and went into chapter 7. numerous reports indicated publishers are not terribly happy with what border seems to have in mind and the top priority seems to be highlighting the borders rewards plus card but if the customers come yet know they are in trouble with the do they want to sign up for a company they may feel doesn't have a future? so i think unless borders has a rock solid strategy as to how they are going to survive they may suffer the same circuit city but at the same time i don't think we are going to know for several months of the earliest. .. most

about this book is how did i get started on this. and it's kind of an interesting story because i finished the boy's book, and i knew if i was going to write another book that it shouldn't be another issue book. 'cause people love issue books but they don't actually buy that many issue books. [laughter] >> so i wanted to write one a narrative, a reason to turn the page. my wife and i were out biking and i was daydreaming and falling behind her by 50 yards and all of a sudden i realized, i know somebody who could carry a whole book with a narrative and, of course, that's how i ended up asking michelle, you know, to cooperate in some ways

for the book. and that's a process that took about oh, two months. but she eventually began -- she gave me some access here, enough, obviously, to do the book and it was great working we are. everyone also asked me what's my favorite, you know, michelle story, if you will. it leads off with a michelle story about going to the tailor and i won't go into that one there's another one that's in there that's buried in there. kevin and michelle living in toledo went to the original pancake house for a special meal and there's always a big line there. and sure enough that was line there this time. is this creating an echo? there were open tables and there was staff milling around as kevin tells the story, michelle checks it out and she walks up

behind the maitre d' desk and looks around the restaurant and finally she walked behind the maitre d' desk, okay, you stop over here. and she just dispatched the whole thing. and it's the funny thing kevin said. it's like the staff of the restaurant were like grateful that somebody like knew what they were doing. so that's my sort of favorite michelle story and i'm going to wrap up 'cause i know q & a is far more interesting than listening to me. the significance of the book, my gut instinct in starting the book was that michelle would be tackling the core issues that we're going to be seeing playing out in states in the coming years and i would like to say some genius on my part is probably accidental. in fact, that is happening. if you look at the teachers contracts just agreed in wisconsin and colorado, florida, nevada, new york, in all those places if you look at the

reforms that are proposed or just starting, the place to actually see how they played out on the ground would be washington, d.c. of course, some politicians will look at what happened here and say why would we do that? the mayor lost his job and michelle lost her job. and to those who would say that, i would say you've acting good point there. so why -- why would anyone do that? a couple of reasons. there's a whole group of politicians who believe, you know, that i've done michelle light as possible where you can do the same kind of reforms only you smile more when you're doing them. and you're more collaborative. are they right. i think it depends on the school district, you know, a midfunctioning school district probably could do that. but, unfortunately, there are a lot of school districts -- too many school districts with the same profile and i don't think you can get away with it. there's another way of answering this question. 'cause i recall asking this of

kevin johnson. >> i thought here's a politician whose also immersed in education issues and also went door to door campaigning. and i asked kevin, you know, speaking of the mayor, why would you -- why would anyone reach out for michelle rhee kind of person considering what happened? and he said, you know, people like us we're just so desperate to, you know, make a dent, some kind of improvement in urban school districts. and so it is going to happen. they are going to start reaching out and he offered this group, this avalanche of offers that came to michelle after she stepped down. so i think kevin's right. these reforms are going to be tried again and again and not just michelle light version. and so i'm going to pass to michelle who amazed me by agreeing to talk about her relation with the press. probably her least favorite topic but considering this is organized by education writers association, she played along as

a good sport. so over to you. >> my relations with the press. [laughter] >> i think my relationship with the press was complicated. let me say on the first side a lot of very good things happened because of the press attention that we got. but with the efforts we were putting forth. i was really surprised to tell you the truth when i started the job that there was so much interest in what we were doing. i at first, you know, i would often go out to dinner to richard and shaun and we would talk about how strange it was. and at first i really thought it was the visual was so stark, right. here's this korean-american woman who's young. who has never run a school much less a school district and now

she's taken off this job in mostly an african-american city and it was such a stark visual and i thought that was sort of driving the interest in the news. and i thought that it would dissipate over time. and try as we might, it did not happen. and it just seemed like the press interest and the intensity actually increased over time. and i remember having dinner one night with a journalist here in the city. i sort of was lamenting. we had a particularly press day that day and i don't get it. i mean, there's a fight in the cafeteria at some high school in new york city, i can guarantee you that the "new york times" is not covering that. but what's going on in the "washington post" is covering every single thing that's happening and i don't get it. and he looked at me and he said, i can tell you why there's so much interest. he said it's because you give good quote.

[laughter] >> you say the things that we know people are probably thinking in their heads but they're trained to do better, right? to stick to their talking points and you actually say those things. you say that there are some teachers who are not so good and need to, you know, be removed. and so that's why the press loves you because you will say those things. so i thought that was interesting. i will say this. i don't know if i'm allowed to say this or not but i'm going to say it. [laughter] >> as for usual. i think that there were people in the media who were extraordinarily helpful to us in this effort. i honestly don't think that we could have done the work that we -- that we did without some of the media actually backing up 100% of the way and when things

kind of spiraled out of control with what people were thinking and what the blogs were saying for the voice of reason and i couldn't trade that -- or wouldn't trade that for anything because it was a venue through which there was this consistent voice saying, you know, this is the right thing and the wrong thing but mostly they said it was right. that was extraordinarily helpful to the effort. i also, though, will tell you that we made a ton of mistakes when it came to the media. it's funny because starting from very early on in my tenure, people would make comments to either me or my staff saying, you guys have the best p.r. machine ever. i mean, you're getting on -- you're getting covered but ail of these major national news outlets. i mean, there's this mastermind behind it and little did they know it was a bunch of 24 years

old who didn't know what they were doing. and somehow people thought it was the rhee p.r. press machine. it was the lack thereof, actually. we naively thought we were going to put our heads down. we're going to work hard and do the right thing and we're going to produce results and that is really what matters. this making sure that we focus on the right things and we're producing results. and i think that we very much underestimated the power that the media would have in shaping the message. and so what we ended up with was a situation where the teachers were sort of -- they were getting messages and they were reading things on the newspaper or on the blogs, and they were getting the message and the communication shaped in their head and we -- this is our

fault. we did not do our part to sort of send a different message collaboratively. and so we thought, some of those things that people are saying, they're nuts. nobody is going to believe that. but in the absence of us putting anything different out, it actually stuck in people's heads and it sort of become the narrative and that's where we really fell down in all of this. and interestingly enough, there are some people from cntb here. they will remember back in the day long before i was chancellor, we would say to superintendents, do not abdicate the communication directly to teachers to the union. you have to be directly communicating with your teachers and then after we took over the school we fell in those same trap and we didn't do that. i would say that my sort of -- i think our biggest challenge and my biggest lesson learned in all

of this has to do with that communication specifically to the teachers. not necessarily, you know, the rest of the public and you're going to take what you take and whatnot. but what really did not serve us well we were not directly communicating with teachers. so complicated stuff like i said both good and bad. i would absolutely say because of the national attention that we got for the effort, we -- we got a lot of support. i don't think we ever would have gotten the $65 million in foundation support for the efforts that we were embarked on from national organizations unless they believed that what we were doing here was going to have a national impact. and that would not have happened were it not for the press and media that were involved in the effort. so i'd say good, not so good side there was a lot more we could have done better. [inaudible] >> i was hoping to get

michelle's answer one more on this issue 'cause i thought we had such an interesting conversation about the whole "time" cover that because is the backup time cover. >> the one they were supposed to use. >> as opposed to the one with the broom. what would have made a difference? what would have been needed done at the same time. no, you may not do that with the broom. you had an interesting answer to, you know, whether you should have a p.r. advisor there or things like that? >> well, so i -- i like to travel alone. i like to do my own thing. and, you know, people would often -- when i'd show up someplace, they'd sort of look around, well, where is your staff? i say they are at the office working where they should be, not following me around. so that was just my thought in

all of this is that -- i mean, i'm a school district superintendent. i'm not a, you know, movie star, one of these people. i don't need folks following me around. i'm just doing my job. and i will say about the "time" cover even though they told me that was the picture they were going with until three days before it came out. i don't regret that cover. i regret that people took it the wrong way, you know, they -- people took it and took it to meant -- to mean that i was, you know, somehow demeaning people and that sort of thing. that was not that at all. i really saw the broom as a symbol of needing a clean sweep. literally sort of sweeping change, needing to clean house and i don't think there's anybody that can argue with me about the fact that we absolutely had to have sweeping changes in what we were doing. we could not go around the edges and spend another 10 years trying to get, you know, 10 more

percentage-point gains for the children in washington, d.c. it wasn't good enough for them. >> well, now we'd really like to take questions from all of you, either for richard or for michelle. anybody here? susan? >> michelle, i can't remember whether it was the "waiting for superman" where you were in a discussion with geoffrey canada, and he made the observation about the fact that many of the people that this change is meant to benefit are as opposed to it. and how disturbing that is. and i wonder if you could comment on that in terms of the most active parents and

community members being not explaining the reason for the change. >> so i think there are a few distinctions that are important. oftentimes people would portray the opposition to what we were doing as parents. parents don't like you. parents don't like these changes. and certainly the majority of the people who disagree i would say are closed to the plan. but the people who as opposed to every step we took were not -- they were not a large group of parents. parents were actually seeing the improvements that were being made every day. it was, i'd say, more general community members who were unhappy with our approach. and i'd also say that -- and richard touches a little bit on this in the book. and i only sort of learned about this through his reporting,

actually, was that he talks in the book about having done a poll in ward 7 and on jordan neighborhood where the school is and asking people sort of about questions of education and ask questions -- you know, what were the schools like before you took over and the majority of people thought they were awful and a majority of people thought schools were heading in the right direction, you know, and they could see the improvement. that was also echoed in the last "washington post" poll that we saw record numbers of citizens in the city were feeling heartened and positive about school reform. but when richard asked the question -- not richard, was in necessary to fire the teachers to see the school and they said no. they knew was a lot better but

they didn't think that the steps that had been taken were necessary to get there. and that was a huge a-ha moment for me is that i realized we had not done a good job for connecting of dots for people. we're not firing people because it's fun and we like it. it's not fun firing people. it's not a pleasant situation to be in. but because we believed that these steps that we were taking, whether it was terminations, whether it was school closures, et cetera, was all linked to the products they were seeing on the back end which was higher quality instruction and leadership in the schools. >> i would just add and michelle points out, yes, i did some polling there at sousa but i also -- sousa middle school is a polling spot. so on that day, on primary day, i met people coming out. and i asked them about this. and i went to sousa deliberately and now keep in mind sousa is

that school in "waiting for superman" which was the worst in the world essentially and a lot was in stake in this mayoral election and michelle would be gone and although greg has not assembled -- he's not gone back, it was not clear during the primary at all because there was very harsh attitudes towards the reforms and i thought this is a school if these parents in this community had anything -- had everything to lose, this would be it. and i was shocked interviewing parents coming out there. they were -- it all comes back to the firing, actually, that there was huge resentment on the firings and there was almost zero sense among people that i talked to that the firings that took place at sousa had anything to do with that school improving dramatically. it was just -- i mean, nothing,

no connection at all. and i thought that was pretty striking. >> can you talk about your process of writing and there's competing narrow tives, you know, in dps and i'm curious how you chose to include those and plans those and make decision business what was valid for inclusion in your book? just how you chose about the balancing narratives and what you chose -- why you chose to include certain narratives. >> right. it's a great question. my book has been out in a week and i'm being trashed. you've only got one shot in doing this book. the question is how are you going to spend your 270 pages? do you always have, you know,

spooling views and opposing voices and do you try and answer one big question. and to me the question was, you know, can an urban school district like d.c. be turned around? was this the right strategy? was it working? and should other school districts follow that strategy? and so although there's a biography in there and that's the fun part of the book is michelle growing up. if things happened in her life that weren't relevant to answering that question, like how somebody like this come to this position, they got tossed. and, you know, i debated a long time and i'm really getting criticized for this. why don't you have a chapter, you know, interviewing fired teachers and the impact that this had on them? i think this gets to the heart of your question. and believe me, i thought about doing that just to avoid the inevitable criticism because if

this had been a book about d.c. and the impact on d.c., then i obviously would have been done that but that's not what this book was. this book was again, you know, was the right strategy chosen? was it working? should other school districts pursue this. essentially it's a national question. and so i deliberately -- i did not do that. and i thought if i was going to profile teachers, they should be teachers that were brought in that made a difference, which is why -- you keep talking about the sousa chapter here. mainly, because it was such a dramatic turn-around and it was by jordan bringing in effective teachers, not just bringing them in. he was never around. he was always in the classroom telling them how to teach. the funny story -- i mean, an anecdote in the book, you know, i would arrive sometimes for interviews at sousa and there

was no dujuan cooling mischaracterize my heels. he could care less about me. i was not a big priority in his life. his priority was out there in the classrooms and so i had to like beg and weedle my way in. at first i was kind of offended and then, you know, he's got one thing on his mind. so i digress and that's why i didn't include -- you know, the broader picture. and i had a very nairtive, if you will, and i'll admit to that. i'll take my lumps on it. you have 270 pages and how are you going to use them? >> and is -- [inaudible] >> had to be invited to your book party. there's a couple of things i don't agree with on no child

left behind and its impact on high schools. i think it was really meant to shake the system and i think michelle came in and really did challenge that and tried to take that on in the district's high schools but i would like to know during your tenure if there had been other school chancellors around the country that had come to you even quietly to ask how they can do what you were doing even if they were maybe afraid to take it on so publicly as you did? >> did everyone hear the question? >> you want me to try and repeat it? my question more to michelle in my commentary was, did other school chancellors or superintendents or others that were in a position that you were in trying to really shake up the district schools, did anyone even come to you quietly to sort of ask how you were doing or what -- what it was taking for you to have the ability to do

what you were doing. even if they didn't want to publicly be known for that? >> chancellors or superintendents come to michelle and ask her what she was really doing, you know, and what was the message to her, you know, not madness but, you know, and was that something that they could emulate? is that the gist of it? right. >> i had mostly people who were just coming into their jobs who were trying to get a lay of their land and trying to understand, i think, before they really got up and running what the challenges were, why i made the decisions that i made, was i happy with those or not? lots of folks who came to me to ask about school closures. when we closed the 23 schools in d.c., no other district had ever closed anything close to that in one shot.

and then after we did that actually in a number other cities that did occur so we definitely got a lot of questions about the school closures in particular. >> michelle, what did you think of the arbiter's decisions of the day before yesterday. and why haven't you said you're going to appeal it? [laughter] >> and now that i'm not in that job i can answer really the way i want to. it's a crock. if you look at the arbitrators say, yeah, these people were not good, right? and if you look at what we are -- can i still say we? what we are required to do in order to remove a probationary teacher from their position -- what the letter of the law

states we absolutely met. what he said we did not do which is an explanation of why to the teachers, that's nowhere in the requirements of what is necessary. so i have no idea what that man was thinking. in fact, we were -- we were actually, you know, advised by our councils, you know, when you have terminations you actually don't go into long things with people about why and whatnot. you meet the letter of the law and that's exactly what happened so i think that decision was absolutely incorrect. i'm confident that it is appealed it will be turned over. [inaudible]

>> i'm curious as a journalist what -- how do you react to this narrative of your tenure and what is the one thing that you would have told differently if you were describing it in your own book? >> how do you react to the narrative of your tenure and how would you -- what's the one thing you would add if you were to be writing the book yourself? [inaudible] >> let's see, what did i think about the book? yeah. [laughter] >> yeah, what's one thing you would add, the pieces to the story? >> what's one thing you would add?

>> potentially, and i think rick got through the sousa chapter but if i were to add anything to this, i would try to add the voice of kids. i get my energy from children. i love children. the difference between you and other adults that most adults love their own children but for some reason you like all children. [laughter] >> and i do. i like adults far lesser than i like kids. and so the city is full of children who have so much potential, so much talent. i mean, they are absolutely amazing kids and they never cease to amaze me. whether i'm talking to little kindergartners or my students and i get emails from all the time. the children of this city are absolutely phenomenal. and the one thing that -- the

one thread that i regret not seeing in this is the voice of at least one student and what their experiences were over that three-year period and what they saw, both from the school side and then maybe from the community side. i think that would have been a nice addition. [inaudible] >> did you think about that or the 270 pages weren't big enough? >> it's too many pages and it was probably my long years at "usa today" we would get lectures on editors losing eyeballs and they skip the to the next page. you lost their ibs and you get to the point where they're gone and when i'm reading, there's not that many kids -- i understand what you're saying but i was afraid of losing the

eyeballs. [inaudible] >> richard wrote about sousa from talking about a strong leader building a strong team which i absolutely agree is one of the key things that can make a turn-around either work or not. let me tell you from a completely different perspective. so when principal jordan first came in, i started hearing from my staff that things were really turning around and i had been there my first year and it was an absolute disaster and so it was literally one of the most dysfunctional schools that we ever had true to the "washington post" call it an academic sinkhole. i started hearing things very early on in the year things were looking up, things were looking better. and i don't think in that first year i don't think i actually was able to visit the school. i saw after the first year their test score gains which were almost unbelievable. and, you know, we like to see gains sometimes when we see

gains that you kind of wonder whether those are real gains or not and so i visited all the schools and i will tell you if some of those schools, i thought, really? this is a school -- i would back in and every classroom that i walked into the children were engaged, 100% engaged. they were wearing uniforms. their uniforms was tucked in. this was a school literally that i absolutely felt comfortable sending my own children to. 100%. in that short of time period which is a huge thing. so i wanted to kind of understand why -- what had happened and what the the perspective was. and i decided to hold a teacher listening center there the next week and i show up at 3:15 and you get out of the car and the kids are just getting out of school and so i'm walking into this school and all of a sudden the kids see me and they're like, chancellor rhee,

chancellor rhee and this is strange when i'm walking in the school who's the chinese lady around. they're hugging me and they're taking my picture with me and i thought it was a little strange. they started talking to some of the kids and i talked to one young man and i said what elementary school did you go to? the elementary school is down the street. and i said do you think that school prepared you for the rigors for school. well, the teachers here teach. and i said, what does that mean? well, they really teach us to think outside the box. and this is a sixth grader who's saying this, right? and it's interesting just to sort of hear from the kids' perspective. they were all telling me what they thought about both their elementary school experience, how it differed from their middle school experience. they could articulate what the

differences were and how they felt coming to school every day and it just gave you a different appreciation. [inaudible] >> and next book i'm going to let michelle interview the kids. if i could just jump in with a quick question here because it was alluded to here the high school dilemma, if you will. when michelle took over, there was so-called comprehensive high schools and they were all failing if you will by ncld. and michelle realized she couldn't take them all on at once. and you took them all -- a few at a time. and it was rough writing. i focused on dunbar which did really well one year and ran into some huge problems and, you know, i came away from this whole thing not really that encouraged about the possibility of turning around failing high schools. not that it couldn't be done but what's your hindsight here?

>> it's extraordinarily difficult. there's very, very few examples in this country of what we were trying to do, which is taking over a large comprehensive high school, as-is, with the existing students and seeing an active turn-around. i'm very proud of them that happened in this country was led by my fiance kevin johnson in sacramento. that effort, though, took five years. the first two years, they didn't see huge academic change they saw a huge change in the expectation. and last week i took some of my staff -- we were relocating to sacramento for a visit. you know, it was fascinating because that school, which, you know -- when they took it over was a failing school by any measure about to be taken over. there's not a single security guard. there are no metal detectors. i mean, it's a completely different school now. but it is one of just a few in

the country that has managed to get there. and it was not an overnight work of art. now i think there's seven years into it. and they're still learning lessons about what still needs to be done. >> as a reporter for education week i visited that first year, and it was very much a work in progress but there was a huge change already but, you know, it took a while. >> yes. >> interesting. we have time for one more question. >> i have a question for both of you. i have a 6-year-old who's in d.c. public schools. and we love the school and most of the parents do, but the question is, the thing you just raised which is what do you do when they reach high school age and most of us who live in d.c. think we either have to go to private school or move out suburbs. i was raised in public schools. i went to college in public schools and so i'm a believer in that. but the realities of what do you do for your own kids?

and the question that i have for you, michelle, is, you know, you mentioned five years for a turn around in the high school. how much time do you think you needed here to really make a complete change, oops, sorry? you know, my son's elementary school is great. >> we love it. middle school isn't so much of a problem but high school really is the sort of barrier. and what did you think if you could sort of project -- what was your timeline in your head for, you know, a real change to be affected in the school system? >> from the perspective of a parent who, you know, doesn't have a lot of time to wait for schools to get better because their children only have one shot at an education, michelle, how -- what was your timeline? how long do you think it really would have taken you to get the schools to the point where everyone in this room would feel

comfortable sending their own children to? >> when the mayor and i started our effort together, we talked about the transformation of the school district for two terms over an eight-year period. not at the end of eight years everything would be perfect. but at the end of eight years we feel the entire city would be able to look back and say this is a wildly different school district than it was when they got started. and, you know, it's interesting because during my 3.5 years here, i was often greeted with advice maybe from people who would say, you need to slow down. you are doing -- you're trying to do too much too fast and you need to understand that change doesn't happen overnight. and i would tell you that in fact people who said that to me had children in the d.c. public schools. see, i have my children in the school district, and i knew

every single day every decision i was making was going to impact them one way or the other. and i simply wasn't willing to say, you know, to another family, okay, just give me five more years and then the school that your kid is at will be better. and that's part of the reason why, even though it was controversial, i came out in favor of the opportunity scholarships program here, and also the charter schools, effective charter schools because i said, no, i don't want any parent to have to wait until i fix that high school or that fix that middle school or fix that elementary school. they should have the right to have their attend a high quality school today. and i hope that a lot of them stick with me but my effort has to be focused on changing them as quickly as humanly possible. and hope that what we were doing was so high quality that it brought people potentially back, but i was not going to close the

door and lock people and say you got to take one for the team and have your kid suffer through the next few years while we're trying to fix this system. >> i would like to end the q & a on a positive note, i think i will not respond to that question, but i already, you know, described -- i was stunned by just -- i mean, i knew going in nationally how difficult it is to turn around an urban high school. and, you know, i thought i was watching one, you know, but it didn't really make it that far past in year 2. and -- like i said, i will end on a positive note. and, you know, there are some other people here i tried to identify who maybe come in. i think shaun branch is here now. raise your hand. he's the one who rescued me when i showed up on the wrong day for the interview and also gave me batteries when my recorder ran out. did the sandman ever make it?

anyway. listen, i appreciate everyone coming. and we want some mingling and some book-signing opportunities. the books are being given away by the publisher and i'll be there as long as my voice and hand holds out so thank you very much for coming. i appreciate it. [applause] >> for more information visit the book's website, "the bee eater".com. >> here's a look at some of the upcoming fairs and festivals happening around the country.

>> up next, legal journalist kim iceler profiles the five partners of the washington, d.c. law firm williams and connelly. the author reports on the inside the beltway of the firm from their representation of the "washington post."

>> this is a book which is not just about washington -- not just about a single washington law firm but about -- the culmination of everything that i from writing about lawyers and law firms back in the day, and that when you're a newspaper reporter you learn early on that underneath every decision and behind -- almost behind every election and almost every political thing that happens from the smallest town to the biggest city, nobody does anything in this country anymore without consulting a lawyer. i started my journalistic career as a reporter in greenville, mississippi. and from there i went on to the tampa tribune and after living in florida for five years, i had decided that the only place that i could possibly live that would be better than florida, 'cause i kind of liked warm weather, was california and i ended up getting a job at a legal paper

out there called the los angeles daily journal which was owned by -- i'm not even sure looking back it if i really remembered at the time that it was a strict lay legal paper. it sort of looked like "the wall street journal" and it was owned by charlie moneyger and he had he a firm out there and he's the charlie munger who's the associate of warren buffett now. i had loved covering courts, you know, when i was young my father -- i'm sure it wasn't intentional. he kept giving me books about lawyers to read. so i read all the books, clarence darrows' autobiography and one of the books i loved the most when i was little was louie naiser. and after writing a couple of

stories about sort of internal law firm. the big story was you about a crisis they were having at morrison and forester i ended up getting a job another magazine which ended about the demise and and i was writing shark tank and while it was at legal times i had an idea for writing a story about one of the lawyers of williamson connelly who i thought has had greatest dream job in the history of law, which was running a baseball team and that was larry lakino and i was over to his office and he was the president of the baltimore orioles. and larry -- i got almost all through the story till the end of the story, and then somebody i was interviewing about larry

said, oh, i guess you know about his illness and i was like, oh, yeah, sure, sure. the illness. that's terrible and so anyway i began to piece together the story of how at the age of 39 years old, larry had been stricken with non-hodgkin's lymphoma and had -- and was the 36th person in the history of medicine to have a bone transplant. and while he was -- and while he was in recovery, his miraculous recovery from this illness, he -- he had -- he went to the dana farber cancer institute in boston and they typed in the boston red sox team and so ultimately -- when larry got out of his isolation, they said what's the one favor -- what's the one thing that you most want to do now that you're getting out of the hospital and larry said, i want to go walk around fenway park and there's fenway park because and there's a picture of the old fenway park.

well, larry's story -- i've always thought it was one of the most dramatic and wonderful stories because, of course, larry, 13, 23 years later larry not only survived what -- against all the odds but managed to an even greater beat the odds in even a greater way by being the leader of the red sox when they won the world series. a feat nobody thought was possible. it was shortly after meeting larry and telling his story in legal times that i signed on to cover the iran contra hearings and that was when i first encountered brendon sullivan sitting behind him in the press row in the senate while he was representing ollie north. and when brendon sullivan came in to represent you, the room would crackle. it still crackles. and i walked into the ted

stevens case trial this year, you know, there's an electricity in the room that you're present with some of the great lawyers. as a reporter i had been pretty lucky to be able to be in trials with people like melvin bellia and william kunsler and i was going to mention jim coleman who is now i think at duke university when he represented ted bundy in some of his death penalty appeals. when you're in the presence of these great lawyers, it's really a spectacular feeling. you know, some of you may have heard -- i don't know if some of you are watching boardwalk empire. anybody see the last episode where the -- arnold rothstein, the guy who fixed the 1919 world series is preparing his legal defense. and one of the characters in the program says, arnold, you should

be a lawyer. and he replies without sort of missing a beat, he says, no, i'd rather continue to make my living honestly. so, you know, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of lawyers in this country that sort of don't necessarily all shower praise on the legal profession but fortunately i've been able to be around the best and the greatest. and when i used to do my 50 best lawyer story for washingtonion ever year, it would occur to me -- and i would list three -- usually i would sort of limit it to three. and brendon would be on there and david kindle woodrow wilson be over there and sometimes i would rotate the third spot richard cooper i think would be on there one year and bob barr net was on there one year. and i was thinking, boy, i could put 10 william connelly -- there's at least 10 and brendon

and david would say all 50. so i thought it would make a great book. and in the washingtonion i did a piece called "the firm that would run the world" in which i talked about the concentric circles and some might say conflicts that sort of enveloped this legendary firm. they represented the tobacco industry and the supreme court cases involving whether or not tobacco should be treated as a drug by the food and drug administration but they also represent the vince lom barti cancer institute. one of my favorite ones involved bob barnett, when this week with david brinkley used to be on every sunday morning, and it struck me williams and connelly represented the network that broadcast the show, abc.

they represented all of the talent that was on the show, george will, brinkley, cokie robertson, sam donaldson and they would represent mary matlin and james carville and to cap it off they were the attorneys for archer daniels midland for many years and part of which is retold in the movie "the informant" with matt damon, aubrey daniels' role. anyway, as i looked at brendon sullivan's career over the entirety of his 35 years, i used to always say in my articles about him -- and when i was talking to people, i would say, brendon sullivan is gone 31 years and had never had one client serve any time in jail, which was pretty remarkable because by the time people came to him, they were usually pretty far up the creek.

it wasn't like he was defending, you know, too many roman catholic nuns or that sort of thing and after that i began to wonder if it was really true. was i just saying this? had i just repeated this story so many times that i believed it or not? and so one of the things that i try to do in this book was to go back and talk a little bit about why brendon sullivan has this passion that he has and what the pattern is from when he first came to williamson connelly after being -- defending prisoners at the city of stockade in san francisco and then on to his first cases when prosecutors sort of routinely -- he discovered that prosecutors didn't always behave in the most correct manner possible. and i sort of came to realize, and i think i explained in the book, why he is the way he is.

why his cases turn out the way they do. and one of the best examples was the case of a tax case he had handled where -- he was going through the documents that the government had given him in this very high profile case and one of them didn't look right to him. it was sort of -- the others were yellowed and this one looked okay. and so he held it up. he held the paper up to the light. and had his investigators check out the watermark and they were able to prove that the paper wasn't manufactured until after the document was supposedly had been typed, and the prosecutor hadn't been able to find -- hadn't been able to find the original document so he just had it retyped and that was sort of classic brendon sullivan which we saw a lot in the ted stevens case when he was able to prove that -- once again prosecutors

had failed to provide all the exculpatory evidence that they're usually required to do. and in the broadcom case which concluded the same results. i do find it kind of interesting to me that a lot of conservative politicians who rail against the awesome power of the federal government, especially in the last couple months -- the brendon sullivan has been a foot soldier in the fight against the misuse of power of government for 35 to 40 years and a lot of these other people are perfectly willing to give -- to create new laws, make federal crimes out of everything that they can and give more power to prosecutors. and don't see any inconsistency in their positions. i don't need which ones they take but it seems a little bit inconsistent. so i had taken all this and i

was able to convince st. martin's press to let me write a book of the world of big time washington law and particularly -- and looking at it through the lens of williamson connelly, which i tried to do and tell how five in the basic thread of the book is take the five main characters in my book which are brendon, david kindle, gregly craig, bob barnett and larry keno in the law firm and by the people who have left the law firm to pursue careers as larry did in baseball or jeff finler did with pfizer or nicole at the sony corporation or other people at textron or nextel corporation or marriott how the direct line from the things and maxims and what it meant in terms of

american business and law and really made this a tremendously unique firm. in and a lot of other ways in firms they don't take lateral partners, for example, they don't engage in self-promotion. they don't have offices outside of other places. so that's sort of what the book is about. and kind of like, sort of -- unlike what you might get from the comment from arnold rothstein in empire boardwalk. i think my characters are all -- exemplify the best in american law profession which is sometimes difficult to say because when you go from writing for a trade publication, as i did at legal times and american lawyer -- although american lawyer was sort of an antitrade publication to writing for a general interest magazine like

washingtonion, you're sort of expected to hammer lawyers all the time and not really give them much of a break but there are some great people in the profession. jake stein is standing over here. one of the great lawyers in america. thank you for coming as well. [inaudible] >> if anybody has any -- if anybody has any questions, shoot them out here and i'll see if i can make some sense. [inaudible] >> sarah palin and geraldine ferraro, was there any -- [inaudible] >> well, robert barnett has built this incredible practice and one of the things that enables me to call this the world's most powerful firm is the fact that bob barnett's practice -- he represented -- he represents three presents, all the vice presidents, all the

cabinet secretaries, all the major media figures in the country, the anchors on both the network and broadcast. placing all the powerful people in washington around like pieces on a chessboard. and he started it all with geraldine ferraro and when i called her to talk about her relationship with barnett and how that led to this incredible, remarkable practice that he has, it was just about the time that sarah palin had been named to be the vice presidential nominee by john mccain, who is not a williamson connelly client because. and so i said just sort of at the end of my questioning of ferraro about her relationship with williams and connelly, i said, have you talked to sarah palin? you now share the only distinction to be the only two

women in history to be nominated in vice president. has she called you or asked you what it's like or what it might be like or anything like that? and she said, well -- she said, no, but then she said, well, actually senator mccain had called me and i called him back. he had called me to tell me what he had done and i had called him back, and he said -- and i said, wish her luck. and he said well, she's right here. i'll put her on the phone. and so he put sarah palin on the line and she basically had no clue who geraldine ferraro was. the conversation was very short. so when sarah palin's book "going rogue" came out, there's whole page in there about how sarah palin was going around -- had been going around the country talking about how great