my favorite example of what i call a noble lie was the law that president kennedy told during the cuban missile crisis. hove to and the cuban missile crisis by giving cruise ships to withdraw the soviet missiles from cuba. but at the end of the crisis khrushchev told him that he would only remove soviet missiles from cuba if kennedy would remove the equivalent missiles that we had in turkey, the jupiter missiles. kennedy had no problem moving those missiles. in fact, he told the pentagon to get the missiles out of turkey before the cuban men to the missile crisis. he understood full well that you could not tell the american public and he cannot tell your fat that he had agreed to a deal worry ticked jupiter missiles out of turkey. he told khrushchev that he could say nothing about the deal. if anyone in the american media

suspected the deal and as to whether there was a deal he would have to live. the media quickly picked up the possibility there was a deal and as kennedy and is the sense about that . given the gravity of this situation at the time it was imperative that he bring it to an end. he felt the only way he to do it was by telling a lie. >> host: did fdr like to get this into world war ii? >> guest: he lied to try to get us into world war two. there was unable and since involving the u.s. as a career which was unable -- a u.s. navy surface ship. it was involved in operation

involving a british aircraft. roosevelt told a series of lies to the purpose of getting us into war were to. he was having great difficulty doing it. he told allied to try to get as in, but it did not work. it took pro harbor. >> host: went to war leaders get behind closed doors did they lie to each other? >> guest: the main reason is that there is not a great deal of trust to begin with. whenever to what leaders do behind closed doors. states tend not to trust each other very much. ronald reagan really had hit the nail on the head when he said trust but verify if. what reagan was saying is you really can't trust peabody. you have to verify their john the truth. so, it is really going to be

highly unusual circumstance where one leader is in a position where he or she can bamboozle on other verify. you see some pressure, but not much. >> host: when you see a president having a special relationship with another world leader, does that tell you anything about their troop level? >> guest: no. winston churchill and franklin d. roosevelt had a special relationship before. in fact, the special relationship was very intense in the year before pearl harbor because winston churchill wanted the united states to get involved in world war two very much. franklin d. roosevelt himself wanted to get this into the war. the two of them worked hand-in-hand to do everything that they could serve bring the united states into the war. they had a special relationship. they had no incentive to lie to each other.

in fact all of the incentives or to work closely with one another to get a sense of the war. >> host: politically while leaders find it easier to lie to their own public? >> guest: actually quite simple. easiest align when there is trust between two people or to groups. and in international politics there is not so much trust between any two states. one leader dealing with another leader, in most cases, not much trust and therefore it is kind of hard to live because the other side is distrustful. but when you're dealing with your own public, in most cases public's tend to trust their leaders. they think that their leaders are looking out for their own good. and we look at the president of the united states we think he is trying to protect us. international politics is a rough-and-tumble business, and our leader is doing his best to maintain the security of our

country. there is a certain level of trust between the public and its leaders. whenever there is that element of trust of it means that there is a possibility of telling a lie or waging a deception campaign is very great. we saw this in the run-up to the iraq war. the american people by and large trusted the bush administration. not to say there aren't some americans to distrusted, but most trusted him. he was there to tell a handful of lies that helped get us into the war. >> host: john mearsheimer, we often hear about the special relationship between the u.s. and england. given the special status of the relationship, are there lies told between these two nations as well? bill clinton perricos. >> guest: i looked very carefully at the relationship.

and then i know a great deal about the bush bellaire relationship because both of them were involved in dragging their countries into war against iraq in march of 2003. i think in both cases, but the case of tony blair and the case of george w. bush, there is evidence that they told a handful of wise to the public. there is no evidence that they told lies to each other. in paris, they worked and enhanced to drag the added states and britain into the war. >> host: did you read this before we. ♪ >> guest: i began on the book a long time ago. i got a call who was them at the new york times. international wine we never met.

for some reason my name popped into is said. i am all well-known real list and someone who believes and politicking is let me to expect that states lie a lot. i thought when i first started the research there is blind evidence of leaders why all the time, and i was quite shocked that is not the case. liza told quite rarely. when i used to go around the country talking about this subject before the book was published would tell audiences that i can't find much evidence of line. amazing how cynical must be bored. can't believe that. just not looking hard enough. the fact is there isn't much evidence. anyway, he asked me on the phone what my thoughts were on the subjects. i told him, i had never given any thought to the subjects, and moreover i knew of no literature on it. so i asked him to tell me what he was thinking and i would

bounce off his ideas, which is what we did for about an hour. a very fruitful conversation. i made a short memo for the record. a few months later someone asked me to give a talk at mit, and i decided to talk on the subject. low and behold i ended up with this book. >> host: different buckets year eroded after which the leaks. >> guest: no. i looked quite differently -- carefully. i think that what you see is pretty much in sync. you don't see a lot of evidence of lying. in fact, this seems to me that leaders are quite blunt with each other behind closed doors. this is not to say you don't see evidence of line, to the extent you do it is leaders lying to their own country more often than lying to each other which,

of course, is consistent with what is probably the main theme in the book. >> host: professor john mearsheimer, how did you compare the u.s. to other countries? >> guest: i think you will find more evidence of the united states flying than most other countries. this is, in part, due to the fact that the united states is democracy. would you expect to find, lying in a democracy than in a proletarian states. for the simple reason that democratic leaders are accountable to their publics. they have to explain to the public's why they're doing x, y, z. anytime the democratic leader pursues an unpopular policy here she is going to be tempted to tell a lie to get the public to go along with that unpopular policy. the leaded thinks that nevertheless the smart policy, a dictator. you don't really have to worry very much about what your public

thinks about have to to the pub said. you can do much to want. the incentives are right to be greater. presidents have to do a lot of heavy lifting to get the american people to buy on to these enterprises which is why president bush had to go to great lengths. what president johnson had to lie about the gulf of tonkin incident in august 1964 to get the american people and particularly the american congress to buy on to the vietnam war, and is why as we talked about earlier president roosevelt had to tell a lie about their grievances and to. the american people were not enthusiastic.

>> host: dangerous for presidents to lie to congress? >> guest: a potential danger, for short. first of all, one can tell a story where it makes good strategic sense for president who believes that he has a smart policy to tell a lie to congress or to the american people. if he proves to be correct then that is a smart line. but often what happens in these cases is that the reason the president has the line is because the policy is not a very small one and is actually the people or the congress who are resisting the president who has the better side of the story. if you think about the iraq war president bush thought he had the better side of the story. but that he could deceive the american people and in the end he would be proved right. he was not. the rock were turned out to be a disaster and it would have negative effects for the war in

afghanistan. an ill-conceived scheme. so all of that resistance that existed in congress and the american body of politics was basically correct. all of the people are smarter than president bush. his lieutenants were wrong. i do not think that president bush and his lieutenants lied for selfish reasons. they lied and took the united states into the war because they thought it was in the american national interest. they thought they were doing good for america. the fact is they blew it. they did not pursue the smart policy. the naysayers have the stronger hand to play, and it is just too bad that they carried the day. >> host: 1976 jimmy carter's campaign, i will never lie to you was one of a line see used. did he live up to the congress to the promised? >> guest: no, he told at least one. it became clear that the air on

rescue mission was going to be exposed. he had jody powell, his press secretary, line to the newsman who smelled that this operation was about to take place. in that case president carter and jody powell did the right thing. i'm sure none of them felt good about it. what is very interesting about lying is that if you think about it we engage in deception all the time in our daily lives. what we call it is spinning. when you ask president obama how the american economy is today, he spends. he tells you the positive news and downplays the negative news. when a boy meets a girl the boy wants today that girl. he goes to great lengths to portray himself and the most positive light. he is spinning. deception as part of daily life.

but lying is a special form of deception. most people in our society, the vast majority of people in our society would recoil at being called a liar. there's something really terrible. as a result of that i don't think that leaders who lied to their people or leaders to launch other leaders feel good about it. there may be a good exceptions. but someone like dwight eisenhower, even john f. kennedy, very, very reluctant to line for more reasons. it is a form of behavior that is actually quite detestable. the fact is that when you are dealing with the edge national politics and if the security of your country is on line you will not hesitate to lie, not because you're an evil person, but because you do what you have to do to protect your country. that is really what i'm trying to get in this book.

>> host: examples of people line for personal leaders -- reasons? >> guest: no, i made it clear that i was not ripe to consider those sorts of cases. there are certainly lots of them. i have been on a few radio and tv shows or president clinton about the mike gillespie affair. people have asked me how i think about that. i say that is the case of a leader line basically to save his own skin. that doesn't fit the category of lines. i'm looking at what i call strategic lines which are lines that leaders tell up for what they think is the national interest. >> host: one more example of a libel laws and national level. i think a good example of allied that backfired most would be a

matt shock to know that the soviet union was the first country to put a ballistic missile in the air and the first country to put a satellite in aerospace. after launching the first entered continental ballistics metal -- missile, he lied to the american people, led to the american leaders and tried to give us the impression that it was a missile gap. they had this used to advantage in missiles over the next states. in fact among the did not have a huge a vantage missiles. we cannot tell what the boss was regarding this is because we did not have overhead satellites that the time that could look down on the soviet union and count their missiles. when they told us they have lots of muscles most people assumed that was true. of course they did not have an advantage, but what it did was

spurred us to build many missiles. therefore president kennedy came to office in 1961 thinking there was a missile gap. what we discovered is that there was a missile gap. it's just favored us commanded favored us because they had been lying in didn't have that many missiles. we, of course, respond and had built this rather large that backfired. there are, i'm sad to say, quite a few cases. >> host: what is your role? >> guest: i am a professor in the political science department and have been here for 20 years. it has been my only academic job which is very unusual for people most of my colleague said that two or three jobs, but i have only been at the university of chicago since my starting days as an assistant professor back

in 1982. >> host: what courses are you teaching currently? >> guest: i'd teach a course on great power politics. i teach a course on liberalism and american foreign policy, and actually talk for the first time this past quarter a course on ryan is a man palestine because i've gotten very interested in the israeli-palestinian conflict and very interested in the history of zionism. >> host: what was the reaction is your last book? >> guest: as i'm sure you know, the reaction here in the united states was loud and almost normally-in the mainstream press. i don't think we get a single positive review and the estates. the most positive review we got was in israel. cover the book in three separate

pieces including one major review. all three of the pieces were positive. we got a much better -- we get much better treatment in israel than in the united states. >> host: why do you think that is? >> guest: almost impossible in the united states to criticize israel or to criticize the u.s. israeli relationship in the mainstream media. if you do it you will pay a real price. i think israelis are much more comfortable about themselves and much more aware. it is much more open and free society when it comes to talking about israel and the united states. it is really quite amazing, the extent to which israel is a taboo subjects here in the united states. >> host: why?

>> guest: well, my view is that the strongest supporters of israel here in the u.s. states want israel and the united states to have a special relationship. they want the united states to give israel large amounts of material and diplomatic assistance, and they want us to give that assistance unreservedly. in other words, without qualification. we just give it to them no matter what they do. this is what makes this relationship so special. so we have this large interest group who we call the israel lobby that has worked overtime for decades now to put the yet is states in a position where it supports israel unconditionally. now, if you have an open debate where israel is criticized for pursuing policies court this role is criticize in ways to

make it clear that american and israeli interests are sometimes at odds with each other, then you begin to question the special relationship. you begin to say, why are we supporting israel in an unqualified way when the interest of the two countries are at odds? so, the lottery does not want people saying that israel and the united states often have different interests. that might undermine the special relationships. instead, what the lobby wants is for everyone to be on the same page. israel is an indispensable ally, and there is virtually nothing that they ever do that is wrong command before the united states should support israel. the argument made in the book is that from israel's point of view this is foolish policy. certainly bullish from america's point of view, but we argue israel is a normal country. like every other country, israel

sometimes pursues smart policies and sometimes it pursues foolish policies. we have never seen a country that got it right every time. so when israel gets it wrong we ought to be able to criticize, just like we do the united states when it gets it wrong. but the special relationships prohibits you from doing that. to maintain that a rather unusual relationship, you have to make sure there is no criticism. and this is, i think, what explains why there is hardly any criticism of as well. >> host: in the spinning of lying in 1948 when harry truman recognized as route? >> guest: no. significant pressure brought to bear on harry truman. this is well documented, to recognize israel immediately and to help get the united nations general assembly to accept the

partition of palestine when it was a jewish state and a palestinian state. so played a key role. but he was not lying or spinning in that case. the real lying in spending that took place at that point in time had to do with what the scientists as shortly thereafter the israelis to the palestinians to create the state of israel. the fact is that the land that is today israel was once filled with many more palestinians and jews. in 1948 the israelis had to ethnically cleanse the palestinians to created jewish state that was a lot 80 percent jewish and 20 percent palestinian. as you can imagine, the israelis did not want the world, especially the americans, to know they gazed and at book cleansing. they invented a series of missile what happened that made it look like the palestinians were responsible for their own

demise and not the israelis themselves. but this was not true. >> host: john mearsheimer, "why leaders lie." was it of fun book to look right? speech you very much of fun but to write because i did not know much about the subjects. i was sort of feeling my way around in the dark. i learned a lot in the process. i ended up surprising myself. as i said before, actually thought i was going to end up telling a very different story which is that there is lots of lying in international politics. we liked each other all the time. but i found that the case is there isn't much linage national politics, and i was even more surprised to find out the leaders lot more often to their own people than they do to foreign audiences. so i am learning new things. it's really kind of exciting and fun. what this academic enterprise is supposed to be all about.