think that applies as well and government service. >> former senator george mitchell, thank you so much. >> thank>> thank you, all. [applause] ..

>> if you think of yourself as a family and if you think of yourself as a team and she said when i got a raise at work, she's so proud of me. and we got a raise, our family can't erase.

but it felt as though she had redesigned providing to include what she did for what her husband was doing. >> illinois mother, maggie anderson and her family spent one year by an exclusively from black owned businesses future but about the experience in her book, "our black year" inside down recently with a guest host on both tvs "after words." >> host: maggie, this is quite a fascinating read. take me back to the beginning.

what were the origins? did you notice to become a book? >> guest: no, wait absolutely no idea. we didn't know what would come out of this fantastic journey. it was really what she read. it was that naïve, nerdy couple trying to descent into pass by their guilt. that's really how it started. and when we made the pledge to do it for a whole year, we thought maybe if we were to do this for a whole year, maybe we can inject this conversation and keep having amongst ourselves to the national dialogue and maybe there were a lot of maybes that we had no idea number one it would respond the way applies in the committee would respond the way to it and it was the result in the book that wonderful people like you are actually reading and revealing. so we didn't have any idea. we did it as an experiment.

we wanted really to be as academic grounded as possible. a lot of folks have been talking about doing it with a system error and a lot of rhetoric or if we wanted it to be an experiment, something lasting that maybe students could learn from here so we hope there would be a book, but we did not know it would be. the folks come together and put this thing alive for so long. now we have the chance to really make it something historic with the book is fantastic. >> reacher going to keep track as he went along? >> i did a little but. i got too busy to join. my husband said he got to write this stuff down. >> i know it's all in there. i know will never forget this. a little dings like that first time i actually got in front of the audience and spoke at our good friends church. i journaled about that. it was a gut wrenching

experience to actually present our little journey to a room of strangers and have no idea how they would respond and to speak. so i journaled about that. i journaled when we met some community letter to use and they thanked us for what we're doing. i journaled when i got my first letter from a 7-year-old kid who said thank you for what you're doing. so we has to write things like that down, but for the most part the day-to-day search and all the encounters at the fantastic business owners and some of the not so fantastic businesses. mms became the movement. so it became less about the day-to-day engaging as businesses and more about the message and the community. so it was really tough to balance the two. but then inviting the book, if not all of this out. and that is why the book is so special to us. because yes it's a movement now.

were all over the place. but the book chronicles how it was going through the day-to-day sacrifice of it all. >> so early on it would have been clear that would have for life consequences for you and your family. what were the things that you guys were most concerned about losing? >> guest: at the biggest concern and i hate to admit this, but it is the truth. as much as we really wanted to take a stand on our top quality on sun we did leave in some the stereotypes about poor service, poor quality, high prices, not clean, all that kind of stuff that a lot of middle-class black folks hold about small local businesses. that was their concern. every really going to live like this and expect inferior services and bad prices to take a stand. so that was our biggest concern.

we prepared ourselves for that. but the other was we really did believe that we could find everything. we were just like well, we'll spend a lot less money and no part. our coins, little suburb and more money on the west economically deprived black community right down the street. there is beauty plenty of black owned dry cleaners. we seem to be black-owned dry cleaners. not as big, probably not the same selection. they have to drive a little further. independents, not vague brands. we assume that was fair, but we didn't live up to her duty. we had no idea that if we were to go to the website we would not find those businesses owned by the people who live today like you do if you were to look for an asian business or chinese owned business in chinatown or

grieco and when you go to greektown. we assume the same phenomenon would exist in the black community you would find owned businesses. so we were shot. the first, second or day not that there is a way to pass or fail, but we thought we would fail because there's no way we be able to survive because there's so few black services that represent the daily needs of the family. food, drug store, all that stuff. none of that in the black community. we have children. so had we known the stark realities, how many industries the markets focus on sea or representation, i don't know that we'd ever engage in this journey. willie thought the toughest spot would be settling for not so great service or not so great selection. we do know we wouldn't be able

to find certain businesses or products at all. >> host: bow. but let me ask about the statistics which you quote in the book early on. in the asian-american community a dollar circulates for 28 days. in the jewish community 1 dollar circulates 19 days. in the black community of dollars, and ours. tell me how you think this i believe it is in a report what are the consequences in terms of creation. >> i hear those numbers and people are appalled when they hear the numbers. but we have to think about what that actually means. that means hard-earned wealth in the black communities, someone comes home with their pay. it immediately goes to a majority-owned bank lets say. or if the family can afford a bank account, a majority-owned check cashier. or let's say it comes home at that cash that day, and they need food. the first thing they will do is go to the greek or italian owned

grocery mart in his community. and that money, a big chunk of his check is going to go to the greek family. the greek family at the end of the night puts the doors down and tries to suburb or greek enclave spends that money in their community. it goes to that tax base and making sure those streets are clean when where the guy who earn that money means his streets clean two. those kids need better schools. so in the asian community or in a greek owned community or native american community, that person, their hard-earned wealth go to an occasional bank or chinese owned bank. the chinese bank invests in the chinese businesses in that community. that guy when he gets his money comes home, he goes to the chinese on grocery store. the chinese grocery store invests in chinese business

people who put their products on the shelves. every everyone in that store is chinese. that store is thriving. that is where the money they make in the stores contributing to the local tax base and keeping property values up in community programs in schools funded. we don't have the benefit of all those basic things in the black community. on the other piece the numbers don't represent is the chinese kid gets to go to the chinese grocery store and see the chinese owner and think, i can be a businessperson and the black community, the black kids can go their whole young lives and never see a business owner that looks like them. they go outside, everyone is black. they go into the store, all the customers are black. but when they go to apply for a job or look at the owner, they see someone who doesn't look like them. that message says to our kids, you can shop here, you can live here, but you are not entitled to be an owner, not even in your

own community. so that's six hours is everything. it explains their social crises, but we don't have jobs, explains why our kids are uninspired and choosing gangs over college and my school systems are underfunded and dropping out of schools and explains every thing and that's six hours. so once we learned about that, this is much less about our guilt and much more of a crusade. i think more we keep pushing those numbers up, the maria chances like this to talk about numbers in an intelligent way and set of just talking about the other numbers, how many black kids kill each other, populating jails. if we were to him that discussion with that dollar stays in the black committee for six hours, maybe they would be an american ha ha moments and we can say that is the reason the community suffers the way it does. so we need to do is support the business owners who invest in employee and that community. but we didn't feel it at number,

that's six hours is talked about enough. to those really important for us to get the stat of and not just the journey. >> so you see that is the direct link to poverty and impoverished by communities. >> yes, all of the social crises. not so much the statistics, just an everyday fact that people don't think about it that much is black employers are by far the greatest private employer. >> guest: added to black unemployment in some places are sometimes the highest in the ethnic group, if we had more black owned businesses that were able to employ, we can counter unemployment. if more black people were employed, we know the cyclical impact that will have in our community. we have more work in our

community, better options and more kids, more pride in the community if their jobs to to go to every day. so all of that is connected to the need to support businesses, not just the need to the six our number of people are talking about let's buy local. i push to buy a black because like businesses are employing black people. if we were in a place in america where everyone is going out and employing the way we should be, i wouldn't need to make this proactive push to support that businesses but lack unemployment is really high. i have to support like businesses if i want to counter. >> host: jude describe the experiment, which you alluded to the sense that junior has been had developed a dangerous sense of gratification, even

entitlement. can you talk about that place who are now as an activist and working on some of these issues and feelings. >> guest: you know, it is funny and i hope that we were without to give other folks in our echelon that have been able to benefit from some opportunities that our brothers and sisters have not been able to leverage. i hope that makes them feel this too because we are not the only people who feel this way. but it seems as if folks like us who have been able to go to great schools and get great jobs and make some money and own a home and give good things to our children feel like that's what were supposed to do. i called the dying, getting rich and and murder it was so that i could have a nice car and i can go and have martinis and talk

about black stuff. it's like okay, so not a gotten all these benefits, we have to reconcile that with our duty to the community. i think the reconciling is where we failed. it used to be that we are pushing for you, fighting for you to make it so you can then go back and teach, employee, lead, keep fighting. that is the part we fail to do. whether we have been doing that those opportunities, all of that wealth is we do our best to spend it on businesses or products that are not representing our community. this is what i say when i speak. the greatest economic achievement of my classes making sure that although an hennessee families are absolutely wealthy, prosperous and educated because

that is what we spend our money on. remixer polo and hennessy are doing great, but our communities are suffering. wouldn't it be great if those middle and upper classes were creating our own polo, i don't hennessy, would not be a better legacy for us than just saying, thank you. now were able to buy polo, hennessy has stated w. hotels and what have you? that is the conversation we are having. we basically knowledge we are being very hypocritical that the movement has stalled recently because we have not been owning up to our responsibility. so now the imac based at made that transition from corporate to cause, we make a lot less money. post over both the highest figures. we have a life. you've given all that has been

treated in. but the sense of power meant, since it cautiousness but i do believe things can change in america for people. you can't put a price tag on that. so we created the foundation and we contribute our own money and proceeds in books than we think if the foundation were funded, we could pick up on where the experiment last half, put more statistics out and create solutions come even more partnering with the corpus that are so they can do more business and all kinds of possibilities are coming up so i can do my talented responsibility and use the fancy gdm nph work from a community and raise money for business owners who could be the next help him in capital investment. some reconciling my duty to make community with all the blessings i have and we are also inspiring other talented people to do the same thing. they're not going to do what i

did, go into the hood and by black ledet, but they can look for black-owned products in the grocery store and walgreens and go to a black-owned hotel or black-owned bed-and-breakfast when they vacation. they can inspire organizations to host black hotels. this is a little thing in the experiment. i target middle and upper class folks like us. number two we have the money and number three if we coalesce and mobilize, we can change. >> host: what you talk about is not creating a new social program or something like that, but working within the qs to really change these neighborhoods. that's just a really interesting idea. guess cobre. and that's why we have those folks who actually created the landmark study raised on our experiment to explore that fact with the money that we are to

have come in the businesses we are at a house. what can we do to counter social crisis. they've proven that study we could potentially create close to a million i think the number is over 800,000 jobs in the black community created from black businesses that we are to have with the wealth we are to have a flirtatious ships in the first ending. we only put 2% of our money, middle-class folks, 75,000 households income or more. we'll may put 2% of our money back into the community by supporting businesses. if we can do that from 2% to 10%, not even tell you to buy all black. shopping that we do and what 50% incremental shift, we can create jobs for the chronically unemployed and put money into chronically underserved communities. so the point is yes, i get a lot of folks who say we need to create our own industries and

separate into all that stuff. i am saying let's go improved. luscious us the folks to support the businesses that we are to have, support our pharmacies. he should have 10 stores by now. support those dismisses on what those guys create jobs. that's all i ask folks to do. the little things within the systems we have an inspire corporate to do more business with us. more black-owned franchises, have more products on black companies on shelves and more black companies creating posts for the supply chains. there's a bunch of stuff within the system we are to have. no government programs, no handouts. only economic empowerment. >> i want to talk about farmers best in a minute. it's a pretty powerful example. but first i want to read some more statistics that you have in the book. less then 2 cents of every 1 dollar in african-american

spends close to a black-owned business. more than 11% of whites and nations on their own businesses compared to only 7.5% of latinos in 5.1% of blacks. white owned firms have average annual sales of $400,000. lack owned firms is 70,000. 74,000. you know, why do you think this data isn't disturbing to more people? to think folks don't know? did you know? >> guest: we need the black says have raised and black dresses are so proprietorships and people haggle about hominid businesses that we have. these are so proprietorships that last year. something is unemployed and they tried to do something or they do something that they love so they sell jewelry or maybe she'll do

your hair. were the only ones that can handle that market. social do that or we might open a home daycare or something like that. but those are things we can be readily, quickly because we love it, are in the community and will have friends and supporters, but these are not lasting institutions that will employ 200 or 300 people. i would have businesses, but they're short-lived and marsal proprietors who do not employ anybody. so we knew that, but what we did not know was how few were being supported by black people and that was the reason they are failing, lack of consumer demand. and this is from the black community and without side of the black community. folks tend to think that it's just the way it's supposed to be. that is really what is disturbing now that i've lived -- this is my life now, that we are at this point where

i'm starting to believe that america, folks inside the black community think that these alarming statistics are affliction of our propensity, not a byproduct of our history here of some of this is just residue of some very racist systems in this country and how they have manifested in our economy. a lot of this has to do with our history here and how disaffected is culturing how culturing how we see ourselves and that is why we are not inclined to invest in communities and businesses. so it has nothing to do with who we are and what our talents are. it has to do is send stuff good. i think the experiment is reminded of the third time in your member the book, we had 6400 grocery stores. we have those grocery stores. the department stores, hotel chains, cosmetics companies.

we had all of that. postcode poster for racial integration. i thought that was an interesting point you raised in the book. and you hear that when you're in some circles. not all the consequences of racial integration were positive. >> guest: and that is not something i would have dared even conceived of or thought about before this experiment, but it's an after-the-fact. but what i don't like people to focus on is we had all this great businesses because they forced us out of we had to. we also had great businesses because we support each other, loved each other. we had unity and pride and when we had those businesses, we didn't have the social crises. that is what i want people to focus on. we can counter all the problems we have in the community. at the point about is yes.

i don't think this is intentional. i would not go that far. we have fantastic businesses that we showed in the book are at the cusp. if we had kept supporting them a little bit in the same trend as before, those businesses could have been the next. could've been the next hotel chain, the next ace hardware. they're in the same contradict tree is businesses we love and support now. but that everything fell off with immigration. and now it was an intentional a lot of consumer were denied the right to be at the counter. but somehow we were demonstrating our solidarity for sticking it to someone by saying okay, now i'll shop with you. but in so doing they abandoned the business owners who depend on not on me before. so we went out and drove to support businesses that had one to support them before.

but we did that, we left our guys out. those businesses grew from consumer dollars and after that the businesses started to recognize the value of the black dollar. so the next way that crippled or on cioppino spirit and siphon so much wealth from our community was our generation, the point was get a good job at a big white company. that's it. that is what i was trained to do. that would make your parents go to sleep better. get a great white job at a big white company. but other groups, the goal is to be an entrepreneur. we lost that when those corporations started to see the value of the consumer dollar they started to recruit our best talent. so are fantastic with the entrepreneurs ended up working for the great corporations that

were marketing to the african-american consumers. so it's kind of a perfect storm. consumers are going that way because they've been denied the opportunity for so long, not knowing they were going to the community and you're going to those corporations so those guys would've been owning the hardware stores and grocery stores in the community. all of that started to happen and then the last wave his 70s, 80s, early 90s through the immigrant population started to notice this phenomenon. here's this community that love to spend outside of their communities. this is their badge of honor to be able to buy brands and support companies that are not in their community. so they set up shop in our community and we supported them. another local businesses are gone. our top talent is in corporate america and not wanting to be ashbourne uriel and the money keeps leaving our community.

all of that works to cripple us. we can change all of those things. would be hard, slow process. but the point is that started with integration. i think within an integrated society we can bring enough of our money back, enough of our businesses that to fix what is going on in our community. >> host: now, not of your experience with black black owned businesses were positives. talk just for a couple minutes. we'll take a break in a few minutes. i'm curious about your first visit to fresh meats. i know there are other businesses like that that weren't the best businesses and places you necessarily wanted to shop at. what made you go through at that shopping trip? >> guest: well, we wended into it real optimistic hoping that the jays press me to be a nostalgic experience do we see

on tv, the corner store owned by the mom-and-pop than it was clean and neat, and there they be employing thousands of doctors and is a great pillar in the community. not necessarily the type that folks had talked about. instead we got the stereotype. it was dirty. in my opinion probably a friend for an illegal activity. the shells were dusty, added the. the owner thayer was just heartbreaking. a young woman with kids. she had her kids at the store. the kids were uncapped. it was cold. they barely had enough clothes on. i felt like i wasn't even in america anymore. first of all there's no way a business that exists like this in a part. it is unheard of. she would be cake dough.

but it's okay to have a business like this because it's on the west side? the second thing is all of that was overwhelmed by my experience with this woman. she's a mother and she has these kids and i'm sure they look like that because she is poor. and i know this business is not going to last six months. she has no hope. these kids have no hope. so who am i to yell at her about how business is so bad because all of this historical stuff, if anything she's a bit done. she's trying, but the consumers are supporting her. her community is dead and dying. there's nothing beautiful around her. so what is she reflect an? reflects what sees outside. but art is beautiful and perking of great employees. that is how oak park is. that is the spirit of the part. the website is to press.

the businesses are depressed and the people that own them are depressed and the businesses striving are not owned by west fighters. so they make their money and don't have to deal with a sad reality. this woman was exactly what he needed the empowerment experiment because we need to support her. we need to make sure there is more demand for but businesses so they can be competitive in shine. but as long as we don't support our businesses will bj's fresh meats and we are much better than that. >> host: okay, we are going to go to quick break. thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> on the go? "after words" is available via podcast and xml. click podcast on the left side of the page. select the podcast and listen to "after words" will you travel. >> host: so maggie, kraft is also a huge set or in the

experiment and the entire story. the robinson and collar and writer calls this this integration. does your experiment -- does your experience in a place like jay's show the idea where please like one black community no longer exist on the did you have any thoughts about this as you went through in terms of the fracture quite >> guest: we were a huge fan and were so happy that he's been able to push this issue into the dialogue. it is something that we don't talk about. i remember a lot of times before the experiment to do something about all these feelings something about a dinner or conference and there's one or two black couples and something

that happens all the time. some kind of business conference happens a lot. were sitting there having a great time talking about the news of the day, talking about kids, suburban life and we sit there and we say it every time. we have more in common with these people than we do with their friends, brothers and sisters on the west side, with the people he grew up with in liberty city, the people you grew up with in detroit. you know, what are we going to talk about quakes because to do that and just how wrong that is. we really should be, if any team, closer to the folks who share history here, culture here. and actually are part of our struggle. the whole thing that makes the black community specialist that

we have stuck together and we always bought for one another because they were exploited or denigrated as a class. where are we if we lose that? and the other part of the discussion we try to intellectualize is if we don't bring that back, then we are just looking other folks take tape to be we are stereotypes, a culture to make money off of, you know, the hip-hop culture or whatever defined as to be. before we were represented by our unity, our proud and african heritage. all of that is gone once he got to this place. once you graduate from harvardcome e*trade and all that stuff. you are now a harvard alum and you do harvard stuff. you don't do the stuff that brought us together. so we would talk about it all the time. but of course you never had to feel it has the ring of her in

those ruins. and i remember it even when i took the time to write out an abstract about the empowerment experiment, not just are doing it, what we thought could result, i broke the scandal points of what could make the experiment special. one was connecting the struggle would make it special. that was one of those things is that folks like us we don't go to the marches. we don't go to push on saturday. after i was laid off from a big corporate gigabit donalds and was given a severance package, i started volunteering at push. that's where the community was. that is where it was beautiful. people come together and talk about issues, network. there are very few people like me in that role. it's mostly working-class folks.

none of the harvard university grads coming university of chicago grads. so my folks don't go to the saturday community meetings. they don't go to the rallies at the town hall meetings when so-and-so bill is up to create zoning laws. all of that stuff, that community stuff we don't do that. so our hope is maybe we can't make them do that. we can't make the march anymore. but if we can get them to do little things to speak in support of business is, i always want to do more. maybe this is their escape, maybe this is the way to make them feel connected to the community again. because i don't think we're alone in feeling bad about that. we have separated and hurt those folks in the website, but what is really awful about it is when i made that connection and we still do it now. we still go to the website. we know businesses on the westside and they know us.

the point was when we were there and we felt that disconnect, that is what inspired us to do more. because we remembered some of these are good people. these are hard-working people, people who came from the same places we came from. we are no different. we are not different. i may have more in common with the university of chicago grads, but we are not different. we are the same. and if anything, my job the way she should be defending me i should be defending her. and they were doing that. they honored me. for the crown jewel. look, here's one of the girls who made it out. she's successful and they're proud of me. i need to reciprocate that pride they been proud of her and supporting her and saying here is a strong black mother trying to do something for her family. she's in the community. but they're not doing that part.

they're giving to us, but they're not giving back to don. i think it's about time somebody calls out folks on that. people think of a little tough on that, but everyone knows what i'm saying is true and what eugene is bringing out his true. we hope in the experiment that we give you way to do something about it. just look at some businesses and spend a little time on the westside and bring some of these folks together so we can show the world how we used to be. >> host: speaking of this, let's talk about what really became one of your favorite black owned businesses, a business you relied upon to route this year and it didn't make it. it didn't make it through the year. and their other businesses businesses in the epilogue to a quality black owned businesses that did not survive. what impact did that have on you and on the social experiment that you and your family were engaged in?

>> guest: in many ways and i think of careened beyond, perfect guy, smart, driven, located his business in the community, did not live in the community. he actually lived in the white suburb, too. so he could have opened up shop in the white suburb and probably have done well. but he chose to be in the community because he wanted to be a role model for those kids. and that he failed makes us think that we filled. but at the same time that are keeping this discussion alive is really my hoping and i say this every time they speak. i do this hoping we can bury careened back. he was everything that we can be that everything we are not. he is perfect. we are imperfect. he had everything we needed and not community. perfect store, great value, perfect selection.

in my opinion, just as good as any whole foods. but because he was black did not support him. a mile away, a disgusting place come your quintessential food and liquor a mile away, always packed with high people. here we have this place, everything was shined in this place. asparagus from new zealand. he brought in all kinds of fresh produce. everyone was impeccably dressed, always open on time, great quality fish and a coffee shop in there and everything. down the street this place the meat stained, the produce was moldy, prices out the roof, greek owned, dirty, even the owners treated customers of disrespect but for some reason we flooded to this place because that's who we are, that's our

job. but we let careened guy. we thought for a careened in the book. we did everything we could to get that story chance, my family did, but the community did not respond. ambitious to perfect case in point of why we failed. it's not because we don't have great business owners. it's because our consumers have lost faith and we are not trying to best to support them. if we support a careened just a little bit he be opening a store right now. when i walk into that store that day i saw an opening. this is set, thinking that most folks were like me and they see a quality place owned by fantastic entrepreneur and would want to him. i was sorely disappointed and he represents the whole problem we have now. i know korean is not alone.

i bet there are thousands of great entrepreneurs who are doing it right, investing the community and hired in the community and we are not doing our part by supporting him. so i keep this alive hoping that even if we don't bring careened that at the end of this journey we do support this and maybe we can bring some of the 6400 grocery stores back by mobilizing in finding and supporting great business is we have. >> host: you mention this in the book and it resonated with me only because i grew up hearing this idea that the white namespace is colder, which is just a real statement within the black community. i wonder if they listen to you talk about why this grocery store that was a beautiful store in an area that did not have fresh food readily available failed and if you think this

idea that the white man space is colder played a role in why that store failed or if there are other fact hers. >> guest: there could have been other fact is, but people knew that it wasn't a matter of marking wares. everybody knew about the story. we promoted mainstream media and local black media. so i rented store existed. it is the kind of thing would well-meaning folks will say in it to go by that story. you have to eat. why is that when you get in your car to go get groceries you try five miles away from your community? why is it you do that instead i've what is stopping you from going to see careened indefinitely at the white man's ice is colder like before this experiment, first of all we drive over and around. we don't shop in those

communities, folks like us. if any and we may go there because someone is having a barbecue or their son meeting would have to go to and someone decided to have it there. but if we don't have to, we don't go into those communities because we don't live there anymore. so that's number one. we don't even take a chance. but number two, am i going to get in there and there's going to be shimmied quite at the counter popping down and been on her cell phone. she's terrified. and i'm going to be standing there waiting for her. am i going to go in there and not even be able to find the fresh meat? these are the things that block us from even taking a chance on that story. so i totally believe it is the white man space is colder, which basically means that if you have a white business in a black business and i am black, i am going to go support the weight

is this because i'm sure because it is white but it's going to be right and have everything they need. waitstaff is better than black stuff. we cannot hold a candle to avoid this mess. it's totally untrue. perspired enough to know that. but that thinking does live and breathe in the black community and its stalls us in our tracks from actually going to the black business. even when we do, we go in with the thinking that it's a burden. they're going to have a bad experience. okay, i'll go, maggie. i'll go support. you never have these conversations when you go to a majority of business. you go to a black business because inside we think the black as this is our inferior. black entrepreneurs are inferior. one of the main goals of the experience was to defy negative stereotypes about black businesses, to show everyone

that careened, jocelyn, tracy, show america, not black people, the sentra nurse. and if i have to guilt you into supporting them to conquer the white man space is colder and i think we are getting their comedy is spearmint can do that. but i've heard of the term. and it's so funny and now that i say it, everyone knows that, but it's not something we've talked about before. it's real. it's really the community. outside you one quick thing. i brought cbs camino major media cover. they spent three days of mr. in experiment and i took them to the west side. and when they saw that. they went door-to-door and none of the businesses are black-owned. when i saw this grocery store that had malcolm x, martin luther king, the black near

chicago and they saw as a greek family that owned the story, there liquidy put up with this? this is so insulting that everyone here is lack and poor in all these businesses are owned by people that won't even hire you. what you put up with this? it's become so bad that we've just accepted that our role is to be the consumer to support white businesses. we are second class codebreakers psyche for us to think we are going to go into a business owned by a black person. and if we did not commit something is going on. we are forced to a something like that, but there is no way that a black person should own a quality business. so it is white man ice is colder

and it's gotten so bad that we've actually accepted this role in supporting white businesses. we cannot even conceive of that reality been changed around and irony to how stretch but dry cleaners, that parker stories, like mechanics. we can't conceive of the possibility. >> why appears that you enter it at thinking? i'll also ask you, not just for african-americans, but for white americans, hispanic americans, but also pushing the ata you talk about in terms of supporting black-owned businesses and supporting the black community? >> well, we are using the term conscious consumer is the because we think if we focus on what is going on in the community that the statistics we talked about, how the wealth that are $1 trillion now and buying power, so little that goes back into the black community and how it is strictly correlated there, we can give

americans a straight to what you bring some grocery stores back in some of the room models back into the community. so we focus on the correlation between supporting but as this is a black child, role models in the community, funding holds, converting tax burdens into taxpayers and ideals because average and get behind. when i talk about americares. we are not say because india, we at mexico or canada. we say because our economy is suffering. we need jobs in their community. we are pictured is somewhat to restore the historical american industry, american manufacturing. we want to bring that back. that is part of our soul and our spirit. that's how we do that tonight is the same reason i people to

support that businesses. if you want to see a better economy and this economically depressed areas can be won for just for the chronically unemployed, if you want kids to have hope regardless of your background, we need to be as a best supporting but businesses. the way i get them to see the possibilities there is number one to keep highlighting our top-quality black businesses that we are to have a dare and do more within corporate america. corporate america has a lot of the sprints and a major retailer completely live off the black consumer dollar. during the experiment i think it is changed now. i have to update my research. but in 2009 and 2010 i love kentucky fried chicken. all americans love kentucky fried chicken. they make a lot of money off black consumers. if i had 57 franchises in the chicagoland area with one report of a black people and not one

franchises back, we need to do something about that. we had the careens, the nikes, fantastic black folks that can almost franchises. kfc needs to do more about that. if we make kfc see that when you have a black franchise in the community, you were great job and you may be earning more loyalty and you make a real investment in that community instead of just saying you're investing in the community by having great commercials with my families. make a real investment and not black franchises, have more throughout the system. but it's a challenge we make to kfc now. do we also say, look, with cooked to order, in the media there's a lot of folks that are inspired by what my family did. there's a lot of people be more conscious about how their shopping. it might be in your business

interests, even if you don't care so much about this case. it might be in your business interests to show conscious consumers like me this sweet spot suburban mom, were the ones you want. in a pew near and trista wore black franchises so i will support you more. in 2009 and 2010 in chicago, i didn't go to kfc because they didn't honor my communities by reciprocating loyalty is to business by having black franchises they are. i am not alone in all of this so we are hoping the corporate sector will soon have to bear responsibility and consumers of all stripes, if they care about what is going on in this depressed communities that they see a lack of fanfare, a product on the shelf, go out of your way to support them. keep talking about how we can create jobs on around us and your kids. to not be a great stories that is been on the government and

created jobs for folks who are chronically unemployed. >> let's talk about another angle, something and it difficult for you throughout the project. once your website or not, want some of these articles got been in the mainstream press, but this is a racist and jeter did, yet how did you personally do with? and how do you speak to folks that don't understand this idea i have wanted to support black businesses and not white on business this? >> guest: right, it was a very difficult thing for us. when we started this experiment and we try to gauge her predict how the community would respond, the worst thing we anticipated with apathy from the black community. this issue is not new. many folks to find blacks. without if anything black folks would say that's a good thing you're trying to do.

good luck. i was the worst thing. we thought folks outside the community, if anything would see this as your classic giving back story, that would be media darlings because here is a family, you always hear the story of the folks getting out of the hood, but here's a story of bad making away back to the trip we did not think they would see another way and that we are some kind of militant groups out there trying to take down wal-mart or something. that was not appointed all. we never said anything negative about white business is come away people, community, anything like that. we are just say this is self-help economics. and of course to give the story and get into the media, we know that a lot of the media in the beginning were going to focus on

the family who says they will support black businesses as it appears in the flu in family who decides they want to spend their money in this economically and power their depressed community. so of course i was going to elicit a negative response. for shiny they spent time at their family and letting the media took the time to see what this is about them because they fashioned this as an academic experiment. i'm not living living like that anymore. but to get the data that we wanted to take the stand that we wanted to take and to show out these industries herbaceous no black representation, we had to do it that way. so number one, we tell the naysayers this was an experiment. we had to do something bilge rat , elongated so that we can show out the economic disparities and we can show the racial divisions in this economy. a lot of folks to one half this

conversation. maybe one of the people who think the status quo is okay. so here is one created intelligent way for me to counter that. that is the first answer. the second is what i say to you before about buying american. for some issues, some communities, especially the issue about our high unemployment, we have to be proactive. and folks who care about the environment by agreeing. it is not saying that they hate other companies are telling them not to support other companies, but they used their dollars to support those companies who help the environment, not hurt it. so i'm asking folks to spend their dollars on businesses that invest in the community, black or not. i would say go out out there is for walgreens. we get our pizza, ice cream. my husbands shaving cream, toothpaste for walgreens. i loved walgreens for giving us black entrepreneurs who put the products on the cells a chance.

so i make sure i reword walgreens and encourage them to do even more of that by supporting walgreens. walgreens is not black-owned, but by supporting businesses who have made distribution centers, hiring 10, fifth in 1000 people, i am helping my community. same thing with officemax. i am not just pushing so go out there and support black businesses do not wait. i say go support businesses that are making direct investments into the poorest communities in america. we have been here 400 years. i would hope most americans are waiting for that opportunity to go to mass retailers that were started -- someone from the family that helped build this kind trade. i would be a great american story just like the president. wouldn't it be wonderful to have those achievements and our economy? i go to officemax. i tell people by paper.

the something you could do. white americans, hispanic americans. employees in birmingham, alabama. irving hancock alabama's mostly black. 60% there are unemployed. a lot of are business owners the paper. monsters to buy paper for their kids in school. by bellicose paper and do something good for america by helping birmingham, alabama. that's what i say to those folks who call us racists. >> well, with a couple moves left. i'm interested in what is next for you and the empowerment experiment, sort of where things go from here. >> well, we in the beginning wanted to inspire a movement, not that i would ever insult our great leader, rosa parks, by comparing mine to hers, but we were trying to pay tribute to her legacy. we did want this to be a story where one family took a stand

and then the community responded. so we hoped would come from the experiment is that we can actually create a campaign, as he well. and we've been talking to a lot of folks. i do this all day and every day. we have celebrities who are willing to be spokespeople for this and we have every day folks make an everyday commitment. we spent $90,000 in our community that we would not pass. but what folks like you to say you know it, and inspired by what she did not doubt my community. i want to make sure i spend $10,000 but those businesses, black or not that invest in my community and get this gives more role models. ..

>> after his release in 2010, he wrote "capitol punishment." the hard truth about corruption from jack abramoff, america's most notorious lobbyist.

>> the title of your book is "capitol punishment." the hard truth about why washington corruption from america's most notorious lobbyist. a framed title for a frank book. in this book, detail not only reflect positively on yourself, you talk about lobbying abuses and what led to your imprisonment. what led you to write this book? >> two things. first, i thought it was important that i present to the country and to the readers what really happens in washington. i had gone through quite a journey from the time i was a lobbyist until the time i landed in prison. in terms of rethinking the world i was in and the role i had in it. i decided while i was in prison that i should take a different approach to this world, maybe try to do something about it, and part of that would be to talk about it and talk about the

kind of things that those people suspect that they don't really get to know because they don't get to go behind the doors into the rooms that i was in and hear the conversations i heard as a lobbyist. by doing that, i wanted to enable america to have a true assessment to what the government is, at least in part. the second reason i did it is when my case became public and there were hearings and news articles, in fact, there were so many news articles that i started collecting them into a folder on my computer thinking that this could not last long -- i might as well save all the articles. it became almost a ritual every morning that i would go and get all the articles from the internet and put them in a folder, and by the time i went to prison, there were over 10,000 articles about me. yet because i did not speak and

did not get a window into my life, i became an evil cartoon. it didn't help myself because i wore a hat coming out of my hearing a court. i have become kind of a villain. i wanted to show people that i am not an evil person. i'm a regular person. i did things that were wrong, and i don't have florence or detail am a bi grew up like most everybody else. i have kids and a wife and family. i felt it was important to tell from my perspective what happened. >> you described working for the head of the college with republicans. congress said to you, well, i can deliver if you arrange for me to have a piece in my district. you describe dealing very contented by that.

what reader initial reactions when he started off in washington? >> i started out with the college republicans. we were activists and wacky and wild and instigated trouble on the campuses -- organize republicans. when reagan had his lobby, that is when i experienced a moment with a congressman. he said you enable us to have the space in my district and i will organize a debate. i was shocked by that. you hear about it and see it on tv, see it in movies. to see it in person -- it was beyond me. i was very young. i didn't really think a lot about that until i return to

washington 10 years later as a lobbyist. >> you describe your life in a candid terms. it described that one of the ways you gain influence as you extended job offers, and even before they left the congressional offices -- but have you in mind and felt that you had control of that office. describe how that works? >> at first, when i started building my body lobby practice, i started to look for people to hire. and i joined the lobby -- i was the first person not work on capitol hill. during one of the meetings, one of the fellows suggested that i go back to capitol hill and get a job. that was an interesting point at that time in my life. everybody else had worked on capitol hill. when the time came to higher lobbyists, i went to capitol hill with my friends. first couple of hires i had came to me.

they join right away. as i started to hire more and more employees, and i started to look at some of the players on capitol hill and think, i really hope i can get him or her to join my practice, what i mentioned is that i noticed at that moment that once they agree, they would start to have in mind where they were going to go in a year or two, which is only natural. people start thinking about their next job. i noticed that had an amazing power on them and their office. in essence, they became our agents. he did things that benefited us and our clients that we couldn't engulf you. >> in your book you describe this as one of the biggest problems in washington? >> right. it is one of the problems in terms of corruption -- and that's not to say that everybody who is hired -- not deny same-sex everybody.

but the facts that people can go through the revolving door for public service into becoming much more wealthy -- joining lobbying firms or do whatever they do -- it is a problem. i think it is a source of corruption. and something which i started to use. i knew as a while -- after a while i was strategically planning ahead for the business, and i would try to hire people who i thought would be a big help to us as well. it is a source of corruption. it is not something people focus on. people don't generally know about this outside washington. it is a very big source of control. >> you also describe how you charged clients, including indian tribes, up to $150,000 a month, even though other lobbyists were charging about one 10th of that. describe how you came to

represents only indian tribes and how these payments came to be? >> i represented -- our representation is very different than most lobby firms. most lobby firms ask clients for 10 or $15,000 a month. they do some things for them, and they can't engage at those prices. who hired me where in life-threatening winds are there were about to get out of this mess where they were folks who originally hired -- the mississippi indians -- that was about congress passing an unrelated business tax that would've taken the gross revenue of these tribes. in 1995, i was tired and brought in to do that. initially, i was a law firm.

law firms charge based on the number of hours that are spent on the case. they add up those hours and multiply them by the hourly rate that these people use, and that is how they come up with a monthly bill. well, the tribe fight got very intense. we won the first go around. then there were more rounds and more fights and hearings and this and that it the bill is getting up there very high. i noticed that the bill is averaging out at about $150,000 a month. the other clients had similar situations. ultimately, i got to understand that when we went to war, unlike the small lobby firms do where they do research and a few meetings, we would literally run legislative fights to congress with a full on effort. the time that we've been -- the time that people work for me -- about 40 people working for me at that point -- the time that they would put in multiply the

buy will be charged rounded up to be -- on average -- around that number. subsequent clients when they came to me with their problems, i explain what we would do. i explain the activities we would be involved in. i told them this would be the place, and they were threatened to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year. i think that they felt that a couple million dollars a year in terms of the lawsuit were worth it. and the usually one. >> and you have had the restitution of? >> i have, indeed. the matter of restitution as part of the package. when i was done lobbying and my crew was over, i added up the fees that we had collected and the benefits that we had provided. the money that we had saved and the taxes we stopped them being put on the land that help the tribes get into control --

tribal reservation land. i tried to play some conservative values on them. there were several million dollars in fees. we figured we delivered about $6 billion of value. that, to me, was the measure of the representation of my clients. the reason my clients continued to hire me -- i didn't have contracts like most lobby firms do. most had a contract saying that you have to hire us for a year or two years, and no matter what you cannot break that contract. my deal was if you don't like me, fire me by that afternoon. in fact, i had one client, which was a foreign country who wanted us to represent them. they wanted to give support to the u.s. to create enablement. we were lobbying to get the u.s. to set up that enabled -- naval

base. at that point, once we started representing, they start arresting members of the staff. they were arresting them and holding them without charges. the state department was very upset about this. i went to them and said you have to charge them and let them go. in their country they did that, and on our country we did not do that. i didn't want to represent them anymore, so i had to give back their money. that was my attitude to my clients. if i did not deliver value for them, i did not want to have them highly. >> describe, -- campaign money is a problem -- it is not the only problem or even the main problem. what is the main problem of? >> the main problem -- there are

four main problems that identify in terms of solutions in the book to some of the corruption. the overall problem is the federal government today. there are 30,000 lobbyist running around. there doesn't need to be 30,000 lobbyist. that is the reason that this industry is growing continuously. there's there is never a bad year in the lobby industry. there is never a bad year around this town. what i feel is that you're not going to be able to reduce the size of government. money that gets involved, the campaign contributions, and also the gratuity and trips and tickets to ball games -- everything else. whatever gets them through the loop holes that are left in the law -- any of these things ultimately come down to being bribes. i know it is not polite to say that. i certainly did not think so when i was in there.

if you're giving a public servant something of value and you want that public servant to do something for you, i don't know you how you their presidents anything else. number two, revolving door between public service and cashing in. whatever the euphemism of the day is -- it is still cashing in. they are people who show up in this town worth $20,000 and leave less than that. the other two that i think that can go after the corruption -- i used to pretend or convince myself because you want to have people to have the right to vote for whoever they want. there is value for having people

there for a long time. the truth is the lobbyist -- if you have a commerce and he made a relationship with -- you don't want to have to start all over. i think it is important in terms of getting new blood in this town. finally, the other thing i talked about in the book is trying to get these guys to apply every law they make themselves. recently, we have seen insider trading scandals. but we know that there are other laws that are also not being applied. you should be applied. it is not right. how do you send a guy like [inaudible] to prison for it insider trading? if he were a member of congress, he would not have to go anywhere. it is not fair or right. more laws need to be applied in this town. >> when you think about the campaign contributions -- and

you use the term bribery. you describe at one point in particular senator you were told would support you if you received a 5000-dollar check for campaign. you describe that neither of us considered this as a bride. are you saying that contributions are bribes, and is this common on capitol hill? >> it is very common. it is very common all over town, all over washington. i don't think the brightest thing to you care about your government or that you want to give money to -- and any amount -- to someone running for the presidency. you are doing it for the betterment of the country -- for macro issues. if you're doing it because you want to get an earmark or because you want to get a tax break or to get a grant or a contract -- is like that, i don't think see how that is not a bride.

>> described the restaurant he started -- a fund-raising area for groups or members of staff of congress -- you were showered with gifts and meals and tickets to sporting events. i think it's that he spent 11 million on sporting events tickets -- under the lobbying and ethics reform passed after you were convicted, all of that would not be illegal. do you believe the lobbying ethics were put into place after he left washington have improved the system? >> i think it has been marginally improved. but i don't think it has been solved. i can't take a member to lunch and buy them a hamburger for $25 or whatever the prices in this town. but if i took them to a fund-raising lunch and pull out a 5000-dollar check and said we

are having a fundraiser, here's the check -- i can buy them a hamburger and then still have the same conversation. that is the way around it -- that is loophole. there are many loopholes still. they take away certain things, but ultimately there has to be a shedding of the door. no things of value -- people still trying to get benefits for themselves or their companies or communities or whatever they are doing -- no financial gifts to a public servant whatsoever. not a dollar or a pickle or whatever. >> on capitol hill were quoted as saying to you were being prosecuted for activities that were commonplace in the lobby world do believe that is true? >> unfortunately, i believe that 90% of it was legal. 10% -- i went over the line

maybe 10% or less of the time. most of what i did was legal. most of what everybody else was doing here was legal. i do not accuse others of breaking the law. i guess i am accusing the entire system of being over the line. not the legal line, but the appropriate line. in that respect, yes, people certainly are doing what i did good i didn't invent anything or creek idea to take people to meals or sporting events or any of that good i just over did it -- i had my own restaurant and plane -- i over did it. i cross the line. >> what about the lobbying industry today co. what is your opinion today? what works or doesn't work in the weight is conducted now in washington? >> it is important to note that there are many good things could there bubbly people who are not doing anything wrong in any way.

i don't have numbers and percentages, but my experience was that most of the lobbyist played on a much more quick scale than what i did. that doesn't mean that the kind of things i did or not owing on today. they are. there was a lobbyist who was invited and sent -- indicted and sent to prison after me. people don't learn when they see somebody like me go down. i compared to driving down the road and a car wreck in the body all over the place. as you look back, you are scared by it. the next mile, you have forgotten it already. enter back to speed. >> one of the things you talk about in the book is the charities that you gave money to -- a question arises given your

commitment to jewish morals. how did you end up at the center of the celebrated ethics controversy? >> when i was a lobbyist, actually didn't think i was doing anything wrong. i thought it was doing what everybody does. maybe i was aggressive, and that was my personality. i was hyper aggressive my whole life. but i did not see where i was. that was my own fault. i liken it to when you set up on a voyage on the ship. if you are one small degree off base, you're not going to notice that at the beginning. you might not even notice it in the middle. by the time you're done, you are at a place that you never dreamed he would end up. that is what happened with me. i lost sight of what i believed in what i knew. a lot of it had to do with the competition of my wanting to win. i had too much of a desire to never lose for my clients.

i love the competition. i played ralph -- our guys played rock that if you tack on my clients and you were from capitol hill, you would expect us to come after you in your election. we were a very thuggish group of lobbyists. i'm sorry to say. that kind of aggression and activity, unfortunately, was normal to me because i thought it was ejecting clients who i loved and supported all their issues. i made a lot of money for them and for me. my wife and i gave way 80% of the money that we made to charities and community causes. it's not like i was -- unfortunately, for my current situation -- it's not like i invested it wisely. while doing all that, i thought i was doing good things. i looked at other lobbyist on trent lobbyists and saw them

going down the rows. they got defeated, they didn't win and you don't care. your attitude is i will get another client. for us, our attitude was we are going to live or die with our clients. if our client loses, we don't come back alive. and that was literally for better or for worse in office. looking at all that, while in the middle of all that -- i thought i was a normal lobbyist. i thought it was moral good unfortunately, i have gone so far off the puppet that was my perception. >> you do say looking back at you should've been bothered by how often class members who asked for help were pressed for contributions. do you agree? >> i don't agree. first of all, i do not trust any government program. i had the privilege of living under the government offices for

43 months. i got up close and personal with a lot of government employees, and i'm not certain i like them too much -- although they treated me well in that place. i'm nervous about public financing for a number of reasons. first of all, the jeffersonian reason of not taking someone's money and spending it on an ideological thing that they don't believe in, which i think is ultimately though softly in there. second of all, we're at a time when we need to decrease expenditures instead of increase them. third of all, whenever you open up a program in the government were your spending money, guess who shows up? the lobbyist. that is human nature. i would much rather see a toolbar on the people in the system -- i don't view it that somebody who is out there who cares about the country and wants to give their money away to politics because that's what they like -- i don't view that as a problem.

if it is revealed and disclosed who they are. if they're not asking for anything and they're just giving money because they believe in people, i think that is good and what this country should have been. i am not in favor of people like me who were giving and raising money to get something. that is the problem. i don't think the campaign for public financing addresses that. for me, it creates a different problem and potential for corruptions that i don't want to see. >> many are angry at washington right now. look left and the right. you think they have a right to be? how should congress respond? >> they should wake up. they have a 9% approval rating. that should help them something. but you rarely hear them worry about that. they have insider trading laws, but they don't understand why they are unpopular. they don't understand why people look at them and what they're doing and the money they make and the power they have -- we

don't have a monarchy in this country, but we certainly have something close in terms of congress and, subsequently, the white house. >> lawmakers signed a cleanup -- an anti-tax pledge. >> nobody can deny -- i don't believe that republican's are raising taxes because of this pledge. people forget that not raising taxes is a primary motive of the republican party. what he has done is turn it into an actual pledge so that some of the breaks that to their constituents and voters, they can hold them accountable. what i propose is a similar thing of good government. let's come up with changes that are going to fix the system. let's demand of our legislators and those who are running for the seat that they signed this

pledge -- but they're going to go port and cosponsor and do everything they can to push through legislation then ask these kinds of changes and takes away their pledges in terms of congress and otherwise -- and hold them to it. if they don't do it -- check them out. >> you describe having met [inaudible] as a college republican. describe what the role that you two men played in your life and the role that they play now? >> grover and i met -- he was a student at harvard business school. i had just become the head of the college department in the organization. together we organized massachusetts for the reagan campaign in 1980. we worked very hard and had all sorts of adventures and wrote about it in the book -- some of which was very funny. at the end of it, we won

massachusetts. they were kind enough and generous enough -- we provided the difference. we registered several thousand absentee ballots it college applicants, whose votes at the end of the day made the difference -- three or 4000 votes victory in that state. grover and i went to that together after that. grover suggested to me to run for the national chair. he had involvement with karl rose and were friends with them. i didn't know anybody. i had just come out to california and its college. rover was my campaign manager and when i won in 1981, he was my executive director and stayed with me before he went off to do other things. he returned with me, and be reunited under president reagan's lobby where he was a dealbreaker. then he went on to americans for

tax reform which has been effective. grover and i haven't been in touch much. unfortunately, for him, he had tremendous scrutiny in all quarters. people seem to get mad at him at the taxpaying and blamed him for the budget super committee business. so he tries to keep his head down a little bit. we have not had much contact, but i consider him to be a friend and i haven't been in touch with him -- but that's okay. he has other battles to fight. >> what about ralph? >> ralph -- when i was elected in 1981 was a very young man. he stayed on the couch, he couldn't pay to afford more. grover was making $1000 a month, and i was making the same as well. ralph got $100 a month. he lived on my couch.

he became executive director, eventually had a religious at me and went off to then work for pat robertson, ultimately the christian coalition. he built the organization that was an incredible operation. ralph played role in our efforts to stopstop casinos in the south. his role caused some trouble later as he did in necessarily describe things for cicely correctly. i haven't been in touch with him for a while. >> thank you, we're going to go to a break now and we will be back shortly.

>> at the very beginning of this book, you describe how your trek to a senate hearing felt like a death march. i want you to talk a little bit about the series of events that began in 2003 after articles in the "washington post" again to it here, questioning the amount of money that the tribes were paying you, questioning your involvement in a casino could line business. circumstances.part of this is all part of a scheme of events that you describe is the archetypal washington crisis and unfolding of a scandal where you are under this microscope it you were fired by your firm, you were investigated by federal oscars, you were carried by the news media. what was that like for you? >> it was horrible. as i mentioned, i thought this

would blow over after a couple of weeks. i didn't think there was anything to a pit the article in the "washington post" that came out in 2004 -- the article said i charge my clients a lot of money. articles in other papers said the same things. i did charge a lot of money. this reporter came to see me at the "washington post" -- i gave her an interview. i tried to explain to her what we did for our clients. there was a much interest in hearing that. when the article first came out, frankly, i e-mailed back and forward with the firm. asking if we should post the article on her website. it talked about how it claimed that we were recognized for clients. but i thought it would be over soon. then senator mccain got into action and subpoenaed my e-mails

and so did happen a serious investigation. his investigation involves some of my rivals. he actually wrote a letter lauding my work during the investigation. it seemed to me, at first, that it would go away. when it clearly was not going to go away, i thought why am i getting picked on her? what is this all about? i am just doing what everyone does? why am i such a problem? shortly thereafter, obviously, we have was fired by my firm. people started to treaty with disdain, and there were more articles on the front page of the post. it was extremely difficult for my family -- seemed to get their everyday, and there i am on the

front page of it read eventually, i started to look into -- i hired an attorney. a brilliant attorney who started going with me through my e-mails. i rode over 60,000 e-mails during the time i was a lobbyist. i had diarrhea of the fingers. senator mccain's committee were saying that some of them were boneheaded, salacious, -- we filed the complaint to the senate ethics committee because that violated the ethics. if you're heading an investigation, you're not supposed to leak it to the press. they didn't attention to that one. eventually, it became clear to me that i had crossed the line. lines that i didn't set out to cross were think i crossed, when i was there. i stopped caring about the

lines. i just wanted to vent. i do not understand what this was all about. then i started figuring out what it was all about and i knew i did things wrong. it shocked me, to be honest with you. i didn't contemplate that i would ever have a moment like that. well i was going through this personal journey and figuring out what i had done and where i was, there was a public -- everything in my life was taken negatively. every aspect of my life. even the charity described in contorted terms. i saw different papers like the la times where i had grown up out there in beverly hills, they had their fun with me, and they went back and took my eighth grade election -- when i ran for president of the class in the eighth grade. they be characterized that as

this was the beginning of my salacious campaign activities. they had another article about when i played the ball as a linebacker. paper tray that as proof that i was a villain. i guess when you play football you nuts was to hit people. anyway, this was going on, and i was thinking -- i just kept falling and falling. when does it stop? it never stopped. it kept going and going. it stopped when i landed in prison. you asked about the hearing. i described it in the first part of the book, people asked me why did you plead the fifth at the senate hearing? senate hearings are not always fair for judicial rights. witnesses don't have rights in the senate. in fact, they have rules in the senate they don't even abide by. when they got there, the first thing out of my attorneys not

was senators, i'd like to ask a question for information. he recognized them. they said, you who ruled that he made that the senate hearing is likely to lead to the indictment of a witness or that is emerging of the reputation him at this hearing has to be intelligent closed session. if there is a hearing that is more likely to lead to an indictment -- i can't imagine what it is, but meanwhile you have this hearing on capitol hill -- you designed it to take place when they were opening -- and you have more cameras here than the super bowl. this hearing should be closed. the senators looked at each other and at him and chuckled and kept going and so i knew that there wasn't going to be a fair hearing. what got to me when they were asking me questions -- the memories are coming back to me

of who these guys were. a lot of these people were people that i gave a lot of money to. one german got $175,000 to work for me or my clients. senator campbell claims he doesn't remember it now -- but we had a breakfast at a restaurant where i handed him a bunch of checks. he was chairman of the indian affairs committee and he told me that our clients could do very well in front of his committee. so i am thinking these things as i am watching the senators asked terrific questions. insulting, nasty questions. and i am pleading with it -- senator mccain, who is my greatest antagonist -- he stepped forward and said that we better stop this. we are actually harassing this witness. so they stopped and i got to

leave. >> one of the things that seems to really stick in your mind is the way in which you were carried for wearing a hat. the image of that at that hearing -- >> [talking over each other] >> tell us about that. >> it was january of 2006. as soon as i saw i was guilty of things, i did not want to fight and create a big spectacle and drag things out. i wanted to get through it and do what i thought would be right. i knew i was going to cooperate and meet with the justice department as i did do for many days, including after i went to prison. the day came in january -- january 4, i think. january 4, 2006 when i had to go

to court. everywhere i went, the media would show up and they would charge me and yell things with me and make it unpleasant. i really didn't want that, so i decided to go to court as early as possible to beat the media. i think the hearing was at noon or 11 in the morning. i went at six in the morning. it was raining and dark and i left the house on that january morning. it was raining, so i grabbed eight raincoat and rain hat. it wasn't a fancy hat, it was a collapsible rain hat that i had in my closet. i grabbed it and i put it on good and i walked in the rain and went into court. most people had raincoat on that were going in there -- had raincoat on. the hearing took place, i pled guilty. i had a lot of things on my mind

that day, not my wardrobe. i walked out and put my hat and coat on sleep. as i worked out, the glare of the sun and the glare of the cameras -- he started screaming at me. the folks who were taking pictures -- they screamed terrible things that you could reason they do that is they want you to look at them. if they screamed something more outrageous than the other guy, they figured he will look at them. that is their goal. they were screaming stuff at me -- what are you, against her? mafia? i realize that it was the hat. i wanted to say that the only person that were hat like this was george rapp decades ago. i realized i had a wardrobe malfunction and i set myself up for real problem. but that is what happened. i wrote about it in the book. virtually, that had become the image of me. it plays right into the image of

a bad guy, the mafia, things like that. unfortunately, innocent things -- they can lead to your detriment. >> do you think the were treated fairly? >> itunes? a lot of people treated me -- >> well, federal prosecutors? >> yes, i do. they put me in jail for a long time, but i thought they were incredibly professional, very fair, a good approach, and treated me with great dignity, in the sense that they were professional. i did not experience what some people experience with prosecutors, which is harassment and prosecutor -- evil who worked with me were nothing but professionals. it was a horrific thing. i knew eventually that i was going to end up in prison, and the prosecutorial team and justice department were the ones who put me there.

i put myself there, i guess -- but they were the ones who are operating. even knowing that, instead of looking at them and treating them as most prisoners and felons hate the people who prosecute them -- i certainly don't hate anybody. i put myself where i was. and i regret it. >> you describe facing the cumberland facility. going over, how would you change the system? what would you recommend as reform? what was the hardest thing about being in prison and what lessons did you take away from your trial and imprisonment? >> i took so many lessons away. if we had another hour, i could go into them. some of the big ones were that you have to follow the rules. my children probably don't like this, but i won't even drive over the speed limit.

i did not have an attitude that these rules were important. i have an attitude that they were an impediment. unfortunately, i did live like that and i wound up in trouble. i also took away the lesson that you better see the forest and the trees or you will wind up buried by the trees. i did not step back and say should i be doing this? is there anything wrong with what i'm doing? in fact, i mentioned the opposite. i thought it was okay. one has to do that. in terms of walking the track in prison and how i was treated in prison? prison is horrible. one day in prison you would not wish on your worst enemy. i was there for 12,099 days. unfortunately, there are people in prison for a longer than me.

it is a crushing experience. it is not only taken away from your family, your freedoms, you are stripped of everything in your recently a number. you become a slave. he worked for 12 cents an hour. you have no privacy, not one minute. you're sharing housing cubicles with 100 and 50 square foot area -- -- six people lived in at 150 square foot area. every minute i was praying to god. think up, eventually happened. >> looking back, was there a turning point where you went from thinking that everything was okay to realizing that it was very much not okay? >> yes. the turning point was when my firm fired me. up until that, i just thought that we would fight for it and everything would be okay. i described in the book when they came in to see me and i

thought they were coming to tell me how they we were going to turn this around. instead, they fired me. that made me realize that i probably wasn't coming back ever. i tried to position myself to get through it, but at that point i realized that this is not going to end well. >> if there is one thing you could do differently, what would it be? >> there's not one thing, there are many things. again, i would be careful to follow every rule. i would be careful to make sure that i didn't take information that i had that my clients, for example, deserve to have. there were a lot of things that i would do differently. i would probably try to, if i could, squelch the hypercompetitive attitude i had that i have to win no matter what. that is destructive, and there

are challenges. i am hoping that i have overcome a lot of them. one really never knows until your put back in the situation. >> you predicted in your book that the reforms you propose would not be well-received by washington lobbyists. you are correct. many consider you responsible for helping give lobbyists a bad name, and you're now coming up with recommendations on how to change the system. are you surprised when asked no, of course not. i have quite a few lobbyist friends. the lobby world, i think, to be nearly wanted to make out that i was one of the people who research the name lobbyist. i certainly didn't help. but i wasn't the only one. i understand that they now feel

that i have no right to come back, and frankly, go after the system. i'm not doing this to please them or not please them. i am doing this because i feel that i have information that i can make recompense to the country who feels a much greater hurt them the lobbying world. if i can help clean up the system and eight people in analyzing their government, i'm going to do it. i thought about this. it could be very much easier for me to be quiet and go away. and not subject myself to the media's, scrutiny, and to the lobbying world and their scrutiny, which is in tents. but i decided that that would not be right at i went through this, i need to do something to make recompense. i am paying restitution. i will probably pay it for the rest of my life. i wouldn't prison, my family

lost everything. my kids suffered, why are -- my wife suffered, my mother passed away. i paid a big price, probably rightly so, for what i did. but if there is something positive i can do -- i'm going to do it. if the lobbyists don't like it, it doesn't matter to me. a don't intimidate me. i've been in prison for 42 months. no lobbyists are going to intimidate me. >> you have been barred from being a lobbyist by the federal government -- >> the interior to permit barred me from being a vendor. not that i had plans to do so, but i was barred from the injured department could i don't intend to be a lobbyist either. they did not, and i don't think they can bar me from being a lobbyist. >> but would you want to be a

lobbyist? >> no. i have other things to do my. frankly, i would rather do something good and help other people in general. >> talk about what steps are taken to promote changes in the system? >> first of all, i wrote the book, and i am speaking about it. i try to answer peoples questions. i'm trying to work with some of the reform groups who, by the way, were my biggest adversaries. when i was going through this, there were people who were against me -- that was their business and their job. but i have reached my hand out. that guy who used to be me -- now i would ask him to let me try to be helpful if i can. most of them are delighted. some are not. some feel that i shouldn't put more people in jeopardy, and i don't want to do that.

even people i don't like. it is not to be about individuals or people destroying lives -- they don't think when they're destroying lives that they're people who love them that suffer more than they do. there's more than that. every time we focus on one person, they don't fix the system. i got fixed. the system didn't get fixed. what i prefer to do is instead of focusing like that, i would rather take on the system. if we get people to change it, life will be better for us. >> one of the things you recommend which is that lobbyist be barred from making campaign contributions. there many lobbyist to say that it's unconstitutional. what are the areas where there is common ground? >> with a lobbyist? >> within the reform community?

>> i'm not talking about the lobbyist who is out there honestly trading. i'm talking about lobbyist who cares about these things. they don't want to be barred from taking people to dinners and things like that. i don't know that there's common ground. alternately, there are people -- and i was one of them. they use those tools to their damage. they get a leg up -- they don't want those things barred, and so real reform is not going to happen. what will happen is slow reform. you have to sit down -- if you use your fingers, if user for, stupid stuff. what i am talking about terms of constitutionality. north carolina bar the lobbyist

from giving any political contributions. i think people have to remember that it is one thing to bar people from giving money. it's another thing to tell somebody that if you want to be -- nobody is forcing anyone to be a lobbyist, by the way -- but if you want to do that, you need to give up certain things. those choices have not held up as constitutional. as the basis on which i hope that changes like this would be constitutional. >> the number of people were caught up in this series of scandals that sent you to present, and only one of them, amber of congress bob may, was able lawmaker. do you feel that there's a sense that when congress fixes the problem, that they will fix the system and not themselves? >> when i saw the reform bill coming, we knew that there would be loopholes.

part of the problem, and one of the reasons bob was the only one who looked at this -- bob had a different issue that wasn't related to mine. he gave or he took $50,000 in casino chips -- who wanted to give the government permission to sell. that act -- i'm not sure where he wound up. he probably would've been convicted. in terms of things would mean, nobody else was indicted. a lot of the action is protected under the speech and debate clause. in fact, jefferson, who went to prison because of money that was marked bills from the fbi bribery operation that he was

running -- extortion operation, if that was in his office, he would be enjoying that money today. there are a lot of protections that they had in congress that prevented people -- the justice department, from investigating. >> you been a than a filmmaker, you have invested in a casino company, you have run a restaurant -- there is talk now about a reality tv show, i don't know that still live. what is next for you. what are you working on now? >> i'm working on the reality show, some other television -- some things that are related to this case. there is a social game at that we are developing. i'm trying to do everything i can to confront the weight them media is today in terms of the opportunities for young people and others to get educated. not just give a speech or write a book or go on television, there are other things that have

to be done. i'm trying to accommodate this message and this approach that, in hoping that in doing so, we will be able to widen the audience for people who care about it and who are going to do something about it. i'm still add and doing other things -- but i'm trying to fit into the space and promote this. ..

it's not going to go through. >> host: i'm not.josé thank you very much. >> guest: thank you for having me. >> still ahead on tvt prime time on c-span 2, chris mathews on this book, jack kennedy, a list of hero

>> if you think of yourself as a family and if you think of yourself as a team and she said when i get a raise at work, he's so proud of me. it's like we got a raise, her family got a raise. i felt as though she had redefined providing to include what her husband has as she had a lot of respect for what her husband was doing. >> next on booktv's "after words," sam donaldson interviews chris mathews about his book, "jack kennedy: elusive hero." >> host: chris mathews,

welcome. we been friends for 35 years? >> guest: at least. >> host: but no deals. talk about a man who has faded into history for most americans. you have to be a certain age to remember what kennedy with lake in the pledge. why did you read this book? >> guest: first of all that may be true what you say in terms of fresh memories. but they asked people this time of year two years ago with "vanity fair" and cbs 60 minutes who should be on mount rushmore it was not there. guess who won? in terms of heroic stature, he is bare. he is the president-elect to a necklace that to the arc of his life, the hair with them, saving his crew, the cuban missile crisis, getting through without a nuclear work, getting to kill the way he was killed. do people still has in his mind. i think although you may not come to mind as much as he did, when he does come to mind there is a stirring the air.

>> host: let's talk later about kennedy the president. let's talk about kennedy demand. who was the? >> guest: that's the question i wanted to get to. the hand in hand. not that has been, not the president, but the guide, the person. when you hang with in the navy and the one you went to high school with. jackie when he was killed tried to explain to her has been to resolve. he said she he was a sick young kid alone all the time reading about these heroes. he was never a well young man. inside he was still a state john cage, mobley and when i got the nose of the interview, she added, all men are accommodation of bad and good. bad and good. his mother never loved him. so she's trying to explain this guy who was here has been. unfaithful to your essay has been, but she was trying to find

them is the guy himself. that took real love to do that. what she found was a young kid who grew up loving church hill, loving his writing, looking to her as the election and money has to be one of those heroes sunday. she saw that way at the young sake can't come up lonely, scared. he thought he had leukemia all through high school. he died he had a death sentence that he'd never repealed to escape to get through high school. >> host: joe kennedy the patriarch, the man who ran the family and all the people in the family we are told. jack kennedy was the second son. it was joe who was supposed to follow and do some thing that killed kennedy the senior couldn't do. because he killed himself with appeasement for adolf hitler. >> guest: and open semi to them. use the word, not the worst word for jewish people, but pretty close. he was openly tribalistic. he basically was finished.

he wanted joe junior to be his guy, his "avatar," his person, to get past the classic issue and become president. well, he was killed in the war trying to prove himself to the old man into the country. and jack moved up to the position. what i discover in the book is it isn't as simple as he was stricker and into service because he wanted to be a scholar for some kind of journalist, some kind of serial man. he really think he was going to sit in class with 30 kids at princeton or somewhere were sent away writing books somewhere alone? no. going back to his school, he read a history of world war i in its entirety when he was 14. he read "the new york times" according to his fellow students every day. he could've had it nailed to add a new sit in his bed in figure each issue in each article and figure out its meeting. he intended to go to law school.

when he was in the navy is all he talked about was the state and local politics around the country. all the indications were his friends, chuck spalding, landfilling, charlie bartlett. he was headed for a political career. he wasn't sure that he wasn't ready and primed to go for it. >> host: his father within london and believed he could deal with adolf hitler. he was the second son he jackie describes according to your boat is all of those things we said no, dad, you're wrong. >> and brilliantly his father thought his son would agree with him. he said yes, britain was justified in not fighting against munich and 38 because they were not ready to fight. here's right disagree with with the old man. they should have been ready to fight and baldwin talked them into not taking the take the threat seriously. by 38 they lost what he called the locus state. they were ready to fight and i'm

sure was cleaned up by arthur and he wrote basically they were ready to fight. we darn well better be ready to fight because this could be a world war. the old man was not an peace there. it is fair to say he was a sympathizer. he did not want to fight do not cease. they seem to do nothing to this guy. what was happening, the final solution in 42. they were being picked up, and taken away, deported. this was going on. jack was pretty good on that front. and an uncertain age wearing a particularly good in terms of jewish people. it was a point later on his political career when penny o'donnell said i wished the jewish vote have been better, sort of dumping on the jewish community to one of its leaders. jack said, don't ever send out that letter. we've got to think of the

future, not the past. i love this line. these people have problems you will never understand. he had tremendous for what they've been through. >> guest: >> host: his brother joe had been killed, the airplane had move up and his father had to say you were going to run for office. that not true. >> guest: one of his war buddies said that is how he would [chanting] he would build the case, darn it the old man wants me to do this. you know the world war ii guys. i never wanted to admit and vision. it is much better to say the old man must be to run for congress. everyone around him did this guy was raring to go. he heard the call. and by the way, all these years of covering politics can't did you ever hear of anybody or meet anybody who was talked into the political career?

is something you have in you. the only thing that gets rid of it is from non? i mean, it is in you. jack wanted to be a success. >> guest: the guy who says i have no plans. he has the speech in his pocket. >> guest: today there's more open ambition. i think jacking up the generation. he was very much a world war ii man. don't complain about your billets or postings or missions, but don't mix when it later on. don't brag about the war from which most guys never did. >> host: so he runs in the district he didn't live in there's this wonderful story that someone come and meet his father put the guy on the ballot with the same name as the guy -- >> guest: that was joe russo. you know, i knew that from working with tidwell. the irish get the biggest tackle as stepping on the fingers of the timing is right below the

latter. they come up behind them. count the number of italian elected congresspeople in massachusetts. the irish club winning the seat. jack had an opponent named joe russo. they found another guy for 20 bucks named joe russo and put him on the ballot. a clean legal trade. it's not a dirty trick. there's a difference and we can talk about that some day. but also jack had some tough opponents that had been mayor of cambridge, jack strategy came in second, but all the local guys with the favorite times, but you come in second everywhere. he badly was the only guy with the war record. coming back from the war with his heroic service in saving his crew to his well advertised or the old man, there is no one else on the ballot with the war record. that was an election that nixon won in all those guys came in way back to the war.

the american people wanted to reward. if you hadn't served, you had a problem. >> host: and 52 he runs again henry cabot lodge. what was wrong with them? there was nothing wrong. post what turns out as he couldn't win. guess what happened is the kennedy people working with kenny o'donnell and bobby was a creature of that campaign, what they did this realize the old way of running if you're a republican who ran from outside. he ran the rest of the state. if you're in boston are currently wrote criterion for the city knew you were getting outside the city. but the kennedy people discovered a flood of of people go to boston college law school school or harbored the end of that of the boston area into quiet burbs for the maybe 20% to 30% of the population. they were 850 irish guys. they're independent voters who vote democrat or republican.

the kennedy and 47 and 48 campaigns around the state of massachusetts, the commonwealth. going into communities where they were minorities, democrats, but they were there and back and 52, you know how it works. you've been there before. you know i'm in there for the first time. you communicate with those people. they say why don't we have the irish guys are senator? by the width of the watch beeps? this guy has a war record like large and they convinced that they had somebody from their world, the catholic world as good as the protestant world and that was the toughest nut to crack, to convince the irish to vote for an irishman. this is the same thing they had to face the 1960s when all the south in pennsylvania pat brown did think an irishman could get elected president. they had to convince their fellow catholics they could do it. that is an interesting thing within the catholic world. posted in to save irish connection with the irish family. part of his drive was to show

that the irish were just as good as everybody. >> guest: i loved the story in high school, this very rich, posh school. i was active in the convention last year. it used to be all yankees. i mean, they were the fourth fourths and fifths in old yankee fan is like adlai stevenson went there and people like that. the headmaster didn't particularly like the irish people, but he had to put up with them because the chinese kids about the money. that's the way it works. the kids at the money you have to let in. joe kennedy got his kids in there. one day george st. john was giving a chapel speech sermon about those kids have the right we are, but some were troublemakers. mockers had a couple of meanings in one of them was irish trash. the ones who claim that a horse manure from the wagon in boston.

kennedy heard that. so what did he do? they called the muck and did nothing but plan to travel. he was frankly expelled for it is that if you're really my son you would be in a nightclub. so there was the old man says he comes in and takes her side. he bought a couple film projectors that that school and they let him off. he only elected it who were wheeled, whose fathers had so much money they could be cake out. >> by the way, wherever the great line from his inaugural address. as that which her country can do for you. you say in your book so that he got it from the hat mass dirt -- >> guest: i went back to the archives. the irish have now taken over and eileen -- elaine connolly is a wonderful woman who's head of

public relations and the headmaster at the time i was doing my research game shanahan. any affair. she introduces me to the archivists. very hesitantly gives me a briefing book, looseleaf book. i open it up and on the right-hand side was the chaplain to a george st. john come the beloved headmaster in and it was a couple sermons for the day and little something called dean great essay, an essay written by his hero, the former turn of the 19th century dean of of studies at harvard. and it was the following phrase and when i read it i cannot believe i found the rosetta stone here. is that the you should always ask of it alma mater not, quote, not what she can do for me, but what i can do for her. and the direct quote. in sorenson, who was the direct speechwriter thought that was the most credible theory and connect to that. not even he had gone back and

found it because they pulled in the other true. there was in a record that. at the time kennedy gave this speech but about either of the protestant republican school is that the accused him of plagiarizing the great george st. john. so i don't know what he supposed to say. i've met had master once said, he obviously took it from this. and by the way of putting the book so iran can see the actual copy. postcode late ted sorensen used to say when you ask them, as you know, did you write that or did john kennedy write that? >> guest: that drove the family crazy because they thought he was saying i wrote it. but her member kennedy comment tandy's widow said i think i traced that thing back which was great because we thought ted had written it. he honestly drafted a lot of that stuff for kennedy, but for

56 to 60 coming years to young guys in his 30s. he was only in his 20s. trapped in the country, the whole country all around putting things on the map. ted drafted none, then finding that in writing it again. his speeches were well delivered. they were well written and it was only 60 or so he began to learn how to give a good speech. >> host: lets talk about kennedy the senator. i was in his time until two weeks and he was inaugurated as president. was politically aware in the 50s. but i remember from guys all around. well and he was in the senate he married jackie and almost died. someone, i guess he or someone the book. >> guest: i think sorensen wrote it. i think if you read it again. i remember reading it years ago and thinking the introduction, the preface read write idiomatic

job of a politician. there's a sympathetic thing that speechwriter would write. like only in this profession -- were expected to do things like that against her interests. what other profession do act against your interest which is really what got this thing going. he wrote for the st. lawrence ua which is a passage for the great lakes in the atlantic ocean up to canada. of course what did that cut off? to cut off the boston harbor. they thought the locals up there, such of the irish were bitter about things, he's doing this because the old man just won the merchandise mart in chicago. he showing for the old man. so he began in fact i would ted sorensen is to be granted a magazine article at times in which they have acted against local constituents even show national courage. that is when it started and evolved down into a book. he didn't write it.

if you listen to what sorensen wrote before he died in what he told me, he is only 28-year-old kid. kennedy knew of the history. it is fair to say kennedy produced the book. he had all the history, read the books, scribbled some notes, figured it out. he wasn't going to sit there month after month and drafted. it went back and looked to kennedy's letters. they're beautifully dictated, butters to his girlfriend, typed pages, beautifully written letters without any problems. beautiful grammar. i'd love to talk about inge come at a deadbeat dad. his girlfriends were all gorgeous, but she was a danish, gorgeous creature, a movie actor. she was married a second time it is having his relationship with her. she had to picture taken at the berlin olympics with guess who? adolf hitler who had taken a fancy to her. whatever the interest or she

thought she was the nordic ideal and she was. she looks at the poster, sort of a soviet poster of a blonde gorgeous woman and has the apple line features and jack was totally smitten with her. his best friend at the time, chuck spalding said it was the most compatible relations with others being. postage after hoover said he was a spy. >> guest: detractor down to charleston now. check with the navy intelligence not of course caught the problem. of course his father was a suspected pro-nazis, going out with this dazzling blond nordic women who had been seen in a photograph and he goes fully here of probable cause? at the same kennedy to charleston to get away. they shack my asp down to charleston because they thought i was hanging around with a spy. i was his wording.

she chases them down one week and may spend four days together at the fort sumter house hotel. for days together in the only time they came out from there. a living together down there. and i love this, was basically for a couple late-night meals and to go to mass. that is so jacked and they both went to mass together at the cathedral in bradstreet in beautiful charleston. it just shows that came across to both been thinking about after i wrote the book, jack was a devotional cat who prayed every night it is bad that. he would laugh and say how supers dishes. you know dave patterson told me in the editor said with just a tape potters told you because you don't act like you believe it. and jackie said in their tapes condescendingly because she was very secular. and i found out from gwendolyn's

closest friend who lived at the white house and i traveled in europe. even after traveling through europe, he would pray every night via his bedside. he was devotional catholic. >> host: lets talk about the women for a moment. we may have to return to that area. then straight, went astray. statistics out there try to tell you how many do what in this country. he was a surreal strayer. why would he do that? >> guest: something as i said a few moments ago his wife try to figure out. she said his mother never loved him. trying to figure out. i think she attributed to the way men were in those days. jackie was not only a woman of that. when men really were in charge, but she also grew up, close the told me she grew up in the old

money world for after dinner the men with go to their own room together and smoke cigars and talk about their girls. they kept secrets from the women and the women often talked about whatever they talk about, but they were always denied access to the secret world of the men. jackie said winner has or is killed, i now lose jobs the men's world. i'll keep carolyn, but others that appear the only way to determine not busy with the part of the secret world where bill graham and invest all know about everybody's girlfriend. remember? they kept it secret. the other part was this is who he was. jack kennedy was his father son in this case. the old man chased women. gloria swanson, a wonderful story. at most apocryphal or not. rose kennedy and joe kennedy or are on an ocean liner and across the atlantic rosetta joe come evil police colossus on the boat.

and joe had set it up orient his girlfriend on the boat with them for the type daytrip. this is the kind of stuff that was outrageous, men's behavior and a day when men could get away with it. >> host: in 1987 where he said solemnly around or jump in the title basin. >> guest: by the way, still today do you know anybody who focuses on investigative pieces and puts any resource or time into someone's private life. >> guest: i know other candidates who do the retelling. what normally happens now is a press conference in a downtown hotel in it at "the new york times" put it on page 56 but there's an indictment indictment of discovery with paula jones. it is sort of thrown at us. if it is thrown at us but then there's any digging. >> host: that doesn't make a right to write about and i want to make certain i know about it.

just go they really want to know this. if you are about people -- in fact, we had a debate at the end of 2011 for one of the candidates -- romney pointed that the other guy be married and we have an open discussion now. >> host: that's true. john kennedy wanted to be undertaken in 1956 of adlai stevenson, stevenson threw it open to the convention. he was already saying i'm going to be president. he donated another for three years or so. he had a terrible back operation 54. last rites for the third time is at that point. that's when nixon was crying because rex skelton became a curator. this guy told me in an interview nixon was crying that night. he was close to kennedy. he really liked him before they went to work with each other. kennedy wanted to be president. let's face it. he began to think it and he

wanted to boost stevenson. he was doing and like it knocked off the chairman of the party in massachusetts. kennedy wanted to be in chicago and all of a sudden at 11:00 at night he won the nomination for the second time through the primaries. he didn't like him. he was a drinker. he doesn't like the guy, but he didn't have the nerve. >> host: he was also womanizer. >> guest: okay. stevenson was able to make a decision. he was always rethinking everything. well maybe the other side genocide. he wasn't much of an ideologue either. i'm not so sure. so instead let's have a vote. what he was really trying to do was he wanted to focus on the fact that eisenhower who is up for reelection and wanted to put it the election and all the

democrat payday. it is so important stephen said because of the health of the president and the mumbo-jumbo that we have a vote on this. the bible for it to the tasman spirit will kennedy says have got to run for president. he calls up his buddy, a segregationist from florida says we could be a work pretty speech, anything from the war. then he starts going to people like, the sappy and running around desperately for charlie bartlett and his german friend. it's a crazy campaign, but he ends up almost winning. he's moving a hand and then sam rayburn calls on oklahoma. oklahoma governor desolate kennedy. and kennedy doesn't have it. he has a lot of strength in the south, but not enough. keith walker is very good on civil rights. he also ran in the primaries and it almost beaten stevenson. >> host: okay, got 21960.

>> guest: kennedy came so close. he said if i can get disclosed no preparation, just think if i spent four years. >> host: 1960 win. we have time for the whole campaign because he went into his presidency. there's wonderful stories. what about the first debate in chicago? and the makeup you have in your book. >> guest: first of all, kennedy really took this debate seriously. he later became head of 60 minutes, great producer, but he was director. he wanted to know where i stand, what the lighting is. he wanted to really get a fix. kennedy of course spent hours at the hotel in chicago, constantly answering the questions of ted sorenson over and over again, trying to get ready. it is in there and he starts to psych out an extent. so they asked about makeup? says i don't want any. then they go back into the rooms and he says i'll put makeup on

when he puts it on. so they had this mexican standoff if you will. they're both macho men because kennedy has laughed openly at humphrey's calmness primary point make a great but today everybody uses it. apparently the lighting was brutal. you have to do is make an appearance of bill wilson puts the makeup on secretly in the back room. you need it. nixon comes out with this horrible stuff called leafy shade that this guy put on and it's melting, almost like just pouring off of him on camera. nixon was sick, had been in the hospital for three weeks, the kennedy people that it had to be so thin so you could see nixon's legs wobble. they knew nixon was in bad shape physically and they wanted that to be seen by the public out there. they were cruel and they also

wanted to make sure he had to stand the whole time and waited until the last minute. and this directory to go on, he waits and waits. he hides in his green room until five seconds before. he's going what is going on here? second debate here in washington, nbc studios. nixon gets control. so he brings the level of the temperature of the room to 40 degrees. it's a meat locker when kennedy arrives. again is that l. nelson, my sores, a tv guide. posted the basement finds the guy to change the thermostat. and nixon guy standing guard on the thermostat and says if you don't get out of the way the thermostat, let me turn that to 65 or 70. i'm calling the police. so they had another standoff and ended up compromising on the temperature. so they get it up for nixon. the whole idea was they did not nixon to sweat. so they've seen him sweat profusely and said we will not let this happen again.

they all knew what was going on. this is about who's going to rule america by the way. >> host: do know as well as i do that on a day like today we like it to be about ideas and judgment and that god. presentation. >> host: >> guest: kennedy was like a harvard dawn and the way he crossed his legs in the way he would look at next turn with that look every time nixon says something weird. he said he won the election by the way he looked at nixon, like what is this guy's story? every time kennedy spoke -- his eyes would guard. he sees the eyes start and he couldn't stop the sites are moving that way. which is what he did in the first debate in 1947 in pennsylvania. they have their first debate in pennsylvania. the invitation of the local congressman. >> host: and learn something everyday. >> guest: they have the debate that they took the train home at

night and a foot for you cut the bottom bunk. all night long they talked about the cold war and i always would love that picture, but you? talking away about the cold war. >> host: by the way, the first debate in chicago ted sorensen told me that to have to the debate they went down the street to to find a pay phone and jack kennedy party quarter to act as a call to dad to see how he did here is who is in control -- >> host: >> guest: because his dad always said he did great. >> host: he won the election thanks to his dad in chicago. the old man, mayor daley and sam gioconda and lyndon johnson from texas. >> guest: with the help from a few good friends. >> host: with the help from a few good friends in the graveyard. we are happy through programs

with chris mathews and his great book. let's talk about kennedy as president. grassed up in "the new york times" in late november wrote an op-ed piece. i'm going to put a little and it. the first was kennedy was a good. few historians take this view. if alexa calla, surviving stenographers and popularizers like chris mathews' new novel works hard to gloss over 210 the president. >> host: >> guest: that was very whimsical and ideological. a great deal of his record was there the circus. i think this president is running for reelection has to look at the fact that kennedy trend as you know what he would do because he was doing it. he'd gotten a civil rights bill, which we live by today come which i was jim crow which says you can walk into any restaurant

, gas station, men's term. you don't have to be way to do that. that bill was fighting to get through the senate -- the house judiciary committee weeks before he was killed. he'd gotten through judiciary committee. he was moving that legislation. the moon program. he's the one -- in fact jacky said he wanted his initial secretly put on one of the next that iraq is because he knew and she knew that that was the one that was going to pass the soviet union and get it to the man. in terms of competition for support in the third world, which is what kennedy was all about, the competition at the soviet union was that it third world war, which is the whole strategy, peace corps, alliance for progress, special forces. don't let wars be escalated to the point of a nuclear conflict. does his great strength in getting us to the war. i don't know how to ask and investigate enough to be almost

oracular stability of president kennedy to set us on a course to win the cold war without a word. that is what i believe he did. in terms of economic policy, the tax cuts of the republican, but in this case criticized as opposed, took his record is pretty darn good. in fact, look at things like medicare and a lot of these things for his. i think he would've had a very good second term and a thank you a bit petty in this regard. >> host: either way, the greatest civil rights of modern times is marked with the king junior. and the second was john kennedy in june of 1963 collaborated of course the sorensen. and i invite people to go to the ability to get it from the university of virginia. he can pull it up on your computer and listen to the speech. >> guest: the power of the

president to go in the middle of a fight with wallace over desegregation at the university of alabama, to go on television in the midst of that and did have the upper hand and bobby justice, to go and say it is fundamental as the bible and say the moral issue. that is the johnston encourage them to do. to make it a moral issue. african-americans have had, many today still on their walls, a picture of him and that cooking for a reason. i think in all fairness to the younger critics, i don't think you understand without knowing how tough the fight for silver rice bus, when he troops to go into mississippi. federal troops to enforce that in a couple black young people. you had to do it that way. it was so tough. it was scary.

young jewish kids are getting killed and buried alive. this was an amazing struggle. one of the tom and you and i know that the real struggle of the 60s began and ended with civil rights. >> host: i think you're right. i covered mike dukakis is campaign. he went to philadelphia, mississippi. never mentioned the three solarized workers had been murdered nearby. i think a lot of us criticized him. then they go back to the things he said kennedy did and did well and did right and what better afford. that may be. those toward the end of his presidency. let's start at the beginning. the joint chiefs have 10 but the bay of pigs. >> guest: this is where the president earns the worst way by failure. here is what happened. eisenhower promised supported by

the joint chief was to take a group of middle-class immigrates reliving in miami, educate them. a lot of them are censored doctors themselves. they are just good people that wanted to take their country back and we trained 1500 of them under the auspices of the cia. these are a true cuban heroes. the plan was to get them on the beach somewhere in cuba and at that time, perhaps part of an assassination plot, nobody knows, it overthrew the country in the early part of the decade, the something which that just magically create an incredible turmoil and all of a sudden the middle-class would overthrow castro. that was the idea. the trouble is they kept changing the base and that was so remote they would even hear about it and kennedy wanted to keep the noise level down. but he never asked the most pathetic question. you're landing 1500 exiles with light arms.

how many regular cuban troops will be the first step? but they've got to ask. the answer? 25,000. once you know that, you know they'll lose. 25,000 trained defenders of their country and their revolution are well going to be 1500 guys. so then he was told to escape into the balance. kennedy never asked. 80 miles of swamp separated that each. so kennedy never asked the critical questions. i think what happiness is not defending him. this is to criticize him. he thought -- the first time in a fight he was in the path. he was the bus among the crowd in high school, among his friends. he was always the boss. all of a sudden the cia is running the operation. he's just a part of that. he doesn't know it yet. you're making a good criticism and i'm a green. he didn't know was his job to ask all the tough questions and

no one were going to get on the right answers. it turns out alan douglas and operations chief light to the cuban exile same if you guys had trouble in the beach, which in this figure, we are coming in with everything we've got. and this is just sort of a detonator cap. and they never told that to kennedy. kennedy is a couple days then, they say mr. president we have to go in. at that point kennedy realizes that says no. that was the most important. the most important decision of his presidency was to say i'm not going to get hooked into a war with cuba because kennedy knew there were thousands of soviet troops. he would've had to go to war until then. as he put it, we think are will do if i start killing a bunch of russians? and he says nothing. he knows he would go for berlin because khrushchev knew he would go for berlin.

>> host: will get to berlin ballista through vienna. so kennedy missed khrushchev after the bay of pigs and is clearly thinking i could take to escape. any brutalize kennedy. >> guest: i told you there'd be 70 million people caught in nuclear war. khrushchev says with a blink of an eye jacob what else is new? kennedy couldn't believe it. imagine that a person. it's another escalated battle another tougher batter. it would shake anyone. they came back inside and the demand has led to face nuclear war over berlin. and that's where is different from ice. come back after that and say you shouldn't step up and kept the brinksmanship. he had the upper hand. by early 60s, he read the manifesto coming out of

khrushchev's mouth. he would be messing with the guy. at that point the rocket fast would be moving ahead in africa. they are feeling their posts. if we are ready to play, they're ready to fight. good to play with them and be careful with the russians about berlin because kennedy at promised during the campaign and 60 that berlin was worth a nuclear war. below is easier to say that the fighting nuclear war over berlin. he in the end i don't think wanted to fight. he wanted to avoid nuclear war. >> host: crew chef ascent every message possible. we're going to normalize the east germans and all of that. and now here comes the wall. then the water. >> guest: he is a real critic. >> host: he's written a book in which he tries to make the

case that granted he was rolled. we should have not down that wall. and once the presidential election right now is uncovering it the most important is that we allow its okay to bomb iran. with the second step? here's the way kennedy looks over berlin? via 15,000 combining the forces. french, per sms. guess how many? would've had to go to first use. they rolled into berlin and we would have a choice then and west berlin in a matter of hours, which would've been horrific for europe or go to some kind of first use to stop them in their tracks. i'm not going to that step because that stuff is horrible. it puts us in a position of launching a third world war. kennedy knew this. the hike would say, just say no to them. that might work and it might

not. but as time went on, it became more likely that it would work. the russians knew we would need is a nuclear weapon. by the way, i'm not sure the great state. suing the end it wasn't really a good lesson that's her kennedy realized. when he rides a bus and a good laugh because it would blow up the world over this. he decided he had to do something and the best thing that ever happened was first of all fulbright was saying on "meet the press" that the chairman of the foreign relations committee says we're not going to defend west berlin. as the key signal to the russians. if you cannot use them to come up with that. just don't take out west berlin. he signaled to them pretty clearly, take which you have to take to protect your soviet realm, but you don't want the workers to swing to the west. do what you have to do but no more. it's easy for anyone to argue now we should have been tough. the tab is not a metaphor. delete the consequences.

it would've been better off than nuclear war because outside of that, either the russians back down are we that gone are neither side back down. and if you're kennedy had gotten wet spot launches countries in world war i, world war ii world war ii and world war iii is a natural progression as each side does what it has to do step-by-step in you create a goldberg situation where both sides find themselves killing each other over something that both sides didn't want to do. and that's where presidents differ from historians. >> host: we will continue on the major points of the presidency. all diversion. i remember going to the news conference. i did not because to think about asking a question to hold in the state department auditorium. i'd be at the back of the room. but we think about the way. the questions are usually pretty soft, but not always. but he couldn't have thought of answers in the time it took to get there.

but he had the kind of wit but everyone concentrated on. you cut your finger. how did she do that? something like that. >> guest: is rare in politics or the would-be politician. they're not funny usually. stevenson was funny. he was witty. gene mccarthy was to his regret probably. politicians try to avoid being urbain. to be urbane is to be elitist. but for some reason jack makes the irish background with his wits and it didn't seem to be to urbain, but it was fine. it wasn't clunky. and those press conferences were a treat and they were not prime time because even in those days the self-confident that is going on at 9:00 at night with everybody watching, more television in those days than they do now because there's only the three channels. but everybody watched those press conferences than they were on. so you're right.

by the way, one of the reasons i really wanted to write this book. i came across a guy named harrison. probably republican. most of those guys were. he said i'm not going to talk about kennedy the president. he was great company. he said coming in now, we're stuck with no showers, no movies, we were at the front. in the middle of the night detached yet the guys then the guy is going to listen and laugh at your jokes and tell good stories. they had to be good guys. they said kennedy was great company. here's a guy you want to write about. late in the night in the later got into the morning to more churchill became churchville. and that's what i want to find. >> i'm paraphrasing. of course headed towards reelection at some point someone asked him, that's a tough job.

do you recommend others try to be president? he said yes, but not yet. >> guest: the timing ever since adult self-deprecation was running against the working guys in cambridge mass pike and 46. he was a carpetbagger. he knew it. but he said they're all telling tough stories. he finally says i guess i'm the only one here who didn't work his way up the hard way. then he just laughed it off. at least he admits. >> host: that reminds me what reagan used to say. hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance. >> host: now we have a real problem. we have maybe a thermonuclear war against the 13 days in october after discovering that there are soviet missiles with

nuclear warheads rapidly try to be put, which would threaten us. just goes intermedia vessels were not defensive missiles. they were for real. >> host: didn't happen that way. what happened? >> guest: later on that list george bundy national security adviser concert lee curtis lemay wanted to level the country. they were altogether. and you see a good movie like arnie bernstein's film, 13 days. >> host: that was directed by ronald shawn olson. the theme where the made for a red face says, you know, you're in a tough spot, mr. president. the president comes back and says they think were in it together. he walks out of the room and says you cut the rug right out from under him, general. they were really determined to go and take those missiles out

when they discovered them. they also recognized you have aaa to say you've got to knock out the aircraft installations and the ground rockets that cannot shoot do the fans. so you have to do a full invasion. suppose the plan. kennedy is going wait a minute, we think the russians would have to kill in the wake is there going to say. turns out some other things we didn't know. this really makes a case looking at some of this on the book with a different conclusion. if we had gone in, khrushchev said in his memoirs, had they attacked by missiles and by the way, maxwell taylor told the press that we can't get them all. if we go when working to get x%, but there's 10% lavatories said last and we can't get in they will fire them. so what do we do? committee said if we do not allow a situation where attack is we've got to attack them.

the russians, any attack from cuba in north america or south america is an attack of the soviet union on us. >> host: requiring a full response. >> guest: so what does that say? returns the khrushchev was ready for marion to act. this is the scary part of any kind of chain reaction of the what consequences has to be considered here. how do you attack deflate any missiles left, even a couple big ones. he was talking like a little kid. talking of intermediate-range missiles i was going to hit new york. i might have killed everybody, but i would've killed millions of people on it would've taught america what it's like to fight a war in a software tory. derek and his crew chef not thinking of consequences because had he done that we would've gone for the full straight. so what kennedy was looking at was a couple things. first of all, i don't want them to stray can use their missiles on us, but then we have to retrain the attack.

but he also wanted to do with it in a way undercover. so he did two things. he set up a blockade to limit the immediate threat of action. called the quarantine so it was only about the missiles in the material it into the missiles. but many of the secret deal. bobby went to see the soviet ambassador and the only thing different in the movie is the actually went over to him at the justice department and saw the pictures on the wall and bobby for the first time in his life did not take an suv -- slb. there is a back-and-forth and word gets back that although we couldn't publicly traded their missiles are missiles, that kennedy would remove the missiles of turkey quietly in a couple of months if they could keep a secret. so is a combination of churchill

and chamberlain that got us through it. the tough stand in the secret collaboration. kennedy said i couldn't live with myself in history file that a nuclear war to take place over turkish missiles. he was able to see the difference. >> host: soon make a deal to save us to go into nuclear war. >> guest: i think one really cannot sell the book is a useful tool, but i think a lot of presidential election should be about consequence. every time a journalist asks what would you do with any say what what would have been then and what to expect what happened then? the calculation had been made quite if they say i don't care, then you shouldn't be president. >> host: we want a president that knows how to play chess. we have about five, six, seven minutes left. we come to dallas. do you think oswald -- he acted alone. no question about it.

but anything behind him? >> guest: i don't know. i made a point in my book to not even put it in my book. i wanted to bring kennedy right up to the edge. so i took them in the car and generate given this information and years ago. he was a congressman in fort worth and kennedy gave that warning -- this is the way life works. you know not the day or the hour. we know our bible. so kennedy gets up that morning and says we go into the country with jackie. he's going to hostile territory because they had spat on his ambassador in the u.n. could the papers are filled with kennedy as a trader at and nixon is of course taunting because he was in the night before saint kennedy is going to dump johnson for the ticket and put somebody else in.

not a chance because kennedy was in texas because he pushed for civil rights, caused himself any chance of mississippi, alabama. probably not south carolina. he was trying to hold onto texas in the anti-civil rights environment and he also needed georgia. so is down there campaigning for money and reelection. as he travels from fort worth to airport having a good morning and good speech to the chamber, he's talking to jim wright saying why is fort worth a good yellow dog democrat and why is it so right wing? what i like is it shows jack kennedy the political career to this area and tried to be good politician. the answers he got you find fascinating from down there. jim wright explains that on the newspaper. he said it was the daily press

that just spread this anti-liberal, anti-kennedy mindset in the city of dallas. john connolly was far shrewder. he said it do with the economies of the two cities. fort worth was a ton of fact true floors for men and women work next which other, blue-collar blues written for each other as a working-class, good working corrals or stockyards in the same game. regular people. dallas, high-rises, finance. everyone wears a white shirt to work they want to work on the next floor, up to management level, the ones they want to be like. think a republican. and guess who was like that? john conway. he attributed the whole thing to economics. and as we know, you're getting to the question as to what extent was the kennedy from the

right environment at texas in those days of her civil rights primarily, that's the role they've tried to wrestle with because they feel the atmospheric anti-civil rights, anti-kennedy somehow had something to do with a guy that was infatuated they didn't like what kennedy had said in tampa. the navy is gone, everything can happen. very anti-castro. all i know is he that one day he was going after nixon because he thought he was with johnson. he had gone to the soviet embassy and the cuban embassy the day before. all the information suggested he was a man of the hard left, real anti-american communist, no longer with the soviet union, but now with castro. but that is all we know. the latest books, bugliosi's book, all safe single assassin.

>> host: you said at the outset correctly that whether they knew him or not should be on mount rushmore. i think one of the reasons in addition to the casey was made that kennedy was really becoming a very strong president with the assassination and the way jackie and the family handled what everyone watched around the world. >> guest: me too. i think it was a lincolnesque funeral. when i was in the peace corps later, we get movies from the u.s.a. we had to get movies wherever we could get them. ..