hold because right now -- it might change very quickly because of the economic sedation. .lead >> and also, are you having the same problem that we're having which is this large number of people who are unemployed, and is that related to any of the issues that you're dealing with?

>> our generation is very successful. because they were born in the soviet union, they know their roles might change, they are not waiting -- [inaudible] more mobile, so that's why mostly -- [inaudible] who are not journalists are very successful, very successful lawyers, businessmen, bankers. the problem is by 35 they started to feel like, well, okay, i got my family, i got my house, my mansion, all these things, what to do next? and they start to be very close to the problems of their own families. so they tend to think mostly about these things. they don't want to think -- maybe because it's not very effective to think about politics in be russia. it's not very -- it might prevent a good career, so why to do it? for many it's big challenge, they just don't want to talk

about these things. and it's one of the problem that we almost lost public about important things. nobody want to talk about -- [inaudible] nobody want to talk about new initiative of medvedev to suppress troublemakers by new technical system of -- [inaudible] and things launched just two years ago. for many, well, they're white secure, yes. some terrorism might happen in moscow. it happens, okay, but we, we don't want to think about it. >> what do you think when your generation is 50 and not 35 that you're just going to carry on the same stuff, or will they think about opening it up? >> that's a big question for us. it's a very big and open question. i just don't know. maybe there's some more people who might be active in many more years, but to be frank, i'm

not -- i think if you want to be active in politics, you need to start not at 35, but at 21 and 22. and the idea is not to forget about it afterwards. for many of my friends and we have some -- my good friend, lars -- [inaudible] late '80s they took part in demonstrations. now they pressure them to take part in -- [inaudible] mostly in support of kill journalists or kill -- [inaudible] it would be quite -- [inaudible] but, for example, we have a number of manifestations just for open speech, in fair of open -- favor of open speech. >> okay. >> thank you. my name is gregory -- [inaudible]

currently, russian internet at george washington university. you wrote interesting pieces about russian internet and cooperation between -- [inaudible] groups a few years ago. so i wonder what is the current state related to internet activities, and to what extent -- [inaudible] do they have the writers to follow everything, what type of activities are they doing now and what is the current state of russian blog surfings? >> and i would add there's a chapter on this subject in the book, so i call your attention to it, please. >> in fact, this is quite smart to keep distance of hackers, so it's not the fsb who are -- [inaudible] there's a number of people, and according to our information they support not directly by the fsb, by the kremlin. so it is the same, we can

compare the -- [inaudible] and some people, some bloggers are recruited from the -- [inaudible] organizations and supervised by the same people as administration. what the fsb does, they encourage activity. when something happen and, for example, they had very famous attack in the united states, there was complaints and there was call to local fsb office to ask, well, you have the students. they said, well, students were -- [inaudible] we had nothing to do with them. >> they were just patriots. >> patriots, yes. they were just patriots and that's why we don't need to persecute them. and now as far as they see and we note this once, the fsb tried to find a way to some groups of

hackers, again, but not to pay them. not to order them, but to encourage them. because sometimes it would be enough. because in this case they might keep this distance, and you see it turned out to be very successful in case of historian. the evidence is, well, it's, again, we have to talk only about just russian hackers. and -- [inaudible] >> and blogosphere, the secret service is not active in the blogosphere because it's an era of -- [inaudible] administration. recover all this. >> yeah, and -- >> have special -- [inaudible] who have their own progresses. >> they even created kremlin's

school of boogers. [laughter] >> georgetown university. could you say a few words about the relationship between fsb and svr? and, for instance, when we're talking about the, when the russians are talking about the nearer broad, which organization has primacy in looking at that, and to what extent there is subversion sponsored by one or the other organizations in the nearer broad, for instance, the great interest in georgia or ukraine. >> the fsb was given a very special task in carry out operations in abroad. they ask it to supervise the former soviet union, and now

have a special department. and they mostly responsible for -- [inaudible] including estonia and -- [inaudible] but the problem is that because there is no mechanism of even internal control, this department because of some bureaucratic reasons began to increase activity. and sometimes the journalists you have to deal with very peculiar things to understand what's going on inside. well, i must say that now this department adopted new and senior, and now it's globe. and at the same time the svr as we understood -- [inaudible] be task it to deal with former soviet union republics. and special web site on the

internet -- [inaudible] and it existed only three weeks, but there was a number of documents. and i had no ability to check them, but as far as i can say they looked credible. there was some documents about some operations of the fsb in ukraine, and there was very interesting notes. top secret to the president of russian federation from directer of department of -- [inaudible] we carry out with special operation in ukraine, we created false document to present it to the government of ukraine, and we have to say that the foreign intelligence service recovered this document and reported it to moscow as genuine. so we ask you politely to say it is fake. >> so, andre, they're competing in other words. >> yeah. >> yes. >> chriser schroeder, friend of

david's. history is filled with unintended consequences, and i'm sort of curious if you could play back what the fsb has become, and if you could interview putin ten years ago, is this what he wanted? is he stuck in any way in things that happened once these things came unleashed? and second question, if i could, i'm sure it's in the book, could you just give us a quick tour of who to watch, who are the people we're going to be hearing about in the next five to ten years and, you know, who they are? >> i think that because putin had some interview in 1999 and he was quite honest, i think he anticipate something different. because he wanted to create real new lead for russia. kind of junta united by common perspectives on russian present and future. people love the kremlin -- [inaudible] kind of vanguard in the russian

state. but, in fact, you know, in 2007 it became even public the big struggle between people inside the secret service against -- [inaudible] and there is an open letter written by, excuse me, by victor, former kgb officer responsible for police -- [inaudible] and then -- [inaudible] close friend of putin. now has become traitors. so i think now fsb -- or, now, putin quite disappointed by this internal crisis because he, as far as we know, he's fully aware of it because he task the agency of victor to go investigate activity of the fsb and -- [inaudible] and some general, and the general responsible for these investigations was sent to jail. so i think he is not quite happy

with what now he has. but at the same time i think he might be happy, but in the 1990s one of the big problem for the goth was you have to face -- government was you have to face all these questions from foreign journalists, domestic journalists, and you have to answer these questions. may be honest, maybe not. the political culture became so suspicious, but now if you ask official, first of all, be very difficult to ask him because you need to find him. and the second question is if you ask the question, the answer would be not the answer to the question, but to a kind of search for who paid you for this question, who ordered you to ask this question? and i think that's happened in the 2000s. and i think putin because, you know, he has very strange habit to answer questions, he quite happy with that.

>> okay. >> delphine with the center. i had a question about who is resisting in the society, the difficulty of pushing back against the freedoms and the political restrictions. aside from the mass stagnation, surely there are people in addition to the investigative journalists who are trying, different sectors of society, who is doing that and what kind of pressures are on them? >> we have an activity of some local, small groups who are mostly about some local problems. the neighbor, for example, the concern. [inaudible] they had, for example, some very active trade unions in some cities where there's big plants, and so these people, they are very angry about problems if

they leave the ship or try to do something. the problem is now they are the subject of the campaign against -- [inaudible] and this campaign is mostly watched not by putin, but by medvedev. because medvedev in 2008 created the new -- he disbanded the department responsible for fighting organized crime and terrorism in his interior ministry, and in the same place he created the new department responsible for fighting extremism. and it was said openly that now we've won the war against russian pfaff mafia -- [inaudible] and now all these thousands of experienced officers and interior minister who were responsible for pep -- penetrating criminal groups or terrorist cells, they now are

responsible for these kind of troublemakers. so now we have a lot of example when trade union activities would be ask it to go to the local office of center on fight being extremism. it would be said, well, you are kind of the activities prosock f -- provocative, you tried to undermine the state, and you might be accused. for example, bloggers criticize the activity of the security service and the interior minister they accused of the same thing, extremism. mostly it's about bloggers and the local groups. and we have -- and maybe some small, not very significant liberal political organizations like, for example, cat par of which, to be frank, is very small and -- [inaudible] 2,000 or 3,000 people. that's -- but they are summit of

investigation of big department -- subject of investigation of big department. and they were asking for big powers, and they were given these powers, and medvedev signs a new law giving the fsb more powers to, to prevent the crimes of extremism. and for me it's very, very -- i just -- i'm not very sure what does it mean because extremism in russia is something about -- [inaudible] it's not about attacks or bombings, it's about what you say something with might be provocative and while to prevent someone to say something that might be provocative. but now the fsb was given the right, and now two big services, interior ministry and -- [inaudible] they deal with these small number of troublemakers. >> okay. first here and then we'll go to the back. okay.

>> andre and irina, i'm from the french daily newspaper, he fig row. i've spent a few years in russia myself, and i was struck about what you said about the fact that nobody really knows what's going on in russia because, you know, investigative journalism is nearly dead. i mean, apart from a few exceptions fighting existence the current. and i was wondering if you would extend this notion to the fact that in the west people are less and less, less and less interested in what's going on in russia as well. i mean, they used to be very big current of information about russia in europe and in the u.s. and you can really see now that it's not the case. it's less and less information about what is really going on throughout russia. so do you feel somehow

politically abandoned in your effort to grasp where is your question going, and in connection with that first question i was wondering what you think of the current foreign policy of the west, both the obama administration and people like president sarkozy, what is your feeling about what the west is doing now with russia? >> yes, of course, we feel a little -- [inaudible] on by the intellectuals. we failed to attract attention of the authorities and change some things that we investigate. we can -- [inaudible] and nobody pay attention. sometimes it might be some forcible actions against -- [inaudible] for example. some criminal cases or interrogations, but in general nobody pay attention to our investigations.

and the situation is that the -- [inaudible] have now entered the -- [inaudible] because there was a problem. >> be and about foreign governments, i think while it was surprise for us because it's one of the big problems, big issues of the book that we tried to write about it. in the early 2000s and the late 1990s we fought -- [inaudible] experts and dissidents fought what we see kind of kgb revival, and this new power, putin, might change the whole country, economic rules. but, in fact, what we saw -- and i think -- [inaudible] fsb was not so active. they were given the powers.

they never tried to gain the power. and some crucial things changed. but political culture and economic -- [inaudible] has the same thing. it has even the same names. there is not talks about property rights. from be except some crucial -- from except some crucial things, there's some currency for investors. putin was very, very generous with the united states just after 9/11 attacks. he even closed down some intelligence facilities, for example, in cuba, and he closed down the base, the intelligence facility in vietnam. it's just a problem of russian -- it looks like for the west pause they quite happy with -- because they quite happy with foreign policy of russian

state except for, like, georgia, but, to be frank, i think everybody understand it was not the question of if they are talking about even iran. medvedev is very, very generous. it's not like -- everybody understood and i think in the west that putin's state is not a kind of new russian, new soviet state created in 1920s with the idea of revolution everywhere and undermine the -- [inaudible] in every country. we are not so big threat. just a country with some strange habits to deal with internal opposition. but it's just a problem of internal opposition. >> [inaudible] david's book has been -- >> you mean, will it be published in russian? >> yeah. i mean -- [inaudible] and told very, very well. >> what do you think, andre? is there a chance this book will be published in russian? >> yeah, i think so. the public has heard some talks of russian publishing house --

>> they're going to charge you a lot of money for it. [laughter] >> so i hope. >> has there been reaction to the book inside of russia? >> official, no. there is no official reaction, and there was one interview. [inaudible] that's all. this looks like, well, we think it's very smart because the story would be a big story only if other papers, for example -- [inaudible] might pick up this story. but mostly other papers might pick up the story only if there's government interaction. in this case it be just story. -- [inaudible] well, it's just your choice. >> we had one question in the back here. >> thank you. [inaudible] freedom house. you had mentioned earlier that in 1990s when there was a creation of the fsb as we know it now, it sort of toppled the

influence of svr and other agencies. my question is regarding the caucuses of which no one wants to talk about in russia. how much competition is going with in controlling the situation between the -- [inaudible] and fsb? because there is militia units, as i understand, has been squished out and -- [inaudible] has tried to squeeze out the fsb as well but not quite exactly. so who is, exactly, controlling the situation in chechnya, and are the republics especially given the, a new spike in military activity and -- [inaudible] thank you. >> andre, explain what gru is. >> yeah. the problem is, in fact, the fsb used a their powers and, they

i -- and to -- [inaudible] not to obtain more responsibility but to avoid it. we have, as you know -- [inaudible] it started in 1999, it ended in 2009. but the fsb was responsible for the operation only for 31 months. it was -- [inaudible] interior minister and mostly to internal troops, and now internal troops are most active force. not only, for example -- [inaudible] and the appointment of --

[inaudible] changed nothing. he still thinks of internal troops are more effective force to deal with terrorists. so it was not the struggle between military intelligence, fsb and -- [inaudible] why is so important is because sometime, because now we have his news of -- [inaudible] he is physically responsible for situation, for whole situation, and he was given just the same people who said to be controlled by kadeerov. hard --

[inaudible] fsb carry out very good operations, yeah, they kill some people, they even detained one permanent leader, but they don't want to be responsible. and for military intelligence because we now i have a very big minister of defense and -- [inaudible] it's a situation that -- [inaudible] so just not in position to do something in chechnya or international caucuses. >> to the fsb, we should say that this year the fsb special forces -- [inaudible] in the caucuses and the special forces on the fsb organized few successful liquidation of terror. and one man was captured, it was big success for them. >> yeah. >> [inaudible] >> okay, i've got two more

questions. one? finish. >> bill tucker. i worked in the reagan administration in the white house counsel's office. and i have talked to people, and reagan came into office, and one of his goals was to bring down the soviet union. and he referred to it as, you know, as an evil empire. and to a man, all of these leaders in the former warsaw pact countries have said that reagan calling the soviet union an evil empire gave them the courage and inspiration to fight on. against communism. but i would like to know from

your viewpoint what effect reagan and the west had on the pressure they brought on the soviet union to bring, bring down the soviet union and cause it to fall? >> i think, you know, the big evidence of the idea the west was very important in disbanding the soviet soviet union, the kgb personal. and former kgb chief uri -- [inaudible] and many other generals, they talk constantly, talked to press and said, well, there's so many so-called agents of influence in the west, so that's why soviet union collapsed. but, i think, in fact, played important role of the west dissident groups were very

small, and andropov was so harsh to persecute them that by the mid 1990s -- mid 1980s they became so insignificant, and there was no support from the population to them. i think it was mostly -- and, of course, listen to radio for voice of america, but it never -- [inaudible] to become active. so just, okay, we can listen to it. that's great. this might be interesting to hear some voices of socialism, for example. but it was not so significant. i think it mostly was internal crisis. and mostly because -- and i think gorbachev was very, very important. it was his decision. because i think if gorbachev decided not to do all these things, might last for another 10 years, maybe 15 years. it was his decision, and some

people close to him. but, again, i should be very cautious because i was very young, so i have no abilities to check all these things. >> okay. last question here in the back. >> i'm from safe foundation. i have a question regarding the fsb. i have read that even in hitler's time the person who headed up the secret service, his own secret service, schallenberg, he was collecting information on hitler to overthrow him when the opportunity came. same in the united states, you know? is we -- there is a suspicion that fbi or i like to call these so-called intelligence agencies agencies of state terrorism, and that exists in every country whether it's in russia or in the united states or anywhere else.

they have probably knocked off kennedy and those kinds of things do happen, and then we saw bush sr. who was a cia chief, his son becoming a president. so that -- is there something going on to either knock off medvedev and putin together, or there may be an adversarial relationship at some point and one of them will overthrow, something like that is happening? will[laughter] or some third person like what happened to khrushchev will come and, boom, overthrow these guys? >> if you're talking about information collected by the fsb about medvedev and putin, we have some examples but only in the 1990s when we have -- [inaudible] who collected information. he published it. but i think if there should be reason for those things. and the first thing is that you have to have public opinion and

very strong medias to publish this stuff. because from the media if you have a strong media that might publish all this stuff, so it's my result and -- [inaudible] of some senior officials. today if you even have some very sensitive stuff about some very high-placed officials, there's not reason to publish it because nobody would be -- it's just not, well, we see -- it was never used except this last example of mayor of -- [inaudible] but it was thought -- [inaudible] medvedev was not, he was not pressured by media to do this thing. he decided to -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. he was just -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. and if you are talking about how putin is controlled by the fsb, i think it's a big question for me because i think that if you have no possibility to check

information independently, if you're president and you have no independent channels, if you have no media, no parliament, independent parliament, you have no -- so you can create many, many police as napoleon done or tried to do or it was decision of -- [inaudible] but if you have only one main secret police and it is only source of information for you, so you -- and for you it's very difficult for you to find new decisions and to be not pressured by them. well, i think it's a big question for medvedev, but for putin. >> okay. well, listen, i'd like to thank everybody for coming. having read the book myself, i'd like to call the attention to the fact that there's a lot of juicy material in this book that we haven't talked about today and definitely is worth an afternoon of your time. this is particularly three very strong chapters about how the fsb dealt with terrorism in the last decade, there's a very

thoughtful bit about the fsb and the rule of law. there's some very good material about the role of the fsb in the political process and, certainly, with dissidents. and one of my favorite small gems in this book is a chapter really about the moscow secret subway. and i won't give it away, but i hope you get a chance to read it. so thanks, everybody, for coming. i'm sure the authors will hang around, answer your questions. and thanks again to foreign policy and the new america foundation for gives us this chance. [inaudible conversations] >> this event was hosted by the new america foundation in washington d.c. for more information visit newamerica.net. >> i'm a retired infantry officer from the army, and currently i'm the dean of academics in the army inspector general's school who happens on the side to write books about world war ii. this is my second. and i mention that because my first one was on the battle of the bulge, it was called the key

to the bulge, it came out in 1996, and i happened to have researched that one at the same time that i began research for this particular book. so i sort of did them in pair rell because i was conscious that -- parallel because i was conscious that because i was dealing in these cases with two very obscure events that did not have a lot of secondary source literature on them, that i actually had to make certain that i was with able and in a position to contact a lot of the veterans while they were still living, both german and american. my particular take on, on history, military history specifically from the world war ii period is sort of the human aspect of it. my background is in english literature, so i'm not a trained historian. but i have decided to go back to school to gain a ph.d in history which is what i'm working on now. but i, i try to approach my, really my attempts at relaying these battles from the perspective of being able to teach future soldiers what it's

like to be in combat. i, too, am now at this point in my life a combat veteran, but at the time i started researching these battles, i did not know and understand what it was to be a combat veteran. and i wanted to take a lot of lessons from our veterans at that time both american and german and try to capture them inasmuch as i could in the books that i wrote. so i used very much an interdisciplinary approach to writing military history in this case with a lot of the social and cultural aspects of folks in all echelons of command, leaders at at all levels to include what happens with the individual soldiers. and i particularly focus on battles or events that have great significance but have never been touched upon before. and is o one of -- so one of my passions is to seek one of these out, and once i do, to try to figure out what happened and why it was important. so, too, with this destruction of the mountain division because you're probably wondering why a

mountain division. >> why an ss division in particular? why should any i of us care -- any of us care about what happened to this division in the waning days of the war in the european theater? >> here to are a few of the upcoming book fairs and festivals from around the country. >> you can also have your own rare books and materials appraised. booktv will be live from the tucson festival of books on march 12th and 13th. our coverage will include author presentations and interviews, we'll be taking viewer phone calls and feeting tw the event -- tweeting from the event. follow us on twitter at

booktv. for more information about upcoming fairs and festivals, visit booktv.org and click on book fairs on the top of the page. >> the problem with monopoly over of the long term is while it starts promising and results in the golden, often results in the golden age, over the long term entrenchment leads to paranoia, stag nancy and abuse. you know, cbs and nbc when they started had a lot to say for them. by the 970s, things had gone too far. so i guess what i suggest in my book, a more modified version of my position is it is important to have the structures that can support quality things but not at the cost of end trenching -- >> uh-huh. >> a monopolist for so long that they just lose any sight of what they have to do.

and i think that's what happened with many of the media organizations in this country by around the '60s and '70s. >> well, before we get too far off question, one is prescriptive and one is descriptive. you do a wonderful job in the book of describing this tragic process you just described briefly where a new communications medium comes along, all things are possible, there are these wonderful dreams of how fabulous it's going to be, this -- the title comes from the now-long-forgotten period when there were such dreams about cable television. some of you may remember those days. >> uh-huh. >> and then, inevitably, the bad guys take over and get their hand on the master switch. how can that not happen again if it happens every time? >> right, right. what journalists need to understand -- >> uh-huh i. >> -- is the important of creative destruction in the journalism industry. tech people, oh, we have to have a dynamic industry, we want to

see companies die and be destroyed. journalists are afraid of death. [laughter] they have a poor relationship -- >> that's so unfair. [laughter] >> no, no, journalists and the media from the very core, i mean, look at these brands. "the new york times" has been going for -- that's unheard of in other industries that have any sort of turmoil or natural market process. to have brands that last for hundreds and hundreds of years and have these dominant positions. journalists are exactly two -- what is needed -- what is needed in journalism is a dine schism and a little bit of creative instruction, and journalists will be upset about it, but in the long run it'll be good for you. [laughter] >> let's switch back to descriptive for a minute. the model, i think richard would say this based on my reading of his book which is, tim, you're dreaming because, you know, any communications medium as powerful as the internet just

cannot, you know, the liberal reformer public interest advocates just cannot ever build a big enough fence around it to keep the process that's always happened in the past from happening again. so just as a practical matter how to you think we can -- how do you think we can prevent this process that you've convinced us is cyclical from happening in this instance? >> right, sure. this is, the answer is related to some of my other work on things like net neutrality which is to say there always needs to be channels whether it's the internet or other channels where the new can challenge the old. >> right. >> where "the new york times" gets a run for its money. where nbc is suddenly facing off against youtube videos. >> many uh-huh. >> there has to be these channels, and the problem -- i'll just go on the offensive and say the problem with your book is it's too insensitive to

the fact that managerial capitalism tends to make market entry very difficult. just to put it that way. >> well, the problem with your argument, tim -- [laughter] is that there's no getting around the inevitability of the cycle. if i read your book, i would come away very depressed because every single case you tell is one in which you have these bold innovators with these great ideas who were stomped down upon by these sort of either money-mad or reactionary pollute accurates, and then something happens and this wonderful idea's born in someone's garage, in someone's attic, and it starts up again. and that just isn't so. there were major public policy trials. bell loses big time in the 19 teens. they don't get to control the telegraph as well as the telephone. the kind of separations principle that you write about,

i think, so persuasively in your final section, radio act of 1927 keeps at&t out of the content business. content and conduit are divided there. if you had not had the studio system in hollywood in which you had the coming together of the people making the movies and the ownership of the theaters, the united states might never have established a dominant position in the world film business. and we did in the 1930s and '40s. we had 80 president of the world finish 80% of the world market. the europeans couldn't get their act together. we did, and that made possibility the creativity that led to the self-sustained development of hollywood. >> if you didn't have the hollywood studio system, you also wouldn't have had the most heinous example of private censorship in american history -- >> that is a ridiculous claim, tim! [laughter] first, the most heinous example of -- >> private censorship. >> what is the --

[inaudible conversations] >> tell the story, and i'll tell you why you're wrong. >> thanks to consolidation of the industry into the hollywood studio system, a cartel of five studios -- or maybe it's six -- >> right. >> every -- the catholic church was finally able to enforce production code. >> uh-huh. >> and set up a system which you're familiar with where one man, joseph breen, had to okay every single film before it was made which is called prior restraint and would be so illegal if it was a government -- and let me give you one example. warner brothers in the mid '30s wants to make a movie about what the that the says were doing in germany. they were, like, listen, this is bad. you know, bad things are coming. joseph breen who described his job as should having ethics down the throats of the jews -- that was how he described his job -- vetoed the movie. it was never made. i don't know whether it would

have -- but this is a form of censorship that should be intolerable to anyone in journalism school. >> it isn't one man. this is the problem with the whole book, that these heroic individuals who arrived out of nowhere, the mogul makes -- >> medium. >> medium. look, the reason breen did what he did was because seven states were poised to enact codes of their own, and those states could have created a patchwork of restrictions on movies and goodness knows what the consequences would have been. the studios worked with breen because it was an alternative to censorship at the state level, and that would have been reminiscent of -- [inaudible] >> coming up, abbas milani, directer of the iranian studies program at stanford university, recounts the life of the shah of iran. the author or speaks at the world affairs council in san francisco for just over an hour. >> the subject that i'm going to

be talking about, as ralph in his very generous introduction mentioned, is the enduring importance of the shah. and, essentially, it is an attempt to explain why i spend about ten years finishing the book that you have to my left, the book called "the shah," that palgrave just published. i think it is increasingly clear, at least to me it is, that the thought of the shah was one of the pivotal figures -- events of the second half of 20th century. in a recent review of this book, in fact, in "wall street journal" the reviewer compared the islamic revolution of 1979 in terms of its magnitude to the bolshevik revolution of 1917 and said that is how important, how consequential that event was.

the 1917 revolution, we know, brought in lenin, soviet soviet union, the cold war. it's hard to imagine a more important event. and he claims, and i don't think he's off, that the islamic revolution and, thus, the fall of the shah was an event of of equal magnitude. so, in my view, understanding the shah is very much about understanding today. it's about understanding iran today, and it's about understanding why we are where we are today both domestically in iran and in terms of iran's relationships, troubled relationships with the u.s. i think if you ask any book reader in the english-speaking world, i suspect any part of the world, and ask what are the three major or problems about iran, they would point to iran's

nuclear program, iran's democratic movement, and they would probably point to events of august 1953 as a turning point in u.s./iran relations. august 1953 is when the government of -- [inaudible] was overthrown or dismissed depending on whose narrative you believe. the shah, who had fled, was brought back to iran, and a new phase his power began. some have

>> that the three major problems iran has faced in the last century has been the question of modernity and it fight for tradition. the battle between the moderns and the traditionalists.

very much included in this paradigmatic debate is a question of what does it mean to be iranian? the question of iranian identity. is iranian identity primarily islamic, or is iranian identity a hybrid identity, or is it primarily a pre-islamic identity, and this islamic identity is an unfitting, diseased addition to it that has come a thousand years ago when it's been rejected by the body politic. third question, aside from tradition and modernity the, the question of identity is, again, the question incumbent in these earlier two issues, the question or the debate between democracy and despotism.

between progress and authoritarian authoritarianism. the question of whether you can have democracy and progress at the same time or whether there is something needed in iran's current political/cultural/social, some would say even ethnic makeup that requires or begets one form of despotism after another. how is it we replace the shah, the shah's authoritarianism with a far, far more brutal, more oppressive, less competent, more corrupt islamic regime? how was it that we got rid of one king to get someone who now has more power than any king ever had and also claims to speak for god? literally speak for god? recently, one of his henchmen said going against the word of

mr. khomeini is going against god himself. and it is himself god, there's no he/she in that language. god is man, and ladies have to just live with the fact that it is misogynist cos moll. in all of these three questions -- the domestic question and the international three questions that i mentioned -- the shah figured very prominently. in his period, 1941 to 1979, figures extremely prominently. it is the contention of the book that the iranian democratic movement that we have heard so much about, the green movement that we hear so much about that created some kind of a mythical almost movement by bringing three million people in a city of 12 million people who

silently marched and asked what happened to my -- [inaudible] where did it go? that movement was in every fundamental composition the same social forces that brought the shah down. so unking why the shah fell, understanding why the coalition was formed against him -- and it was a very strange coalition and i will explain why it is strange -- helps us understand why there has been political instability in iran for the last 30 years. and if american policymakers, for example, had ruly studied the case -- truly studied the case of the shah's nuclear program and how he went about it, they would have managed, i think, the nuclear negotiations with iran in a very different way. and i suspect they might have come to better results. and finally, i, in the book,

offer a rather different view of august, '53. hi -- my argument is the events of august,' 53 are far more complicated by the narrative offered by the roilists who claimed it was a day of national uprising or those who claimed it was an infamous cea coup. i think the reality is far, far more complicated, and i try to explain why it is more complicated and why, in fact, the people who rule iran today, the clergy, had far more to do with -- [inaudible] than the cia ever did. the clear, in my view, unquestionable, dominant force whose shift of position

essentially completely shifted the dynamics in iran were the clergy. when they sided with -- [inaudible] you could cleary see in the documents the balance -- clearly see in the documents the balance of forces was now against. i refer to documents, and tock units is really -- documents is really the last reason why we now need another biography of the shah. there has been about a dozen biographies of the shah so far. in my view, unfortunately, all of them have been commissioned biographies. commissioned in the sense that they were either written to demonize the shah by his opponents or lionize the shah by his advocates. many of them were directly paid biographies. in one case they paid a french -- a british lady close to a half a million pounds in that time. she came to iran, spent very

little time in iran, went to the embassies, the british embassy, she spend most of her time in iran in the company of young, handsome iranians who were very eager to meet with this biographer and did very little and got, basically, the money and repeated almost verbatim all, everything else that everybody else had written in the earlier biographies of the shah. so the biographies have not done justice to the shah. and partly they haven't done justice to the shah, partly because it has been commissioned. but part of it has been because it has not been possible to write, in my view, a completely thorough documented account of the revolution because some of the most critical documents we needed were declassified. those in the american around kentuckys and -- archives and

british archives. there is a 30-year rule. most of the documents are classified for 30 years. some are crassfied for 70 years -- classified for 70 years. and they get declassified in a sequential fashion and, essentially, i had to wait until 19 -- 2009 for some of the most important documents to be declassified. literally, the part about the nuclear program, the documents that i needed, that i have used to write the hawaii i ri of the shah's nuclear -- history of the shah's nuclear program were declassified about three months before the book went into print. i had to delay the publication of the book. i had to rewrite the entire chapter because about a thousand pages of new documents were suddenly available. so it is now urgently needed for

reasons that i have explained, and it is now more than ever, i think, possible if one doesn't want to lionize him or demonize him. and i have tried to do neither. i have tried to rely on what the tock units indicate -- documents indicate. the book is composed of 20 chapters. some peers of the shah's -- periods of the shah's life are covered in greater depth. for example, there are three chapters, three full chapters of maybe about 100 pages that cover 1959 to 1963 pause i think that's -- because i think that's a pivotal period in iran. that's when the shah, with pressure from the americans -- pressure that begun with the eyesen hour administration and

was augmented during the kennedy administration -- forced the shah to undergo changes. some of these changes were very much changes he had wanted to do all along but was not powerful enough to do it until then like the land reform. to his credit, the shah had been talking about the land reform almost from the day he ascended the throne. but some of whom were very clearly mandated, pressured by the kennedy administration and earlier by the eyesen hour administration. it is remarkable how worried the american administrations of eisenhower and kennedy were about the future of iran in 1958-'59, '60. they really thought the revolution was right around the corner. they believed that unless something drastic is done, and i've quoted some of these documents, it is truly remarkable h