[laughter] you will not fly in a private jet most likely. [laughter] >> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. up next, marine captain thomas daly talks about his experience in the first 6 months of the serge in iraq. he presents his book at barnes & noble in washington, d.c.. this is just over 30 minutes. >> i've got a couple things i want to go over with you guys. first of ail, thank you for coming. i know you take times out of your days and schedules to come here and listen to one marine's speech, so i really do appreciate it. before we begin, i'll give you an idea of the actual agenda i'm talking about. the specific topics.

i'll give you an idea of what a rage company? what is the book about? where does it take place? what's the situation? i'll give you a piece about the author, about myself, tell you about the city of the capitol of the province in iraq. the book is separated into different books. there's the first half and second half. once we're into it, you'll understand what i'm talking about. it'll drive us into why i wrote the book. i'll go into the importance of rage company, and we'll do a questions and answers and a book signing after that. okay. it's an bar province in 2006 and 2007. we're sent into iraq and spread across through cities. this was kind of necessitated by an intelligence assessment that said anbar providence was not

winnable. he said success was unlikely. however, within the city from november to march of 2007, the city went from averaging 31 attacks a day to less than one. that's a pretty significant change, and the rage company tells you about what happened. why that is, why it occurred, and give you the idea of how that ties into triable warfare at its core. i'll give you some information about myself. my father was a career marine for 20 years. i was a military brat going to military basis. i never spent more than three years in one place. i went into the marine corp. from college. my clear progression was an artillery officer. my first two years were training. after spending about six months in the fleet, i picked up with the 15th explore unit.

i was a ford observer which is typically the role of coordinating artillery, close air support, heavy machine guns, but when we deployed to iraq, i had a good conversation about my company commander what it was he wanted me to do. in the urban environment in cities, you're not dropping a lot of artillery. you're not doing close air support. what was it that this officer was actually going to do for the infantry company was kind of a question up in the air. typically what happens is artillery officers become civil affairs, public affairs, kind of handing out pamphlets, interacting with the local population. i didn't really want to do that. i wanted to do something more meaningful, and so infantry company level doesn't have an intelligence officer, and so an infantry company is about 200 marines. for 200 marines, there is nobody that is designated to handle

intelligence. that occurs at the battalion level of 800 marines. we decided that we were going to create my little ford observer team into an intelligence section. as you go through the book, that really paid off. it made a huge difference. it's the piece that, you know, you think about police work and counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare, but for every four police officers, there's two detectives. you sift through the information. within the military, you don't have that. there's 9 guys for 800. that creates a problem for the december seminated nation of information and things of that nature. enough about myself and my background. the city of ramadi. it's a city in anbar province. it's condensed.

houses are small, a retaining wall and courtyard wall, two to four feet high, it's a very interesting dynamic. you'll see from chapter i from the on set seven minutes into the first control, there's a marine shot through the throat. just getting that marine back to the a combat outpost which literally they walked 7 minutes away from, 300 meters was tough, but it's because in the urban environment within iraq, it's a very con depositioned fight. it's -- condensed fight. it's block to block. it's fighting from fortress to fortress. the inso -- insurgents in the urban area, it was sunni. they were not that strong. it was saddamist insurgents.

it was a foreigner just as much as we were. when they came into the local populist and interacted with them, they were seen as outsiders. that precipitated this when rage company as our call sign says actually entered the city, we were in a population that was at odds with al-qaeda. they were not helping america granted, but they were not helping al-qaeda either. we kind of went into this opportunity if you will that a lot of people didn't recognize at the time. this is the early fall of 2006, so the first half of the book, rage company arrives in ramadi in november. we conducted about 7 battalion operations, but on our 7 large scale operations, you can describe them as conventional style operations. we duke what we learned in

fighting another military, and we were trying to apply it to a guerrilla movement. the effects were pretty unsuccessful. you know, our planning for the operations would literally take 36 hours, so for 36 hours, we were on the base talking about what we were going to do, and then we went to the execution phase. that was lo longer than 12 hours. we talked 36 hours for what we would do for 12 hours. from the interacting with people stand point, you're not doing much. when you talk to one another about coordinating your tanks, aircraft, get your supporting elements in place, the enemy is out there. the enemy is influencing the people, and you are not. so, that also drove another thing. the people did not want to work with us because we were not the dominant force on the streets, the insurgents were. when people don't want to work with you, it's hard to get intelligence about who the insurgents are. we would go out, execute operations, bring back 20-30

insur gents every time, but we had no evidence they were doing anything wrong. we had aeasesments saying they were doing something wrong, but unless we find actual evidence in his home like weapons, explosive materials, ied making wires, things of that nature, you can't prosecute him. we were trying to institute a democracy where there had to be a preponderance of evidence to put these guys in jail. without the link to the pop populous, we were -- it was a catch and release program. we would risk our lives, and watch 95% of them go back to the street. another problem was that if you actually did try to prosecute one of these guys, and they didn't get convicted, we paid them $14 a day. a lot of these insurgents, this is interesting, it was almost every single high level terrorist that was a target. we had his picture in an orange jump suit.

he had been captured before and released, and so it was actually kind of a requirement within al-qaeda and iraq that in order to be promoted, you had to be caught by the americans and released at some point. every one of them had that happen. that was another problem. the detainee problem in and of itself was not successful. it drew the civilians to not want to work with us as well because they watched them be released back to the street. that's the first half, conventional warfare not working. the second half of the book is different. you'll see this. the first eight chapters are the first half. in chapter nine, something different happens. we have guys calmed scouts. this is the origin of the anbar awakening. i'll give you the story. i was running between combat outposts doing some movements, moving material guys around, bringing ammo out, and i got a

call from the tactical operation center that there were 25 locals who wanted to help us out. from a marine stand point, 25 locals, i don't know what that means. i got in the vehicles, drove outside the base, and there's 25 guys all with waiting for me to talk to them. i put my machines guns point the, and walked over there, and there was one individual, a tall lanky guy standing out front, and he told me he wanted to cooperate with the americans. from that point on, all of our operations changed. the way we did everything changed. the battlefield changed. these 25 guys, we had some serious problems at first. these are 25 iraqis who are all exinsurgents, guys i envisioned killing. they are now offering to work with us. naturally there was problems at

first. a lot of mistrust, nobody believed each other. there are times where we had to lie to each other in order to get each other to do what we wanted, but the moment we executed a mission together, it was very different than the first nine battalion levels we did before. we spent time with them planning on using tanks, aircrafts, supporting elements, engineers, and these guys were like why do that? we know where they are. let's go to their house, grab them. no plans. very different. we wanted to start the operations as soon as it got dark because we want to maximize the darkness to get as much done in one night. why do that? wait until mid night. they want want to run away. they'll be in bed by the time you get there. we did that. in the first operation, we caught 28 al-qaeda insurgents, every single one prosecuted,

local sworn statements from citizens saying this guy is a bad guy. this guy has killed local civilians. every single one was prosecuted and turned in. from that moment on, the local population looked at us and said, hey, they are getting the right people. when they had confidence in us, confidence in the iraqi government, the game changed. we couldn't handle the information given to us. it was unbelievable. what happened was as we got more information, as we became more effective, al-qaeda got more brutal. you'll see in the first eight chapters, some are wounded, but we never lost anybody. in the second half, we lost three. the more effective we were against the enemy, more marines were killed. that doesn't necessarily make sense, but warfare is an art, not seance. you can do all the right things

and somebody can get killed. when i watch the news, it's frustrating to see we are losing our guys. remember, is it for something positive or not? it's a key point. we'll get into that later as to why i wrote the book. as we became more effective and al-qaeda got more brew tam, -- brutal, is precipitated that the population had to do something. they were kidnapping local people, trying to figure out who the guys were helping us. the more they did that, the more mad the locals got. they got together with us, we provided them with weapons and coordinated missions, and practice missions as well, but it turned into a revolution where these guys just went all out. as anbar providence is a triable society. the supporting of the this fell

along try ball lines. within those tribes, you have dozens of subtribes, under that, you have even more sub- sub-subtribes. it's interesting in what sides they play. once they are all on your side and they decide to do something, without question, it'll happen. they threw their support behind us. you had all of these rural areas, all these historically supported areas of al-qaeda disappear. that's what this awakening was. you saw places like ramadi, the deadliest place in iraq go from 30 attacks a day to less than one. you had the local iraqi citizens hunting down al-qaeda was a story that didn't exist out there. even in the marines sailing back from iraq, the story wasn't

recognized. they knew things were getting better when we were leaving, but on ship and rem necessarying -- reminiscing about why did they give their life? you think about the specific incidents, and one marine was killed in a fire fight in an open field. you wonder, well, what did his death accomplish? if you take it into the isolated event, you can't say it accomplished anything. there was no person he was trying to save. there was no heroic action that was occurring at the time, and so as the marines are coming back, they didn't know the story. i took that as something they needed to know, and that was a driving impulse to write the book. what made it really evident as we were sailing back, i was watching c cnn, one of the reporters i have the most respect for, this guy has been kidnapped by al-qaeda and lived

to tell about it. he talked about the successes of united states hiring people to do the work for them. i knew three marines who died, not armed thugs, and we were not fighting these guys to fight for us. they were fighting with us because they hated al-qaeda. we were not paying them. they were melting gold themselves to pay other tribes to help them. it was stuff in their families for hundreds of years enand they gave that up to help us. it's one of those reality of warfare. you know, there's going to be a historical take away from the iraq conflict, but is that necessarily what occurred on the ground? who knows. that was really the driving impulse for me as so why the i wrote the book, and it's really important because we are obviously in afghanistan, and

afghanistan is more a triable society than iraq, and as we look forward into the conflicts of the future for this nation and you look at the conflicts we really struggled with dealing with, they are guerrilla warfare. you got to look at, you know, islamic extremism within its context. it's very, it's all guerrilla warfare, and if they pick that because that's what they are successful at, and so it's kind of necessary for us to figure out how are we going to defeat this? how do we change the middle east? how do we change the interpretations of islam so that it is a place where america can feel safe? how do you win in the war on terror? can you win the war on terror? those are questions to be answered by somebody. the war has to end at some point. we start to define objectives and realize what is it we are tried to do. we're trying to influence the people of afghanistan to accept

democracy, their own version of democracy, and that's very tough, but you got to remember it's all about the people. if you look at the operations in the first half the rage company, it wasn't about the people. it was about the enemy. that's kind of where they got us. guerrilla warfare is about tricking western way of warfare. they are trying to trick us into focusing on them. you think about a conventional military, intelligence drives operations and intelligence is always focused on the enemy, and in this case the enemy is al-qaeda and iraq. the problem with that is the enemy is not the focus. the focus is protecting the people. the people know who the enemy is. every good insurgent terrorizes the people and forces all the others into doing what he wants. if you forget about the enemy and focus on the people, they tell you who the insurgents are. that's the biggest problem like every counterinsurgent like myself has is figuring out who the insurgents are.

that's the key point in rage company is that you see that in the second half of the book and the game changer that really occurred in anbar providence in early 2007. so, that's really the importance of rage company. it's understanding what took place in anbar province. with that, i'll open the floor up to questions. yes, ma'am? >> we knew you were going to start right. did you have any idea of your writing skills if you were able to do this or was there focus on these classes in high school or how did that part of it evolve? >> that's a great question. for those who couldn't hear, it was about my writing skill and i was writing this book, how did i know i could do it? i was a european history major from the university of rochester. no professional writing bctd.

as the intelligence officer for the company, i got every mission debrief, so i debriefed every mission control that went out and aware of everything that occurred. when it comes to writing the story, you'll notice when reading the book, there's a lot of quotes. i mean, i did in depth interviews with the company. it's not my story, but rage company's story. i really tried to go at length to make sure it was as accurate as possible. in order to do that, i had to interview a lot of marines. you'll see it jumpings perspectives. you'll see it from my view, a lieutenant and sergeant's perspective. when a marine was killed in cam bat, i wanted to write from the on-scene commander. i didn't want to write from my own. i wasn't always at the scene. i wanted to make it as accurate as possible. i think that really drove my writing style because somebody who wasn't a professional you

know in writing nonfiction, it's easier because i can follow events as they occur. you pick up on that as you read the book. i wrote not only the events, but my thought. you'll see my second guess people, but a couple paimgs later, i say, hey, us in the wrong -- i was in the wrong. i judged someone a couple pages before, but he was right, i was wrong. you'll see that very quick in chapter 1 right away. i'm the new guy second guessing somebody who was there for 10 months, and it's clear after a couple pages, i'm in the guy who is in the wrong, but yeah, no real professional writing background, just a european history major from the u of r. >> was there a lot of editing from your editor in >> i was surprised. i was expecting red when i got it back, but they want to keep of the voice of the author. >> [inaudible] >> oh, yeah, i got a lot of

editing and thought, when you edit, it's a as a matter of fact. they are correcting your gram ma and syntax. i was reading it and like, oh, i'm dumb. [laughter] it was interesting. definitely a lot of red. good question. yes, sir? >> what do you fellow marines think of the book? >> that's a great question. all right, so, a lot of guys love it because this is really what they struggled with coming back from iraq. you think from the average corporals' speer -- perspective, they know the guy is in this house, let's get him. they don't know the full context of what we're trying to do. when i wrote the book, i wanted to explain that to them. that's probably the piece they like about it the most. i've gotten some criticism from

other guys that were in different units, so as you can understand, combat is a very emotional experience; right? so when i wrote my thoughts in the sequence that they occur and saying i didn't agree with somebody's decision, naturally, people don't like that, so i actually got a lot of criticism about stuff that i admitted i was wrong, and people were getting to the certain point, but they were not reading on about me second guessing myself and my own decisions, so it was an interesting experience, but all in all, the marines of the company, they love the book. yeah? who else? >> when you talk about the -- can you talk about the image on the cover? >> great point. this gentleman here. this is another thing i got criticism for.

i got an e-mail from a fellow captain to put a picture of myself holding a marines 240 gulf media machine gun. the problem with that is that's not me. this gentleman is much better looking than me. this is lance corp. yal michael d shuls killed in iraq when i was there. this picture is from afghanistan. it's an interesting fact because the book takes place in iraq. another neat thing is you see where it's blurred out, those were mountains. iraq doesn't have mountains, so we took those out of the photo. i was actually -- i can't know who this gentleman was on the cover. even after the book came out, i didn't know who it was, so i flipped up the jacket because i got a question about who it was. i decided stop being lazy, get up off your but and figure it out. i turned to the jacket and

looked him up on the internet, sent him a note and said your photo is on the cover of my book. who is he? he sent me a note about him and mike were good friends in afghanistan, how he got to know him very well, got to know his fiance and their child, and then he informed me mike went back to the iraq and was killed, and that he knew his family, and so that was really moving for me because this book is about what the marines in anbar province sacrificed their lives for. this cover of mike on the cover of book is supposed to be representative of that sacrifice. his face is blacked out. i think that's for a reason because it represents all of marines who have given their lives in that province. that's a great question. what else?

yes, ma'am? >> do you think you'll write another book? >> do i think i'll write another book? that's a very good question. considering i didn't think i was going to write the first one, i don't know. i don't know. it's got to be a cause that's worthy. this was something that really, really spoke to me. it was an experience that elicited a lot of emotion. it really was something that i had to do. i didn't think it was a choice, so i need to have something else that's going to be similar. yes, ma'am? >> how quickly after you got back did you start writing or decide to write? >> yeah, that's a great question. i actually started writing right away. as the events occurred in the province, the marine corp. that has a process if you jot down what happened and try to put it together as a lessons learned format. when i started writing it was to do that, write lessons learned

about what occurred, about how the revolution took place, what drove it, and as i was doing that, i kind of realized that, you know, this is a great story. why is tan action after report that will get filed away and nobody will read it? i wrote chapter 1 and chapter 4 before i got back to the states. we sailed back for a month on ship, and i just took my time. it was the opportunity for me to just kind of sit there and write and then work out, eat, sleep, write. that's all you do on a ship is eat, sleep, and work out, so i added writing to the mix. great question. >> are you going to stay in the marines or get out? what was the career track? do you stay in or get out or use this in the military if you get out? >> i'm out of the marine corp. now. i work for itt corporation as a

sigma black belt. when i was in iraq it was about influencing change on the battlefield, and now in the corporate environment, i'm influencing change within the business. there's a relationship there. >> [inaudible] >> absolutely. >> sometimes they can't train in the military -- >> yeah, well, what people in the military fail to recognize, and i'm one of them, is that you have the ability to do a lot of things. it's very easy to get stuck into your place and focused on what your specific objectives are, but if you track a step back, look at the big picture and try to influence the people and not focus on the enemy, but the people around you, the citizens, their security, what jobs will they have, how will you feed them? it really change the way that you conduct operations, and so i think that's kind of what the military is starting to do. you have seen it happen in iraq. we're taking that approach in afghanistan, and it is, the

military is changing. >> that's what you were in the military that you were bringing over into what you are doing now in business? >> right, right, absolutely. >> with the planning and strategy and forward thinking? >> yeah, it's all about the process; right? process drives behavior. the process in iraq was thinking about the operations, we were clearing entire nibbeds; right -- neighborhoods searching for contrabands. we kicked down every door or blow it down. think about that, every house in a neighborhood, marines kicking it down, were aggressive, wearing gear, body armor, night vision googles, it was cool for me, but look at it for an iraqi's perspective, we're aliens. you think of all the cool lasers, it's foreign to them. they are very scared.

we scare every single person in the neighborhood. if you look back and look at what we did with the scouts, we only went to the houses with insur -- insurgents in them, blow out the door, and put them in jail, and they never come back. the americans know what they're doing now, give them all the information you want. it's very different. it's a big change. yea, ma'am? >> do you think they need to do the same kind of thing this afghanistan? like employee the triable leaders in afghanistan to be successful there? >> yeah, absolutely. look at afghanistan, and we put a lot of money into the central government, and you look at what happened in the anbar awakening within iraq and general petraeus authorized u.s. troops to pay sunni iraqis to fight for us. you had this revolution within

the city of ramadi and petraeus reviewed the results, visited with the a gentleman, who also met president bush at one point, and he is the first shake to step up against al-qaeda and he declared the awakening. he had tv commercials. very charismatic gentleman. he was killed in september of 2007 by a al-qaeda suicide bomber, but once we had the success and once we saw what was occurring, that's when petraeus instituted the sons of iraq program. once instituted, sunnies needed jobs. they had no jobs. future was bleak especially within the government, so when we gave them jobs to secure their neighborhoods, you had guys lining up in droves because they wanted to work, make money. they wanted to have a wife and kids, and so when we started giving them a future whether it was securing their neighborhood

or an actual job, things really turned around. that's exactly what we need to do in afghanistan, but if you look at iraq and afghanistan, the literacy rates among the population is extremely different. iraq is fairly modern. afghanistan, hardly anybody there is literate. in fact, a lot of my buddies over there, the only person literate is the translator. everybody else they meet is not literate, so it's a very uneducated populous which shows you need to interact with them and explain yourself to them because we speak english, and they don't so it's very tough which is why afghanistan poses so many challenges. taliban used to rule afghanistan. they about al-qaeda in iraq, they never ruled it, but viewed as outsiders.

taliban doesn't have that problem. they ruled that place for awhile. they are already dug in. there's different challenges. what we did in iraq you can't say we'll do in afghanistan, but if you think about the needs of the people, that's what you can transcend and apply to both. what else? yes, sir? >> describe the dynamics when you brought the scouts back to the marines that were at one moment gunning them down, and now they are supposed to work with them? >> yeah, so back -- i'll give you guys the situation. when i actually picked up these scouts like discussed before, i was taking them out to combat outpost rage which was nothing more than iraqi's home that we had taken over in the region east of the city. there's actually a map on the inside of the book if you want to look where this is placed, but these are the suburbs of

ramadi historically dominated by al-qaeda. before we set up combat rage, there was no troops there ever. that was interesting part about the surge. we surged combat troops all over iraq. getting back to your question. so the marines at combat outpost rage didn't know i was bringing 25 iraqis, all armed, none of them vetted as, you know, as loyal sources, they didn't know i was bringing these guys back. i drive into the compound in the back of my 7 ton truck is armed dudes looking like insur gents. that brings up red flags. these are guys we kill days before, and now they can see our fighting positions and our weapons and they can plan their attack basically from the inside now. i bring them in, put them into one room, crowd them there, put

marines at the door, shut the door, and we talk about it in the operation sent r. as we're talking about it, here i have all the platoon commanderring says, what are you doing man? they wanted to kick them out right away. don't give them a chance. kick them out. eventually captain smith, a company commander showed up explaning i knew these guys might be coming. we're going to try to work with them, and so immediately, the first thing we tried to do is take away their weapons. that proved to be very problematic. the first thing we did was say, here's 25 guys who want to help you. they hate al-qaeda, fighting al-qaeda themselves. we put them in a room and then say we need your rifles before you work with you. walk out there, hunt down insur gents where you're going to get shot at and you can't have a weapon. they obviously refuseed.

it just backfires. when that happened, we kind of took a step back. all the iraqis were saying we're not going to patrol with you. we just want to go home. put us back on the trucks, we've been gone from home too long. they will figure out we're working with you. remember, these guys' neighbors are al-qaeda guys supporting al-qaeda. they realize they will figure out hey, who's not home? those are the guys with the americans. what we ended up doing was saying we didn't have trucks. we lied to them. they were outside. they couldn't see outside, they didn't know that. we convinced four of them to go with us. once four of them said, we'll do with you, the rest were like, well, if we're going any ways, we'll go too. very quickly we ran out, had

guys drive the trucks back, walked out, and went on a first op together and it was successful. it was an interesting dynamic that occurred where we -- it almost didn't happen. it almost didn't happen. good question. anything else, guys? all right. well, with that said, let's do some book signing. [applause] >> for more information, visit the author's website, thomas thomaspdaly.com. >> this is booktv's annual book awards in new york city, and now we're joined by megagan stack, a finalist in the nonfiction

category, her book "every man in this village is a liar, an education in war." ms. stack, what was your experience in baghdad and afghanistan? >> oh, well i was there covering the stories for the l.a. times. in 2001 it was my first foreign assignment. iti was a young reporter who got dlown into it. it was dramatic and exciting and amazing and completely memorable. i went to iraq later on and off in 2003. just covering the events and watching everything more or less fall apart has been part of my experience. >> this book is about nine years in the making? >> yeah, that book is drawn from reporting from 2001 until 2006,

2007. yeah, it took a few years to write and get into the market, so, yeah, it's a decade of my life. >> where did you get the title? >> it comes from afghanistan. it's a phrase that somebody said to me before i went into afghanistan, every man in the village is a liar. it derives from an old greek paradox where the person who says it, i think it's all the creations are liars, but the person who says it is actually a creation. if he's lying, he's telling the truth. i used it as the title because it seemed to me as an apt description of the nature of truth and war and the difficulty of reporting in a war zone and villages is the global village as well. there wasn't anybody who came away with clean hands from the wars. everybody was lying to some extent. >> where did the picture on the

cover come from? >> you'll have to ask my publishers. i don't know anything about it. i believe it's beautiful. i believe it's afghanistan judging by the building, but i don't know. >> will they learn about the daily lives of people in afghanistan and iraq? >> yeah, as well as a lot of other countries. the book takes place, you know, through years of reporting. it's about lib ya, saudi arabia, israel, it's about jordan, egypt, it tries to take in the totality of the regional experience of the so-called war on terror. it's not necessarily focused on combat zones exclusively. it's the war for ideas, the war of democracy versus islamism. there's scenes woven into it. >> you are still with the "los angeles times" and now in beijing. did you fly here for the

ceremony? >> i did, i was coming for thanksgiving anyway, so i came early. >> every man in this village is a liar and education in war is her nominate the book. >> we're here at the national press club talking with baesley. can you tell me what aspect of her life you concentrated on? >> yes. well, this book concentrates on the way eleanor roosevelt wrote the script as first lady. every lady since then followed the script or have not. they had to at least know about the script. there's a lot of books on her, but this book tells about what she did in the white house to make the job of first lady more than just that as a hostess.

she made the first lady shift a potent part of the american presidency. >> so was the script that she wrote giving the first lady a role to play in policy? >> the script showed what a first lady could do. the script showed that the first lady can make the job of the president's wife into one this which she could promote the administration or she could show the public that the presidency was interested in individual. she was the public face of her husband's political program, the new deal, but because she traveled so much and because she really had an innate love of people, she personalized the presidency, and she made it a lot more than just passing laws. she made it a way of connecting

with people. >> did you come upon any facts that you hadn't previously known about her in research? >> in doing the research for the book, i was struck by the way her personal life impacted on the way that she developed the role of the first lady. for example, when she first became first lady, she had some reservations about this because she said, i just don't want to sit in the white house and pour tea. at that time, she had an intimate friend, a newspaper reporter, a political reporter for the "associated press," and it was her who introduced eleanor to the plight of minors in west virginias living in horrible circumstance, so one of eleanor's first project as first lady was to try to do something about thiaminers and set up a

community. she probably wouldn't have gotten interested if it had not been for this reporter. similarly, before this second world war, eleanor had a very warm personal relationship with a young man named joel weish who was a socialist and a leader of the student movement, and eleanor was interested in young people, but because of this very warm relationship, she was especially involved in causes of young people and international students who were -- and ways of trying to get young people as part of the political process. also, in doing so because of he had escorted communism, and in fact, i think it was a communist at one point,