mass destruction, we've been with them now there are entirely new levels. we have whole new levels of

threats in terms of information technology and the ways to bring societies down now in the digital age. and the basic passions -- i actually tried to understand -- and i did this a lot with the atomic bombs. why were the bombs dropped? and it drew me into many areas. the love of violence. there is a love of violence. there's a sense of beauty in violence. there is the drive to make a better and better weapon. you know, i worked -- i'm associated with mit, and i became sensitive to the concept of sweetness. scientific sweetness. technocratic sweetness because this is a phrase that the manhattan project people used, why did you make the bomb? well, we wanted to win the war but it was such a sweet -- this is their words not mine, problem.

why do you want to make a hydrogen bomb? when you've got an atomic bomb? because the problems are so fascinating and challenging. and then you get the machinery behind this and the machinery takes on the life of its own. and then the machinery becomes so complex that you get into your turf wars. and your individual prerogatives. and then you get the political pressure. you know, one of the reasons we dropped the bombs was because they believed it would end the war quickly. i wrestle with this. i believe that. i don't refute that argument. but that's not the only reason. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: there were many reasons we dropped the bomb and the other was politically. ....

>> coming up next, booktv presents "after words," an hour-long program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week u.s. presidential biographer nigel hamilton

discusses his new book "american caesars" about the 12 u.s. presidents since world war ii. the award-winning author of jfk, reckless youth, and the two volume biography bill clinton, examines each man's path to the white house and his particular strengths and weaknesses. he also takes a close look at the more challenging issues of each administration and the fashion in which the president tackled them. he speaks with fellow historian and author richard norton smith. >> host: nigel hamilton, author of "american caesars," you have spent a lifetime thinking about and practicing the art of biography. this book is among other things maybe a group biography of the last 12 american presidents. what do you think a biographer of those who subject? >> guest: i think the first thing as truth.

also, i think he or she, a degree of curiosity. i think fatal for the biographer to go into a project with a set opinion. i think a biographer needs to have an open mind, and clearly you need some driving interest and curiosity. but i think you've got to be willing to change your mind. if the facts and the documents will lead you to a different view of the character. and that happened several times in "american caesars." >> host: does a biographer also owe his subject, that's a word that has become in this town, i mean that a biographer is engaged in the almost godlike presumptuous act of re-creating life. and if you're going to explain

another human being, a character and his motivations, actions, presumably you need to try to step into issues, perhaps even inside his skin. is that something that you think is necessary? >> guest: i don't know that i was a necessary because it depends what kind of biography you intend to write. personally, i always come until now, avoid writing biographies about people i don't like because i think it's difficult to emphasize with them and you may end up jumping in passionate judging them unfairly or not able to put yourself in their shoes. but if you do have to write about people you don't necessarily care for him and in this book among the 12 president there were several i basically didn't like, i think you owe it to them, i don't know what empathy is the right word.

but you owe it to them to try and keep an open mind and at least intellectually be able to put, to project onto them. of course, a big challenge with "american caesars," ceda not necessarily domestically, but as caesars, as the most powerful men in the world and how do responded to that challenge. which never existed before the second world war. >> host: let's back up a bit. for those who don't know, tell us who was told he is an inspiration in terms of classical literature of this book. >> guest: he was a roman historian, at the time of hadrian, who was working in rome

in caesars archives, and you got this idea that he would like to write the lives of the greatest roman dictator, romancini's are from julius caesar on works. and he chose the first 12 from julius caesar through donation, many of them are fascinating. and some of them terrible tyrants, dictators. some of them great men like caesar augustus. and that book that he wrote became famous, since purnick began to has never been out of print. is basically our source material, not only for the lives of those great roman emperors, but for the characters, the personalities. because he, being in rome, he was able to do interviews with people who lived through some of the lives of those caesars, and by telling not only their public

lives by their private lives. he gave his unforgettable insight, this window onto the world of rome, and at the height of the roman empire. >> host: so he is often credited as some was the father of psychological character driven biography. in fact, he had a classical president. >> guest: that's true, but the big difference i think is he did something that has never been done since, as far as i know, as far as biographical history. and i know if my book is the first time. it's been tried since roman times, but he decided to write about those emperors, first in terms of how they became president -- caesar, how they operate as caesar, and only been to look at their private lives. so he separated the public from

the private ear canal, over the last few centuries we become more and more interested in the psychology of human beings. so certainly every biography i've written, "jfk" or clinton or field marshal bernard montgomery, whatever, i always tried to do an understanding of the character right from the very beginning, almost before he was born, and understanding of the context of the psychology of the parents. and when i was asked if i would like to write a new version of the american, the roman caesars, the 12 caesars, i looked back and i thought, i tried to analyze how he had structured his life. and i really like that template, that idea that you first look at the public life so that you can actually, clearly the political

challenges and the administrative challenges, the leadership challenges that those men faced in the time when there was caesar. and only then look at their private lives. so i wrote an initial chapter on harry truman and showed it to my editor. and he said this works marvelously. you first see them as the president. you first see them in the way he had to deal with the extraordinary responsibilities and how he dealt with it. and only then do you stop and look at him in terms of his personality. >> host: due to ineffective private reader a sense of life being lived, evolving, growing, reacting, and all of that pre-story if you will shaping the individual who comes into office. >> guest: it's an anti-psychological approach at

least in the early part of their lives. but the advantage as i say, if you're looking at the figure, if you're interested in the united states as an empire since world war ii when it abandoned isolationism, i think it serves to clarify the issues with which these great presidents had to deal trackback there's a statistic, that is jaw-dropping. early in the book i think i've got this right. in 1938 the united states was responsible for 14th overseas military installations. today that number exceeds 1000. how do we get from -- is that the story how it got from 14 to a thousand? >> guest: that is the story of the american empire. and the united states i think was like 17th in terms of the military ranking before world war ii. the army was desperately understaffed.

>> host: how much of that was whistled on disillusionment following world war i? world war i had been, slow the american people as a crusade. >> guest: the same in britain. john f. kennedy wrote his thesis that was made into a book, why england slept. he did want to know anymore about the armaments and the tragedy of world war i. but once the japanese attacked pearl harbor, the whole scenario changed, and what i found so fascinating looking back at fdr was the way that the united states geared itself up so incredibly quickly to fighting, not only a world war, but it world war on to vastly separated from its, the pacific and in europe. >> host: it's interesting because, first of all, would you

acknowledge that with the candidates for csr before fdr, teddy roosevelt, woodrow wilson? >> guest: certainly there were characters who were would be caesars, and often i think they were referred to as a caesar. but very quickly, that notion of the united states becoming a money cheat -- a monarchy or empire was only abandoned, it was only with world war ii that the united states for ever abandoned isolationism and the real reason is the atomic bomb. once the united states had developed the atomic weapon, people talk about disarmament. but before you could disarm and somebody else would have the bomb. so really out of necessity the

united states became not only a calmative, but the great democratic hegemony of the postwar. >> host: i'm wondering, you're a native brick. does that give you insight into the imperial mindset? and, in fact, was not one of the factors of the american century postwar the relative withdrawal of britain from that role? >> guest: absolutely. i don't think i could've written a book -- i certainly would not have the arrogance to undertake it because a lot of people said nigel, isn't this rather ambitious? i had written quite deeply about two american presidents, jfk and bill clinton. >> host: let's make sure our viewers know, you have written about young jfk, a book that service or a fair amount of controversy, and the two volume

biography of bill clinton, including the clinton presidency. and, of course, in your multivolume biography, field marshal bernard montgomery pew survey met up with dwight eisenhower. so you brought all that into this. >> guest: i felt i had sort of handle but as you say, the real advantage, i felt i had in relation to my colleagues in the united states who teach history, was that i've actually grown up in a decaying british empire. i was born in 1944. churchill was still dreaming of holding on to india. african colonies and so forth at one of those fascinating things about fdr in my chapter is the way that fdr basically tells churchill that it's a no go. >> host: you portray, obviously, you portray churchill

with all of his heroic qualities. as essentially a man looking over his shoulder. and fdr is someone with a more sure grasp of the future that has yet to unfold. >> guest: i think fdr was a real visionary, domestically but also globally. he's definitely the hero in this book. >> host: that bring something up because we have 12 figures and it's interesting that the first four, roosevelt, truman, eisenhower and kennedy, the great caesar's, in your view, and, of course, that raises the question, what happened post-kennedy to -- hasn't all been downhill? is it the nature of the empire, the imperial exercise itself? was in vietnam? was at the individual president,

coincidence, bad luck? what combined to trace this trajectory from fdr through the president? >> guest: the short answer, all of the above. but i do think the big turning point was lyndon johnson and his vietnam war. into since that's the most tragic chapter in the book. >> host: do you see johnson as a tragic figure? >> guest: absolutely because he was a man who raised himself in texas, who hadn't shown any particular enthusiasm for civil rights. but who then took up that mantle of civil rights, and basically rammed it down the throats of congress and certain southern politicians. and who knew that it might be fatal for the chances of democratic candidates in the future. and i should think he showed enormous courage in that sense.

and there is a wonderful moment which i hadn't come across before when, in 1964, when he was still unelected, he simply assumed, there was a moment when he dropped a letter of resignation to say that he would not stand for the presidency at the national convention. and people were so worried about senator goldwater and the republican right that he was almost pressed into service. >> host: do you think that's what he had in mind? >> guest: i think he may have had in mind, but i think it's interesting, and the weight if he had stood beside he would have to be in this book as the fifth great president because what he achieved with civil rights really was extraordinary. and he inherited kennedy's

involvement. it was a war at that stage, and i think in many ways, although a great man, johnson, was not equipped to be a caesar. he had traveled somewhat around the world as vice president, but essentially his realm was the united states. israel realm was texas. anti--- [inaudible] >> guest: exactly. i don't think he had the confidence in the same way as jfk, even though he was such a young man. i don't think at the confidence to overrule his advisers and to say, well cold water may still be pushing, but we won the election and we are not going to war there. like i said. >> host: we all have sort of a

set of criteria for the ideal president, presumably we all want our president to have a sense of history and perspective that that brings. is it also possible to become prisoners of history? clearly lyndon johnson generation was branded by munich. and the munich analogy kept surfacing, appropriate or otherwise. and in johnson's case, he also was halted by the fact that the right wing had exploited china's going communism in 1949. he recognized that inside the civil rights bill he was probably signing away the south. you just wonder whether all of this came together to influence in any way contacting viacom. >> guest: i disagree with my fellow historians who tend to agree in movement and patterns that can't be changed.

i think a good example of rejecting this notion that you are imprisoned in, say, the history of munich, the appeasement of dictators, is the way that president eisenhower the third great caesar in my view, the way that he dealt with the suez crisis in 1956. because the british, french and israelis went in to take back the suez canal. and they assume the united states, even though the most powerful country in the world, would simply stand back and say, not egypt, and allow to happen. and eisenhower did not. he's the president of the united states and he is the commander-in-chief of the american armed forces. and he said no, he basically bankrupted the british by saying we are not going to support the pound sterling.

the president is an extraordinary way to change history if he or she one day time was an act of some political risk on his part. >> guest: and courage. looking across these 12 lines, one of the common themes for those presidents is definitely courage. you, i have seen a theme that runs throughout this period of these lives, being essential to leadership, under all circumstances.

what do you learn collectively from these lives? >> guest: the first thing you learn is the first two years in >> host: that will probably come contrary to the incumbent. >> guest: exactly. if you think of the difficulties, almost every one of these presidents had, what you're talking about reagan in the first two years in office, there's this huge learning curve. and in that sense you think surely there has to be a better political system that trains people in advance for this. but i don't know that there is. i was interested when i was writing about bill clinton in my multivolume book, that bill clinton i'm sure is the cleverest, intellectually, the smartest, the highest iq of any president who has ever occupied the white house.

he just has an extraordinary able mind. but in the way he was the worst president in terms of the caesars come in terms of taking over the reins of power once he reached washington. he was obsessed with the public approval. you could psychologizing back, but the fact was he -- >> host: winning an election was not enough? >> guest: you have to have a terrific chief of staff. i spent years as a military historian recording world war ii from marshal bernard montgomery's perspective and a new monte. eyed him extremely well as a student and monty would always say you've got to have a good chief of staff and the work into the bone, and he goes now with all the work you toss them out and you take one. you say that because to

president -- the situation arises in the ford white house where ford initially had the focus at the which clearly does presidency and as you write to his detriment. >> guest: and clinton. it's like let's hope that future presidents will read this book and at least learn some of the lessons. because they are so obvious. it's not as though, yes, it's always going to be a learning curve but there's some things to be a good administrating -- administrative chief once you enter the white house is and looking at these past

f the white house, let alone the country function, are often overlooked. >> guest: one of my changes of mind as a biographical historian was ronald reagan in this book. because i had been brought up in the united kingdom where i was there when reagan was president. reagan was considered by my colleagues to be almost a joke. they did nobody much about him as a governor in california. nobody had any idea that his political convictions went so deep and so far back into his

career. and i ended up having, didn't always agree with him, but i ended up having enormous admiration, first of all, for the depth of his assurance that communism could be confronted from an economic point of view, and that the soviet union could finally be brought down by economic competition. but the other thing i admire him for was his temperament. we haven't talked about that but i think one of the themes that run through the book is that certain presidents did have the right kind of temperament to be a cesar. >> host: let me ask you because on the surface, if we're just talking about self-confidence, conviction, whatever you want to call, jimmy carter had no lack of

self-confidence. ronald reagan had no act -- lack of self assurance, but two very different president. >> guest: right. i don't think self-confidence is the right, necessarily, the right requirement. no, i'm talking about temperament. such as jfk showed. the ability to distance herself on, stand back and looking at the way jfk handled the cuban missile crisis, to listen to the advice you're getting from your cabinet and your national security advisor. but to be able to filter that through your own mind, an independent mind, and to remember you are elected by the people of the united states, not by these people around a table. and ul your loyalty to them -- you all your loyalty to them.

i think that is how to import and i'm not sure if jimmy carter had all that. he had his absolute sincerity and the visionary quality. i mean, that he saw the challenges. it wasn't a lack of patriotism or the police and the national interest. on the cadre, he believed that so deeply. but the problem was he believed so deeply that he wasn't listening to the other people. >> host: but you called him a big army on, he helped our relationship established relationship with the soviet union, akin to our relationship with great britain. >> guest: he would come out with these remarkably naïve notions, which in a way were very christian, very charitable. they lack a certain realism, if you could ever of the united states. i keep saying empire because

americans heard do not, like to consider themselves as an empire. we got rid of the british, they don't want to go back there. but abroad, that is exactly how the united states is seen. if anybody travels outside the united states, they very quickly become aware of that. and as you said earlier on, the number of military bases, well over a thousand, means the united states is operating at a military level that has never existed in the history of humanity. not even the romans were as powerful. so, you know, it's a huge challenge. >> host: it's interesting. there's some interesting things in this book. i think it's fair to say it's a revisionist history in a number of respects. for example, one of the threads that runs throughout the story

of the last 70 years is america and the movies, and particularly our relationship with israel. and you don't most of the admirers would point to camp david accord that is perhaps the highlight of the carter presidency. you present that in a very different light. >> guest: yes, i presented in jimmy carter's retrospective life, like. he came to think at the time he was very proud of it, after all, he brought these sworn enemies from egypt together. but over the years he felt that he got the poor end of the stick, that the israelis had really run rings around him and that the israelis really got everything they wanted. and peace which is what he really wanted in the middle east

would probably not happen, certainly not in his administration or even after that. and i know certainly most of my jewish friends and colleagues think rather badly of jimmy carter for the. and i'm sad about that because a survey not anti-semitic. he's a brave man who constantly goes over there and he is truly interested. i think i coordinating -- i've quoted an aide who said the mahatma ghandi. >> host: in some ways he's a better former president then perhaps he was a president aspect i think he would quarrel with that actually. yes, i great man but not a great cesar. it's off the path but a racist in effect a question as someone who is the bottom of the

ex-presidency. it may very well be the largest part of carter's legacy is to redefine this nebulous often. with pluses and minuses. if you look at bill clinton's center, it is as ambitious in its outreach in their humanitarian efforts. but correct me if i'm wrong was not an operational diplomatic element to what bill clinton toward jimmy carter, who they was operating as a kind of freelance or. >> guest: exactly. and it can be very embarrassing to the incumbent president if he feels he is being overshadowed by the former president is, it happened when richard nixon, during president ford's time to china. >> host: a week before the new

hampshire primaries. >> guest: port gerald ford had a reason to do well, i gave is meant a pardon, which is almost the same piece of that chapter. i think that was a terrible mistake. >> host: so you are not, i think it's probably safe to say, in the interest of full disclosure, president ford, that was one of the libraries iran. we had a personal relationship. i think it's safe to say, he lived long enough to have the satisfaction of knowing that most americans had come to the point of view that what he did was necessary and, indeed, an act of political courage. the kennedy library gave him the profile, courage of or. but i take it you question that consensus among you still think it was a mistake. >> guest: yes, i think it's a terrible mistake.

i think richard nixon was one of the most dangerous presidents we have ever had. i think he was truly close to being a madman. >> host: you can. both johnson and nixon to caligula, which is -- >> guest: johnson, in terms of his private life, i mean, we haven't mentioned that but each of these presidents has a private life for a love life, and they are often at complete odds with the public figure and you have to ask yourself, well, is the private life actually impact. >> host: it raises that question. clearly john kennedy behaved recklessly in his private life, missile crisis it was the opposite of reckless. so what is the connection?

>> guest: if i was a psychologist or sociologist, i might try and draw some statistical inference, but i don't think, i think the fact is all these users were individua individuals. you need a hell of a lot of individual and ambition to get to the white house. and their extraordinary characters. and going to extraordinary tension just to get to the white house, let alone the responsibilities they carried. and how they managed their private lives differs from one to the other. i mean, harry truman is the perfect example of devoted husband and i love that story that when he is in berlin, he is about to drop the atomic bomb or decide to drop the atomic bomb, he is put in a villa by the russians and this young american officer, infantry, mr. president

is anything unique, i can get you anything, anything you would like. women and consist of them, son, don't ever mention that again. i made my sweetheart. i am devoted. we are loyal to each other. don't ever speak about that again. he was a truly honorable husband. >> host: that tells us something important about harry truman. but is the risk, particularly in a monoculture, sort of celebrity we spend too much time on private lives? >> guest: there's a risk that we do, but i'm afraid it's a lost cause. try and stop the media, i'm sure it excludes event of course. but tried to tell the media not to concentrate on the personality and the private life and particularly the scandals are i tried to be -- set the

pattern for doing this. and i've tried to be truthful about the private lives. and i try to be a judgmental about those private lives, but they are in succession pretty extraordinary. the one that most fascinating actually was the gloomy gus, richard nixon, when he was a young man. >> host: was he the hardest to know of these 12 figures? >> guest: i think so because he was quite a brilliant man, but he was so dark and heavy different side to him. i mean, he was part liberal and part conservative, right wing conservative. we now know from his psychiatrist, we have the nose of his psychiatrist, who said, i think i quote him saying he was

an enigma to himself and he was an enigma to me. and he was the psychologist. even nixon's first girlfriend he pursued for five years. mind you, she was a democrat. . so complex that no one will ever complete. and nixon said now we're getting somewhere. which goes to your point. >> guest: himself, yesterday he would look apparently to the psychiatry, you look into the mirror and at one point he was suffering from depression. i think you as vice president, looked in the near, and he said

the most remarkable thing about presidency, is not how it ended but that it happened at all. >> guest: oh, yeah. as i see in the book on that first to say. i think robert wrote a wonderful book, basically i think he was guilty of high treason and sabotaging johnson's peace negotiations. >> host: given his personality, he set himself of an introvert and extrovert. there's of those who regard him as a closet intellectual, it wasn't cool in his circle for that to be known. but he was not unnatural in the democratic, the doorknocking process. and yet he reached the top of the greasy poll. >> guest: but, you know, the secret to that, that he studied

acting at college. he was recognized as a great shakespearean, a potential great shakes bring actor. and you see that when you see the archives of the film of his extraordinary, like the checkers speech, and those ballots when he goes before the camera and talks about the silent majority, and talks about his people, his crowd, the people -- >> host: was at that in some ways a takeoff on fdr's version of the site majority? was being exploited, not listened to, punished? >> guest: but in fdr's case it was ideally.

there was a man born who could see beyond his own circle, and see the truth, populist of the united states. but in richard nixon's case, i think it was actually, some of that was really genuine, that he came from this -- when you go to his little house at the nixon library. >> host: a combination of idealism and resentment. >> guest: resentment is very important there. he grew up poor for a very early age. his brother dying of tuberculosis. and father with his terrible temper and fearful of the father. and so determined to do well in school. he used to carry his schools wrapped in a paper bag so they wouldn't get dirty. and going barefoot to the school. i mean, i think what would

happen in those great moments of crises when he was accused of corruption, and it looked as the president eisenhower would drop him as nominee, in 1952, that it looked as though nixon would have to retire or resign from the vice presidential nominati nomination. and he goes in front of the public and gives the checkers speech. but i think that's the moment when he reaches back into himself. it's not just resentment. it's that moment where he puts away his political ambitions and all that. >> host: it is moving but at

the checkers be, it is watching, and nixon ostensibly praising general eisenhower and going after adlai stevenson and calling on everyone to release -- ike breaks his pencil. he knows exactly -- ike, the instinctive politician who's been a lot -- lifetime, knew exactly what was being done to him. an amazing moment. >> guest: that is his brilliance, his genius really, nixon's, that he could turn that kind of potential defeat into potential entry by being able to see other people's weakness. >> host: would you buy the notion that nixon was in effect the last real president? >> guest: to some extent yes, i would. he did believe in health care reform.

major public and issued its. deal. specifically social security. politician and accommodating himself to the prevailing consensus? >> guest: richard, i would say it goes deeper than that. again, what moved me, nixon's absolute adulation of his mother, a very religious woman. and she never be the children but they were terrified of her calling them out for doing something simple or whatever. and i think, again, he would

reach into himself for a notion of responsibility for society, for the less well off. his mother was a true christian in that respect. and so yes, i don't think it was -- >> host: today would he be a man without a party? yes. he would sit -- fit into the current republican party. it think very few of these republican presidents would. you see almost in every case they are fighting tea party style elements with inside. >> host: that's an interesting observation because i wonder if that is applicable on both sides of the aisle, that fdr had to put up with you belong and others on the left.

people thought he wasn't decisive enough. this was an opportunity not just to save capitalism but in some ways at least the structure if truman talk about professional liberals. john kennedy had criticism from the left. but is it fair to say that all of these presidents -- >> guest: forced into the middle. they basically, they are at the extremes on the left and right the right, and in the end they are forced into that in the middle. and what was so interesting to me, if you exclude to a large extent the domestic policy side, you see the miracle of how they managed to deal with that domestic policy side, as best they can. reserves they need and the insights they need to recognize a more global perspective in terms of both american interests and global, global peace.

>> host: is safe to say that reality intrudes and ideology receives? >> guest: definitely. i think a lot of them have to take a very deep breath and basically forget politics, or at least ideological foreign politics. and look at the reality of the situation. >> host: it's interesting that john kennedy is the fourth of your great caesar's. i'm wondering, my sense is nixon said it would take 50 years before people could write objectively about it. and the irony is i was thinking 50 years in kennedy's case that the what followed the assassination and shirt that the pendulum would swing to the other extreme, and only now in some ways the kennedy presidency, for a long time, he didn't get much legislation

passed, style, there is a tendency to minimize. but, in fact, if you look at the two overriding issues of the age, the cold war and civil rights, he demonstrably, he used that favorite term, grew in office. and, in fact, before his death, and braced the politically difficult position on both. >> guest: just as eyes and dashing eisenhower had adopted a more progressive position on the civil rights in the previous administration. >> host: as opposed to enforcing a court order, had he, graduate who understood the that southerners would be as they could, in fact, be educated of time to a new racial order. >> guest: you put your finger on when you use the word time,

in a short order our long-term. because a lot of these presidents, if you put them together in a room, will have very similar approach, this is very similar visions in patriotic terms, in terms of social responsibility. they would differ in terms of when can this happen, when is the great american public willing to accept this. in eisenhower's case, oddly he felt had had had been -- obviously he felt his hand had been forced. he embraced the moment, and he said the troops down to arkansas, and i think that is a really sad moment in american history. and the same with john f. kennedy. he was concerned that he would get, he should get a second term

in office. so he was constantly trying to put things off to his second term. martin luther king and many other people were not willing to wait for the. courage in accepting that come in facing up to that. >> host: jfk is seen as the first television present, the massey contributed to his legendary but it was the pictures, not on the front page of the times but on television, like, which in effect to some degree forces his hand. >> guest: it definitely change history. and that's true all these president. i mean, i eisenhower had to accept that he had been training. i think he got training from --

>> host: robert marconi was his coach. >> guest: they recognize, the because richard nixon in the numbers. that's not really possible for a president today, is that? >> guest: no. the diffusion of communication means that you don't have that a bunch of competing voices. ceremony, they are twittering and the internet is commenting. >> guest: i think we'll see different kinds of american

visions in the future. >> host: that is what we want to go. first of all what are the lessons of this book for barack obama? as you know we are taking this on the eve of midterm elections, so part of the conventional narrative is there's a considerable amount of disillusionment on the left with this president who really makes only a cameo appearance in his predecessors. he fit at this point in your narrative? >> guest: the obvious parallel is with bill clinton in 94, he was stunned when he lost both houses, not just one house, but both houses of congress, chambers of commerce. and it's remarkable. i think, when bill clinton after losing, bill clinton's image, talk about photojournalism. his image was morphed onto candidates during the midterm election.

>> host: why was that so polarizing? >> guest: for a number of reasons. because now today one talks about possible racism involved in the polarity, but in bill clinton's case you couldn't say it was because he was white. i think those definitely the counterculture thing which newt gingrich played very successfully, the idea that these people have had a too soft or they had avoided service in -- service and get not at all possible court or some of that. i think a lot of it was just like housing order, the first two terms are learning expenses. and he made a terrible mistake taking an old kindergarten friend as his chief of staff. he wanted somebody to trust. to be honest he had quite a lot of secrets, in terms of his private life so he wanted a chief of staff that would respect that. and it was a terrible mistake

because he has a brilliant mind, but it's not a good administrative mind. he needs somebody, just like eisenhower during world war ii, general smith, who used to say? you had to have someone. i think bill clinton is a wonderful, how a president can lose a midterm election, and yet as once they set of bill clinton, once he got to his funk, see that he is not a member of congress. he is in this unique role as president of the united states, commander and chief, and the whole world looks at him. it's not just the electorate who are electing senators, the whole world, especially the democratic world looks to him for global leadership. and if you think of bill clinton, the way he actually brought peace to bosnia, but

even in domestic terms how he dealt with the oklahoma city bombing, the fact that they were terrorists coming from within the united states, was only those people after. >> host: the idea was made, clinton brilliantly through triangulation stole a lot of republican, he basically co-opted the center. welfare reform while balancing a budget. does the option exists for this president in this incredibly polarized ideologically driven medical climate? even if you were so inclined. >> guest: i don't know. i don't know that i would have i guess. >> host: is it harder? >> guest: i think, i respect president obama, not only for his intellect. i think he does have a great temperament. he has a mix of fdr and jfk.

you know, jfk was quite a sold out cold meant anyway. >> host: given the tumultuous events of the last few years. transit you can, but the focus has been on the candidates for the midterm election. and i think once that's over and people see just how difficult the problems of money and foreclosure, and they see congress wrestling with that, whether it's under new supervision or not, the stature of the president will be seen as something, somewhat, some one side or connecting president obama's calls are not really bad. they are higher than president reagan's. so i have great confidence in

his ability to lead this country and be a 13th. >> host: unlucky number. what do you think the impact, not on american politics. >> guest: i'm not sure what to say on the air. i think my father was editor in chief of the london times, and rupert murdoch rescued the tim times, and thanks to the trade unions in great britain, so innocents did a great service, but then proved to be i think a really awful newspaper. and i think the way he has operated out of his committee patients empire. i suppose you could call him --

has had really terrible effects, particularly inflaming parties. that i think is a man of no deep social responsibility, and i think to use somebody like roger ailes who was a colleague of lee atwater, the master of dirty cracks, that kind of approach to the election here, is a very, very sad commentary. but, you know, i still feel very optimistic. you only have to travel abroad, was at winston churchill who said there's not much that's better when you travel abroad and you see other countries having to deal with high unemployment. and with a great deal less