independent publisher based in cambridge. we do everything from history and military history to biography, memoir and we publish long books. >> lissa warren, thank you for your time. >> next, josh margolin and ted sherman talk about one of the largest federal sting operations in history which ended in the arrest of 44 includes in new jersey state legislators, several mayors and several state officials and a number of rabbis. it is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> good evening. i am a senior political correspondent. the michael aron with two is seen colleagues from the media. josh margolin who made his name in this state but is at the new york post and ted sherman who

continues to make his name as a star ledger and most recently did this series on the steward commission which may not mean a lot to people down here but sure mental lot to chris christie because he went after it and sort of turned it upside down and 100 people foul out and haven't gotten back up yet which is what this book is somewhat about. it is about the downfall of a number of people who were not expecting to be taken down and many have gone to prison as a result of whose lives have been ruined. you all remember i am sure what triggered this book or the incident that this book is all about. the mass bust in july of 2009 of

political figures mainly in northern new jersey and rabbis from portland, from the orthodox community. these two guys decided to write a book about that and i want to ask them why. why write a book about this case? >> because nobody understood what happened or why it happened and when it first happened in july of 2009. we were as close as anybody who wasn't handcuffed and frankly we didn't understand it. we come into the office on a muggy july morning having been tipped off the night before that something big, quote, was going to come down. in new jersey there is only something big and the possibility of getting arrested anti-corruption case but we are there and getting reports from

our colleagues at fbi headquarters, or in. a dozen politicians, 2 dozen, hasidic rabbis with their ritual fringes flowing in the breeze, deputy mayor of jersey city who shows up handcuffed. she is 70 years old wearing a low cut dress. what is this? >> a former burlesque queen. >> the only news we have as well put together business ladies and deputy mayor. there is an informant in the middle of it and the fed won't say who it is and no one a understands -- the first thing no one understands how it came to gather and when you finally find out, when we finally found out what it was that tie everything together we still

didn't understand it. why would anybody trust solomon west? he had been arrested already on a $50 million bank fraud. the details are extraordinarily hilarious but he had been arrested already and people like taking bribes and laundering his money as if he is not -- [talking over each other] >> let me stop you. who would play iraq when they make the movie? >> good question. the old story is very cinematic and most reporters when sitting in a courtroom waiting for a case to develop will cast a movie just sitting there and we did the same thing. george costanza. >> he is from jersey.

>> what is most amazing is solid black is in his late 20ss, this whole thing got started when he went through a pnc bank in monmouth county, went through the drive-through window and passed a bad check for $25 million. >> it wasn't a bad check. it was a $25 million check on a closed account and the bank cashed it at the drive-through. [talking over each other] >> they put $25 million into his account. >> under the bank protocol once you deposit the check and the customer your funds are

available immediately. within hours he transferred the money out and the next day tried to do it again. [talking over each other] >> up until that point, he was the son of a rabbi and dealing the community that has taken over the community. he had built in a huge ponzi scheme. >> that was solomon's secret life. he was known as a philanthropist and as the son of a rabbi. he was very successful buying properties all over monmouth county and no one realized that the time that it was all a ponzi scheme. he was a mini bernie madoff. he had lots of investors who were promised huge returns and the way he did that was buying

properties. and getting mortgages for these properties. sometimes getting mortgages for properties he did not own. sometimes he was getting mortgages for properties he said he was going to buy that he already bought. this went on for years. >> the banks look ridiculous. >> yes they do. >> they don't do any due diligence. >> he said that. eventually the ends up in bankruptcy court and he said yes, the banks do no due diligence and any excuse he gave normally was accepted. >> you find that amazing? >> it was astounding to us. i don't pay my mortgage -- [talking over each other] >> in the book you write that --

ted just made the analogy to bernie madoff. you wrote at one point in the book that although he was running a massive ponzi scheme and i think you say that he built up $310 million worth of debt at the point where he leaves the $25 million to pay somebody. you write that nonetheless, people that he victimized weren't as angry at him as bernie madoff's victims were at him because you write he had a kind of charisma. >> solomon dwek had not like -- in public figure, we are talking about a guy who is pudgy, balding. i am pudgy and balding also but don't look like a movie star. he just doesn't appear to be a

physical presence. but he manageds to get people to believe in him, to trust him and have faith in him and his charisma is something we can all understand from our personal lives given whenever face you might have. the simple phrase he was rabbi's sun. by being a rabbi's son, that cloak that he wore was able to give him immediate integrity or at least the illusion of integrity where people felt even at the end, he is arrested and the scandal is coming out day-by-day revelation by revelation the state judge on the case assigned a lawyer to start unwrapping all of this.

the monitor meet with individual victims and one after another they still trust solomon. he wouldn't do anything wrong. he didn't mean it. >> these are all the victims of his ponzi scheme, not the victims of going under cover. >> absolutely not. they have a different feeling about him. >> people like his uncle. >> that is a different case because as we found -- [talking over each other] >> $50 million from his uncle joe day. >> where did joey gets $60 million? >> joey is a successful man in the garment industry. like most of his investors he saw how successful solomon was in the real-estate business and asked him to invest. >> it is important to wonder stand that and it is a 300 page

book. we could talk about it until you are old board. we won't go through this step-by-step but anybody and there are probably a number of lawyers in the room leaguers and anyone with familiarity with the ocean county seen and the jewish community along the shore, there is understanding that the syrian community over there and i am not casting this on any individual community but the community as a whole has made its mark in the garment industry which is an international industry awash in cash transaction and there was a feeling among people in american law enforcement and some outsiders for longtime that some of these companies associated with the garment industry are doing illegal business because there is too much cash flow and around and they are not properly reporting it. that is the universe we are dealing with. uncle joey is a garment maglev. sixty million was a hit but by

no means an end to do that. >> so how did solomon dwek debt caught initially? >> running a ponzi scheme and like all ponzi schemes it ran out of gas. he wasn't getting any more new investors. >> how many years? >> four years. suddenly some of the loan for coming do and he didn't have the cash to come up with it and he was working on one last deal, getting a lot of money from a new source. telling investors that he had a deal for the steel golf course which is undeveloped and land and worth a fortune had he been able to acquire it. as it turned out it was another one of his scams.

he did approach them and they said no but he kept various investors going with this on the assumption that money would come back in. >> was it the twenty-five million czechs he cashed that coincided with his being caught by the fed? how did he get caught? was at the same time frame? was that why he needed the money? >> that was what he was going to cover the bad check with. he needed a bridge loan. he needed a $25 million -- be interesting if they is he had done this before. he would go to pnc bank all the time and cash a check that would

be insufficient funds and a few days later everything would be okay. and pnc did an internal investigation because they thought there was a scheme going on back then and he always paid it back and there's no problem. is an industry where money flows back and is good for the cash. >> the next morning, $25 million check, they catch him on that. the bank catches him. they don't negotiate the second twenty-five million. those two, $25 million checks lead to the prosecutor's office and the fbi arrested him. >> but not right away because he is running the scam. he is telling people he can make up the loss. money was coming in. some people thought this golf

course was still in picard's and pnc gave him the chance to pay it back. uncle joe we figured out what was going on, made him sign over his property. >> so how do we get from this to solomon dwek going undercover for u.s. attorney's office? >> he gets arrested and gets all down to the u. s district court and his photograph coming out, charged with a $50 million bank fraud and facing 30 years in prison and that is how we come to the next part of the story. >> pick it up. >> facing 30 years in prison on a $50 million bank fraud, in his mid to late 30s and four

children with a fifth on the way and he does not want to go to jail for that long and he does what every other self-respect thing person wants to do. he wants to roll over but the problem is -- >> this has all been publicized. [talking over each other] >> they had a big thing about how his in-laws had to put up their house and there was some great interaction between solomon and a magistrate judge in his arraignment. chris christie, at the time, u.s. attorney is doing a victory dance. a $50 million bank fraud is like winning the lottery for them. they have dwek and dead to rights. he is going to the big house. $50 million bank fraud for 30 years put the press release out, he has nowhere to go with this.

it is only him. it is the easiest case we are ever going to make. no investigation necessary. >> then what happens? >> his attorney starts to make a play to enter into a cooperation agreement. chris christie won't by intuit. he tells his associates july want to get into bed with this guy? he has no doubt dwek knows more than what they arrested him on but they don't trust him. >> who convinces chris christie to give it a try and let dwek go undercover for a little longer? >> it is his senior aides in the u.s. attorney's office. what he didn't realize is through the course of the previous number of years there have been a number of investigations that came down

through the operations, council members and town administrators and the big engineering firms went belly up as a result. in the course of those investigations, when dwek's name comings across the corruption prosecutors say he knows stuff we want to know. coinciding with dwek's willingness to rollover with his lawyer pounding away his lawyer was on chris christie's call sheet. finally they give dwek's lawyer a meeting and instead of a firing squad wear the heaviest hitters from the attorney's office are arrayed, his tweet to lawyers come to make this place behind closed doors. the corruption guys, ralph become the u.s. attorney and

dancers chris christie's lead. behind closed doors he says we have something to lose here. if dwek gives us more bad guys it is another victory dance. if not, they will still send him away for 30 years. it is a no lose situation. chris christie as we are all starting to see now that he is governor, he is a really strategic thinker and is all about the upside down side consequences and this is easy for him because he says this all the time, heads i win tails you lose. easier they get dwek and other bad guys or the goes way for 30 years. six months, that is the first bite. and the corruption guys, we will

review it then. >> i know from reading your book, it is like me, and it is pretty fascinating. [talking over each other] >> for the first six months to a year dwek is only producing money laundering in the orthodox jewish community. he is coming up with any politicians willing to take bribes. is that correct? >> he is running in circles. when they came in they promised they knew a lot about money laundering and political corruption and without all the things. the problem in terms of this case, what he knew about the

corruption and everybody knew something, he could not wear a wire down there and try to get anybody on paper and say it was suspected right away but for some reason the money launders trusted him even though they knew the story. not so much that trusted him but held to mouth so initially the case focused -- >> what did he tell money launderers? >> that was bankruptcy which was true. he has a wife and they have to eat, how are we going to pay for anything? can you help me get some money out of the business? dwek out of his real-estate, a real estate empire. >> dwek trade on the sense of

pity that other orthodox jews they're going for all of their own. they knew he was in trouble financially and that he had five children and a wife to support and -- >> they were already in >> yes. [talking over each other] >> they were primarily connected with religious institutions. [talking over each other] >> primarily actually all had to be but that was a vehicle to launder the money. it was one of the simplest crimes impossible to prove unless you had that inside but it was a tax scam read large. that they come from illegal activity and illegal drugs sale and whatever. take my $100,000 in the form of a check. i go to my local synagogue if

i'm noah rabbi of laundering money. i write that check to the rabbi. the rabbi would then turn it around and i would get $90,000 back in cash so there are a number jerry. first of all i will take the full $100,000 charitable donation. that is a huge flag and put you in jail right away on that. then the fact that you are laundering money. in dwek's case he is running an illegal handbag manufacturing and distribution ring wear sometimes he would advertise that he is trying to get money out of his bankrupt company without the bankruptcy trustee knowing about it which is bankruptcy fraud. >> he kept describing that these were illegal proceeds.

>> he needs the money launderers for the fed to make the case. the money launderers need to not only actually launder the money but be aware actively that they are laundering illegal proceeds from an illegal transaction of some sort. and through the supreme court ruling, so there were actually some of the money laundering reporting class that had to be thrown out. >> the recordings. dwek wore something like this? wear? >> dwek -- >> why wasn't the spotted? >> it was very small. it was a system that was a video and audio surveillance system. we think it was a button on his shirt or something of that size.

what was interesting about this system was in years past when informants went in to meet, they would wear an old mac recorder on the small of their back. [talking over each other] >> about that small and it was hard to pickup sound. what was interesting about it was they had a hard time picking up sounds because of the ambient sound. you know better than anyone all business in new jersey is conducted in diners. >> we are going to a diner tomorrow to -- >> this opens a whole new world for the fbi and technology because in years past the recordings were so bad that

before a trial could begin prosecutors would argue over what exactly was said and they would have a transcript and argue that this was this and it would go on for a long time. with the technology they employed in this case there was no question who said what. you would hear everything clearly. no matter where they were as a family. >> so dwek -- >> it makes things more complicated moves around. it moves around. there are some days when the fed has wires up here and some days down here. the reason we are hedging a little bit if this was probably the closest held secret. the fed would give us no information about the recording system. they would talk all day about surge in sides of the case but not the reporting system and we would go directly to the fbi and washington with a series of printed questions to get any information at all.

what they would do is they would wire dwek up here. we know that because if you see the advantage point on some of the video footage sometimes it is neck level this afternoon we were reviewing video footage and it was at the belly level. it moves around. most likely a shirt button work like inside the middle of the shirt button, might be stuck inside the little hole in the men's jacket or stuck in a button or something like that. >> how much cooperation did you get from federal prosecutors? >> the nice thing for us and this is not a political statement is governor chris christie won the election because he was free to cooperate as much as he chose and to his credit and to help us out he has an incredible eye for detail and incredible gift for storytelling

and democrats would say it is storytelling storytelling. it is storytelling and he had an incredible i for pregnant detailed reporters need to be able to tell. he gave us incredible cooperation. fbi went through the mechanics of the takedown and a day of the arrest. in one point the current u.s. attorney put out an order that nobody was to cooperate with us anymore and went to washington, the justice department and invoked his authority as chief investment officer that nobody should help us out. that chilled things for couple days but we got back in the game. >> this book is full of dialogue recorded on the little camera

between dwek and unwitting targets, kind of foolish when they don't realize they are being recorded. this is as much a question i am asking as a fellow reporter as an answer that needs people. all of that dialogue suggests to me that the fed let you see some -- i know they introduced the trial as a public record. you can look at that. you answer the questions were you able to see things as we did? >> yes. i will answer that question. but i will respond to another part of what you said in the preamble. we were very fortunate that sources trusted us with evidence that has not yet been unsealed. they locked down everything until one of the parties needed

to enter into evidence and trial which is a very limited universe when you take into account there are 3,000 specific meetings that were recorded. dvds turn sideways. it took up an entire wall in the u.s. attorney's office so a small fraction of that had been entered into evidence. we have sources who allowed us access to and sealed material at their own professional apparel. in terms of your point that the fed let us see it, i would love to be able to respond to that directly but i can't limit the universe potential sources out there for fear that i might out of sources accidentally. let's just say fishman was insisted that nobody under his authority could cooperate with us. ..

>> he had to go from person who knew the next person who knew the next person. so he started -- >> he worked at this pretty feverishly, did he not? >> absolutely. >> every day. >> and he worked -- not only every day, but what we did at one point was we took all of the criminal complaints that had been released and put it into a database and made ourselves a little chronological timeline to see what he was doing. and it just blew our minds at one point where we're seeing that he's meeting five, six people on the same day going from williams burg, going to

brooklyn, back and forth and back and forth. >> being that we're down here in atlantic county, he started one day, i think, early afternoon with meetings at the boar galt that, and within a couple of hours it seems like the parkway had gotten compressed, he winds up at another jersey city meeting getting another bad guy. >> you and i have -- >> i'm not going to talk about how fast i drive today. are there any lawyers or cops in the room? [laughter] i didn't say that. >> when dealing with rabbinical types, he's solomon dwick. >> yes. >> when he's tealing with political types -- dealing with political types, he adopts an alias. >> correct. >> and i'm stunned, he's gotten maybe 15 or 20 political people to accept fedex envelopes stuffed with $10,000 in cash before you write somebody

googles david'sen back, and there is no david. the other 15, 20 didn't google him? >> the one that did came to a book signing last weekend. this guy's really happy. he googled him but, yeah, it was extraordinary to us. that's why the book has a little bit of humor in it, and -- >> a lot of humor in it. >> with part of it is our commenting or analyzing various anecdotes because we had to put ousts in the reader's -- ourselves in the reader's shoe a little bit which is something we can't do in the newspaper every day. we need to show you that, yeah, we can't believe this either, and we couldn't believe this at various points. and so, yes, dwick has brought more than 25 people into various bribery-related political crimes

on this case. and three day before the arrests are going to take place, finally, the former president of the zoning board in guttenberg says, you know what? he's talking weird, he had complained the guy was talking weird, he's talking weird, he's talking fast. none of what he says is making any sense. who is he? and he's down in this cluttered little office he has in guttenberg, and he googles him, and he finds nothing. and he says, you know what? i am not going to that meeting tomorrow. remember, at this point dwick has put himself forward to these political types as a mega developer, the kind of guy who can buy 600 mobile exxon gas stations in one transaction because mobile exxon needed to die vest some of its holdings because of a her very. the -- merger.

the kind of guy who just jets around the world and puts up or would put up a 40-story building on a chromium dump along the turnpike extension in jersey city. >> and nobody every question -- >> and no one ever questioned him. so the guy in guttenberg says, you know what? if this guy is who he says he is and i can't find one reference to him on google, i'm going to take a pass. >> so who did take envelopes? [laughter] >> the mayor of hoboken. >> and he took more than he was even charged with. >> and also went back for more. >> right. >> now, okay. that raises a issue i've always had about some of these things. he took cash in fedex envelopes for his campaign. >> okay. >> is that the same thing as taking it for your pocket? i mean, the deputy major of --

mayor of jersey city, the former burlesque queen who's now in her 70s, she took money, but it was for mayor daley's campaign of which she was the treasurer. to my way of thinking that's a little less screenal than taking it to put in your bank account. >> the jersey stink we don't, we don't hold ourselves out as scholars of jewish law or authorities in jewish law or federal criminal statutes, and it's important because we understand the distinction you're drawing. the law doesn't draw that distinction. these are two different cases. as we lay out, what cam ran know was doing was he actually was putting money in his pocket because what happened was -- and any of you, i'm not enough, i'm not familiar enough with the local politics here many atlantic county and cape bay county, but in hudson county you have this proliferation of municipalities that have nonpartisan elections.

as nonpartisan elections automatically become free-for-alls in big communities, bigger communitieses, in hudson county it's even more of a free for all than that. and it winds up, for a number of different reasons, becoming very expensive. this was a very, very expensive political environment. three council members each with big followings run anything hoboken for the mayor's office for a vacant mayor's spot. mayor roberts was not seeking re-election. so you have this free-for-all, as i say. if nobody wins a clear majority, you have a runoff election three weeks or four weeks later between the two top vote getters. cam ran know squeaks by, he gets into a runoff. so now he has one really expensive, crazy election, and then another. and he, basically, starts

emptying his bank account. he starts writing all sorts of checks out of his own pocket to cover expenses. he starlets writing so many checks on -- starts writing so many checks on his campaign account, he runs out of checks. he literally ran out of checks in the checkbook to pay street workers to put him over the top. and in the end he wins by -- i'm sorry i don't have the number committed to memory right now -- he wins by a small handful of votes in the city of hoboken. and so the money that he's taking in bribes, at least a portion of it, is to cover his own expenses that he had, checks he wrote that he couldn't cash. >> you say the law got distinguished. i once had a conversation with chris christie when he was u.s. attorney and somebody, i don't remember who -- maybe it was the essex county executive -- who had also taken some money for his campaign. and i said isn't it different when it's for the campaign than when it goes into your pocket, and he said, absolutely not.

it's all for your self-aggrandize m, whether to spend or enhance your stature in the community. >> it's funny because within 4 hours of the arrest, so this is july 24, 2009, cam ran know hires one of the highest profile attorneys in new jersey who represented jason williams and a number of other high profile clients. within 24 hours of the arrest, hayden is out there spinning the defense. josh, you have to understand it's not for peter or, it's for the campaign. he does this, and so i take that back. you know how reporters are, we go to one side of the street, get a comment, go to the other side of the street, get another comment. so i take it to the feds, they start laughing. let him take that to trial, great. for the exact same reason you just said. >> all right. so two members of the state assembly, l. harvey smith and

daniel van pelt, are ensnared in this. a number of officials in jersey city -- how many mayors? >> three mayors. >> three mayors. a bunch of deputy mayors and operatives. >> council president in jersey city. >> council president in jersey city. 44 people in all are rounded up on the morning of july 23, 2009. um, which is right in the midst of the governor's race. john corzine's running for re-election against chris christie who had resigned in early january of that year, or maybe it was in early december of that year. >> with right. >> and then he announced in early february. we all knew when he resigned that he was going to run for governor. so there are a lot of people who think that the timing of the culmination of in this two or three-year sting had a political taint to it or a political

motive behind it. i know we're not going to answer that question definitively, but what are the arguments on either side for whether this was politically motivated somehow? >> well, the arguments against it would be one of the arguments against it would be that the head of special prosecutions was a man by the name of jimmy nobio -- >> in the u.s. attorney's office. >> in the u.s. attorney's office. if anything like that were going on on his watch, he'd probably arrest himself, that's how ethical he views these things. and, in fact, it affected the case because he actually was, was -- he recused himself a week before the arrest came down because he got a job proposal just before the arrest happened, and his absence in the case affected a lot of what went

wrong with the case later on. >> i noticed at the end of the book you have him back in the u.s. attorney's office. did he leave and come back -- >> he never -- >> he just left the case. when we started the process of researching and writing the jersey sting, it was november of '09, shortly after the governor' election. governor's election, okay? so the arrest happened july of '09, christy wins the first week of november of '09, we start our process the end of november of '09, and we finish seven months later. ted and i had, like reporting any investigative piece in the newspaper, we had no idea where this story was going to take us. we knew the beginning, we knew the ending, because, obviously, it happened. it's not a novel. but we department know where the road was going to take us along the way. we did know, however, there was certain questions we needed to tackle. we needed to at least be able to get to a point of understanding

the timing of the bust. >> because the accusations were flying left and right very, very quickly. and everybody heard them and, in fact, the accusations continue as you read through the book. you still see that there's still some lingering hostility over the issue. not from governor corzine, interestingly. he does not believe it was plett call. political. but other people do. so what the pro-corzine spin, for lack of a better term, was that the feds were beholden to chris, they got promoted by chris, they all loved chris, that they timed this in the middle of the election because this would highlight christie's background as the corruption-busting super prosecutor, and it would make the election about that and about christie's corruption-fighting history more than about anything else. and in the process it would also damage the democratic party

because it seems that corruption in new jersey, they hit republicans, but they really hit democrats. that's the spin. just, basically, if you take -- if you see that the ground is wet outside, it must have rained. >> and joe doria -- >> joe -- >> former speaker of the assembly, a prominent democrat who had joined corzine's cabinet as commissioner of community affairs and who did or did not get a raw teal out -- deal out of this whole thing? >> that -- we don't answer the question intentionally, and we're glad that we are not required to answer that question because it really is a matter of perspective on joe doria. and we lay out exactly what happened with him. but joe doria who was at the time a member of the governor's cabinet, he was not arrested, he was not charged, but his home and office were searched. it turns out that one of the bad men had, a, advertised that doria was on the take, and, b,

had gotten dwick to pass him marked money, and he advertised he would pass that money off to joe doris. there's never been any proof that doria took any of that money, he's never been charged. as the feds day, the case continues. but the element of doria being brought in, that's a good point that you raise, that adds to the democrats' pro-corzine spin that this was all done to damage corzine because -- >> the media was very present at doria's home and at the department of community affairs in trenton when they were being searched. >> right. so the corzine people say that it must be that the feds and the christie people tipped off the reporters because they're all there. now, that is a fallacy. let me tell you this: every newsroom worth its salt anywhere in the country has either scanners or pager services to find out what's going on with the police. joe doria's house was a circus

that morning. cops protecting the scene as teams of fbi agents swarmed the house. even if reporters had not been tipped -- and i know that i personally wasn't -- >> if you weren't, maybe nobody was. >> it would have taken five minutes for the new york star ledger only five minutes away to watch the search, and the search went on all day. but you want to -- >> yes, keep going. >> so the christie spin is this. a, the federal government doesn't work this way, we don't conspire to damage candidates or aid campaigns. b, cases are taken could down wn they're taken down and this case was, basically, an armed invasion of the metro area with more than 300 irs and fbi agents plus a dozen prosecutors. you don't just do that on a whim based on some political date on the calendar. and the most overarching piece of evidence, the pro-christie people say is you need to go

inside and understand why it was timed that way. what was going on in the investigation. look at the investigation. and so in the jersey sting we actually dissect the investigation to be able to explain exactly what was happening in terms of time. >> one of the things that you point out is that a federal judge in this trenton who was overseeing dwick's bankruptcy was pounding on the u.s. attorney's office to wrap this up so that she could do what? >> she, in the bankruptcy case they, the creditors in the case wanted to depose dweck. and the u.s. attorney's office kept on trying to put that off because once he was deposed, everything would come out. because he couldn't lie. so there was that pressure. >> what other pressures were there to do it when they did it that would suggest it was not at all political? >> well; there was the pressure of the fact that there was a new

u.s. attorney coming in, paul fishman, and nobody knew what was going to happen when he did come in. of so there was some internal push to get this case done before he came into office. >> now, that is political, but it just is not corzine/christie political. >> there's also you write, and i have heard before, an unwritten rule in the u.s. attorney's office that you don't can do a political arrest or indictment within 60 days of an election. >> that's the practice here in new jersey. >> so this was about 70 days or -- >> and so -- >> more like 100 days. >> this goes into what ted said about fishman. >> about 70 days. go ahead. >> so in the u.s. attorney's office you have all these competing pressures if you take yourself back in time to july of '09. the bankruptcy judge says there will be no more delays, dweck is being deposed. i know you're the u.s. attorney,

i'm sorry, but i don't care. she literally said that to him. then on top of that, mara knows that his window is closing. fishman could be confirmed at any moment. mara, a, wants the case to be done under his watch like anybody would, but more importantly fishman -- and fishman tells us this on the record in the book -- fishman is, at the very least, a conscientious, thoughtful guy. he's not going to come in this one day and then say, yeah, sure, go arrest everybody tomorrow. he's going to want to press pause. he's going to want to review the documents, review some of the evidence. he might decide to do the arrests, he might not decide to do the arrests. but pressing pause would have put them within the 60-day window before the election, and mara would not allow that. >> was there also a clock ticking on dweck's cover being blown? >> there was always fear that his cover was going to be blown because he was always, always going beyond the bounds of what

he was supposed to be doing. >> how so? is. >> he was scripted. all the time he was scripted. but even while he was -- >> the fb with i -- >> rehearsed him. >> rehearsed with him. >> right. >> okay. >> but he never followed the script. there were times he would go to a politician and tell them, i'm not a member of the democrat party, i'm not a member of the republican party, i'm a member of the green party, get it? green like cash. and they would look at him and go, yeah, okay. that wasn't in the script. you know, the fbi's looking at this after it came back to the office, and they're just like shaking their heads. this guy is a rogue cannon. and there was legitimate fear in the office that at some point he was going to blow it. >> so i can see a pretty good case for the christie point of view, that this was, that these were external, nonpolitical forces that caused this to

happen. but when it happened and, by the way, we're going to open this up to you all for questions in about five minutes, when it happened, you write, john corzine knew he was going to lose the election. >> yes. >> you also write something i'd never heard before, was that nine months earlier all his aides told him he was going to lose the election, so he shouldn't run for re-election, except he didn't agree with them. >> it was probably for me as a political reporter one of the most remarkable series of interviews i've ever conducted. i mean, i have had the honor of covering governors, even a couple of presidents. but to get this deep inside and to find out exactly what had gone on which is so contradictory to everything that we're trained to see as political reporters. the rule in politics is both guys, women, whatever, say they're going to win. they believe it with their whole heart. i'm going to win because blah,

blah, blah. the other guy says the exact same thing. come election night, someone loses, oh, it's such a surprise, we thought we had it in the bag all along. that's not the case here. corzine walked into this election, this campaign in 2009, he was the only voice of his inner circle who thought he even had a fighting chance. >> at what point, like january? february? >> yes. i don't remember the exact times we have in the book, but there are two critical meetings that occur at his business manager's luxury participant in manhattan. one meeting, i think, is around the time of the conventionings in '08, in august/september. forgive me if that fact is off, you know, it's ted's fault. [laughter] but what happens is they gather, and they go around the table. and be everybody is unanimous that he can win. it would be a tough slog, we are going to probably face christie, he's formidable, but jersey's a blue state, and it's going to be okay, and the governor's got

unlimited resources, and john corzine's a really good guy, and people have a great affinity for him. that's their spin inside. come after, shortly after that we have the fall economic collapse. which is a big deal. but it's especially a big deal for john corzine because of who he was before he was the governor, goldman sachs. he also, really his polls, you know, were falling like a rock. he had months and months of bad news. so they reconvene december/january. and around the table again, to a person they all say do not run this race. you will lose. >> it's funny because there's a wonderful story in new jersey political lore about brenton and burn in 1977 at around the same time after he created the state income tax. and all of his advisers said, you're going to lose, except one; john, his attorney general,

who would become his attorney general in the second term, who said i think you can win re-election. and, of course, we know brendon burn did. but it's a similar kind of pow wow. burn wasn't convinced he could win, but you say corzine -- >> understand the psychology of corzine. and in addition to governor christie giving us considerable access for the research here, governor corzine gave us tremendous time and access and assistance. he provided people from his staff to help answer questions about times and dates and places. really remarkable. and we do give them both credit in the book and, you know, take the politics aside for a second. they gave us the level of access and detail and context that didn't necessarily serve a flattering picture of either one of them 100%, but they were both really helpful for this process. corzine is a guy who believes in himself completely. even when no one else believes in him. you know that there are people in the room who have worked for him or with him, and he just had

this blind faith in his own ability. that come what may, people trust me because i'm trustworthy. and i'm a good guy, and my heart's in the right place, and i can do it. and that's it. the polls said he was wrong, way wrong. and -- this is actually not in the book because we had to edit some stuff out -- he had different pollsters, and he insisted going to different pollsters as they kept giving him bad news, he would switch pollsters, and they're all telling him you're gonna lose, but he kept doing it. on some level just the pain it must have been for this man, everyone saying he's going to lose, to run this shock. but finally come july 23, '09, remember the bad story, john corzine is colossally wealthy, beautifully-appointed, you know, floor to ceiling views of the empire state building. he's woken up by his aide. there are arrests happening. one of the people arrested is arrested in his very build anything hoboken,

coincidentally. so they're doing arrests in his building, people that he has shaken hands with, put his arm around, hug inside public. he's woken up, he's told don't answer the phone. he gets up, and he's standing in the front of a flat screen tv on one side with views of new york on the other side, and he is coming to the conclusion, sickening in the pit of his stoppage that it was -- stomach that it was, this is done. i've lost this race. these are my friends. these are my party members. >> is that why he lost? >> he doesn't think so. he thinks he lost because the economy was, was bad, unemployment was terrible, and he thinks that people were just tired. >> of him. >> they wanted a change. >> anybody in the room want to ask these guys a question?

yeah. >> [inaudible] >> hang on one second so we can hear you better. >> hi. i read the -- just finished up the book, and i also followed the story quite a bit when it first came out, i read all the criminal charges, watched a lot of the videos. and my impression is that, certainly, a lot of these guys who were convicted and charged are as guilty as can be. but i can't help but see a few where it looks like they really were sort of pushed into saying things that they didn't really say or mean the way it came off. and for some of them like doria, maybe suarez in ridgefield or ridgefield park, it seems like the feds were overzealous, that like once they got, you know, their into it they weren't going to let go. did you come away with that

impression at all after -- because you, obviously, have seen a lot more evidence than i have. but some of them, just a few of them, it looked like they really probably, to me at least, weren't guilty. did you get that impression at all? >> well, dweck could spin a story, and he just, defense attorneys when they first saw some of these videos were just incredulous that he never shut up. even when people tried to walk away, he never shut up. and in the case of l. harvey smith who was acquitted finally, he was saying some very damning things on the videotapes. at one point he tells dweck, stop talking. stop talking. i feel like i ought to pat you down. yet the jury saw the rest of these videotapes and came to the same conclusion, i guess, that

you did. there was a lot of talking going on. >> but as you saw from the end of the jersey sting, you actually do see not only some of the weaknesses in the cases, you actually see confusion and internal feuding inside the u.s. attorney's office. and ted and i, first of all, we had to finish the book and send it to the publisher before some of these other cases collapsed. we only had time to get suarez's acquittal into the epilogue, but there was one of the political defendants he had, richard greene, had all charges dismissed at the request of the u.s. attorney's office even, that's very unusual. and then we had smith was acquitted at trial. and our belief is that, like yours, some of these cases were very, very solid and maybe, in fact, most of them. there were some instances where the fbi and u.s. attorney's office, their eyes were bigger than their stomach. they were trying to run up the score, and they're paying the price now. >> just if i can respond to your

question, there's an element in their account of this case that suggests that the prosecutors were engaged in big game hunting. i think you may even use that phrase at some point or something close to it. it really comes across as a game for them, and the bigger the target, the better the score, the better they feel. and so i understand the basis of your question, i guess is what i'm saying. yeah. >> could you explain the situation that lou hands sew created or brought to court, and the judge said that some charges should be dismissed because he was not a public official? and also in connection with that, were not phil kenney and

guy ca trillion low also not public officials? >> the manso situation is different than the other situation where some of the cases were bad. the u.s. attorney's office was acting when they charged manso and people that were running but not in office, they were working under the legal theory that the law that applies to bribery of a public official applies to somebody who's running for that office. so as if you were already in office by running for it. manso decided he was going to fight that saying you can't apply to a private citizen the law that bans bribery for a public official even if i'm running far office. and it turns out that the judge overseeing these cases agreed with him. the court of appeals in philadelphia agreed with the judge, and the u.s. attorney's office now does not know what it's going to do. now manso has been indicted on additional charges, and even if they throw out all these charges, the feds with are still going to take manso to trial.

but the biggest charges he's facing may well get thrown out, but we don't know the end of that story yet. >> well, ca trillion low actually was a public official. he was running for office, but he was also a jersey city official. so that doesn't apply -- >> and phil kenney, i believe, was also a campaign treasurer for one of the other candidates. they, basically -- if they have you in a government office, that's how they can use that law that way. but the manso thing is really complicated, and this thing happened -- that's the other piece of this. remember the whole story with rudy giuliani where a number of his high profile cases were thrown out on appeal after he left the u.s. attorney's office in manhattan because they were flawed cases. in manso it's the law that's questionable right now. >> somebody else? >> young lady in the middle. >> bill comely. >> [inaudible] >> wait a minute. >> oh, yeah, we forgot. say it on mic.

[laughter] >> everyone would like to hear about the body parts. [laughter] >> we forgot that aspect. >> probably the strangest element of this entire sordid case. and we didn't learn truth about this until very late in the reporting process. when, for those of you who don't know about the body parts, there was a individual who was arrested for brokering a human kidney. and this, actually, is the first case ever brought under law for brokering a human organ. the law is so old, actually, it was written by a young congressman by the name of al gore. and it has never been tested in court. and in this particular case dweck, with an fbi agent posing as a secretary, arranged for a

transplant to occur using the fictitious uncle of this secretary. they never actually completed the transaction, but they arranged for it. we couldn't figure out how this fit into anything. it certainly wasn't money laundering, how did dweck possibly get involved with all this? and there's all sorts of speculation that they used him because he was a member of the syrian community and, possibly, he had an in there. but the truth of the matter is as we found out much later, dweck's own grandfather had arranged for a kidney transplant through this broker, so he had knowledge of this. and then as long as they were going for the ride, they threw this in as well. >> in 2008 a kidney went for $160,000. i don't know what it goes for -- >> not including installation. >> not including installation. [laughter] parts only. >> parts only. partses and labor.

>> and the donor only gets 10,000 of that. >> okay. daniel van pelt was a young assemblyman or i don't know how young he was, he was a new assemblyman when all of this happened, and he got caught up in it, and you write that he, too, had a kidney problem, and that might have been something that he and dweck talked about? >> oh, and this was one of the great moments. ted is the expert in this anecdote, but this is the great almost crashing of his own investigation. solomon dweck is in the kidney and money laundering racket. he's meeting with daniel van pelt, the assemblyman, talking about bribes as david essenbach and.

>> and then he starts talking about kidneys because daniel van pelt has a kidney problem. and he starts talking about his grandfather getting this kidney, and gets this long song and dance in a diner one day about buying a kidney. but you can't mix the two cases because if he actually started going down this path, suddenly, suddenly solomon dweck is going to come face to face with dave essenbach, and it's not going to be pretty. >> who else? here and then up there. >> congratulations on this great book, you guys, it's fantastic. i'm curious, you're both writers, you've written for newspapers, magazines, is this a different experience, writing a book? what's the difference -- what i'm getting at, it's more than just a long story with no word count, but is there a different process as opposed to the writing you have done for newspapers? >> it was for me, but bear in mind we started this process writing for a newspaper. a lot of what we were writing

appeared in the newspaper as news stories. and as we, as the narrative of that grew and we decided to write a book, it was a difference type of writing. typical newspaper writing is you're taught in journalism school of thetic accelerated pyramid where all the information goes up on the top, and this story narrows down lower and lower to the point where people might stop reading after a while. a book doesn't follow that type of construction, and i don't know, for both of us it was kind of a new freedom for us. >> ted and i have worked together for a number of years. we did a number of long-term projects together at the star-ledger and some other stories that had a faster turn around. but i remember when we got into this and we finally had gotten the book deal and, obviously, the old cliche about newspaper reporters wanting to get a book

deal. so we were euphoric over it. and i remember calling ted one night and walking to the pizza joint one day near the office in newark and saying do we know how to write a book? [laughter] and he said, yeah, we do. i said, okay, we do. all right, question answered. [laughter] i also remember calling him one night on the phone and telling him that i didn't have writer's block. i was always trained in journalism school that it's not possible to have writer's block. the cure for writer's block is writing. doesn't matter if it's good or bad. but i just didn't know where to start or how to given the process of finally starting to write after we had done some reporting, and i called ted at home, and he said, just start writing. and i did. and i found it really, really fun and liberating because for so many years we're used to a daily deadline, we're use today a set inch count, even if it's an important story and a long story. you know you're not going to

write 7,000 words on it. i mean, 7,000 words you start getting into entire section of newspapers. a long story in the star-ledger would be 2,000 words, an average story would be 800 words. the book is 155,000 words. so, which is double, by the way, of what the original book deal called for, but that's a whole different fight. but the -- so it was liberating. i found myself at 2:00 in the morning on those nights that i could actually stay awake at the computer saying, man, you know what? i haven't written like this since college where i was able to write what i wanted to write and say what i wanted to say and add an extra clause into the sentence and didn't have an editor breathing down my back and saying, you know, we've got a bar to go to so get us out of here. you know? it was cool. >> there's some wonderful rendering of the new jersey political life in the book. you both deserve a lot of credit for it. >> thank you.

>> yeah. >> you had said that 44 people were arrested. i was just curious if all 44 were try inside different cases, and if so, if there was a connection between them other than solomon dweck. >> there -- some of them -- well, first of all, there have only been a small number of trials. and every one of the 44 is different. and the number change, and there's weirdness to the numbers, so we can go through the litany of numbers. 44 people were charged that morning, 43 were arrested. one person has disappeared, vanished, believed to be a fugitive living in israel, beyond the reach of american extradition. since then additional people have been arrested on charges associated with this, but we're not -- but were not rounded up that first day. most people that have gotten involve inside the process, the criminal justice process, most of them have pleaded guilty. as of yesterday when the chief rabbi of the syrian community pleaded guilty, 26 have pleaded

guilty. two have been acquitted at trial, three have been convicted at trial. some of these people will go to trial or would go to trial or were arrested in collective complaints or indictments. some were in single indictments. the rabbi yesterday was in one -- it was alone in a complaint. it's, basically, there's not -- there's not a good, logical rhyme or reason to it except that the feds tend to lump people into the same complaint or indictment if they're all being charged with the same crimes from the same instances of criminal activity. so if you and i hold up the same liquor store, we're going to be charged together. but if ted and i hold up two different liquor stores, we're going to be charged separately. that's roughly what it is. and the case has two, has two tributaries. you have the bigger one with the more defendants on the political side, that's where he's david essenbach. the smaller side is the money

laundering. you don't have any crossover. he's not, he's never both people. just for obvious reasons. [laughter] >> josh -- [laughter] >> josh says that two people were acquitted. the first one who was acquitted was anthony suarez, the mayor of ridgefield. it was shocking after all these guilty pleas and convictions in court that somebody had gotten off. and so it occurred to me that he'd make a good guest on television. how did he beat the rap? how did he -- he was the first? >> in ten years. >> first in ten years to be acquitted of a chris christie public corruption charge. so i, about a week or two after the acquittal, i called him up, and we eventually hooked up, and i ininvited him on the show. to my surprise, he said he would do it. his lawyer was one of the top

defense lawyers in the state, michael cliply, famous guy. i said maybe you want to come on with your lawyer. he said that would be good because i'd like to get him on the show too. i called the lawyer, the lawyer didn't want any part of it. but he gave me 15 minutes on the phone. so the day of the interview arrived, and i was really primed. i had prepared, and suarez -- who's a very unassuming, boy next door type from ridgefield in bergin county -- came in to the studio on time. and he said, by the way, i can't talk about the case. [laughter] i thought, what are we doing here then? i said, well -- he said, i can't talk about dweck, i'm not going to talk about dweck.

i said what am -- what are you going to talk about? i' ll tell you how i felt and how it affected my family. it was kind of a bust. >> two weeks ago tonight ted and i had a party celebrating the launch of the book in new brunswick, and governor christie -- who doesn't like missing a party especially with reporters -- showed up. and the lawyer made the rare appearance at the party. and it was funny because i happened to just coincidentally be standing right there as the lawyer is behind me and christie walks in the. and the two of them are just yucking it up. cliply is saying something about, you know, i got the one referring to the fact that he got an acquittal in competition with the u.s. attorney's office. and christie doesn't miss a beat, and he says you wouldn't have gotten it if i were still there. [laughter] >> yes. >> in the last trial, they

pulled solomon dweck has a cooperating witness. there are few defendants remaining. as you pointed out, some may go to trial, some may not. what is the future of dweck for the government? >> we don't believe that the feds have any fear of putting solomon dweck on the stand. the back story is that dweck got beaten up pretty badly during the suarez case. so for the next trial the feds used another one of the bad guys who actually rolled over after getting arrested, a guy interestingly named ed cheatham. [laughter] and so cheatham -- you can't make it up. that's why i wrote a book, right? i told ya. [laughter] so cheatham stood in for solomon dweck. dweck is a bad witness. by definition all informants are bad witnesses. they wouldn't be called rats otherwise.

they're bad witnesses. so the way it always works is the government, the feds try to convince the jury don't believe the guy, believe the video. he's not a person in this case, he's just a vessel for carrying a camera. that's roughly what it is. and, of course, the good defense lawyers, all defense lawyers, try to rough up the informant, say how can you believe this guy? he's a crook, he's a criminal, he's a swindler, he turns on his own community, his own family. they're always flawed. what happened, we think, with smith was dweck had gotten beaten up in the suarez case, the weakest of the government's cases. and they benched dweck in the hopes of mixing it up with cheatham. >> calling an audible. >> they called an audible. they're used to beating up dweck. everybody is impressed with what cliply did to dweck on the stand, no question about it. but in terms of the future of

this case, it's really just a matter of the strong cases and what the videos show. and especially as you start getting into the money laundering cases now, and we don't want to sound like we're taking sides because we don't, we're happy not to. but we've seen some of the stuff, and we quote it at length in the book, and it's pretty ugly if you're hoping for an acquittal. you had yesterday -- understand the scene yesterday in trenton. 79 years old, the chief rabbi -- internationally -- of the syrian-jewish community, one of the wealthiest enclaves, cul-de-sacs of the, of organized jewish life in the world, and he walks in to plead guilty to a federal felony. that's not because he was confident of an acquittal. >> and, in fact, two weeks ago dweck was going to testify in the trial of joe cardwell, and on eve of the start of that trial, cardwell pleaded guilty.

>> right. in fact, we were -- in the week we spend -- in the book we spend some time on cardwell because he's been in the game for generations, and it was one of those stunning moments when cardwell was arrested that day because he had always been perceived as being somebody who was always one step ahead of the law and, you know, he was arrested finally. so we foreshadowed what cardwell's defense was going to be, and it was a failing defense. even if solomon dweck is a bad guy, and i guess on the merits he's a bad guy. >> is solomon dweck here tonight? [laughter] >> is he in the room? is that's always a question we ask. >> on that note and assuming solomon isn't here -- >> if you are, you ought to answer some questions. [laughter] >> i want to thank you both very much and thank you all for listening and participating. it's a very, very good read. i recommend it. >> thank you. [applause]

>> for more information about this book and its authors, visit the jersey sting.com. >> well, part of a book group is 12. it is an imprint that's rather unique in publishing circles. it publishes 12 books a year, and the new publisher and editor-in-chief is cary goldstein. first of all, cary, how are you liking your new job? >> love it. i love it. as you know, i was with 12 from the very begin anything 2006, so -- beginning in 2006, so it's wonderful. >> let's talk about some of your upcoming books. last year you published a book by christopher hitchens, his a autobiography. tell us about, arguably essays. >> this is christopher's first collection since 2004. we'll publish this in september, and it, basically, tracks essays

christopher's been publishing since about 2002, run up to the iraq invasion. covers all sorts of territory, literary criticism, general political commentary, profiles, annoyances, ranting and other amusements, international affairs with a section we're calling offshore accounts. it's fantastic, and it gives a real sense of the scope of christopher's, you know, purview as a social commentator. >> and right next to that is "republic lost." >> yeah. lawrence less nick was at stanford, probably best known as an authority on intellectual copyright, particularly as it curves the web. larry's now at harvard where he's also the head of the school of ethics. probably more than at any other time in history, americans have

the sense that money controls congress. and that our system has been corrupted. and larry diagnoses the illness that is the corruption of our system. not any particular corrupt individuals, but the general system. and actually puts forward a series of cogent and very radical fixes to this problem including a new constitutional convention and a -- [inaudible] >> when is that coming out? >> that's coming out in october. >> that's quite a cover. >> thank you. i'm glad you like. this is sort of a focus group for us at bea, and you are the premier authority. >> cary goldstein, "eminent outlaws." >> chris graham, probably best known as a novelist, wrote fatherrer of -- father of frankenstein. this book is a group biography of the gay writers who changed america. the first half covers writers like james baldwin, british

writers up through edwardal by, and what's amazing is those writers are now no longer thought about as gay writers, but they are cannon writers. and, ironically, the second half of the book which goes from stonewall and larry kramer, edmund white up through tony curber in, what you find is a more specific ghettoization of gay literature, and it becomes somehow more insular and reaches, actually, a narrow audience with few exceptions. i'd say mike cunningham and others, but it gives a very broad perspective on the history of gay literature and how these writers had an impact and went beyond the literary and actually affected our political culture as well. >> want to also ask about eric weiner's "man seeks god." >> we published eric's first book i believe it was early 2008 which was a new york times bestseller. in that book eric went around the world looking for the happiest places on earth.

in this book eric begins with an ailment which later turned out to be indigestion caused by an unreasonable deadline imposed by an editor. nevertheless, when he's in the hospital it occurs to him when a doctor asks him if he'd found a faith that fit, he realized he hadn't. he covers religions we know well, he goes all the way to nepal and finds an american, he finds himself in vegas with a wild group who worship little green men. it's a very serious study about the role of faith in our lives, but it's also got eric's trademark wit and objective irony. >> and finally, cary goldstein of twelve, "time for outrage," up here on the wall. >> this is a really exciting book. this, this book is a phenomenon in europe. it was originally published as a

4,000-word pamphlet in october. it has since sold almost two million copies. we're calling it "time for outrage." it's by a 94-year-old former french resistance hero who fought with de gaulle, also a concentration camp survivor. and instead of a call to arms, easily identifiable, he's calling for action against a more evasive enemy, and that would be the tyranny of the -- and dictatorship of the world financial markets. the unequal distribution of wealth. western aggression in places like gaza. and he's encouraging young people all over the world to get involve,d and that without their involvement nothing can change. and as i mentioned before with larry, there's a general sense of malaise in that we don't have the power to make things happen. and stephane at 94 is living proof that we do. we're going to publish that in

september. >> cary goldstein, how far in advance doing 12 books a year, so how far in advance do you have these books planned? >> right now i'm fully scheduled through august 2012. got about three books for the fall 2012 season that are likely. we always leave room because big projects come up. and as you know, we're very selective list. so we have some peculiar demands, and books that would work very well on some lists because of our odd expectations, one book a month, may not be right for us. we try to allow room for that surprise book that comes in that everybody's passionate about and that we can make work in a really big way with the kind of focus that maybe a more expansive list cannot. >> cary goldstein is publisher and editor-in-chief of twelve books. twelve books.com is the web site. [inaudible conversations] >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> well, i heard that there's a

new book out by chris hedges, new york time reporter, excellent writer. boy, he can cuts right to the core, and i just heard about it, so i want to get this. i don't know if it's out yet for this summer. he's a wonderful writer. and writes very passionately about the times, you know, in which we live. um, there's also a book i just saw called "the good jesus and the scoundrel christ." and it sort of, it's a dark satire. it imagines that mary had twins on christmas day. [laughter] and we never heard about, like, the bad twin. we only know about the good twin. so this sort of imagines a story of what the other guy did. so, so that sounds -- so that's, you know, right up my alley, you know, as a recovering catholic.

i'm looking forward to reading that. >> tell us what you're reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. >> long before he put his john hancock on the declaration of independence, he was arguably among, arguably, the wealthiest merchant banker in the america living in an op lent mansion on top of boston's beacon hill with a commanding view of the massachusetts landscape and seascape. far from be espousing individual liberty, hancock and his fellow merchants in new england governed their businesses and communities with economic ruthlessness that often left their competitors homeless and penniless. like today's tea party movement, the colonial tea party had almost nothing to do with tea. tea was nothing more than a

social beverage for wealthy women. men seldom drank it, and it ranked below ail and rum among -- ale and rum among the beverages that american consumed most. the tea party movement that sparked the american revolution actually began 20 year earlier, in the 1750s and '60s. when new england business leaders, like today's tea partiers, supported a costly government war but refused to pay higher taxes to cover the cost of that war. the war had started in the early 1750s when overpopulation in the east, especially the northeast, sent british settlers pouring over the appalachian mountains into what was then french territory. france, at the time, claimed all of canada, the lands around the great lakes, the lands around -- on either side of the ohio and mississippi river valleys down

to the gulf of mexico. in 1753 the governor of virginia sent a young major named george washington, and most americans don't know this story -- >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> thanks for joining us today. well, coming up booktv is life from the 2011 chicago tribune printers row literary festival, and for the next several hours we'll be cover several panels from the university center. here's our schedule.