>> i must say i'm particularly relieved to hear that marvin and

debbie worked on their book on the their own hours. i'm particularly to have one of the kalb brothers as a competentper -- when i was bureau chief in hong kong for abc bernie kalb was bureau chief for cbs and then in 1971 when i came back here to the united states as diplomatic correspondent i was blessed to have marvin as a competitor. our friends tendon to be people who are who are have become our competito competitors. we only travel with competitors

but i'm especially grateful to have the kalb brothers as competitors i want to get a few words although i must say i was kind of nervous it was tactical mistake to put a microphone in bernie kalb's hand. [laughter] >> once it is there it's going to be difficult to extract it again. but bernie -- >> do i have a half hour -- >> no. would you set the scene by reminding the many people in the audience here who may not be old enough, how did we get so intriparticularly involved in the first place? >> let me begin by saying for me this is a night of very heavy quelling, i got my dear brother, my dear friend koppel and my niece and writing a book to the perceptions, the analysis into the book and all together i'd

like to just add that over the years i have earned a reputation for being absolutely fearless as a reporter, fearless by my objectivity and i would like to give it a review of the book and in that spirit i would call it a rave review. it's terribly ironic to see marvin and debbie here writing a book about vietnam. after all i made my first visit to vietnam in 1956 you can do the arithmetic. and in 1956, debbie was not on the scene, marvin in 1956 could not read and could not upon active indicate and the page i'd really encourage you to read is

the dedication. the dedication is really quite marvelous and i always told marvin i buy all the books that are dedicated to me. ironic, desperately ironic, i talked to marvin, my visits to vietnam were endless. i spent years covering the war for vietnam a bit for the "new york times," many years for cbs news and we're lucky to have with us somebody who wrote a great book about vietnam who wrote the book "vietnam." [applause] >> what to say? what to say? marvin, debbie, taking a bite of this story is quite extraordinary. vietnam for many people have drifted off the front page of even their emotions but for people like me vietnam never gets go. i have this deal with vietnam, i don't let go of vietnam and

vietnam does not let go of me. i go to vietnam as often as i can, i must have been there as much as eight times in the first decade. i spend my time in the enemy's hanoi. how many people have been to hanoi? then this will give me speaking with authority. saigon where saigon fizzled out on the war where we fizzled out and read stanley's book and this is the night to read their book, debbie and marvin's i've gone through it meticulously searching for errors. i figured that would give me great pleasure but i must say so far i've read the book twice. marvin said it's not necessary for me to memorize it. i've read the book, i find it an overdo contribution to literature of vietnam.

vietnam is the 800-pound gorilla that is always in the oval office when the president has to make a decision about war andmacy vietnam does not go away. the dead, the wounded, the cost, the gripping impact of vietnam on america, we know those here, those who were around in those days and for marvin to catch up the haunting legacy, the uninvited, the unwelcomed guest at the oval office all the time, vietnam, may it stay there, may it introduce sanity and wisdom and prudence to all american decisions to remember what happened in vietnam before we embark on strange and wonderful and curious adventures. thank you. [applause] >> oh, bernie, if your brother and your niece ignore your questions as successfully as you did, it's going to be a long

evening. [laughter] >> the story -- no, no. you got no second chances here. that's it. [laughter] >> the story is told about winston churchill at a dinner in which he clearly did not enjoy, turning to his hostess and saying about the dessert, madam, this pudding has no theme. debbie, what's the theme of the pudding? >> the theme of the pudding i think there's a number of themes but i think the main theme is that vietnam does not go away. it's there. every president has to deal with it. it's there every time they have to make a decision about sending troops somewhere. it's there in the politics in terms of what happened in different elections about whether someone served or didn't serve or chose to go to vietnam or not. it doesn't go away and that's the theme that carries through the book, through each president that we look at.

>> and yet, marvin, vietnam clearly has affected different presidents in one might almost say diametrically opposed fashions? how is that possible? >> sometimes diametrically opposed. but there are two levels here. on one level you have to imagine what are the major influences on all of the presidents since the end of the vietnam war when they have to decide as debbie was saying about sending troops to fight. the vietnam ghost is there as bernie was saying, it's there all the time. however, each president operates in his own environment. each president operates on his own time and each expresses operating on a particular problem so while the overall ghost is there so with any specific president you're going to get a different response forecast 1-- for example, 1983,a

terrorist group known to the president, known to the people around the president, they knew where they were, and yet, ronald reagan decided that because the american people had been spoke by vietnam, he did not want to put them through another experience like that. and so for him after the killing of 240 americans he did nothing and that was remarkable. that was because of vietnam. on the other side, go to a president like bush 1. the iraqis go into kuwait. it is seen as a direct threat to the united states. bush 1 decides to do something and pursuant to the powell doctrine, which is a direct consequence of the vietnam war, president george h.w. bush sends

500,000 marines -- troops to do something powell told us it could be done by 100,000 but because of vietnam, he wanted to send in -- many, many -- sort of overloading the circuit as it were to make absolutely sure the job is done. you go in. you do it fast and you get out. that idea is so different from our experience in vietnam. so the president, yes, can do it in different ways but is always shadowed by this haunting legacy. >> and yet let's come to the present day. here we are engaged albeit not on the ground but engaged in libya, where no u.s. interest -- or significant u.s. interest appears to be involved.

we have no sense of how we're going to get out again. and the engagement to the degree that there is any engagement is rather timid. is that to a function, debbie as a function by president obama and his advisors. >> the libyan situation, what's going on today is what's going on in vietnam. the war powers act, congressional environment, the arguments between the executive and congress over who really is in charge of sending troops and fighting, what constitutes fighting? how do you really define that? and that was some of what was going on, on the hilda in terms of the votes in the house about whether it was okay to send the troops, whether they should be stopped in particular operations >> and yet marvin we appear to

have come no further in the past 40 years than where we were. the congressional vote, albeit as debbie said the vote in the house was against funding. >> right >> the military action against libya. but that's meaningless. they will continue funding it anyway. >> one of the things that president obama said right from the beginning -- he said our involvement is going to be measured in days, not weeks. well, it's four months plus now. >> this is a very smart, well read president. he reads history all the time, i'm told. now, vietnam is very much on his mind and he did not want to convey the impression to the american people that we're

getting sucked into something that could end up being another vietnam. this was a man who when he was campaigning in '08, he went off to do the obligatory front where you visit the war front and he went there with senator of jack reed of rhode island and chuck hagel from new york, a democrat. it's a 14 flight from washington into kuwait, as you know, for most of those 14 hours according to both senators, what was on this senator's mind was vietnam and the lessons of vietnam because he was going to afghanistan and he was going to iraq and he wanted to learn from these two men what was the relevance and was it possible that i'm missing something and he kept asking questions about vietnam and over and over again

and they were both amazed. they both said he's a great listener. when he goes into his first national security council meeting -- the first point he makes to his people is, quote, afghanistan is not vietnam. well, why does he have to say that at the very beginning unless he thinks there's the possibility that we are getting into another vietnam and somebody like bruce rydell who does books also for the brookings press -- bruce at that time was writing and thinking through the president's first strategy paper on afghanistan. and bruce told us that the coast ghosts of the vietnam walk the corridors of the white house every day. he found that to be the case. >> and explain to me how it is that those ghosts can affect different presidents in such extraordinarily different

fashions. for example, jimmy carter in trying to go into iran to rescue the hostages, underplays it militarily and ends up with a disaster on his hands. then you haddorn h.w. bush who, in effect, overplayed it by sending over 500,000 troops into iraq and kuwait. same vietnam, theoretically and they had same -- >> it's the same lessons to be drawn but these are different people functioning in different political climates and environment and seeing issues in different ways. i mean, the idea that a republican would see it one way and a democrat another way is

sort of abc. what i find is special interesting is that as the years go by, you would think well, this war ended really in 1975, why is it bugging me today? but it is. how you respond to the bug is an individual thing depending on the politics of the moment, the challenge that you face. somebody may feel you got to go in full -- full bore and send in many more troops than you need or with obama and libya, whoops, this would be done in a couple days. don't worry about it. you go in either direction but you go there for the pressure that the memory of vietnam has produced. >> let me challenge you just a little bit on the suggestion that it's somehow it's a partisan manner, republican or democrats. >> it's one of the reasons. it's one of the reasons. >> well, let me challenge you on that one. ronald reagan, if ever a

president in recent memory has a memory of being or a reputation of being broad shouldered, tough, not going to take any crap from anyone, it's ronald reagan. >> absolutely. >> and yet as you correctly pointed out in the wake of 241 u.s. marines and u.s. personnel being killed in beirut and what you didn't add is that the intelligence showed them that the iranians and the syrians were directly involved in the creation of what was then a completely newfound organization, hezbollah. >> it's in the book. >> it's in the book, that's right. [laughter] >> he did nothing. he did worse than nothing. he pulled those marines who were in lebanon at the time -- pulled them out to waiting ships offshore. the ships stayed there for a few

days and off they went. >> right. >> and nobody said a word about it because fortunately for president reagan there was another war, a tiny war. >> a tiny war. >> a successful one, grenada, that took place at exactly the same time, right? but here is the essence of a republican tough guy who reacted in a fashion that would have done any liberal democrat proud. >> absolutely. i have to tell you that when i research on that chapter and was thinking about reagan, i approached it with memories of reagan even at the time that i was covering the matter which was this is a hollywood -- he's an actor. there's no great depth there.

and i have to tell you that reading his diary and reading the letters that he wrote, thousands of letters over a lifetime in politics -- if you have any fairness within you, you have to judge this guy in a totally different way and that's one of the things that i learned about the way in researching the reagan chapter. i just had a different sense of the guy than i had before. and that's one of the wonderful things about doing a book of this sort where you can have a buddy like debbie at my side as you sort of discover whole new worlds. it's really the most exciting phenomenon. >> just finish off that thought on reagan. different how? i'm not saying it's different -- >> no you're saying your

appraisal of reagan as you had read all of this -- >> what i mean, ted, is that there was -- i appreciated the man in a broader way, and i was saying to myself as sort of vistas opened for me in my understanding of this man, it said something about journalism to me that we -- we approach the coverage of somebody perhaps too simplistically and we ought to be a bit fairer to the presidents who have this enormous responsibility, sending people off to die. that's a terrible thing. and somebody like reagan looking at what could have happened in the middle east said, no, i'm not going to do it and vietnam was on his mind and the word was "spooked" and he didn't want the

american people to be spooked yet again. because it was reagan, he could use both grenada and language and that wonderful shoulder gesture that he had and people would say it's all okay because president reagan said so. >> i must say that i was struck as i read the book with what you just said with one notable except, all the presidents, well, maybe two -- most of the presidents since ford, come out looking a lot better and a lot stronger on seeing retroperspective. the only exceptions are jimmy carter and george w. why, debbie? >> that's a great question. jimmy carter did not come out looking so great in the end because the last part of the chapter on jimmy carter had to

do with the iran hostage situation and the failed rescue attempt. the first bits of the carter chapter he was actually doing fairly well with a lot of different -- with the middle east, with china with a lot of areas that he was working on. but he was completely undone by the hostage situation and by the outcome of that rescue mission which was a complete disaster and so i think sort of if you took the carter presidency it would have been stopped and it would have been successfully in terms of the foreign policy piece. it was the last year or so of his presidency and that's why he came out in that way because that was the end of the chapter. >> what about george w. bush seven >> george w. bush was completely -- the 9/11 and the whole war on terrorism kind of overshadowed that chapter as it did overshadow his whole

presidency when i think that at the time -- i mean, we were working on this book during that whole time, during his presidency, well, not the entire presidency we were working on the second half of his presidency and i think that that chapter on bush 2 -- it was at the time at the end of his presidency you did have situations that were unsolved and that were not going well. and it was not a situation that you would want to say, okay, here's a very successful outcome as he was leaving office. i don't think anybody would really say that so i think it was a result of both the iraq and afghanistan wars and then we get into the two chapters on obama where you're still dealing with afghanistan and that's still, obviously, is continuing and is in the news this week as well. >> there was one line i mentioned to you before we came out here, marvin, in the

president's speech to the nation, a couple nights ago, i don't have the exact language of it. i'm sure one of you sitting here does. but there was reference to a light in the distance and i think any one of us here over the age of 50 or 60 must have thought to himself or herself of a light off in the distance. i still remember lyndon johnson talking about that light at the end of the tunnel. and how, you know, the joke. vietnam was it was probably some vietcong with a flashlight. [laughter] >> but there's -- ted, there's a deep sadness that i feel -- to even raise that. he knows that. he knows about the light at the

end of the tunnel. he's read all those books. that's why he played away with the phraseology so it's not the light at the end of the tunnel. but that's what he's thinking. that's in his mind and that to me is overpoweringly sad because it suggests that at the end of the day, he really doesn't know how we're going to get out of there. he's playing with different formulas. he's kicking the can down the road. when he started in december of '09 when he said he's going to have the surge troops go in, those were 30,000. they didn't get there until the summer -- the tail end of the summer of '10, 2010. and so they've had one fighting season, and they claim to have done quite well. well, fine but at this particular point you can -- you can be sympathetic to the military point of view and say, well, if you want to get another two or three seasons of fighting in, you could really hurt the

other guys. general petraeus, when he went out there in the summer of 2010, told a number of his people that the most important thing for us right now is to hurt them. to hurt them bad. then they'll come to the negotiating table and we'll be able to strike a deal. the only thing wrong with that -- i have the highest respect for general petraeus but the only thing wrong with that idea is that the taliban -- they have a totally different vision of what's going on. they may have in mind that you can say whatever you like, mr. president. we're here and we're going to be here long after you leave. and so -- >> i mean, you took my next question, and you have already begun to answer it but let's take it all the way. if that was central message to be taken out of vietnam, that

surely was it. the north vietnamese and the vietcong were on home turf. they had nowhere to go and if there is a comparison to be drawn and sometimes i worry that we -- we overdraw them -- >> sure. >> i think there are strategic reasons why we are in afghanistan, which don't apply or didn't apply to vietnam -- but just focus on that one central issue and maybe, debbie you would follow up whatever incomplete answer your father gives. [laughter] >> well, i think that really there are analogies between the two, definitely, and i think if you look at what was going on -- like my father said in the very first meeting that obama had with his foreign policy team -- [inaudible] >> my co-author, not my father.

okay. [laughter] >> yeah. >> thank you. >> can i be your cofather? [laughter] >> that in the very first meeting he talked about afghanistan is not vietnam i think it's always been there in their mind as something as a comparison and you could say yes, there are definitely reasons that the u.s. went into afghanistan that are strategic, that are important and that are different from why the u.s. went into vietnam and there's a lot of differences, too, but i think in the end that's true, what is going to be in a lot of people's mind that if we see the president on tv talking about troop levels that does go back to people's minds about vietnam. that is something that's going to keep reverberating when you hear that sort of language going on. and i think that what is really interesting is just whatever president obama was trying to do with the speech he's going to

get criticism from either side anyway, and, in fact, he is getting criticism about afghanistan and how much is really needed to deal with the taliban it ends up with criticism from people who are saying you're pulling the troops out too slowly and on the other side people who are saying -- >> defense. >> yeah, it's too quick and he had to take a middle course and i think the vietnam in his his mind and in his advisor's minds are. >> when you look at what people like general petraeus are saying and they don't say things like this lightly, they're really saying if you want to win this kind of a war, we're talking 20 years, 50 years even, this is a generational thing that the pentagon for a while there kept referring to as the long war.

nothing uses that phrase anymore. that surely has to be one of the lessons of vietnam also. i'm not sure he could have won vietnam in 50 years but afghanistan, is that one of the lessons? >> absolutely. that's certainly the lessons -- one of the lessons and we haven't touched on one thing which is the obama/afghanistan context and that is pakistan because that's where the nuclear weapons are. and as you and i have discussed in the past a number of times, one of the major reasons we're involved in afghanistan to begin with has to do with keeping an eye up close on pakistan's nuclear stockpiles. and to make absolutely sure that terrorists don't get their hands on them. and that is the underlying theme, the underlying message when obama first came in, they

came up with this idea of a afpak -- which is afghanistan and pakistan. you could see the two together and you could not separate the two and what the president is doing right now in his speech anyway is almost make a move toward separation and they can't be separated. >> are we almost ready to go to questions? who has the -- who has the microphone. nobody has the microphone. >> well, bernie had the microphone. >> no, he had one. he had one. >> i saw it. >> there they are. right there. >> okay. we got the microphone. i'm always inclined to say it's sometimes difficult to get the first person to ask the question so let's skip to the first question and get right to the second question. [laughter] >> microphones? go ahead. >> i have a question. in 20/20 hindsight do you feel

are the vietnam mistake a complete mistake and are we making a mistake in afghanistan and the presidents aren't learning the mistakes of the past? >> oh! today is friday, so i tend on monday, wednesday and friday to answer that question with a yes. [laughter] >> but on weekends and tuesdays and thursdays i'm not sure. [laughter] >> and the fact of the matter is i'm really not sure. i'm personally not sure. i study this the way other people have and i sometimes think that there are good reasons why we are there and the nuclear stockpile in pakistan may be in an underlying way the most powerful reason why we are there and have to be close to the scene where something very dramatic and horrible could take place. on the other hand, if you've been involved in a war for 10 years, you can certainly say to yourself as senator aiken did

many years ago on vietnam, you won. you did the best you could and then you leave. walter cronkite said that in february 1968 and lyndon johnson said to himself at that point, well, i lost walter cronkite, i've lost the heartland of america and, therefore, i can't continue the war anymore. and i thought the other day with obama -- that there was a little bit of that in his speech. there was a little bit of that. what are we doing here? and he spoke about it. other people think that, not he but it was there. >> there's a couple of questions up front and over there, wherever the microphone is closest. >> here we go. there's one right here. rick, there's one right behind you. >> rick, right behind you. >> this question may be actually a little far afield and hopefully you won't yell at me. but one of the things out of

vietnam is how america gets its war coverage and i wonder if you could speak. i haven't had a chance to read the book and i've only had it for an hour. >> the roast beef was good and it kind of kept me occupied. vietnam, i was only at the very, very, very, very tail of it. the officers that i met and that we came in contact with at the very end of the war and as we came to the war, they were very junior officers and as they have grown up to become the senior officers today, their experience with the way the media dealt with them during vietnam has really formed the way they want to deal with the media today. and all these press polls and all these restrictions and all

these ways the media will be handled grows out of a frustration and that the media ran rampant in a vietnam in a way they weren't going to let it run rampant in any other conflict. and as you saw coverage change through gulf wars to currently the way it's handled in afghanistan and handled in iraq, i mean, those are also offshoots of the vietnam war where you guys know better than i you could go wandering off in the jungle. >> rick, i'm going to use you as an example because you're a dear friend. no speeches, just ask a question. >> i want you to ask a question about that because you're legacies. >> you talk about it. you know better than i. >> no, no, no. it's your book, it's your moment. >> rick, the coverage of a war

today because of the pervasiveness of the media is a central concern of any responsible leader. and at the beginning of the iraq war, defense secretary rumsfeld and his press secretary for public affairs -- i forgot her name right now. tory clark, tory clark had this idea of embedding reporters and soldiers. deb was embedded with soldiers in the iraq war. and why it was important we went from a draft to the volunteer army into the end of the vietnam into everything that followed. when you had a draft you could have demonstrations and you could run into a severe domestic problem. when you have a volunteer army

it's only about 1% of the american people that's involved in defending 99% of the people. so there isn't that same level of concern and people -- a lot of reporters had no idea what soldiers went through. no idea, whatever, because they themselves did not serve in the military and they -- unless you're a pentagon correspondent you don't know much about it. so there's been an effort on the part of the pentagon to bring the press in. and that could be way overdone to a point where the press becomes a prisoner. my brother said in a program many years ago that the press was a prisoner of the pentagon and would see only what the pentagon wanted it to see. but at the same time, there were other reporters, freelance people, unilaterals as they were called going in and doing a

terrific job, telling the american people what it was that was going on. >> let me -- let me add if i may add just one observation to that. >> please. >> and this i think is very much a child of vietnam and one of the other haunting legacies of vietnam. it is not simply the fact that you now have a volunteer army where you had a draft -- an army of draftees during vietnam. it has been taken one step further. you now have thousands of civilian contractors. much of the warfare is now being waged by remote control, by drones. libya is a perfect example. there are no boots on the ground in that famous phrase, all

right? so if the draft was one reason why there was so much political opposition here in the united states back in the '60s, that was largely removed by making as marvin says, a volunteer army. it is now being taken to a whole new step which is a wonderful way of concealing the way the american government is taking. >> absolutely. absolutely. >> a question up front and then we'll have a question right here. >> there's a question right here, too. >> right behind you, sir. >> that's okay. i got it. that's okay. [laughter] >> hi, my name is hugh. i'm a vietnam veteran. and i've also been keeping watch on what's going on with the war. one of the things -- right now, when we're reporting from vietnam and everyone else in here was watching it from

vietnam, the war was center stage. the war was the headline for the night. now we have weinergate and these guys are still dying the same way we did in vietnam. so how do you get the focus back on the war. the more people know about the war the sooner they'll want the war over and get it back. and we should never have gone into iraq while we were in afghanistan. that just made afghanistan last longer and longer and longer. >> you know, i'm not quite sure how to answer that question. you're absolutely right. that we are more preoccupied today given the nature of the media with trivia than we were back then because there wasn't that much time. you had three networks back then covering the war. it was the three networks and that was it. now you got three cable networks

that are on all the time. so they have to fill the time. many more than three, okay, but you have to fill that time. that's 24 hours a day so they're prepared to put on, forgive me, just about anything. >> if i may, marvin -- >> no, please. >> there's another major reason, two other major reasons. if you heard the president in his speech on afghanistan, what was he talking about? he was talking about money. he was talking about the need to apply the money that we had to a domestic agenda. he wasn't talking about the dead in iraq or the dead in afghanistan. and there were two reasons for that. a, because in vietnam there were weeks when we had 300 -- weeks, when we had 300 dead and more. and they were the sons of --

there were very few daughters in those days. they were the sons of people all around the country because it was a draft. that made a huge difference. i'm sorry, debbie? >> well, i think one thing -- i mean, you make a really good point about the changes in the media over that period of time because i remember recently watching maybe a year or two ago my father/co-author brought some videos from back from the '60s and '70s when he was on the cbs news. and i was just really struck by the amount of very serious discussion of issues that was going on. and the sound bites went on for longer. people were allowed to speak for longer and they really got much more in depth on issues. and it just really struck me because at the time i was, you know, a child watching this and i wasn't getting as much out of it as i was then but yeah, just the amazing change on the focus

being covered. >> we've got time for two more question questions. >> thank you. you had mentioned that there was such a remarkable difference in the way different presidents responded which was not politically -- or according to their political parties. is there any suggestion that the response of one president was predicated on what had happened with the previous presidents' response? >> yes. yes. each one learns from the other. reagan, for example, came up with the whole idea of what became the powell doctrine. that was sort of a gestation of sort of like 10 years. he thought about that and then his -- the next guy in line,

george h.w. bush, picked that theme up, absolutely, 100%. when you got to clinton, the lesson he learned from that was not to take it and double and triple it, but to take it and drop it like a hot potato which is what he did with somalia right after black hawk down, that episode, so the answer to your question, yes, they do learn from another. when bush 2 came in, he said vietnam be damned. he took a harder view and he wasn't going to deal with vietnam. and yet when his second national security advisor steven hadley came in, hadley told us he would not take the job until he had gone to see president bush and he told him that he was worried that we're facing another vietnam in iraq and hadly didn't want to have any part of that.

so he told bush if that's what you're thinking of -- if that's the way you see our policy evolving, i'll say no to the job offer. and this is a very honorable lawyer who would never say no to a president but he did. bush assured him that he recognized the danger and he said, this will not happen with me. and so he took the job, so, yes, it does get picked up from one to the other. >> where's the microphone from here. >> thank you very much. i want to raise two questions -- >> would you hold the mic a little closer, please. >> i want to raise two questions regarding your assertion about the afghan/pakistan relationship and our own interest in it because i think it's central to what much of what we actually do in the coming months. first, i would question whether

10 years ago the existence of nuclear weapons in pakistan was a consideration of any consequence in our industry into the war against afghanistan, i don't think so. and then again now, one of the problems we have when we're dealing with foreign policy we conjure up the views of the problem is and how it ought to be solved and i would suggest part of our problem today and in afghanistan is that we do not see the fight against the taliban or al-qaeda in the same way that the afghanis do. and the afghanis i do not believe are concerned about pakistan's nuclear weapons. i'd like your comments on that. >> i agree with you. i don't think that the pakistani nuclear weapons had very much if

anything to do with the way in which we responded -- the way president bush 2 responded, absolutely. that came later. that came later when they were thinking of lab rating on a policy, what are we really doing there? but at the very beginning it was simply a quick response to a horrific attack on the united states. the second question that the taliban is thinking of pakistani nuclear weapons, i wouldn't be a bit surprised if sophisticated taliban are thinking in those terms, not at all. i don't think the average guy is thinking about it but the average guy in this country doesn't think about it either. i think it takes extraordinary leadership and intelligent leadership to see the full depth. i mean, one of the sad parts of vietnam over and over again was

how how i go rent our leaders were and i might venture to add that i don't think we're all that smart on what's going on with afghanistan today. >> debbie, closing thought? >> well, i guess a general closing hot is that it's been a real pleasure to work on a book with my father. i've really learned a lot from him. [applause] >> and thanks to my uncle who's really helped a lot, too. [applause] >> that's it? [laughter] >> you left out your mother. [laughter] >> my mother, my husband my son my stepson, everybody. [laughter] >> well, you've been a delightful audience. and i'm afraid we have run out of time, run out of not questions, i know. but i have been told that for every book you buy, mr. and mrs.

kalb will entertain another question. [laughter] >> 10 books, 10 questions. thank you all very much. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author orbook you would like to see on booktv, email us at booktv.org or twitter us at twitter/booktv. >> carl elliott, what is your book about? >> it's about the way that medicine has changed as it's been transformed from a profession to a business essentially. traditionally, medicine has been largely a self-policed honor-based profession. and over the past 30 years or

so, it has taken over by a range of market-based forces, the pharmaceutical industry, clinical trials industry, the medical education industry. a whole range of profit-based businesses which because of the fact that medicine is traditionally self-regulated and now operate without a whole lot of oversight. >> okay. and what are the root causes of that? >> of the transformation? a lot of things. part of what i'm interested in the book is the emergence of the pharmaceutical industry as a huge force beginning largely in the 1990s. and that was the period in which the sort of age of blockbuster drugs began. so the drug companies started really hitting for the fences, looking for trugs that they could market as many people as

possible. usually for mild chronic illnesses. when the pharmaceutical industry started to become so enormously powerful, its influence over medicine began to go much stronger and much more -- you had the emergence of the clinical trials industry and the research industry and the medical education industry. oversight private -- research oversight businesses, for-profit institutional review boards. i think a lot of people don't realize exactly how profitable the pharmaceutical industry has been over the past 20 or 30 years. and it's been tremendous. >> and what's your experience with that transformation and the role of the pharmaceutical industry currently as a doctor? >> i don't practiced medicine. i originally trained in

medicine, i went from medicine to philosophy graduate school and so for the last 20 years or so i've been teaching medical ethics and philosophy mainly. the root of the book begins with a phone call i got when i was at the university of minnesota from a local psychiatrist who wanted to sit in on a medical ethics course that i was teaching and that's because he was being disciplined on the state licensing board with a problem with a research study that he was doing. his punishment was he had to take a course in medical ethics and he wanted to sit on my course and not knowing any better, i said, sure, and let him. and it went fine. a few years later, a contract research business opened up in

the twin cities write live. a for-profit clinical trials site and i had an interest in these and started doing and digging and looked to see who the researchers were doing clinical trials for them and i saw this guy who had taken my class was one of the researchers. so i started to think -- i wonder exactly what he did to become -- to be disciplined by having to take my class. and it turned out that his license had been suspended for two years because he was responsible for the deaths and injuries of 46 different patients. a number of whom had committed suicide and 17 of whom were in research studies that he had done largely seriously mentally ill patients often with chronic schizophrenia many who were suicidal whom he was cycling research studies, research studies that they weren't eligible and keeping them in the studies even after they started

to deteriorate. one of them actually had committed suicide in our teaching hospital. and what struck me about that was his disciplinary file wasn't hard to find. i could find it within minutes. if you put his name in a google search, all his problems came up in the very first hit and yet despite the fact that he had been judged responsible for the deaths and injuries of 46 patients he was still allowed to do trials. the fda hadn't sanctioned him. and the pharmaceutical industry was still willing to hire him. in fact, he's still working for the pharmaceutical industry now. and this sort of shock me a researcher this dangerous and this bad was still allowed to do clinical trials and it pointed

to me just how weak our oversight system is. >> so in your research, how often did you find that that was the case that researchers who had violated ethics laws were allowed to continue conducting research if it was for a privately contracted institution versus on a university campus? is in front nobody really knows. that's the difficulty because there's no one keeping up with this reason. the reason he was able to do this nobody was watching and still nobody is watching. you know, you have state licensing boards but they're not responsible for clinical research. you have local institutional review boards -- these are the ethics committees that are supposed to be overseeing clinical research but now these are largely private for-profit boards paid by the sponsor of the research. and if they don't like the answer that they get and if one

ethics board say we don't like this research they go to another one and another one until they get the answer they want. the fda which is supposed to be nominally interested in protecting subjects of research only inspects about 1% of trial sites so 99% of trial sites go inspected. and, you know, for that reason i can't answer that question. nobody can. because nobody is watching. >> what would your recommendations be to improve the medical industry and particularly that process? >> well, there needs to be a different system of oversight of criminal trials for one thing. it's crazy to have the main oversight bodies being paid by the sponsors of the studies that they're supposed to be regulating. i mean, that's just a recipe for the kind of problems that we see. i would say that we need to take

drug testing out of the hands of the producers of the drug. why should the pharmaceutical industry be responsible for testing their own drugs and then publishing the research? they have a financial incentive to come up with results that are positive for their products. and, you know, as long as the testing process is in their hands, you know, that incentive is always going to be there. i'd be in favor of taking drug testing out of their hands and putting it into the hands of an independent drug testing body. >> thank you. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> there's a book about machiavelli that's sitting on my desk that came out, i guess, several weeks ago. so i want to read about it. >> okay. >> i want to read that book about machiavelli 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 it involves two local businesses, freddie mac and fannie mae and so i have -- 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. you know 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 codes and now inappropriate it was given the fact that mark twain, samuel clemens wrote it with the power of that word intended, so i wanted to just take a look at

what the sanitized, if you will, text looks like and then i picked up the book and, again, that's sitting on my desk. and then there are two books -- i'm trying to remember their names. and it's such an opportunity to help out our authors that i'm reading one is a book by lawrence block who's a mystery writer and i think it's called a drop of the hard stuff. it's a mystery novel. and lawrence block is to me just a terrific, terrific mystery writer. so that's actually at the top of my list. if i wasn't here tonight, i would go read lawrence block. yeah, i think lawrence block is terrific. and george pellicannos is a mystery author who has a new book and his wife exercises at the same y