1915, there was a regrouping of the klan, and by the time you come into the 1920s, this group, very patriotic, very proamerica, very antiimmigrant, antiforeigners kind of thing, really takes hold in the culture, and for a moment in time, there is a blending together of a lot of the commonality here of fundamentalism and the klu klux klan, this is something evangelicals have a difficult time acknowledging, and they have had a difficult time acknowledging it was in fact part of the past -- >> you can watch dismiss other programs online at booktv.org. >> now from the 2011 chicago tribune litfest, kim barker talks about the taliban shuffle. this is 40 minutes.

[applause] >> thank you very much. good afternoon. hello, kim. >> hello, colin. >> can you hear us if -- okay. >> was that a yes or no? >> yes. >> excellent. >> very well. i have a loud voice and i'm told it carries. >> we're here today to talk about the taliban shuffle, and kim's days in -- strange days in afghanistan and pakistan, and kim was a foreign correspondentent for the chicago tribune for a little more than six years. she was in the region. and she worked with me as a correspondentent and for me for a brief stretch -- your were my first foreign editor i worked for. hated him. >> yeah. it was mutual dislike. >> loathed him. >> we -- and we're here today to talk about this, and it's a great time to be talking about pakistan and afghanistan, a lot of attention become on it.

let's talk about the book and then hopefully talk about your impressions what is going on now. >> okay. >> so first question, i think, is one you've been thinking about -- when you talk about this book, you worked for newspapers, main stream journalism. how is this different from that and how would you characterize this as a memoir, and what is a memoir journalistic memoir? >> there's a lot of questions in there, colin, and i will try to get to all of them. this is -- obviously it's not journalism writing. it's everything i would leave out of journalism stories. it's what it was like to live over there to be a woman in the region and a female correspondent in the region. it's a memoir and also mashed up with politics and what actually happened in the region, and i did that deliberately. i felt like i didn't know ten years on into this war whether anybody wanted to read another book about afghanistan and pakistan, yet i felt so

passionately about the subject and i wanted to couple up with a way to tell the story that people would find compelling, and it made sense to make myself the main character, and that's really how i treated myself in the book. i didn't, like, look at it and say i'm only going to put the good stuff in here about me. i think a lot of foreign correspondentents do that. they talk about how nobody else understands how this place works except for me. i i'm honest about the fact i didn't know what was going on, about the fact i was completely unlikeable at certain points, especially when i was there for too long, and i behaved badly, and deliberately did that because i wanted to treat myself like the main character in any story you write, which means you have to include warts and all, and i really had to sort of separate myself from this main character, because if i thought about it too much, i would think, that's really embarrassing. die really want people to read that and know that especially since i'm working as an investigative reporter.

i had a guy come by the office the other day, and he is considering working on a story with us, and he is big-time tv guy, and he says i'm in the middle of your book. you just broke up with your boyfriend, and i just said, motor mortifying. >> talk about exposing yourself and talking to people about it across the country, anything you wish you had done differently? anything you might regret having put in? >> no, actually. i'm very comfortable with everything that in there, and -- i didn't put absolutely everything in there. i feel like i protected the people -- the innocent in this book, and i tried to do that as much -- i didn't write, for instance, about any afghan women. people always ask why didn't you write about the afghan women. i did that deliberately because i know every single time a book

is written about an afghan woman, that afghan woman usually ended up bearing the brunt and usually ended up bad for them. so i only wrote about people in here who i felt could take it. for instance, the former prime minister of pakistan, the former attorney general of afghanistan, and i felt people who really showed the corruption in the various countries. farouk is the main character in the book. he is my fixer/translator/local journalist and one of my closest friends, and i wanted to give him a pseudonym and leave certain things out about him. and he said, no, i alpha -- i alpha iraq, and he wanted his name in the book. it's like it's a mc, and we did get him down to chicago. she is living in canada now and he got him to chicago in april, and he was just thrilled to be here and see chicago, the place he worked for, for so long.

>> one of the themes of the book forks those who haven't had a chance to read it, is farouk's macho persona and how he represented a lot of the men in afghanistan. >> yeah, yeah. also, he represents afghanistan. and i'm very much a foil for america, well intentioned, bumbling, no include -- no clue how to do business there, no klueh about cultural activities, and farouk is very afghanistan, hopeful at first and then convinced aam planning an exit strategy. so he likes telling people i'm a try dimensional character. i'm like, where did you get that? i'm like you're not just one ditch -- did i mentional. and he calls him the tri-dimensional character. >> you mentioned the former prime minister of pakistan who

has an interesting relationship -- or had an interesting relationship with kim. he completely miss interpreted the relationship, and kim's re-telling is very funny and vaguely unsettling because the difference the relationship a person might have with a source can be difficult. so tills briefly about that. then the question is, what has happened with him since then? have you hear from him? what's been the upshot of this. >> we're getting married. no. okay. for those of you who don't know the story, i was actually front-page news in pakistan for a week. it took osama bin laden being killed there to actually knock me off the front page. some people have heard about this story way too often, especially if you live in pakistan. the gist of the story is i meet this guy, sharif, the former prime minister of pakistan, very powerful man, and i met him

right after benazir bhutto was killed. so at this point, sharif is the opposition leader, somebody that i need to cultivate as a source, somebody whose phone calls -- i want him to take my phone calls. and it's this delicate dance you're doing with people, you know, you're developing as a source. you don't want to be too friendly, you don't want to be -- you don't want them to think your friends. right? they're a source but your friendly with that source, and he definitely misinterpreted. i joke with everybody. that's how i enter act with the world. and he definitely misinterpreted that and at one point asked -- i didn't know he was misinterpreting but at one point asked me if he could find me a friend, and i said, okay, he wanted to set me up on a day. thought that was funny. so he asked me my cry tier yeah,

said tall and funny and smart, and that led to a question of -- that i'll always remember, what do you mean by smart? he said, and so then i had to explain that to him. and he said but you do not want a cunning friend. i says, no, who wants a cunning friend? so obviously you don't. so this goes on for a couple months where it's getting progressively creepier. he's ending phone calls by saying, don't do what is it you people say, don't be naughty. i'm like, who says that? nobody says that. and he wanted to buy me a phone. he kept offering to buy me a phone because he said that my phone was tapped and his phone was tapped. i told him, of course, you're a source, the former prime minister, you cannot buy me a phone, it's not acceptable, and this culminated in shortly after the mumbai attacks -- i had to go back and talk to him and i told my former editor, i think this guy is interested in me.

i can't talk to him anymore but i had to talk to him because he is the most powerful opposition leader, and so i went to see him after the mumbai attacks and he told me where the lone gunman was from. he pointed me to the village and i was the first westerner to get to that village. during that meeting -- i had my translator with me and he asked the translator to leave and said he bought me a phone, and i said, can't accept the phone, and we want become and forth about the phone, and then he said, i want to be your friend. and i said, no. no. no. no. absolutely not. and then he gave me a line that i'm sure is going to be used as a pickup line throughout bars in america, which is, hear me out. i know i'm not as tall as you want. i'm not as fit as you want. i'm fat. and i'm old. but i'd still like to be your friend. [laughter] >> you got to give him credit for honesty.

so, i was very honest about everybody when i was leaving the chicago tribune in a blaze of glory, and when i quit my job there, i was very honest about the fact that i was writing a book, and i knew exactly what i wanted to do and how i wanted to tell the story, and so this word got to him that i was writing a book. and so he tracked me down at a certain pound when -- point when i was in new york. he september an emissary to me, and we went out for caesar salads, and i had to talk for an hour to sharif, and he said, we're still friends, right? and i'm like, what is this with you and friends, and he desperately did not want me to write a book. i said i'm writing a book, and he said you know i was just joking, and i said, you can tell your country that. he knew exactly what was doing. i didn't pull any punches on

that. and the day before the book came out, he all of a sudden got heart problems and wend to london for heart treatment, i thing craig motorren zen took a payment out of his book. and he stayed there it was like he was staying in london and waiting for pakistan to find out about the book. and he waits and a month later it explodes in pakistan and it's everywhere, and he won't say a word. he does not appear in public. he is still in london. he -- nobody from his party will answer anything about the book or me. musharraf put out a press release calling sharif a playboy and for trying to gift me an iphone. cooperate make this -- couldn't make this stuff up. and on twitter it was back and forth with all the folks in pakistan. and so he only went back to pakistan after osama bin laden was killed. that's when he finally went

back. there's been a lawsuit filed against me in the high court, asking the isi to look into my false allegations against sharif, and saying that it was all made up because i'm a member of the cia, and it's retaliation against mr. sharif for his big stance on the ray davis buy case from earlier this year, which would mean i would have turned around the become in three weeks and working for the cia. >> the final meeting between kim and mr. sharif is quite funny and the re-telling in the book, and at one point he says, but, kim, we are friends, right? and kim says, well, we're friendly. so, was there any concern on your part that -- i mean, he was the pakistani prime minister and does have power, and does have

access to people who can do things. >> yes. >> was that a concern to you? >> no. no. it was not a concern to me. i did -- i deliberately changed the name of my driver in pakistan, who now works for somebody completely different, and there's really no way to find him. tammy is a character in the book, pakistani female journalist there and she wanted her name used and she knew without the stuff -- about the stuff in there and wanted to be associated with it. i had no fear that he was going to retaliate against me. what is he going to do? once it's out, it's out, and you chant do anything about it. there's no putting that back into the box. and there hasn't been a lot of fallout personally for me at all. there's been -- there's certainly been people who suggest, how could you write about that? that was private. my feeling is when you are leader of a country, when you occupy a position like that, you know, that behavior needs to be recognized. and when a person puts

themselves out to be a very conservative fundamental his muslim. he wanted to be called the commander of the faithful, and is hitting on western women, that goes the whole double way and the way women are viewed and what happens before the escapes -- what happens behind the escapes and that's something i had access to. >> on the theme of personal secretary as you were writing the book, a lot of times when you would go back over things you recognized how dangerous the situation was, so -- >> dumb. >> yeah so what was that -- was there any kind of reliving of those things and what kind -- was there a psychic toll in writing the book, following up on the experienced you had? >> ity. feel like the first year after leaving, it was all a psychic toll. you're going through this stuff and reliving and it realize, wow, that probably affected me a

lot more than i thought. going to suicide bombs, seeing people, body parts, and you don't think about it at the time because at the time you're just running from place-to-place and trying to file the story and trying ma make sure you meet deadline you don't think about what happens inside. my view was always, if i'm going to do this job and i'm going cover these painful stories i have to feel every single story i'm doing. i have to connect to it because only if i'm seeing this as a real person, not just as a number, can i translate it back to readers. seem like -- people over there are just like people here and this is what it's like for them. and that does take a toll on you. it was interesting. i couldn't face writing pakistan. afghanistan for some reason was easy for me to write and i could not face writing pakistan. it was just this writer's block. i was writing around the half of the book that dealt with

pakistan or only writing the funny bits, and then i went to visit my mother for ten days over christmas, which is a great way to write a book, because you realize that you have an excuse to get away from your mother for half the day, you know, because at least my mother likes to talk about feelings and emotions and things like that. so, i would take half the day and i would write the book, and then i would come and i would read it to her. and that -- i wrote all of pakistan in those ten days. i wrote about 5,000 words a day. it was all inside me waiting to come out and i kind of needed my mom around almost to hold my hand and to walk me through it. she didn't know any -- my parents did know any of the stuff i went through because you're protecting them. so i was really difficult for her as well to hear everything that i went to. people say you wrote a funny book. i always correct them. parts are very funny and darkly funny, but parts are very sad,

and coming to terms with that was difficult. but now i'm all better. >> right. right. as you mentioned in your initial comments, another theme is the kind of feeling you have when your first get to a place and don't really know it, and kind of overwhelmed, how overwhelmed you can feel and out of place until you kind of get up to speed. there are certain parts of the book that i think you're too hard on yourself, and i think that that's probably -- it's just part of life, right? you don't know something until you start doing it. do you now look at this and -- do you know what i'm talking sunset do you look at that whole time differently or is it still pretty much how you feel? >> um, it's a self-deprecating book, so i definitely did not

want to come across at a hero. i wanted to be honest and open about the fact i didn't know much and it was funny the way i wrote it, and i'm hard on myself, and i think journalist are often hardest on yourself, at least -- maybe you think you're great. i don't know. [laughter] >> not miami, kim. not anymore. >> we're actually very good friend skis think the world of him as an editor, just to correct that from earlier. people say, you come off worse than anybody in the book isn't that correct was my goal. i think there aren't probably a lot of books, especially by female authors, where they're memoirs and the main character comes out worse than anybody else. so i have no regrets about anything in there, and i think it's an honest book and reads really well as a time -- a piece of time. i think it's a good hoyt, and -- good history, but i had to separate myself, the human

being, from the character in here, because obviously i don't put everything -- you can't put everything of yourself because who wants to read that kind of navel gazing. that's a very good book. this is definitely the opposite of that. there's not a lot of self-reflection in here when i'm going through these experiences, even though i had more as a human being at the time, because that's not what you're doing. you're running from bomb to bomb to bomb to cover this stuff and don't have that time for self-reflection that comes only later. >> so, one of the things we talked about earlier before the session gap -- session began was how this allowed people to keep reading about afghanistan and pakistan, even though it might be ten years on with the war and people who might not pick up a book about pakistan are now reading it. so, let's just talk quickly about where you think we're headed right now in afghanistan, what -- we have a potential

pullout of troops beginning, we've got -- whether there is a deadline or not is a question. how do you size it up right now and where do you think the u.s. needs to go? >> i stick with what i wrote in the book, that we're on a path doomed to failure. if we stick on the road we're on. so far we have been sticking on this road, chase strange mix, where you put a lot more troops in, a lot of money in -- we're spending $190 million a day in afghanistan. more than $2,200 a second. so in the time we have been talking -- think about how much money we spent there for an effort that almost everybody agrees is doomed to fail. what we're doing, though, is a narrative is being created out of this. the military is creating this narrative. the obama administration is creating a narrative of success. that doesn't really match with what is actually happening on the ground. and i believe that what we'll do is start pulling out troops, redefine success, we'll move

those goalposts, and we'll bring everybody home. and then in another -- a couple months after we leave, would say almost immediately, the civil war will start race. not the taliban marching into kabul, it's going to be a civil war. the were lords we empowered of there since the fall of the taliban and they're in kabul and they have weapons and they're masks weapons because they see pashtun massing weapons and everybody is getting ready for us to leave, and i almost feel like it's inevitable. people say what you do? i'm only a journalist who except a lot of time in the region, about i'm just a journalist, but it seems to me anytime you give people a deadline and say we're going to pull our troops out, it tells them, well, then we know what their timeline is, we know how serious they are about place. this place has been abandoned repeatedly by the west. right. >> guest: these are survivors.

it's a nation -- two nations of fence-sitters, waiting to see which way it's going to do, and as soon as we telegraph that by saying we're going to start pulling out troops, everybody switches, and things get really bad. my answer, fewer troops. much fewer troops. stop the drone attacks, the night raid, and that's kind of controversial. those just create more enemies over there. so you few fewer troops. coordinated development. right now nobody is coordinating anything. we're just pouring money in and most of it is going into people's pocket. so less money, more coordination, fewer troops, and remove any timeline, if we want it to work, and if we're not willing to do that, my question is, what are we doing there now? bring everybody home. >> as you point out in the book, it wasn't when the -- when the afghans talk about the worst time in their country they don't

talk about the time under the taliban or soviet, they talk about the time in between, the civil war. so, afghanistan, now with pakistan, obviously very much in the news, with the bin laden killing, et cetera -- >> i write about the city where he was killed and that was total shocker he was there. >> what about the idea that the pakistani intelligence didn't know about that, and what impact is this going to have on pakistan, if any? >> here's the deal. you can't look at the isi or the army in pakistan -- and the isi is the top spy agency in pakistan. they pretty much control everything there. it's as if there's a combination of the cia and the fbi and they're entire focus is on

what's happening in the country, not what is happening outside the country. so as journalist we would be followed. there's a couple funny scenes of them following us around as i'm going to get dry cleaning. if we would meet with an afghan or indian, you were on their radar. so the isi is everywhere in the country. but it's not a top-down organization. it's not as if the top is going know everything going on below because of what happened during the '80s. they had different cells of the issy working with ihad digroups -- jihadi groups to fight against the soviets. you have this mentality you can have self-contained cells within the isi. so, do i believe that the leadership of the isi and the army knew that bin laden was there? no. i would find that very hard to

believe. die believe that the civilian government knew that he was there? no. they have no clue what's going on in that country. they had no idea. die believe that somebody in the town knew, in the establishment, that he was there? definitely. there's no way he would have been able to live in a compound like that, with 12-15-foot walls and bashed wire on the top no way he could live there, without somebody knowing he was there, without some level of protection. i think almost everybody who is an expert in that area, that's pretty much where everybody is coming down. so, getting back to your question. what repercussion does that plus this whole davis spy debacle going on -- it's going to have an effect on aid there. and most definitely is. everybody is taking a very hard look at this partner in this war, this partner we're sort of stuck with, and trying to figure out, do we want to keep giving them money? they're using to fight a war

against india. not using for afghanistan. and i think pakistan will be the way of afghanistan in that aid will be cut. we're going to go back to the sort -- just like what happened in the '80s when we cut ties a little bit, and then we're going to see the fallout of that. pakistan is a much more troubling country than afghanistan because of the nuclear weapons issue, although i do believe those are safe, and the fact they created this sort of frankenstein enemy that is coming back on them and you're seeing extremely sophisticated attacks on the establishment. >> when we turned away from pakistan the last time, it was not a nuclear armed country. >> it was not. >> well, we have about 15 minutes left, so i thought we could take some questions from the crowd, if anybody has something they want to bring up.

if you can come up to the microphone. >> kim, what made you decide in the first place you wanted to be a foreign correspondent? >> that's a good question. and i'm unlike a lot of foreign correspondents. a lot of foreign correspondents knew -- know from the very beginning this is what they want to do. they want to good overseas, study a difficult culture in college, learned the language. for me i was always -- i wanted to tell stories. i walls just wanted to tell good stories, and i wanted to tell the most important stories. and so i -- when 9/11 happened i was working at the chicago tribune, and i a them started to send off metro reporters to fill in. i knew this was the biggest story in the world and i wanted in, so i volunteered, have nothing idea what i ways getting myself into. their feeling was -- i make a joke in the book but their feelings here's somebody that knows how to tell stories.

let's see what she can do. >> i think you went in there and said the editor, i'm single, i don't have any ties, i'm expendable. >> yeah. [laughter] >> yes, sir. >> the speaker spoke of war lords that we empowered and pulling out our troops. i'm a pacifist. i do not have troops and so i felt misrepresented by that kind of language. >> you speak of the actions going on there in afghanistan as a failure. >> do you have a question? >> yes. >> okay. >> the question. >> there's a line of people behind you. >> well, the question is prefaced by the understanding that the united states went into iraq to wreck it for israel. so, -- >> question? seriously. this is live on tv. do you have a question? >> the question is, do you believe also that the united states is into afghanistan and

pakistan to wreck it for the benefit of israel and the general idea -- >> no. >> -- conquest. >> no. thank you. >> i don't have aism just want to say i read foreign affairs magazine and they have very perceptive articles about afghanistan and they would reiterate the point you made, there's -- development is not being coordinated there. the personnel are not trained in how to do development programs. >> right. >> so there's a lot of money being wasted. >> exactly. >> that raises the point. talk about the afghan police and the training of the afghan police. at the point you say something very unflattering. what did you see there? >> i mean, god, the poor afghan police. i kind of feel like we played these huge practical jokes on

afghanistan after the fall of the taliban and then divided up what we were going to do and already had our eye on iraq. and when i say we, i'm just using that as america or the best. so you had this decision made that america was going to train the army. the germans were going to train the police. the british were going to take care of drugs, and the italians were going to do the court system. seriously. the italians. couldn't make this stuff up. no wonder they got a corrupt court system. and meanwhile, the germans -- they're a joke because they will no go off the base after dark, even if they're being called to support other troops. there's their cav yet. they don't go out after dark, and if they go out in the day, they have to have an ambulance with them at all times. so the police training was not even thought about.

the fact that you had to have police that were trained, until about 2006-2007, and the americans realized these guys are on the front lines of the war or -- war on terror, and they weren't trained. so they would go down the street and say, we pay only maybe $60 a month. would you like to be a police officer and be on the front line office the war on terror? so they got the no-hopes. right? i refer to them as mopes. and -- these guys -- you would go to training and it would be like they wouldn't know how to close one eye, so they couldn't aim, and you would have these american trainers going, one eye, and do like this, and shooting, and the best shot we had in one class had only three fingers. and they would do things like be leaning on their gun and they'd shoot themselves in the foot. and you just -- you'd watch

these guys at training and just would -- you'd find yourself trying not to laugh because it actually is a serious problem, and it still is. it's still -- they haven't really figured out how to get long-term training and get enough money to these guys so they're not tempted by corruption. the police are key there. >> the only afghan men who didn't know how to happen a gun. >> it's not like they don't know how to fight over there. right? >> yes. in writing the book, researching and everything, did you find that there's a direct correlation between the problems we're facing now and a failed policy in the '80s in arming the mujahideen, and also putting osama bin laden in the position that he became? >> mine -- >> because we trained him, we armed him. he was our man. do you think that's why also

they wanted him dead and not brought back for trial? >> a lot of questions there. let me start with the '80s question. there's no doubt that there's a reason it's called history and it leads to where we are today. there's no doubt that everybody that happened in pakistan and afghanistan is the result of supporting these groups in the '80s and then abandoning these countries and that's the key point. it's abandoning the countries and abandoning education and doing any kind of development there. if people have not seen the movie "charlie wilson's war" it's a pretty good movie and a good way to get an education of what happened in the '80s, and you get the sense that charlie wilson is asking for education what would have been different if we hadn't left and allowed the civil war to happen, allow the textbooks that teach jihad

essentially to little kids, eye louing people to grow up in camps where tear taken care of by militants. that's an apt point, as far as the war now, let's be absolutely honest. it has nothing too do with al qaeda in pakistan or afghanistan. it has to do well off these different groups that could have goals a allied with al qaeda but they're more local goals. it's not about world domination of attacking america. it's about attacking inside these countries and getting rid of the u.s. backed government, it's about gets troops inside afghanistan. so it's bit different. as far as bin laden goes and whether we killed him to avoid bringing him back here for trial, i don't know. you know, i don't know what the decision was there i do know there was orders to shoot to kill, no matter what, and i think that was just maybe because of everything that happened on 9/11, everything

that has happened since then, and worries about what would happen back here, perhaps. >> i mean, attorney general holder a year ago said osama bin laden would not be brought in alive. that was clear. >> i have a core question. you said our aid program is a failure. it would be better to turn it over to ngos? >> no. >> that would operate on a much lower price tag? >> ngos are great but they're part of the chain. they're part of the chain. when you give money -- when the usaid is our umbrella group. that money goes to ngos or for-profit places, and then they subcontract down to the afghan group, who subcontract down, who subcontract down. by the time the money gist down there it's a tenth of what started out. and meanwhile you have guys living -- don't get me started

on the way the foreign community lives in afghanistan. i think i paint a pretty vivid picture of it in the book. but i think that what needs to happen is all the countries need to work together in a better fashion. the way you have it now, it's very piecemeal, so like the u.s. military will build a well in one community. the community didn't want a well but they got a well. then somebody else will build a well five feet air. it's that lack of coordination, lack of decisionmaking, lack of coming up with plan. the idea of having a marshal plan in afghanistan, they have still not done this. >> thank you, sir. >> thank you. >> you told us stories about incompetence, then you said that you think pakistan's nuclear weapons are safe. can you explain why you feel that way? >> die. -- i do. there are protocols that are very much in place, and the one establishment that works in pakistan is the military structure. i mean, think they have proved that pretty much.

i mean, look, we might not like what they're doing, but they definitely know what they're doing, and those -- there are so many protocols with the nuclear weapons, and the u.s. officials here aren't necessarily worried about them, and i think that says something. we'll see what happens. you never know which direction that country is going to go. my sense is it's just going to muddle along as is. >> so my question is, as a single reporter, have you experienced the challenges the male reporter don't experience? >> yeah. >> how do you handle situations? >> punch them in the face. actually, that's kind of true. definitely female reporters have different experiences than male reporters. i mean, i would have loved to have like experienced it as a man so i could say for sure what the differences are. my sense is, as female in these country -- in pakistan, i would

get grabbed a lot more in crowd situations, pinched, grabbed, which ended up getting me access to people because people would try to pull me out of that, which was helpful to my robert, and i did occasionally when i got frustrated, punch the guys who were grabbing me. i did in afghanistan, though, it's very interesting. i think that being a female reporter in afghanistan is actually much easier than being a mail foreign reporter, because you're not really seen as a local woman, you're not seen as a foreign man. you're seen as sort of some kind of third sex, who gets access to everybody. i mean, colin, if he was in afghanistan, would not get to do stories about half the population. wouldn't be able to do stories about women there or about girls setting themselves on fire because they don't want to be married to some 80-year-old dude. i can do those stories and then also even conservative clerics

want to see the female reporter and i challenge to find the last male reporter that karzai talked to. seriously. i don't think it's because of any sort of sexy thing with karzai. i think he wants to give credit to the women who are willing to come there and tell the stories, and i think that with others that might not be the case. women get a weird kind of access over there, and it's not just me. i think all female reporters feel that way. >> we just have a couple minutes left. what happened with karzai? >> crazy town. karzai -- there's a couple different things that i think has happened with karzai. first of all, we set him up pretty much to fail. we love a leader who speaks english and dresses well. we do. we especially love a leader who can control their country. we like dealing with one stop shopping, which is why we kind of like having musharraf in

pakistan, we liked having all those horrible dictators in the middle east. we like having a strong man to deal with. in the very beginning the sense was, here's our guy, and the bush administration -- we loved having our guys in places, and so karzai was our guy there can you remember when the iraq war happened and everybody was saying, god, if only there was a hamid karzai in iraq, you know. god. think about that for a minute. so -- i think that over the years karzai is paranoid, known to be paranoid, he has become increasingly isolated. he is basically in this palace by himself. if you haven't read the story about him, it's a great story in "the new york times" magazine, and it pretty much describes how he has got to this point. i think he is caught between the whole idea that he really believes inside he is a person who is going to save his country, and he really believes, i believe, that the west is against him and america is

trying to kill him and america is killing people there i think all these crazy press conferences he gives, he actually believes that. and that's problem when your partner has turned into the person who publicly -- and he is always doing a wag the dog. the allegations of corruption in kabul blank. look at this florida preacher who set a koran on fire, and then you have riots where people get killed. >> a great observation in the book about everything will be going to hell and karzai will come in when everything is over and appeal for calm. that's his way of doing things. so, last thing, you mentioned charlie wilson's war, terrific book, turned into a terrific movie. i think this is a terrific book and this could be a terrific movie, and i actually heard there's already the rights -- >> yeah, but i'm not supposed to talk about that. >> oh. so, look for it. thank you, kim. >> thank you, colin. [applause] >> thanks for coming.

>> what are you reading this summer? book tv wants to know. >> there's a book about machiavelli sitting on my desk that came out several weeks ago. so i want to read about it. i want to read that book. and then there's a book called, reckless, about what went on in terms of the financial crisis in the country and what led up to it and involves two local businesses, freddie mac and fannie mae. s' so i know lots of the players and i'm curious to read and find out what happened there. and then there's some things i want to go back and read. there was recently a controversy

about huck finn, and the use of the n-word, and there was a professor who took it out of the text, and this sparked a controversy about sanitizing american history, or in the context of my own book, sort of politically correct speech code. and how inappropriate it was, given the fact that mark twain, samuel clemmons, wrote it with the power of that word intended. so i want to just take a look at what the sanitized, if you will, text looks like, and i picked up that book and that's sitting on my desk. and then there are two books -- i'm trying tomorrow their names, and i -- this is such an opportunity to help out authors i'm reading. but one is a book by lawrence block, who is a mystery writer, and i think it's called