cia's largest station in the world is in islamabad, pakistan. they are fishing where the fish are. that's where most major al qaeda figures has been killed or captured. ksm is captured in the famous capture photo of the hair and night shirt and sort of hairy chested photo. he was woken up sleeping on a floor. i believe on the second of the spare bedroom on the second floor of a house. i think it's 18a. this is the joint operation. the pakistanis were involved, but the intelligence originated by the cia. partly through a walk in. anyone who's been in the spy museum knows that most of the time, walk ins are not trusted by embassy or cia. there's all sorts of reasons for walk ins. sometimes it's a foreign service

trying to test the agencies procedures or to discover what is the intelligence officer in that delegation. sometimes it's people offering false information for money. but this particular walk in announced that he was going to be seeing kms for dinner later that night. which unusual. they never say they will have information in a few hours, they try to stretch it out. he was given a secure number. he sends a text. which is hilarious. i am with ksm. sounds like a message between two high school girls. [laughter] hours later he calls and announced he just got out of the car that dr. -- that dropped off

ksm. they drive around trying to find the house. he does know the number or the name of the road. they are looking in the dark, trying to see a building he recognized. they drive around in circles for a large chunk of the night. and the cia officers thinking to himself, what a wild goose chase. at about 2 in the morning, he said that's it. that's the house. ultimately with both the cia, paramilitary, other remembers on loan, and pakistani police, they raid the house. there's more details in my book. "mastermind." [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much. >> thank you all for coming. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> for more on richard miniter

and his work, visit richardminiter.com. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books, every weekend. >> former mexican foreign minister jorge castaneda has written a new book. i want to start with the subtitle, mexico and the mexicans, where you going? >> basically what i'm trying to do is tell the story of mexico and it's people for an american reader. although i'm also publishing the book simultaneously in spanish and in the united states for spanish-speaking readers in mexico. it's called manana or tomorrow? tomorrow or the day after

tomorrow? it's also in mexico in spanish with another version with a different edition which has also just come out this very week in mexico. the purpose is to tell the story mainly to americans, but also to mexicans in the united states and to mexicans in mexico. what story in book? the story of mexicans, who we were, why we are are, and that doesn't work with what the country has become and why we have to change. >> what kind of change? >> basically, it's a national character change. what i try to do here in the book is to take four or five very well detected traits of the mexican national character as described by classic authors like the poet and anthropologist in the middle of the century.

say okay the character traits which were great for mexico both as a colony and independent country to form a nation today are totally dysfunctional to what the country has become. a middle class society, a representative democracy, an open economy, globalized economy, and a country that is absolutely desperate for the establishment of the rule of law. the character traits and these features don't work anymore. they are at odds. and so since we can't change material reality, we jolt to change people's heads. >> let's start with the mexican middle class. what's wrong with the mexican middle class today? >> there's nothing wrong with the middle class. what's wrong with it's members who continue to be incredibly individualistic. the first is mexicoen

individualism. which even by u.s. standards is outrageous, excessive, mexico is a country where less collective or associative participation than any country in latin america, let alone the united states or western europe. we're a country that's terrible at team sports. we have never won anything as team sports, though we're good at individuals. boxers, runners, bullfighters, golfers. we're a country where people don't like to live in high-rises because they don't believe it's their home. they want their home on the ground level. which means the cities stretch out endlessly and cost a fortune. we're a country where there are no collective action suits, the notion itself doesn't exist. we're a country of leaders of movements. [speaking spanish]

>> uprising commander 15 years ago. we're not a country of movements. now being so individualistic is great expect when 60% of your society is middle class. then it doesn't work anymore. >> senior castaneda, how would you describe the current relationship between mexico and the united states? >> what i try to do in this book when you have a long devoted both to the relationship with the united states and the mexicoen national character of obsession with the past, fear of the foreign, and i try and explain why a country that is so tied to the united states can no longer continue to be a country that often sounds off against the united states too loudly. i give an example back from 2004

-- 2003 actually in a city that you noel in guadalajara. where the u.s. and mexico were competing for participation in the athens olympic soccer composition composition -- competition at the mexico stadium. the american players had been impolite, perhaps a bit aggressive. all of the sudden towards the end of the game, the crowd starts chanting. this made this concert some of our american people who are watching us. osama, osama, osama. needless to say, the american players got upset. this would be insulting anywhere in the world, but in guadalajara, it's worse. because they are the number one

sending country of immigrants to the united states. it's the home of pow puerto via that. it's the home of guadalajara itself who live there and spend a wonderful time and with their neighbors and friends. in this city to be that insulting to americans means there's something going on which is not right. doesn't work. that's part of the problem the relationship with the united states. now we've got the drug wars which the united states is helping on. but not enough. >> so you describe those drug wars as unwinnable. >> absolutely unwinnable. it's a ridiculous war. we should not have starred it.

we will never be able to win it. it has now cost us more than 50,000 lives, $50 billion dollar, widespread human rights abuses and tremendous damage to mexico's image aboard with no results to show in exchange. there's nothing that can be done with drugs in mexico as long as the united states keeps consuming what it consumes. it hasn't changed it's consumption patterns. probably there's no reason why it should. i was a strong proponent of proposition 19 in california last november. i had hoped it would pass, legalizing marijuana in the state of california. it didn't pass. it lost by three points. i'm hopeful that in 19 -- 2012 it will pass and then we in mexico can also begin the process of legalization of drugs, starting with marijuana.

>> president calderon is conducting the war in mexico. is it time to end it? >> he will not end it because he's too stubborn. he has taken it as a person battle. he's alone. the rest of the country does not follow him. he's only got a year and a half left. so it doesn't really matter anymore expect for the people who will continue to die which is not a minor event. what he does. the next president will have to end this absurd war which is going nowhere. >> how open is the mexican economy? >> well, the point that i try to make in the fourth chapter of this book is that we now have a mexican economy, 5th chapter, actually, which is one the most open economies in the world. far more open than the united states, than any latin american economy, along with chile, and similar to most economies. the sum of experts and imports

over gdp is one the highest they are over 50%. we're a country where tourism is enormously important. it's the number one generator of hard currency and the number one employer in mexico. where remittances for mexico immigrants aboard are a very important source of currency. also by the way, the country where there are more u.s. nonmilitary narcotics living than any other country in the world. around a million americans live in mexico, which is more than any place else in the whole world. this open economy which has been a good thing by and large. not as many as people thought it would be. perhaps not as beneficial as many expected. but it's ban good thing in general terms. but it's also very much concentrated with the states. with the united states. 90% of our experts go to the united states. 90% of our oil goes to the u.s.

90% of the tourist that visit mexico come from the u.s. and so on and so forth. obviously, all of our immigrants are in the united states by definition. there's a very open economy. so mexico can't be an interspective closed off character. we don't have the traditional mexico way of being in our mind when in our everyday life we're an open economy. >> i want to return senior castaneda to mexican phobia and the fear of the foreigner. with the growing middle class in mexico, as that changed? >> it hasn't changed yet. it's beginning to change, but we are still very much immersed in the fear of the foreign and in the notion that we've always been victims of the past or in the past that we were conquered by the spanish in 1519, 1521,

and humiliated and exploited by the spaniards for the following three centuries. then during the 19th serge -- 19th century with texas taken away, then the united states invaded us, then the french invaded us in 1963, then the americans invaded us again in 1914. and so on and so forth. as a matter of fact, all of the factoids are more complicated than they seem. what i try to say is let's move on. let's leave it behind us. look to the future and more importantly, look to what the country has become. look to the 11 or 12 million mexicans who live in the united states. one out of every nine mexican citizens in the world lives in

the united states. that's a greater share than any country expect el salvador. which is a small country. 300 million across the border back and forth every year. why do we want to dwell on the past when we are so open and so beneficial to the country to be so open. but we're obsessed with it. you know, we have a very change situation in mexico. it's one the anecdotes i write about here. we have laws that foreclosured a series of jobs to naturalize mexicans. a naturalized cannot be a member of the cabinet, governor, mayor, police chief, member of the board of the central bank, can't

with a congressman or senator. on the one hand we demand rights for mexicans in the u.s. whether comes legally or not. but we deny minimum righted to naturalized mexicans, american, spanish, brazilian, chinese, whatever. it's an absurd situation which can't go on. >> jorge castaneda served as prime minister of mexico from 2000 to 2002. working with president vicente fox. how much of the time as foreign minister when dealing with the u.s. -- first of all, how much of the time was spend dealing with the u.s.? of that time, how much was spend dealing with the immigration? >> any mexican foreign minister

is going to spend up to 70-75% of the time dealing with the u.s. we have a few other important relationships in the world. obviously guatemala because we have a border with them. some countries in western europe, mainly spain. some countries in latin america, mainly chile. with cuba, we have a long standing relationship. 75% of any mexican foreign minister time is devoted to the u.s. i tried to devote as much time as i could to immigration. because i thought and continue to think this is mexico's single most important issue with the u.s. by the way i also think it's the united states single most important issue with mexico. there are 11 or 12 million mexican st. s residing in the u.s. there are more than 30 million americans of mexican dissent in the u.s. there are important states in

the united states like california, like texas, like arizona, like nevada, like illinois, where mexicans make up a very significant part of the electorate or of the population at large. it's a central issue. and it's an issue that has to be addressed and that nobody wants to address forthrightly. >> how should it be addressed? >> it should addressed a little bit the way we said back in 2001 and 2002 with my good friend, former secretary of state, colin powell. the way president bush and fox wanted to address it, and the way president obama wants to address it now. legalize the people who are here without papers. establish a migrant workers program for people to be able to continue to enter the united states as the u.s. economy needs their labor. support and help the areas of mexico where these migrants come from so that they eventually start staying in their hometowns

unless they are needed in the united states and once you've done that, ensure that the u.s., mexican border is only open to legal entry with the cooperation of both countries to make that entry legal. but you can't stop illegal entries unless you increase the number of legal entries. if not, you are going to have people climbing over the fence or under the fence or swimming across the mote with alligators like president obama said a few days ago. >> what are you doing today? >> i spend 1/3 of my year in new york city. i teach at nyu. i've been teaching for 14 years, expect for the years i was in government. i spend a lot of time in mexico, lecturing and speaking all over the country trying to push forward ideas like the ones that are in the books. i dabble in politicking, but i try to stay a little bit away

from it. i write a lot. i'm not sure how long, but a lot. if it were by quantity, i'd be doing mine. "manana forever"? here's the version to be sold in the united states, here's the version to be sold in mexican. why a different cover? >> two reasons, i like the mexican cover for the u.s., but the people said it was too somber. and the u.s. cover in mexico has an arguably legal status. look at it, if you can put it on back, you see the mexican eagle is divided in two. this is the center of the mexican flag. you've got the top of the eagle at the bottom and the bottom of the eagle at the top. in mexico, disporting the

national emblem and flag is a dubious legal status. we decided not to risk it. >> what is this on the cover? >> this is a painting by the person that most people consider to be mexicoed foremost artist. he just finished an extraordinary mull, the mexican supreme court. these are five or six kids who are migrants. they are about ready to leave for the united states. if you look down at the bottom right hand corner, the license plate on the truck says mig, migrants 666. he's a hyperrealist painter. these are six or seven kids with extraordinary faces about to leave for the united states. i think they tell the story of the mystery of mexicans as the subtitle of the book in spanish indicates. >> this is c-span's booktv.

we've been talking with jorge castaneda, author of "manana forever." >> thank you. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> it also goes into the details on why some in the middle class is collapsing and talking talkst the growing inequality of america and what it means to the future of our country. that's self-advertising. it was my book. i did reread it. it was a good book. another book that i have read recently which i like very much, that's called "third world

america" by arianna huffington. it's a very readable book. she's a good writer. she touches on, you know, the trends that we've been seeing for a number of years in the terms of the physical infrastructure, in terms of education and in terms of health care that frankly if we do not reverse and this is her point, we are going to end up looking like a third world country. what that is about is a friend of mine came back last year from china. he was in an airport in china, flew into the united states, while he was waiting for a plane, you have to be sitting on a plane. he was wondering which was the third world country, the united states or china? a lot of ominous trends in the country moving us in the wrong direction in terms of physical infrastructure. more and more people without health insurance and growing gap between the rich and everybody

else, the dominance of big money interest in wall street. i think arianna's point is we have to get our act together. so that we become the great nation that we know that we can and should be. another issue -- another book that, in fact, i'm reading right now is a book about the life of somebody i have known for a number of years. i would say he's a good friend. i've known for many years. that is willie nelson. the book is called willie nelson and epic life. that's by joe nick. it's not the most readable. i think what joe does is give us the name of everybody in the world who had anything to do with willie nelson. but given the fact that willie nelson is one of the more -- he's clearly one the great entertainers of our time and he's really an icon and a unique type of individual because of

who he is and his entertainment qualities. in vermont, where i've seen them a number of times all over the country, he brings together just a huge range of people. you know, most singers will appeal to this group of people, that group of people. willie brings them all together. i think it has a load to do with the personality, receive -- deden si as a gentleness. he has been a strong supporter of rural america. if people are interested in learning about the life of a guy that was born in arkansas, his family migrated to texas. you know, he worked in the cotton fields, you know, he grew up very, very poor. and he has a unique tie, i think, to working americans today. so he -- willie is, you know, on -- i'm a big fan of his.

this is a good book which talks about his life. last book which is, you know, not -- it's pretty interesting actually. the topic might be considered to be boring is a book called the financial crisis and that was put together by the commission that congress established to look at the causes of the financial crisis for what went on in wall street and how they ended up bringing us to the place where we are right now. which is the worst recession the country has experienced in the great depression. that's the tough reading. because what you are seeing is, you know, the incredible recklessness and dishonesty from the people on wall street. you know, reducing worthless financial instruments and selling them and leading us to where we are now and talking about the great power on wall street and their business models and so forth and so on. so i think that if anyone wants

to understand what's going on in america today, you have to understand wall street, you have to understand the incredible power that they have economically and politically. and this book actually goes into that. so it's a somber for what i have read and am reading. >> tell us what you are reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. >> now joining us is sam dorrance, he's the publisher of potomac books, helping us to preview some of the fall 2011 books. first of all, who is potomac books? >> it's an independent publisher, family owned, been publishing since 1984. we publish books about political science, on international

relations, insurgency and counterterrorism and sports. >> and sports. >> and sports. >> all right. we want to talk to you about two of the books coming out in fall 2011. i want to start with this one, rumble by bob kemper. >> bob kemper was white house correspondence for the "chicago tribune" during the time of the 9/11 attacks. and during the course of his covering the response to the bush administration to the 9/11 attacks, he became really disturbed frankly about the response of the administration to the families of the victims. and he became very close with many of the family members of 9/11 and the various organizations and groups that they formed. and highway has has -- and he hs followed them closely. so the book is really the story about what they have done both

individually and collectively to get a commission to investigation, to get compensation, everyone knows the groups often don't agree with one another. so it's really quite a remarkable story. i don't think it's really been told in in way before. >> that's rumble by bob kemper right before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. >> correct. >> the other one we wanted that town -- we wanted to talk about is "endless enemies." it's remarkable by a man who's having a comfortable life as a lawyer in new york city and decided he would rather be on the street fighting the bad guys than in the court. so he left the law practice, joined the fbi, he was immediately sent to the boonnies in georgia, mississippi, chases people booth legging liquor or