tv Capital News Today CSPAN April 13, 2012 11:00pm-2:00am EDT
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initiative focused to focus more on state and local because the main problem with corruption is it's at the state and local level and not at the military level. they do have the problems but that's a common misconception about the corruption and are we just pouring the money into the hands of politicians? >> so all that material and training goes to those that phil was talking about? >> that's right. and they are in fact asking for asylum. [laughter] >> but you know it's possible, eard that samee on t .. story about the reason we keep up this policy of her liberation enforcement and interdiction is because it has become an industry and it could be that the merida initiative has led to american contractors and they can make a lot of money selling
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whatever to limit who can army or the mexican federal police are in a way part of this industry. >> at the same with border control and certainly in calexico were it not for the infusion of border security, the economy would be in worse shape. that is recognized in calexico. the border patrol is associated with the economic realities. >> okay. we have about five minutes, or three minutes. if we can get a few questions answered. >> this is a follow up question to sylvia who spoke earlier about legalization of drugs in the u.s. and what impact that might have on cartels. some in latin america are taking steps to legalizing drugs and i wonder what your thoughts are on the impact of legalized drugs in other countries that it could have on the cartel problem and also what impact does it have on
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u.s. policy in relation with those countries? >> one thing that i want to make very clear is that a lot of people don't understand the difference between decriminalization and -- decriminalization and legalization. what -- a lot of people talk about portugal having legalized -- they have decriminalized meaning that if you are busted with a couple of joints are not going to jail. it's like getting a traffic ticket. it's still illegal in every country in the world to manufacture and produce all these different drugs. mexico itself quietly decriminalized personal use, i mean everything, everything, and the local drug markets in mexico have exploded. the drug use in juarez has actually gone up so unless you want to truly legalize, meaning from growing the poppy to
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injecting it into your arm and and make all of that legal for all of the drugs, only that, and you have to have it happened several countries. as far as the u.s. taking a look at other countries, don't really think it will make that much of an impact. there is that whole little thing called the united nations single convention against illegal drugs and we are one of the signatories along with 186 other countries and that requires that all signatory countries have anti-drug policies. bolivia just pulled out of that because they are big on pro-illegal coca and having the legal market but they want to go back in. they want the u.n. to make changes to it and bolivia relatively speaking or are standing on the international, the international world there's really not that high so no one is seeing a decline but the u.s. has a long moral history of being anti-drug. so i think even if all of latin america were to decriminalize or
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looking at the corolla station i don't think the u.s. would change their mind. >> overhear. >> the or mr. laufer. you talked about changing our policies to allow those we love to cross the border and focus on keeping out those we don't want. you may have answered this in part but how do you distinguish between them? >> you distinguish between them with concern and accepting the fact that you are going to make some mistakes but we do have some method of identification that you are going to accept, then that will allow you to have some sort of a check on the person. then you ought to be able to determine who you want to have been then and who you don't than we do that with countries all over the world that we allow much easier passage into this country. a passport or a card, gas and get it in this room and let's search you or whatever it takes
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so you're happy that the person who is coming in is probably okay. but that way, when the border patrol is out there looking for people that are running you can be pretty sure they are somebody we don't want and hear. >> wouldn't that open it up for the cartels to hire people to get these cards? >> of course and there are probably some of you that will drive home tonight over the legal limit because you stop off at a bar and maybe some of you that drove here, and your licenses have been revoked. you probably went over 65 on the freeway or whatever the speed limit is underway here. of course. it isn't perfect but what we have now is a disaster. it's chaos. it's a human tragedy. it is causing nothing but problems, so i say let's try something different and this is
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the idea i've come up with. >> thank you. i would like to see that happen. [applause] >> i think that brings us to the outcome is that right? we have no time left. the authors are going to -- tenth b for so those of you that's a question to you can make your authors down there and maybe buy some books. [applause] >> the pope has a very famous way of being determined dead and that is what the camera linger which is a cardinal level post. the pope takes this person in this person decides when the pope is dead. he had spent three times in the head with a hammer and cause that his baptismal name, which is carried out by the romans. even today the pope isn't dead
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and it's very complicated story that i don't think people know what very complicated people. and robert kennedy and lyndon johnson. and i had to really go into that and try to explain it because it is part of the story all the way through the end of johnson's presidency. that is done and i suppose chronologically at the moment johnson is passing the 1965 voting rights act. and that sort of this in one way or enough to now. >> in the wake of u.s. troop withdraws from iraq in december, the middle east institute in washington on friday hosted a session examining the current state of u.s. iraq relations.
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but the challenges and opportunities ahead in the impact a troop drawdown has had on u.s. employees in the region. this is about 90 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> today marks the first of five panels on iraq that mei will be presented over the course of the next six months. we'll be looking at this unique complex relationship between iraq and the u.s. to examine important role of iraq in the region at iraq's relationship with its neighbors and the evolving political and economic developments as they are. if yours is prompted by the relation that iraq is really genetically fallen off the front pages over the course of the last year as its neighbors said that staged iraq with their people's demands for democracy
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and reform. and what that may initially have given the media saturation of iraq that we've had for years, mei grew concerned that key developments unfolding this critical post-occupation phase might not get the attention here in washington that day so mary. so what do you hope to present the latest analysis of an insight into the way -- insight into a back and nsa continue to shine a spotlight on a country that is so critical to u.s. interests in the middle east. keep an eye on your inbox. we will be rolling out panels every six to eight weeks. and i want to recognize and welcome our panelists. ambassador jeffrey "after words" come ambassador feisal istrabadi from indiana for he teaches at any university in mei scholar, daniel serwer. thank you for taking your time
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out of your very busy schedules to join us in sharing sites on iraq with us. we are very fortunate to have been here with us today. these are three individuals who put a lot of time, thought and energy into the topic of iraq in his own remarkable diplomatic achievements and understanding of what it takes to build strong alliances and relationships make them supremely qualified to discuss this topic. i know that i am not a fun and very much looking forward to their presentations. i also want to think shell and tracy nicknamed out shell for the support of this program to highlight developments in iraq. we couldn't be doing it without their encouragement and backing. see thank you rematch. and i'd like to end the show to our wonderful moderator, charles dunn who is a program director for the middle east and north africa at freedom house, who is himself an mei and in iraq director for the nsc from 2005
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until 2007 and ensure he will also be weighing in on this very important topic today. see thank you, charles. i handed over to you. >> okay, thank you very, very much, kate. thank you for the middle east institute for lunch in this very significant and valuable series on iraq. as kate noted, iraq is largely vanished from the front pages of newspapers that still remain vitally important country to the u.s. into regional interests. many iraqis regard the forcible overthrow saddam hussein and the struggle to build an democracy in the heart of the middle east is a real inspiration for the air of spring. whether they are right or not, iraq continues to undergo vast political changes will have important effects for the rest of the region. what role the united states will play going forward, however, is a matter for open debate.
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the u.s. withdraw from iraq late last year without an agreement for a substantial following u.s. troop presence has led many in washington as well as in iraq to question the u.s. commitment at a time of significant regional political ferment and the prospects of possible military confrontation with iran. finding another concerns have forced the u.s. sudan says it's plain diplomatic presence in the country. so the u.s. embassy in baghdad remains the largest in the world hear the administration is engaged in iraq's leaders to very senior levels as it seeks to help iraqis work for political different to. and to put flesh on the bones of this strategic framework agreement. if fully implemented, disagreement, ds if they would constitute the foundation of perhaps the most ambitious u.s. bilateral relationship with any other state. we are fortunate as kate said to have three leading experts upon
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experience on the politics of iraq here today to help us understand these and other issues. first, ambassador jeffrey feltman has served as secretary of state for near eastern affairs and 2009. ambassador feltman service principal deputy assistant secretary in the nea bureau as u.s. ambassador to lebanon and iraq. as head of coalition provisional authority thought this. ambassador feisal istrabadi service representative for iraq at the united nations from 2004 until 2007. he is currently the founding director of the center for study of the middle east at the indiana university bloomington. prior to his diplomatic employment, ambassador istrabadi served as foreign affairs and is also principal legal drafter of iraq's interim constitution. and dino serwer is a skull at the middle east institute is so a senior professor of conflict
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management and senior fellow for transatlantic relations at the johns hopkins school of advanced international studies. dan was vice president for peace and stability operations at the u.s. institute of peace from 1998 until 2009. in 2004 he established the usip office in baghdad where it is continue to operate. he has made more than a dozen trips to iraq in the past eight years to work on mitigating ethnic and sectarian conflict. please join me in welcoming speakers not be as turn it over to ambassador feltman. [applause] >> okay, charles, thank you for this opportunity to see many old friends, and many colleagues and basically a whole room of iraq experts and those interested in iraq. we can argue whether iraq is on the front pages or not, but i can assure you it's in the
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hallways of near east affairs within the u.s. government, iraq has not disappeared from the inboxes and is still very important relationship we are pursuing. for lack of a better term than because i'm his diplomatic, i will say it is an exciting time. for those of us focused on the middle east, and especially for those focused on iraq. in recent years, particularly over this past year, we've seen tremendous change, both in the region and in terms of relationship with iraq. and they make that change, i have heard and i'm sure we'll hear today, many probing questions about iraq and about our engagement there. i would like to use my time to review three of the questions that i hear most frequently. the first question that i hear, not only here in washington but as they travel through the region is, how did you abandon iraq iran? and make no mistake the withdraw
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of u.s. troops in december 2011 marks indeed a significant milestone in our relationship and there is much debate here in sin and in iraq as well as in the region about what the american president posed december 2011 should look like. but in the end, we and we means the united states and iraq mutually agreed that we should implement the terms of our security agreement and remaining u.s. troops should depart iraq on schedule. for close to a decade, the relationship between iraq and the united states was defined primarily in security terms. yet during this time, the state department and civilian agencies like department of justice, commerce, energy, homeland security, agriculture and usaid and others are laying the groundwork for the next phase of the relationship, one that encompasses a broad range of mutual interest.
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ultimately, relationship more complex and more robust. and we are moving outward with an expansive agenda that is guided by that agreement to charles dunn, an agreement signed in november 2008 at codifies civilian cooperation over a broad range of areas. security agreement that was signed at the same time has now expired, but the strategic framework agreement and doers. now it is a mistake to assume that the united states can only have influence in a country of the united states has 100,000 troops on the ground. i think that the government, president barzani said the same in washington last week. the united states remains today a critical interlocutor among the political parties in iraq. given regional tensions, the united states is in fact playing
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an integral role as an honest broker in iraq and i can tell you from my own experience that the words honest broker are not used by iraq used to describe iran. it's also wrong to do so bad because our troops have depart a comment that our security, our defense relationship with iraq is ended. iraq has purchased billions of dollars of u.s. equipment and training the military education that goes with that. this will, of necessity, lead to long-term defense ties. so our engagement today is based on a sense of partnership, shared interests and objectives and respect for each other as sovereign nations. iraq and the united states shared elemental goal, a united, self-reliant, democratic and prosperous iraq that is well integrated in the region with the government that is accountable to and serves the
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needs of the iraqi people. under the strategic framework agreement, iraq and the united states continue to work together at the most senior levels of government on a wide range of issues turned governance and the rule of law to economic education to energy and environment. moreover ambassador jim jeffrey and his staff see the prime minister, his top aides and a full spectrum of iraqi political leaders and president telefon eight, speaker in the gac, a host of others routinely. this pays for level of access is greater than our embassies typically enjoyed anywhere else in the world. so i also fear that our plans to reduce the size of a diplomat that for a minute back is also the site of opinion in a peer but the opposite in fact is the case. starting several years ago we planned conservatively and
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preparing for what was the biggest military civilian transition in u.s. history since the marshall plan. planning was done in the context of significant uncertainties. for the security and certainty spirits of planning was underway, both our troops and our diplomatic staff were subjected to frequent rocket fire ieds and the like could this require planning for a large complex of self sufficient diplomatic platform to manage any and all security scenarios. it also meant engaging an enormous number of contracts to the support that the county commission throughout the country. we planned the line however to normalize that platform as conditions permitted, reducing contractors, hiring iraqis and consolidating operations. this is the second phase of transition that is now beginning. we will retain at the end of the
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second day one of the most robust and large diplomatic presences in the world. we've heard many times over the years how iraq is turning into a rant because evidence to suggest otherwise, even after the departure of u.s. troops, review of data points makes this clear. before iraq's 2010 elections, iran tried to push all of iraq's shia political groups into a single political bloc guided by tehran. that field. after the elections, iran tried to push iraq sheet to form a government only with iraq's kurds and excluding the predominantly sunni parties. that failed. iran opposed iraq's partnership with leading international oil companies in the development of iraq's hydrocarbon resources. iraqis understood that this partnership with international oil companies was vital to iraq's successful development of its oil site you're been very
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much in iraq's interest in as a result, iraq's oil production is increasing steadily compared to 2009, for example, iraq now persuaded 300,000 additional barrels of new oil on the world market every day in iraq is one of the few countries that has the potential and the plans to greatly increase production. this is one of the most important fact druce bolstering iraq's sovereignty and the ability to resist iran's meddling. ultimately, while iran and iraq they appear to be closer than we and many of iraq's neighbors would like, one thing we've learned over eight years of engagement with iraq is that the majority of iraqis leaders are first and foremost iraqi nationalists to resist external pressures from any quarter, including iran.
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indeed even a cursory examination of relations between the two countries will remind us that they have a long history of rivalry and competition. iraq's leaders have made it clear that today they desire peaceful and normal relations with iran, just as they do with their other neighbors. iran is actively working to forge stronger relations with its gulf neighbors and in particular is well with the broader international community. in this area and trying to help iraq forge deeper relations with neighbors and the international community, obviously the united states is far more to offer iraq than iran does. we provide a tremendous diplomatic support to improve relations with its immediate gulf neighbors and were probably in the regions. it is worth noting the fact that recently hosted the arab league summit, something iraq has not done in 20 years and unlike in some previous era gatherings, the iranian regime is not
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invited us to just are as iran's best friend, bishara al-assad invited. we've seen several important steps toward saudi iraqi reconciliation in recent months. obviously much barneys to be done. but there've been high-level diplomatic exchanges with the naming of the saudi ambassador co-to baghdad, the first since 1991 and iraq is made to my progress with kuwait resolving long-standing issues regarding the border in kuwait airways. iraq also enjoys a deep relationship with turkey and developing stronger economic ties with jordan and beyond. and mr. maliki recently traveled to japan and korea to develop stronger economic trade ties. so i don't want to gloss over the tensions iraq has with its neighbors. but we are pressing those concerns to address disagreements directly as has happened with kuwait and the
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general trend is positive. all you have to do is look next door at iran and iran's international relations to see what is a pretty dramatic contrast. the second question -- at one address quite as fun as the first. the second question, is iraq's leading toward dictatorship? i hear this a lot. there's great debate and discussion in the region and was informed circles here in washington about whether iraq is on the track to return to the days of the leadership and authoritarianism. many of you are quite familiar with the current political tensions between iraq, shia, sunni and kurdish leaders and these tensions boil to the surface as u.s. troops departed in december. we are concerned that these tensions as well. we strongly support president talabani's efforts to bring political leaders together in a
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national dialect to discuss outstanding issues and resolutions in matters consistent with the iraqi constitution. this dialogue is critical to moving the country forward. like many iraqis, we are also troubled when iraq or any country institutions that are central to independent government operations such as let oil commissions come under judicial or executive rank pressure. but it bears mentioning how political parties are addressing their disagreements and constitutional issues themselves. the political system hasn't broken down. politicians continue to look to parliamentary debate on public discussion in the media and private negotiations to find consensus solutions. the government is still functioning. the current tensions in iraq are being resolved by politics rather than withdraw from the process and resort to violence.
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iraqis lanter returned to pull some 23rd turning and national polls in 2014. it is vital to have the opportunity to participate in free and fair elections. iraqi democracy is strengthened every time they cast their votes. third question that i hear and the last question, is iraq going to unravel in the future? known within the administration underestimates the many challenges iraq faces in the years ahead, but his vice president threatens national security adviser tony lake and a month ago, iraq today is less violent, more democratic and more prosperous in the united states were deeply engaged than anytime in recent history. in 2009 u.s. troops withdrew from iraq cities, many predicted chaos and rising violence, the plants declined. wagered on 50,000 troops in august 2010 many similar
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predictions in violence declined again and iraqi security forces assumed the lead in countering acts of terrorism. from august 2010 until december december 2011 the united states continue devising training and assisting iraqi security forces as we steadily decreased our troop presence down to zero. all the while iraqi security forces continued their mission to protect the iraqi population and have largely succeeded in doing so. march 2012 was apparently, according to iraqi statistics though he spent a month in iraq since 2003. as iraqi security forces continued to build capacity with boyfriends can decline even further. think about 2007. sunni politicians which are from the political process for a boycott that lasted over 15 months. now despite continuing tensions iraq's leaders have committed to a political process to address
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difficult issues to discussions rather than violence of disengagement. we see the final of the national level come up with subnational level. for example, kurdish parties ended their two-year boycott at the provincial council showing a commitment to resolving the status of disputed areas to politics. i did not cite these political and security gains to gloss over the herculean tasks that the iraqis have ahead of them. but there has been substantial progress and we must acknowledge this. a few closing comments. when i think back to progress that iraq has made in the past decade, i'm struck by how far iraq has come. iraq stagnated in 1890 after a decade of ill-conceived wars, suffering under leadership of dictatorship whose policies left iraq under crushing international sanctions. from 2006 until 2007 can iraq was wracked by a bloody civil war pitting sunni and shia.
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but in 2012 if they mention, baghdad has been able to successfully hold an air of summit, political parties to mitigation political process despite the tensions and problems. iraq is on the path to resolving outstanding disputes with kuwait, lives of violence have hit historic lows. oil production from 2009 has risen from 2.4 million until 2.8 million barrels a day and is rising. there remain significant challenges. there are two political challenges iraq's leaders must address. and additionally, iraq will have to create more widely shared economic opportunity battle corruption. we are in an excellent place to work with our iraqi partners to help them accomplish these goals and build on the progress we've seen in iraq to strengthen its place as a pluralistic arab democracy for the first time in its history. one final note if i may. many of us in this room have for
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much of the past decade locus deep late on iraq's internal politics, internal security, iraq's internal economics. my current position in the state department reminds me of how important it is to see iraq as an integral part of the region in which the country is located. arab politics tend to transcend national boundaries. what happens in one arab country often has echoes in another and iraq is no exception. this means that many of the decisions iraqi leaders make, many we may question? i've collated by their understanding not only iraq's internal dynamics, but is iraq's the favorite. at this unique moment in the history of the middle east, as we seek to preserve and advance u.s. interests in arab world that is undergoing fundamental and still unpredictable transitions, it is worth
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remembering, yes the unique nature of how we got to where we are today in iraq but it's also worth remembering iraq is not the only country in the arab world or the governed are developing a profoundly different relationship with the governors that have existed for decades. there's obviously risks to u.s. interests in these transitions in iraq and elsewhere, but also opportunities to build deeper and more sustainable relationships based on mutual respect and shared interests. [applause] >> thank you very much, ambassador feltman. feisal istrabadi
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>> good afternoon. it's a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. i want to thank the middle east institute and ms. seelye for the invitation to be with you today. i also want to thank shell for making this event possible. i am honored to be on the same title as ambassador feltman and mr. don feltman and mr. don feltman and mr. don become each of whom have significant become each of whom have significant experience in iraq. i should point out that the remarks that i am making today, the views i express today are my own. they do not represent those of institution for which i am now or have previously been affiliated. my central thesis today, which
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at least i think we'll get a good debate going -- excuse me, will be the u.s. -- that while the u.s. iraq relationship is governed by a strategic framework agreement of which ambassador feltman alluded, it is not consistent with that agreement. i say that in three ways. first, rhetoric aside, the obama administration continuing the policy of the bush administration. i want to emphasize that. continuing the policy of the bush administration has abandoned the promotion of democracy in iraq as a strategic objective. second, rather than promoting development of institutions of government in a democratic framework, the current policy also in my judgment a continuation of the previous administration -- let me start
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that again. rather than promoting development of institutions of government in a democratic framework, the current policy is that of supporting the current incumbent prime minister of iraq personally, thereby isolating itself, that is the united states isolates itself in my judgment from the balance of the iraqi political class and indeed from virtually all of the regional powers at least on the issue of iraq with the exception of iran, wherein a few the u.s. policy appears to be too at a minimum ensure no confrontation with iran and iraq.
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i would also argue that u.s. policy of continuing to back the current incumbent prime minister in iraq, even as his rule has become increasingly authoritarian threatens to undermine iraq's unity, a prospect that should, to paraphrase john sends to focus the minds of u.s. policymakers wonderfully. let me turn now to these points. let me begin by addressing the strategic framework and worse relative to my comments. section 21 of the strategic framework agreement commits the united states to ensuring its maximum efforts to support and strengthen iraq's democracy and its democratic institutions as defined in establishing the iraqi constitution and in so
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doing i continue to quote enhance iraq's capability to protect these institutions. that is the democratic institutions against all internal, against all internal and external threats. note that it is the protection of institutions of democratic constitutional government that the united states is committed to. i believe that fulfilling the general approach, the u.s. administration in 2010 brokered the agreement between all the political parties, all the parliamentary political parties. the agreement set up a strategic policy counsel, which was to have actual oversight over the government.
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it was to have real decision-making authority and it was to be presided over by the individual, the former interim prime minister of iraq who had won a plurality of seats, his list had won a plurality of seats in parliament. at a federal parliamentary agree to pay us and indeed signing the agreement, including the incumbent prime minister, and the agreement was he would then continue to be prime minister if he indeed has. the government was formed in december 2011 on the base case that airedale agreement. none of the significant terms i would argue with the agreement and right now i don't have time to go into them have been put into effect. there is no counsel, et cetera.
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more to the point, there is still as i speak here now, a year and half after government was formed, more than two years now after the march 2010 election, there is still no permanent appointments to any of the national security portfolios in iraq. the defense minister coming up interior minister and no minister of national security. whether the prime minister held each of those positions temporarily and then later appointed third of cronies from his own list, the acting minister of defense. at the iraqi minister of culture happens to be from the prime minister state of the law list and so on. six candidates who have been put forward for that position have been rejected by the prime
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minister. so the prime minister control is de facto the entire security infrastructure of the state. those who know a little sound vain about iraq before 2003 will remember that was precisely how saddam hussein came to power. i'm not suggesting that nouri al-maliki now possesses the position saddam hussein occupation 2009, but if we have time and question-and-answer, i think a convincing and persuasive argument that nouri al-maliki is where saddam hussein was fire saddam hussein was in 1970, you bet i can add that to shift focus on minds wonderfully. all independent agencies in iraq, thanks to a movie of the constitutional court are now under the direct supervision of
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the prime minister, notwithstanding what the constitution actually says is parliament has oversight. the constitutional court found there was an ambiguity in oversight bands and therefore they should report directly to the executive. why? because that is what the court said. there is a justification, even if there was ambiguity for saying it is the executive should have oversight over these institutions. this includes the anticorruption commission, the elections commission and it includes the central bank of iraq. i would say that all the reforms. i can't think of a significant one. all the reforms for transparency and governance they were put into place by the cpa have now been judicially overturned in
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iraq. it is significant to me that within 24 to 48 hours after returning from an official state visit or at least an official visit with the president with the president of the united states come president of the united states, nouri al-maliki return to prosper and his government proffer charges against a sitting vice president of iraq. it is an jumbling from the sitting vice president iraq faces charges of which if he is convicted he faces death by hanging. he is also the prime minister attempting to a parliament withdraw confidence in another member, of course the vice president as a member of the her right the last. the current prime minister is also currently attempting to parliament withdraw confidence
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in the deputy prime minister of iraq, also from the herat. he is now barred from entering the council of ministers building and from entering cabinet meetings. if he tries to get and from the police will bar him from entering the building. forgive me if that doesn't sound like a functional political system in iraq. it sounds rather dysfunctional to me. what do i know. but what is striking, what is striking has been the silence of the u.s. administration on these issues. certainly it is public silence and there's more that i would say about that. but i will stay within the time, so i will do that. but he talked about the isolation of the u.s. both internally and iraq and within the region. i want to refer to tony
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lincoln's comment that ambassador feltman are for two that iraq is more democratic and more prosperous than anytime in recent history. i have to say that remark strikes me as sort of rumsfeld in an audacity. i mean, last week, the president of the kurdistan regional government gave an interview to the london-based paper and was reported in english. he stated iraq is moving towards a catastrophe, a return to dictatorship. he stated that it was unacceptable that the prime minister controlled the national security portfolio. he stated that while iraq is now building a million men armed security force, a security force has his loyalty personally to the prime minister not to the state of iraq and that too is
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unacceptable. he stated if conditions prevail and here i think president by sandy was choosing his words very, very, very carefully as he always does, if these conditions continue to prevail, he would call a referendum on kurdish independence. now back to you ought to focus our minds wonderfully. the outgoing -- adversary, the former intern prime minister allawi we have said the current government of iraq is using the judiciary to promote corruption and brutality in iraq and to arrest opponents and reward cronies. so that a saudi, and amy may not be familiar with, the former head of an independent vendor of president currently in the former head of the anticorruption commission has said iraq is developing into a new dictatorship through the
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courts. he notes that when he was the head of the anticorruption commission he was pressured by the prime minister's office to fabricate charges against opponents of the prime minister and he knows that the prime minister has pressured the constitutional court to place the anticorruption commission under his control, which indeed it did. now i don't have time to detail now the isolation of the u.s. policy vis-à-vis iraq regionally, but let me note one fat. technically three fax. the current vice president of iraq who had been kind of pulled up in iraq has been received formally as vice president of iraq in saudi arabia and turkey, all of which after the arab
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summit is currently in turkey. what should the u.s. policy be? i probably have a couple minutes left. that's what i want to focus on. this seems to me that, you know, u.s. policy -- i take it that the u.s. is never better than what it stands up for his ideals. and i truly believe that. so what should u.s. policy be? well, it should be to encourage stability in iraq. but the stability name? mubarak ruled for 30 years. saddam ruled for 35 years. i take it that is not the stability we need. i hope it isn't. there is a dialogue happening in iraq and it started before the 2010 elections to get us over
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this beautiful of the sunni kurd defied. we used to say in 2003 that we didn't want to weaponization of iraq. the lebanese now say they don't want the iraq vacation of lebanon. there was a dialogue to try and get us beyond that in iraq. it seems to be the united states again continuing the bush administration's policy is still stuck in the mode of thinking if we just say this to the shia and the kurd, rather than look in on iraq in the way at least i think most arab iraqis want to think of it, just to see if iraq cannot shia iraqi sunni iraq, i still don't understand why we can't get past that dynamic when i believe we can talk about this in a question-and-answer period, most iraqis want to get beyond
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that. we must promote -- we together, iraq is in the united states ought to promote the existence of institution. if you create national institution, that's how you lessen tensions between the communities. some of what is the prime minister of iraq done to sms tensions? what is he going to promote national reconciliation? who's been prime minister for six years now. what has he done? we can't even agree in iraq, to name to which ambassador feltman alluded in a statement, the head of the shia coalition calls at sort of a gathering. when not used the conference to describe it. really as my teenage daughter would say.
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the plot to bnl and with this. i know i'm over my time. to call out to be a seems to me that both united states played in the former soviet union are not perfect results, better results in some post-soviet states than in others. but nonetheless, the united states supported genuine democratic reforms, not the form of democracy. mubarak and saddam used to have elections. the united states supported diversification of the economy and does not focus just on energy. i believe u.s. policy today is focused exclusively on oil and that is not, i don't think certainly not a long-term national interest of iran to engender the next rentier states. and the united states coaxes. i tell you, the united states can never go wrong in its
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international relations and i don't think this is a pollyanna view. you can never go wrong standing up for his ideals. iraq i think has tremendous influence in iraq. ambassador feltman said the same thing, so i won't repeat some of the arguments here. i would like to say and i'll finish up this comment that i recognize this as an election year here in the united states. and in what will no doubt be a very hotly contested election. still, withdrawal is not a policy. the u.s. has vital strategic interests in the area that include, but are not limited to oil. the u.s. has a self committed itself -- has itself committed itself to promoting democracy and growth of its institutions in iraq. it is also the only way iraq can become a genuinely stable functioning state again.
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best, u.s. ideals and its national interests in the region coalesce in the promotion of true, constitutional democracy in iraq. we ought not squander that opportunity. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much, ambassador. >> mr. serwer. >> good afternoon. it's a real pleasure to be here and and a privilege to share the podium with ambassador feltman and ambassador istrabadi. after two such striking presentations, you'll wonder where i'm going to locate myself. last night it's going to be in the middle. but i hope all is the surprise you, but i hope a rational middle. i too am going to start off with
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tony blanket statement. iraq today is less violent, more democratic, more prosperous than anytime in recent history. there are actually some indications that violence, especially al qaeda and iraq violence is up since late last year. but even if true, tony statement sets a very low bar and the games are certainly still reversible. if our goal is and here i quote, a sovereign, stable, reliant self-reliant country with representative government that could become a partner in the region and no safe haven for terrorists, we're just not there yet. we have a lot of work to do. on security, iraq still endures unacceptably high number of attacks. as for months motivated, unquestionably much lower than they were at the peak.
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but there's still sufficient to keep sectarian questions high, which is what al gore said he intended in its recent video. the economy is not really in good shape. higher iraqi oil production up spikes the budget and moderates world prices, which americans fight, but high oil production does not make an economy. democracy in iraq is not yet include an independent judiciary, protection of basic human rights, vigorous parliamentary oversight, affected provincial and local governments or fulfillment of many constitutionally mandated procedures. well, were not area for sure. there are threats out there and i think we have to be clear about what they are. first is the the threat of break down, and iraq that becomes
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chaotic and dysfunctional, he more or less failed state, frankly somewhat like the one maliki took over in 2006. and it is important to remember that certainly from then until now, there has been some progress. second is the threat breakup and iraq that fragments along ethnic and sick terry and minds with very broad regional consequences as each of the neighbors seeks advantage. in the third is the one refocused on here so far today and i intend to continue to focus on, which is autocracy. the fear of break down or break a is what motivates maliki or maybe someone else to centralize power and refused to transfer in accordance with the will of iraq's people expressed an verifiably free and fair elections. none of these iraq's broken up,
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broken down autocratic can be the kind of partner of the united states seeks. but it is the third possibility that is really troubling at the moment. we need in iraq that respects the rights and will of its people. the question now and here i have anonymous said these to ambassador feltman is one influence to have apart from the usual tip might jawboning, which jim jeffrey and the embassy had we have mastered the on the shadow of a doubt. i want to take a look at the elements of american influence in today's iraq. i summarize them this way. arms, aid, oil and for that a
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better term i would call relationships. let me explain. arms transfers. some people say give us leverage. we should make pervading our support conditional on iraqi adherence to democratic norms for meaningful power-sharing or depoliticization of the security forces. this seems to be easy to say in very difficult to do. once you've embarked on a program like transferring f-16s over a period, i think decades, it is going to take a big issue to override the vested interests involved and conditionality would immediately encourage the iraqis to go get their arms elsewhere. the best we can do it seems to me is to make it absolutely clear, i'd prefer in writing in advance, that none of the weapons systems the u.s. provides can be used against iraq's own citizens without access -- while exercising their
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legal rights. we should also make it clear that we will cooperate only with a professional army under civilian control. but beyond that, it seems to me iraq's specific governing arrangements are no longer hours to determine so long as they may remain representative and democratic. i challenged the notion. i know the embassy did a great job in the area bill notions, but i challenged the notion that we can impose power-sharing on maliki when maliki is democratically elected and how is a democratic majority in parliament. that's the real problem in iraq is the results of the election and the postelection maneuvering, which i've given him the majority that he has made it quite impossible to form
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an alternative majority in the parliament. at least nobody's figured it out so far. it is a more flexible tools and arms transfers. it should be targeted in my view towards democracy and rule of law. i would focus in particular on encouraging more independent judiciary and promoting a civil society that will demand real democracy of carefully monitoring government expenditures on corruption. ..
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is a prerequisite this, will see that as an instrumental obstacle. i see it as a challenge worth overcoming his. iraq hit should be tied by pipelines to turkey at the mediterranean not to harm those and i am also told by people that it's more economic to take the oeo out by pipeline to the north and west with. finally, relationships. american influence inside iraq who comes in part from good relationships with the main players obvious plight of declining exception. we are a kind of convening power with an iraq and they may still recent deutsch passion the iraqi is of most strikes, and i
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include look to the americans for protection. iraqi is of all stripes believe that the united states is of vital to re-establishing the country's regional role and they are correct. we should be ready and willing to help expecting however that iraq will align with the united states where it counts. right now, that means supporting the of p5 plus one effort and the arab league plan. and it means pumping as much oil as possible into the world market concerned with the prospect of war with iran. just a word in conclusion about the long-term maliki, whatever his virtues and vices is not forever of democracy survives in
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iraq and i think the previous speaker is absolutely correct to point to the strategic framework agreement as the proper vehicle for establishing that long-term relationship to ensure that our institution and iraq and's institutions, our economy in iraq's economy, our culture in iraq's economy are tied closely together. i haven't met an iraqi who doesn't raise this with me who is satisfied with the degree of focus and implementation of the strategic framework agreement by the united states and i have to tell you it is hard for the united states to do these things there's a lot in the strategic framework agreement for which you need to reach beyond
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government and beyond the stovepipes of government in order to make it effective, educational cooperation, cultural cooperation, business cooperation, and i don't think we are very good at it. it's only in iraq we are not very good at it a lot of places. so why have the impression that we have still not learned to fully exploit the potential of this agreement and to sharply increase the interconnectedness between iraq and the united states and as i said those words and murray slaughter's addition to the concept of soft power she's added interconnectedness as a new kind of power and i do think it's very important, particularly important if iraq. thank you. [applause]
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i want to thank all three of the speakers that are insightful and provocative presentations. when i was working in the staff for 2005 to the essence of an ibm used to these decisions and and a large to see that not much has changed. i was very interested in the speaker's remarks how we are engaging and the investor went to the extent which the government has maintained high level issues that are facing many iraqi is and at the same time i'm very interested in the comments on the influence and this raises a question i will throw out to the speakers are we losing the leader using all of the influence in iraq right now? we are trying to leverage the
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relationship. are we doing the same thing in their relationship with the provincial players to build into the burgeoning relationship with iraq respect for the civilian control over the military for example and respect for human rights and in this connection are we doing enough to help support the development of the democracy respect for human rights not only on the national level will of the provincial level and i would note in the last few years are for democracy and governance fer usaid has experienced sharp declines as the u.s. presence has gone down. so i would be interested in their reactions and particularly their in saigon what we should be doing to leverage the enormous influence i think we have in iraq and then i will open up to questions after that.
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seabeck would anybody like to take a shot at that. >> well, you know, i mean i guess it means it depends what you mean by we have influence and virtue of the fact that we are meeting. the ambassador of the united states to meet anybody he wants to meet with from the president on down. that's not the issue and anybody for that matter the question is what is the policy that is being advocated in those meetings? what i see happening in iraq to think in terms of u.s. policy a think there is an 80% solution the conservatives came up with in the bush administration, and the question that i was asked by somebody who works on these
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issues at the time inside the white house in 2010 is, and i am quoting, how can we call what? so the question is sure he that influence as the ambassador said you don't need 150,000 troops when you have 150,000 troops iraq will run the place but to have influence. the question is what is the policy and the rest falls into place from their. >> i think i made it very clear that we are not doing enough to support space institutions. it's not an easy thing to do. i daresay some of the things we support like the review by maliki is one of the most serious threats to his call on
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iraq and it isn't a way to be easy to do but i think we need to do it and to do it i think we need to stop doing things that the iraqis should do for themselves and very much in that category. >> i think we need to approach this with a bit of humility. it's worth remembering that those the ambassadors as we of 150,000 troops in your words we are running the country, things like the hydrocarbon wally, the boundaries, the list goes on, not able to be resolved when we were running the country so i think it is worth looking at this with a bit. ultimately the iraqis are going to determine the future of iraq, and we are going to use our influence to promote house best we can our objectives and iraq which are based on this goal of
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the democratic united self-reliant prosperous iraq. how this turns out matters deeply to us for all sorts of reasons everybody here knows but we have to recognize our ability to dictate outcomes of iraq or anywhere else is quite limited. i think that our influence -- anywhere in the world we need to be looking at how to influence and how to increase our engagement. where are the neglected parts we need to start dealing with, so we don't set up here and say that we are doing absolutely everything we could be doing in iraq. i'm sure there are things we should be doing but we are doing a lot through the consulates and the large embassy through engagement at the provincial and national level. we are think the only outside power in iraq that is seen as
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close as they've come to an honest broker. iran is a scene that we and the other neighbors are not seen of land that gives us an influence over the debate. in terms of assistance i don't know what is on the web site today but the focus of the remaining economic support funds that we are doing in iraq are largely based on capacity building to support institutions not based on capital projects and those investments. they are done to try to unleash the iraqi capital and talent. >> if i may just jury quickly, i understand how the influence is limited. and the ambassador says the iraqis have to decide these things. okay. it's not as if the united states is acting as a neutral broker. i don't believe they're seen as an impartial broker. you have the iraqi is just not
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started announced will deal with the ambassador designated in iraq because he's too close to maliki. this is a serious thing, and it's because the united states isn't taking a position its chosen as a previous administration did winners and losers, and it's working to achieve these goals and iraq have come and i think this is essential if the power of the united states is limited the first will has to be first, do no harm. >> thank you for a much. we will do is open to questions and a bundle the questions to the at the time i will ask you to stand and identify yourself and keep your questions very brief and to the point and we can get to as many as possible
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and over here on the back. >> hello from the atlantic council and our new web site on the middle east. i want to ask a little bit about whether this is kind of dramatic or something real in terms of the threat to have an independence referendum and so on. he made a number of appearances in washington last week, and he talked about this lot. is this just because the kurds and the central government are fighting over the contract, is it something deeper and what can they do to help resolve this problem? >> about dumping arms inside iraq without any control over that and somehow the military relationship with iraq. obviously that is a dangerous
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precedent and not to the quick and the training and we have a monopoly on the world class training inside the military and also helps to build a relationship as well. but absent social which commits our soldiers to operate inside iraq to work they can never come back in. the state department anticipates trying to establish with iraq to permit the training of iraqis as the fundamental basis for that relationship. and the second question on business in general, it's clear in iraq if you want to talk about the u.s. military relationship, you go to the general. if you want to talk about the diplomatic relationship coming to go to the ambassador jeffrey. but unless we wanted the business relationship to be big oil and i don't think this administration wants it to be the foundation of our business relationship, who is the american inside of iraq waking up every morning saying on the
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business relationship with iraq that we want to build and foster to have as the basis of the long term relationship with iraq who is that person, what is his telephone number and is he a weeks y can call him right now? >> international usa. my question is following up on the reference going beyond the diplomatic owning on the questions of authoritarian as in a human-rights, what beyond that to the gentleman on the panel see as the points of engagement whether they are a point of engagement and utilize your not that can be utilized either by external government or by civil society to words and dancing as much as possible that human rights agenda and democratic agenda.
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>> a volunteer for the first question? >> his concerns on the same issues we are all talking about up here are serious. he made it clear in his public remarks, diplomatically can't talk about what he said privately but i can say his private comments were reflective of his public comments he's extremely concerned about the trends that my fellow speakers and i have talked about. but he also recognizes i believe the value to the population of iraqi kurdistan of the unity of iraq and the risks moved towards subornation pos. you could talk about the revenues, but for example that is an obvious one and people can
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talk about how fast it would take to replace the $11 billion of the federal budget, but the other thing is the kurdistan regional parties have right now a jury strong reliance with some of the sunni politicians and the would be at risk in the case of a referendum given the speed internal boundaries. we made it clear to the president that we understand the concerns, that we are committed to promoting the fulfillment of the long november 2010 committed to the constitutional arrangement that we use our influence to promote adherence to the constitutional arrangement but we you're doing this in a policy that is rooted in our strong support for iraq's unity under the federal system.
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>> one or two additional words, the problem isn't a referendum, he can hold the referendum any time he likes and we know what the results are going to be. the problem is recognition and he isn't going to get it. and then kurdistan is going to face a hostile turkey and i don't know if it matters of this point but hostile syria and iran or of iraq. it isn't going to work and would be a dead end and it's pointless to take your country down a dead-end like that especially when you lose $11 billion. specs before. >> i would like to address that if i may. i said i think the president chose his words carefully.
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he didn't threaten independence, a declaration of independence. he threatened a referendum, but the man chooses his words very carefully. is this about oil? absolutely not there's been a topple on zero oil. he's never ratchet it up the rhetoric publicly on this level. i am simply suggesting that if there is such a referendum he may have a recognition problem but iraq engenders immediately a legitimacy problem of gigantic proportions to get on turkey ten years ago mr. silver and i would have a great turkey would have been apoplectic on the issue of kurdish federalism in iraq. they have settled in very nicely
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on that issue now and economic relations between turkey and kurdistan, economic and political relations between turkey and kurdistan are outstanding and has better relationships those and better relationships with iman van baghdad does. so long as turkey proceeds the ambassador whether right or wrong, so long as turkey precedes that there is a developing baghdad, iran axis. it could well maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but not 25 or 40 years from now either. it might well accommodate itself to a buffer state between eight and a greater iran.
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>> the second question was on the state department anticipates the training purposes and also business engagement as well if i could ask ambassador feltman. >> what are the legal protections the u.s. military needs to continue the training program under the mfm and what is still outstanding in the program in the military assistance to the iraqi? and i'm just going to have to leave it to the lawyers. i will tell you that this has been a subject of much discussion between the state of defense at the many levels, but i frankly just am not up to speed on what the current state is. on business, i pick up the phone
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and i called jim and jeffrey or >> we also have a question on the point of engagement that could be utilized within the country. >> utilizing for the human rights purposes if i remember the question correctly. i think the final points of engagement are in a civil society and the opposition in parliament. frankly i don't see the iraqi government institutions are a strong point of engagement for human rights today. but i think that we should strengthen now as best we can both of the non-governmental organizations and frankly some of the opposition in parliament,
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which was rather human-rights oriented. >> thank you. >> very quickly, and i want or do any of this i will just say what i think the influence can be on economic issues and issues of trade and foreign investment which iraq desperately needs the united states has power iraq at least when i was in the ministry was talking to that entry into the world trade organization. that is a tremendous incentive and i agree arms supplies are an avenue and by the way, i think the president is looking down the road at an iraqi air force that he's not quite sure is when to be used only for external defense. and also, there are the levers regionally that i think the united states could make use of its agenda or a human rights
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agenda in iraq. >> thank you. >> what's take another batch of three questions and start over here and in the back. >> my question is about the relationship between mulkey and syria. it's true that he didn't invite to the summit but everyone told him that and his position since then has been supporting he doesn't want to arm the opposition and he's still in the other camp that you are supporting on syria. i was wondering if you could tell us anybody on the panel about the position and how much support he is giving. the other question is concerning the kurds, the relationship of the kurds but his interview came if you can tell us what kind of
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relationship you could see between. can you give us your affiliation, too, please? >> and the principal conductor don't ask me why i'm interested in politics. [applause] to read >> [inaudible] i have reasons to be interested in the relation to iraq in 2004 and 2012 and i chose to reside by the way for many reasons as
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of jan mabry, 2012. >> is there a distinct roles but we can actually consider? is this identified the policy-making different levels of the national policy over here or the policy role of some one is suggesting for america to have an iraq is this already suggested and how is this related to the foreign policy and who is this related to other regional rules and iraq such as reagan and so forth. is anyone suggesting the relationships are not? is this an issue where this is
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because of the so-called arab awakening? is it the kurdish awakening or otherwise? how are we going to deal with the kurdish providing to save possible hearing what is the status of the u.s. in that situation developing, and what is the distinct position with the regional influence? if they suggest trimming the iraqi army. >> thank you. i want to think the panelists for the wonderful remarks and presentation. my question mr. investor feltman. it's important to the region
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overall, one of the worries about iraq moving forward is what will happen in syria. estimate one of the biggest worries is the might double down in iraq and see it as more of a strategic depth for itself to respect if they come to the government and say that's a possibility what is the position? >> thank you. we have the first question on the mulkey relationship and support to a saudi and also the kurdish syrian relationship. ambassador, would you like to address that? >> you phrase the question that we discuss a lot which is the relationship there are several factors that go into the debate inside iraq. first of all, there is iraq's internal politics because syria becomes one of those elements that plays into iraq's internal
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politics where politicians accuse each other a certain sense based on how they stand on syria, so there's an internal dynamic in iraqi politics that comes from syria. there's also the fear of what could happen in the aftermath and suggested by one of our participants here today, what happens in the aftermath. people are worried. we hear this all the time about the pressure on iraq. there's also the fear of spillover into iraq. iraq has been a victim of sugar was exported from syria before the man you may remember in august of 2009 maliki was the one who apparently accused the syrians themselves blowing up the ministry among other things. so you have the iraqi dynamics, you have control coming of concern about spillover whatever
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the sum from syria, all these things play into this internal debate inside iraq when it comes to syria and we've had some pretty discussions with the prime minister and others about the situation and syria. i don't think based on my own conversations with the iraqi leaders and syria have any illusions out syria, about that as some and the regime to read the iraqi themselves are victims of that type of dictatorship and i think they see the regime for what it is. at this point, iraq after much debate has joined the arab consensus. unlike lebanon, iraq is supporting plan for syria and the joint u.n. special envoy for
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trying to resolve the issues in nasiriyah. but again, syria for iraq is partially a security issue and internal issue. iraq as a neighbor has certain sensitivities but at this point, iraq has tried the consensus on syria. >> [inaudible] if i may, i think that she's been careful not to allow the legitimate gains made in iraqi kurdistan to become embroiled in the internal dynamics of the kurdish issues and syria, turkey and iran. i think he's been very careful to avoid getting drawn into those dynamics, and i expect that he will continue to do so.
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this is vital to protect the institutions that are developing their it seems to me. it is worth noting that at the beginning when the government jury clearly was coming down and i agree with ambassador feltman it has been accepting the plan and so on the u.s. and the arab league plan. but at the beginning, even the president of the republic made a statement about our fear is the muslim brotherhood might come to power in iraq and you were sort of stunned the time because the vice president of iraq and of the muslim brotherhood salvi and vice president and the events unfolded as they did, of but that was before. so the iraqis have sort of come to this i think it's grudging and had more to do with trying
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to get more of the heads of state to show up in baghdad had more to do without than a strategic decision by iraq to the engage the system again. those are very different things. in distinction, the comments from the beginning were we stand with the people of syria, and that is -- i've not heard those kind of statements from any responsible iraqi official. >> maybe i can add a word on this. it seems to me feisal is right. but the iraqi sar concerned about and what makes them hesitate is what comes next. if there is a sectarian regime and syria that's not going to be
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a happy outcome from the iraqi point of view and frankly from the american point of view either. on the question of what makes the u.s. role distinct, i think it's clear that the democracy has been in iraq is going to be survived for two reasons that the iraqi is want it and that the americans support. >> - when we talk about the u.s. distinct role it's how the iraqi decision making works in the aftermath of the u.s. withdraw when we fulfil the commitments in the security agreement because there's been some important developments since the fulfillment of our commitments to withdraw troops by december, 2011. i think that the border issue
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we've long promoted its other gulf neighbors. we have the concept of iraq playing a central role in the region, a peaceful constructive role, not that iraq planned under saddam hussein where he is wrecking havoc in the region invading the neighbors and things like that. but there was some political challenges. you're iraqi would understand the political dynamics better than i do in terms of what does it mean, in terms of paying for the border demarcation and acknowledging the deals on the airlines and things like that. i fink these sort of things that we have been encouraging are easier for the rockies to take now than they were when we get troops there because if you were going to get politically difficult decision in terms of your own base when the troops are there some people could very easily say that you're taking it because the americans are telling you to.
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now we could provide counsel, advice, brokerage between iraq and its neighbors without having that overly of making it look as though it's an american dictator. so i don't think it's a coincidence that the kuwait breakthrough came through after the departure of the troops. but i also agree with the ambassador. i don't minimize the impact of this, on the iraqi decision making because it was important to iraq to have this on that in baghdad and it's important to us that the summit take place in baghdad to symbolize the reintegration into the region. >> thank you. i think we've come to the end of our time a little bit before the end of our time. i think all of you will have some questionnaires that were handed out the door. if you please kindly turn them in on your way out the would be helpful. please join me in thanking our distinguished panel. [applause]
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women in the lives of wilson, jefferson and train. panelists include authors kristie miller who wrote wilson's first ladies, virginia speed in her book the women jefferson loved by and laura skandera trombley discuss as mark twain's other woman the hidden story of his final years. the panel is moderated by judy.. this is an hour. o >> the lead off session of the tucson the festival. our session is called emergingoe from the shuttle's, women in ths lives of wilson, jefferson and twain jefferson and
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twain. i enter the temple. i teach in both english department and and a gender and women's studies and i will be your moderator for today. i sent the esteemed authors for questions to think about and they are free to range widely or to answer some of the specifically. so i'll just go through them quickly. what is the most intriguing discovery he made about your biographical subjects? what were the challenges of balancing the women's lives of the more famous men to whom they were attached. but audience did you imagine reading your book and how did this influence your writing? i bet they were thinking of a paying audience. and what is a mystery or question that still puzzles you about the wanted for the women quiet each of our authors has agreed to speak for eight minutes, which should be the thing that it's time for questions and answers.
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our first author is christy miller, who was a research fellow at the university of arizona south west center. she is the author of four books. her enormously popular biography, isabella greenway and enterprising woman was followed by a volume of friendship, letters between eleanor roosevelt and isabella greenway. today shall be focusing on her latest book, alan and edith, woodrow wilson's first ladies of the time i cannot eat it would be wilson's second first lady. [laughter] ..
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who is a secret woman president for 18 months. jian-li was wrong about all of these people. research i came to realize that woodrow wilson was a deeply passionate man.an. i discovered he had an eight year intimate relationship withe another woman during his first marriageth his first marriage. now i was surprised but that wasn't really an intriguing discovery because it was in the first time a presidential candidate had had that type of relationship in his background. [laughter] the really intriguing discovery
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for me was that the importance of his lives was the opposite of what i had imagined. allin as far from a complete non-entity. she had a major influence on the ladies of the 21st century. while edith merely provided a cautionary example of the limits of the first lady's power. ellen's influence could not have been predicted from her early life. she came from a small town in georgia after earth the civil war. but she was a perfect partner for the ambitious young professor. she was unusually well-educated for a woman in her time and place to come and she helps her husband with his studies. she learned german so that she could translate political monographs for him. she helped him with his speeches, she critiqued them and provided at quotations because she knew a lot of poetry.
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and with her help, woodrow wilson became a successful professor, he became president of princeton university, governor of new jersey, and finally, 100 years ago, he was elected president of the united states. so in 1913, ellen willson found herself in the white house. now this is not a place that she ever imagined she would be or wanted to be. she thought being a professor's wife was the pinnacle of achievement. about once she found herself there, she determined to use her position to do good. she'd been interested in social work ever since she was a student in an art school in new york and she began to look around for a project in washington, d.c., and she discovered that behind the capitol building there was a maze of alleyways. they were dark and dirty. they bred crime and disease and
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ellen wanted the buildings torn down and replaced with modern hygienic once. at that time, the district of columbia was run by federal government. so, ellen took a white house carter and began to drive the congressman through the alleys to show them the squalor that extent right behind the marble halls of the capitol building. as far as i know, she was the first first lady to campaign for a cause that was not her husband outside of the white house. however, during woodrow's second year in office her health began to suffer. he had kidney disease, and she had to give up her activities. by june of 1914, she could no longer get out of bed. jennifer 1914 saw the assassination of the arch duke the transferred of austria and soon boon world was at war. by august 6th, ellen was dying. she realized she was running out
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of time, so she asked her husband's chief of staff to go to capitol hill and tell the members of congress she would die more easily if she would just pass an alley bill. so the senate took action in time for her to hear about it before she died. the house took action shortly thereafter the legislation was never implemented because of the entry of world war i. at this point, ellen's life seemed fairly inconsequential putative would be 20 years before her influence would make itself known. meanwhile, she left a grieving husband a year after her death she married a lively widow ellen who became his partner, too. she worked closely with him during world war i decoding secret telegrams as they came in from europe.
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together after the war they went to paris where he negotiated the paris peace treaty of riverside, and that provided for a league of nations, something he very much wanted. but he was ahead of his time. the senate and the united states objected to the league of nations and refused to ratify it. so, woodrow with edith undertook a trip across the united states to try to rally support among the american people for the league of nations. the trip proved too much for him. his health broke down, they sped back to washington, d.c. but it was too late. he had suffered a massive stroke. he was partly paralyzed. he could hardly speak, and nobody knew what his mental faculties were like as a president he was completely incapacitated. so edith wilson stepped in and assumed more power than any
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first lady before or since. she instructed his doctors and the white house staff to keep his condition a secret. if his condition had been known, his opponents would have forced him from office. she knew that woodrow wilson would not have wanted that, and she always did what he wanted to read during the next 18 months, the remainder of the term, ebit decided who would be allowed to see what role willson, and what issues would be brought before him. but mostly, she just postponed decisions hoping she would get better and deal with them himself. he was actually to take more action for the sake of the country, and she said i'm not thinking about the country, i am thinking about my husband. but i realized then was that edith wilson was a very traditional life. also today she has a reputation of being a half breaker.
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i found instead that was allin willson it is when to break the new rounds. as the secretary of the navy, his wife was a tall, shy woman. she knew alan willson, her name was eleanor roosevelt. in her years after her death, no other first lady lobbied for any legislation. the first things roosevelt did on entering the white house was to go to capitol hill and began to lobby for another rally will. as you know she went on to lobby for many of their causes and and for a modern first lady now respected to lobby for their own causes and their husbands
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interest. whether it is michelle obama or ann romney or someone else, we will be expecting her to follow the lead fighter she knows it or not. [applause] saxby for so much. virginia scharff known to many of us as gingey astana director of the center for the southwest at the university of new mexico with scholarly books and taking the wheel in the coming of the motor age and 20 il's and rhodes the women's movement and the rest has to textbooks. she was a research fellow at the university in 2008 and is the women of the west share of the national center in los angeles. she was president of the western history association in 2008.
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in case you have extra reading time under the name of virginia swift she's the author of several mysteries. today she's speaking to us on the women at jefferson loved. >> it's great to be back in tucson and see judy again. i did get my ph.d. the university of arizona, and i am thrilled to be actually back in my neighborhood, so thank you for having me. this book, the women at jefferson loved is about the women that thomas jefferson felt he had made secret promises to. so it's about his mother and his wife and his daughters and his granddaughter's and the women of his great her family. when i say the women jefferson loved, what name comes to mind? i know why you are all here. [laughter] sally hangs, of course, the person that is family tried hardest to erase. this is his granddaughter, ellen
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rim of coolidge and she took it upon herself to try to erase the entire story about thomas jefferson and sally hemingses and she said this relationship, the relationship between my grandfather, my grandfather and this slave girl could not have existed, but in tough, couldn't have come he wouldn't have done it. she called it a moral in possibility. i'm going to guess the people in this room know there are lots of things that are not moral in human relationships but there are hardly anything that is impossible. so, what the kind of story that ellen could little about thomas jefferson's family looked a lot like a sentimental image of what thomas jefferson would have called the enemy is that of domestic life. the women over here with the other granddaughter mary in virginia randolph, and they are coming you know, out there having a nice time. dumoulin possibility that his
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wife's side of his family tried to say that this relationship would have been it wasn't an impossibility, it was a family tradition. so i put this thing together, putting things on the boards and then harper collins cleaned it up and made it look nice. what you will see here is this is in the books and you can tell the players because you have the program here. when you will see is over there if you can find thomas jefferson mine sorry i don't have a laser pointer, right next to him is martha wales, and marshall willson father, john wales up in the first generation there had three wives, she married and buried three women and the first was the mother of thomas jefferson's life. after his third wife died he took up with a half african come have english slave woman named elizabeth hemingses, so she's
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over there and with devotee hemings he had six children. the youngest of whom is sally hemings so the first interesting thing i found is that thomas jefferson's wife and sally hemings were half sisters. half sisters and they couldn't have known it. if there were six kids running around the house i'm going to guess you know who the father is. but then the most interesting thing that happened next, thomas jefferson's relation with sally is the second generation in this family of man of english ancestry to have a relationship, intimate relationship with children with a hemings woman, so sally hemings had one african grandparent and three english grandparents. her children with thomas jefferson then are moved down into mostly english ancestry in a very fast way than what happens is her niece devotee hemings, after thomas
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jefferson's daughter died, he takes up with john wilson there's yet a third generation in this family comes to a moral and possibility, certainly not. what we have is an interracial family, house divided, to shadow families that live together and i found the question that intrigued me the most, the thing that really got me going was the question of how did they deal with each other? what was it like when they were all in the same room? call can we understand the kind of lies, secrets and silences that this family lived with? all families. families or where the secrets and silence go to live. but we don't have that. so how do we draft our head around that story? these are the places these women live and one of the surprises i got right in the middle of the map there was more of the
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jefferson monticello and if you read the but you can find out more about the place that she cared about most. thomas jefferson actually bought where she lived with her first husband. that told me he loved her. how many guys buy a house of a life lived with their first husband and that told me she had a certain influence over him as well so that was something else i learned about from this book. we have very few documents about these women, so thinking about that, finding sources of would be very difficult. here is an example of the amusements of domestic life. this is a page from martha jefferson's journal and you see this lovely doodle with the birdies on a branch and historians have loved that but i took a look at it and i thought what word appears on these pages more than anything else? killed, killed, killed. we are deep in blood at monticello, and if you read the book, you can find out about that.
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well, i guess my most interesting conclusion out of this sort of a thing that really made me feel as if this was a book that people would want to read is a question about how we deal with thomas jefferson's interracial family because there has been so much energy put into denying it. and i guess i want to say so thomas jefferson had a complicated family. why would we want the most complicated man in american history to have a simple family? does anybody in this room have a complicated family? [laughter] i think if we give up the story we get something that is a lot better and we get is a founding father for all of us. thank you. [applause] >> i'm sure there won't be any questions about that. our former author is floor of
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trombley. when she walked in i was going to carper. [laughter] dr. trombley attended pepperdine university at age 16 and after graduating received her ph.d. in english. while in her ph.d. program she discovered the largest known cache of mark twain's letters to date. she has appeared in the pbs documentary. she is the author of five books, three about mark twain and putting mark twain in the company of women. the most recent book she's going to talk today is the other woman, the hidden story of his final years, and she's going to call the other power plant. we are having a technical moment. >> thank you. it's great to be here, and i appreciate your interest in all of our work. if you recognize the guy up
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there, that is exactly what he wanted. in fact they are all part of his plan, and you are just helpless purchase participants making sure he remains one of the most iconic writers. when i say that i don't say it likely to read in many ways we all live in a mark twain world and it's a lot easier if we just give ourselves up to it. the woman standing next to the plane is isabel and she is the subject of the biography that i wrote, and she was a very interesting character and possessed an enormous amount of power over her subjects. now, when most people think of mark twain, this is who they think of, this is the face they see and if that is true for you that is the face that he wanted you to envision 102 years after his death. and he was absolutely determined that she was going to write the
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piece ends of his life for you to remember whether they had any bearing to reality or not. as when you try to work with a speaker that is so well known and so beloved and spent the last decade of his life working every day to create his own edifice and legacy as a boy of rigorous difficult to come in nno one elsollect a leader .. supposed to figure this out. so what that means as i spent 16 years to figure out his last because he's an awfully good writer and it's hard to pierce that. so here are some images that perhaps most people are not so familiar with is tween as a younger man he considered himself to be wildly attractive. about 5-foot eight, she had red hair. here he is the naked mark twain. you don't often see this photograph but here he is posing
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for a bust of himself. he rarely blocked by a camera without stopping and here is the young 20 and probably the one that most people have never seen before, and this is a photograph that he took of himself just before he left missouri to work as a journeymen printer and traveled to new york. if the clothes look ill fitting that is because they were not his. he was so poor that when he went to have his photograph taken the had rental suits that you could wear so that he could look nice triet here is between i spent 16 years trying to get to. there she is. it was very, very difficult to try to pull back all of the different kinds of stories and fictions that he had written, and the purpose is so that you would never meet this person, and isabel came to work for him in 1902 before his wife olivia past week. at that time he was the world's first global celebrity.
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no one was as famous as mark twain, and he had traveled the world by this point she was wearing his white suit pretty much 24/7. he was very astute when it came to branding himself and his family could never keep up with the correspondence because everyone wanted mark twain for everything. so she was cited as a social secretary. in 1904 his wife olivia past week. up until that point in time, isabel always lived outside of the home as soon as she passed, she asked her to move in with him and she lived with him for six and a half years and she kept a record of her time and what he did on a daily basis how she was feeling and what he was eating and what he was reading in who he was seeing. his thoughts and expressions, and isabelle was determined to remember should be part of his
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life. however at a certain point, she was equally determined she would not and so for those of you that might be thinking about legacy, how would you want to be remembered 100 years into the future? i will tell you what mark twain did and you can decide whether you want to often. first, you hire your own by augur. and you make them financially dependent upon you, which is exactly what he did when he hired elbert. he even had him live with him. he drank with him and he paid billiards with him and round up a building his house next to him in storm field connecticut to get he wasn't about to write anything that he didn't approve of and in fact correspondence still exist where he would threaten him. he started to read things or have access to letters he wasn't completely comfortable with. so lesson number one, your your own writer. lesson number two, write your autobiography which he did starting 30 years before his
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death. she was slipping his life as if he was recounting his life, and the first volume of his of about murphy was published last year and it met with a great critical success in fact on "the new york times" best-seller list it was ranked higher than keith richards autobiography and i find that interesting cultural moment. good for us. however, in the autobiography which by the time the third volume is published, you will have access to 5,000 pages of mark twain over half a million words, and as he was dictating the biography, she made it very country clear. this isn't about my life as it happened. this is about my life as i wanted it to be, which is a great strategy. you are always right, you're funny, your kids think you for your advice and this is what he left for us to read. at that point in time he thought that his only real competition was shakespearean he knew
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shakespeare wasn't coming out with anything new. so, that's why he put in a stipulation that this had to be published 100 years after his death. in the last thing that too, and this is crucial for you. there may be people who know you to welcome people who know your secret. you don't want anybody to know about this. so, do what she did. he wrote a 475 page black male manuscript about this woman. and this is the lost manuscript that he wrote in his life. he spent his last months writing for hours and hours about isabelle. he gave the manuscript to his only surviving daughter, clara come his mittal bader if you ever try to step forward, published this and it will destroy her. and so she went and met with isabel and said no. but if you
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ever try to have a role in my father's life and any claim of relationship to my family, this will be published. she was so terrified she actually moved to canada and lived there for awhile. so this manuscript was something that the scholars never could make any sense of and does not agree with any of the other documents he left about his life and so what his scholars did for decades is ignore it because it really didn't fit into anything else that was being written at the time and so when i wrote my first biography, i started to hear bits and pieces and i became intrigued with her and then i ran across the writings are kept at the project in berkeley california and realized is the treasure trove no one has ever done anything with and i couldn't figure out why. as it turns out, until she died in the early 60's, no one was to
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know of this because actually is a well stipulated that all of her papers remain secret because she was convinced that if she found them, she would have them destroyed. and so, you had this blood feud that existed decades after his death in 1910. however, once the writing became public so to speak first scholars to look at, because no one really knew much about her and there was also a gender bias because she was his secretary there was the sense that perhaps she didn't have all that much to say after all so i decided once i became a little more familiar with her and saw her papers that i would transcribe them and publish them and the 50 scholars would be very happy with me. however, has started to transcribe the writings i realized that there was an alternative narrative that was emerging and that she told a completely different story of his final years and was a very human story, it was the story of
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a family that really couldn't deal with the weight of his celebrity, his little daughter hated her father, she was utterly estranged from the point she was five months pregnant with his only grandchild she refused to tell him. the youngest daughter was ill and suffered from a policy and died as a result tridymite a time there was a huge stigma associated with adel si and nothing could be shared with her disease and in fact she knew too much and didn't want that more human side of him to emerge. she was more satisfied with that figure that he is left for all of you and so it was a really exciting journey for me. i learned things that were utterly unexpected and also talking about family secrets this was a secret that has been actually remained intact for almost a century after his death so he would be thrilled that you are here because you're supposed
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to be here in mark twain's world today he would be less thrilled that i am here. [laughter] but he is dead and by not and i would tell you all of the secrets. thank you. [applause] >> if you are weak enough to ask questions about secrets, silence, shadows, y ase come etc. we are being live streamed up on c-span so they've given me a microphone. we are going to probably ask you to do your question by a microphone and if that becomes an wielding if you can keep it a brief question i will just repeat it into the microphone. does someone want to start? >> i would direct this to all of
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authors. how successful do you feel that you know what they were thinking >> i think that is a hard question to answer because these guys were good at trying to obscure their feelings from us and this is exactly what laurel was talking about. in the case of jefferson, rather than writing, he burned. so, what you had to do is go through every piece of paper that he left behind and try to look for the patterns of burning, and it was like a war shot contest. so yes, to a certain extent when somebody is trying to hide things from you, you cannot have certainty about what they are feeling and what they're doing that you can deduce both from the kind of things they choose not to leave behind so that they are highlighting other things, and also, from all of the behavior that they do i feel very confident that i know how thomas jefferson felt about the
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women i wrote about and some of the time because he was writing to them and about them in other cases because he was acting in particular ways that let me know. he freed all of the children that he had with sally hemings. they were among the only people that were freed in his will. most of the people that he owned have to be sold to pay his debt. i think that knowing that tells us a great deal about how he felt about sally hemings so we can get all kind of evidence to find these things out. >> i don't think it is too hard to find out any one that puts in the kind of leader that mark twain did in order to fictionalize his life was someone who was deeply insecure and his determined that he was going to be remembered in a particular way. i think what the surprise me is learning about just how driven he was and he was driven by fear of hitting if he wasn't going to disappear. he was going to make a name for
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himself and was a name for ever more. what i was surprised about was how there didn't seem to be any boundaries for him. she was right to be remembered as the greatest author, the best husband and the most loving father and he didn't care who he had to destroy in order to make sure that this was going to happen. and at the same time, i have to look at what he managed to accomplish with a degree of all respect and fear because he was so extraordinarily successful but doing so, and in fact when i first published this book and there was a lot in the book i haven't mentioned to force his daughter into a loveless marriage she did all kinds of things. the community's was quite a think disturbed by what i had written because there was a sense that we shouldn't speak of those things, and i felt it was first as a biography incredibly
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important we talk about these things and i also felt it gives us a dutch better perspective than we've ever had before to read it's important for the whitewashing. >> i was interested in why of scum and what i never could understand was why ellen willson tolerated his eighth year relationship with mary peck. i have a fury that maybe she just wanted, she believed mary was a family friend almost immediately after the relationship began she had woodrow wilson visited mary at her hollen massachusetts and mary was actually the social hostess in bermuda, and mark twain was there. there's a picture of mark twain, the girlfriend and woodrow wilson, that i felt i was rather funny. i can't wait for the next volume to see what they had to say
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about them but ellen and wilson defended her and pretended that she was a family friend, and accepted discuss and i just have all these furies i'd love to test them but there is absolutely no evidence. the summer after she discovered the intensity of the relationship and woodrow wilson has female friends and she encouraged that because she wasn't very high spirited. woodrow wilson again surprisingly enough was extremely high spirited and he loved to sing and dance and tell jokes and lyrics and she wasn't like that, she was a very studious woman said she encouraged friendships, but she knew this one was different, she was much more emotionally involved. so all of her letters this summer after she discovered this are missing to refine sure she destroyed those. it's the pattern of things that are missing or very eloquent. but, i think she wanted to try
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to protect him from scandal and in some ways woodrow wilson protected himself from scandal by that image during the campaign of 1912 when theodore roosevelt was running on a third-party ticket and william howard taft was running people came to theodore roosevelt and said we have letters between woodrow wilson and mayor retek and if you publish them, you will win and roosevelt said no, that would be wrong. [laughter] as though nobody would believe me triet he's going to think the man as romeo, he looks like the apothecary clerk. [laughter] >> great. okay. >> there's one word, denial
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[inaudible] it would happen so thorough that they just didn't recognize that these other people were relatives. >> you know, that's something that i spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering about. and i think that it's possible that in some cases you are able to convince yourself that what is right in front of your eyes isn't true. if you are interested enough in that story. at the same time the people that you are looking at who when they cocked their head, the kid that is carrying out your bed can or
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will ever come in your chamber pot, or making the fire in your room, they cocked her head and looked just like your aunt martha so there will be these moments use your children's faces changing before your eyes, and suddenly you see these characteristics and you just look over. i think these are eloquent moments. they were very effective in this the model. but at the same time, that the enslaved side of the family, and i say enslaved although they were enslaved for two generations for the rest of their history, they cut to that story alive. so in order to tell yourself this isn't true you have to be actively denying something that somebody else was saying so that is really in fact you have to decrease that legacy and the same way that twain did the descendants of the rebel side,
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the legitimate side made a point of hiring the right biographer to tell the story. they gave the official story. this became the officials repeated pulitzer prizes have been won on that story, and it has taken until really the dna evidence of 1997 so that the weight of science has weighed in on the side of the family story. but this is something the act if we had to be my for years comes of the idea that we just didn't see it, maybe you can say that to yourself a even as you are saying they are liars every one of them is a lawyer. think about that kind of a complex psychological exercise and you have human beings stem a tide of think they were in denial, i think they were in a cover-up which can be quite different. they did not want other people to know it, but i think one of the reasons that ellen willson tolerated his friendship with mary peck is that she knew her husband and felt he needed this
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woman in his life and love him very much and was willing to tolerate it. the second wife was not so tolerant and confessed the relationship to her. he described it as a relationship that he had long ago wove and repented. that kind of language makes me think there was something to lows and repented although there is no direct evidence of exactly what was going on. but she put an end to it. but i don't think they were personally in denial. - did they all knew what was going on. estimate is a great richard pryor joke i feel compelled to share with you. on deutsch to tell this joke in bed with another woman and walks in and seize this very upset, runs off site and follows her and she says how could you cheat on me? he says i wasn't cheating on you. what you mean? are you going to believe me or your office? [laughter]
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so, there's the question about the lobbying always, and so to make sure you are going to believe him whether it is true or not, but isabel was very transgress if so at the end of her life she was determined she wasn't going to be lost forever. as i said, she secretly a range for her papers to be kept at the archives making a secret deal they would be kept in a locked room so she could never find out about them. she had also come up and had written a transcript of her writing again based on the assumption that if clara pass refers to could be published but this is a bill passed away she hoped someone would indeed publish those for her but that never came to pass, and she passed after isabel but one of the most important things she did is in the 50's she held a series of meetings that the young actor who at the time and
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was thinking of creating a one-man stage show about mark twain but she had all the stipulations for these meetings to take place and he had to come to the apartment and could never tell anybody about the meeting and how holbrooke can and met with her and he has now been doing trained longer than twain did twain and its what isabel gave so she taught how he walked and talked and delivered a joke to risk and it isn't it amazing story. in going to have to repeat the question because it turns of this microphone is bleeding into the other room, which is getting more questions for completely different authors. [laughter] [inaudible] >> the question is the purpose of time that mark twain was in paris. she loved year and often visited
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europe. i'm not sure what you want me to sit about it but he loved the parisian way of life and he was a man of letters and he had many friends, she first went to paris when he was on the first and first highest tourist trips to you're not coming and he wrote about that in essence a broad, and in the innocents abroad that is where he stood to perfect the persona mark twain who was a kind of wisecrack westerner who would make jokes and you were never quite sure whether he was making fun of the character he had created, himself, you, the parisians, credit like a fun house mirror and i will paraphrase here she said i never could quite figure out of those french. when we were there we would speak french to them that they never seem to understand what we were sent. if [laughter]
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>> [inaudible] continuing saphenous paris, did you include maria in your coverage of jefferson? >> you know, my original intent is her section in the book because this is the woman, the anglo italian artist and musician jefferson was in love with when he was in paris and of course all of you saw the def less par trail y nick mills -- nolte, the worst decision of hollywood, right, merchant and ivory should be stricken from the record on that 1i think, but , so i actually went to italy to the archive which wasn't anything like the library of congress, you know, they are kind of leaning against adult
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and the cobwebs are getting down and this is a historian stream to get into a place like this and i had to do with an italian friend and was a great, it was a kind of mysteries momentum and i did write a lot about her in this book about my talk about the women jefferson loved i think that he was in love with her but i don't feel like he had a sacred obligation to her in the way that he did with all of those women of his family. and so, she becomes the kind of a figure in there who is almost a full leal in some ways to the relationship he had with sally hemings because maria i think was too much woman for him or too much public of a woman. what's interesting is the way in which their lives got more a similar because he treated her as well bag. if you've seen pictures of her famous self portrait we now have is only like a tintype but in
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the action was done by somebody else and so we've lost the painting there's a self portrait of her when she's young become a very beautiful woman, and he treated her like somebody he didn't have to take very seriously but she was a very serious artist, she was a very devout catholic who altered to leave you ultimately found at religious schools for girls and she was made a baron as of the austrian empire because of her good work and educating girls and when it came time to educating girls, thomas jefferson said you know, i on the subject of a female education it's never been a subject of serious contemplation with me, he said, but i decided i should educate my daughter's above their sex because i calculate their chances of marrying a blockade of 8-1. [laughter] and if you read the book that happened several times, the cltv
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has had a question -- this lady has a question. >> [inaudible] twenty, 21 years. estimates of the question is about the state of biography when we and a longer have letters. the one to start with about one? >> i will come and i'm sorry about that, i do think obviously it is easier to work with letters if you can get a hold of them, but i'm glad that we have e-mails because it was looking there for a while as if everyone was going to communicate with everyone else will telephone. >> and now i hear much more frequently for my children by e-mail and text than i do by
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telephone, so they are not going to be as full and edited the correspondence between eleanor roosevelt and isabel and green light of arizona, this woman did a 50 year correspondence in the early days they didn't really have anything else to do and they would just sit down and write these letters and we probably won't have anything like that but i am glad for e-mail, which looks like it is going to be archived somewhere on some plauen forever and 20 keyword searchable and retrieval indymac chollet modestly encouraged by the advent of electronic media. >> i agree i think there is a lot of information out there. in fact come since it took me so ridiculously long to write this book i actually crossed from one year and into the next. i started this pre-cyberspace,
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and when i first started to work on this book, i have letters few archive. i read thousands of pages looking for one thing in particular and then all of a sudden in 1996 you have the web being invented and so much material is digitized now that when i'm looking for someone, i can just go and hit the finding and search for "the new york times" from 1908 and i can have that kind of information retrieved. as president of the kawlija talked to my students quite a bit about, you know, keeping in mind that what seems wildly amusing today to post on facebook at some point may not seem quite so. so, in some ways this is a real gold without any of the boundaries that used to exist between private and public
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space. so i think it will create challenges for biographers but i don't think that there will be a dearth of federation it's just a different kind of information. >> i think our tools are going to get almost too good. so when christie says things will be archived on the cloud you may think that you deleted that e-mail but they don't go away, right? we think several of the central mission goes away but it is retrievable at some point. if i were a elizabeth if i could find out anything i want to know about anyone of you. so, maybe in the future there will be tools for biographers that can make everyone her own, and we will be able to -- sorry, but maybe we ought to go back to writing letters we can burn. [laughter] >> back there in the gallery. yes.
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>> i wonder if you can speculate on how they would feel -- >> i think that's an interesting question. how would the wives, daughters, jefferson's daughters, how would they feel about their lives being held it? >> in the case of the wilsons, they were presidential families come and wilson came after theodore roosevelt who was the first american president whose daughter was a celebrity and i think that his wife tried very hard to keep in the shadows and helen taft wanted very much to have recognition, so i think that even had they wanted to, they had already given up the great deal of their privacy of the time to read and has said,
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they did take steps to burn letters to read a great friend of woodrow wilson bought a lot of the mary peck letters after woodrow wilson's def, and he kept some of them and put them in the library of congress but he also burned a lot of them. so, i have a feeling of what ever they left, they knew it was going to be there and they did know that their family would be in the public scrutiny forever. >> i don't think i could have written this book had any of the descendants still been alive. his only granddaughter kimmage suicide in the early 60's, and so there are no more direct descendants. his daughter would have immediately sued me and he instructed her to keep lawyers on retainer to make sure that the story was never changed rothkopf.
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the past is past, and when i was doing all this research, i pulled called her grandnephew and spoke to him and they were furious about the things that he had said, and he was 85 that time to get he is still alive and well and just stopped playing softball. i went to meet with them come and for that family it was such an open wound, it was as though this happened last week. they were furious at the scholars and really felt mistreated, and so i talked to them about what i was doing and earned their confidence, and when my book was published, his daughter called me, and things get free crazy because it is a huge figure and there's a kind of madness if so i was concerned
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with the inaction might be and was the first of my book tour in atlanta she said well wife read the book and this is what i have to say to read somewhere in heaven is a bill is looking down and she's smiling he finally gave her her voice back. and i thought that is a great sense of my having done something for the record. >> i think it varies from a woman to woman. some of them wanted to keep their lives private as much as possible and i think for example martha, jefferson's wife, was very much a private person, and that she did not anticipate the wall of separation between his public and private life would better be breached. it's a phrase we know he used adult church and state that was true how he felt about his public and private life and i think when the wall was breached during the revolution when
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wallace came boiling up the river and out to the occupied which was the place that she loved this was a terrible thing to have the public and private life come together. so for her i think it would have been a difficult thing. i think for some of the other women in the story commensurately for his moderate think that his father never anticipated that her story would be told in no way that it was. she died in march of 1776 so he wasn't even the thomas jefferson we think of as thomas jefferson when she died. he hadn't become that guy had yet. but when you talk about his daughter, patsy course of his granddaughters, it's a different story to it i think they wrote letters and expected to be preserved or to preserve them in their own edited fashion. the road every literary letters and with some expectation this would be a legacy for them and a couple of his granddaughters were just absolutely, you know, they really would have liked to
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at one point when the family was broken his granddaughter said i wished i was a man because i could do all kind of things to save the family fortunes that i can't do being a woman. what we should start a school. at least we could do that. and in fact they did in that kind of saving some of what they had died the women starting a school as they were doing at that time. so it's going to vary from person-to-person in the same way that over the generations i think things change from a point of view of their attitudes towards relationships between masters and enslaved when so that the jefferson's fifer think is more accepting of the idea that men in her family might have these kind of extramarital relationships and by the time you get to the victorian granddaughters, there to become the original vision that kentucky is the moral and possibilities in a way that their grandmother would not have
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recognized. >> we have time for one more question before we follow their defeat to the authors to the signing. yes. >> what started you on these books? >> excellent question. what is the spark that started to on your decades long journey for the books? let's go in opposite. >> when people ask me how long i've been writing this pricing i'm not sure, it might be 50 years or it might be five because i love thomas jefferson as a child when i became a historian of women working with karen anderson, i was interested in writing a dissertation about jefferson and his view on women and the women in his life, but all of my -- karen and others said jefferson, he's been done to death. so i kind of put off for a long time and then after i'd written a bunch of other things and four mystery novels and have an agent that took me to lunch and said
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i'm ready to start paying attention to your history, tell me what book. >> so spark and burned. >> as that moment. you've lived for somebody to ask you that question to be on didn't even know i wanted that question, and i said i don't know. >> i guess it was a series of odd defense that kept popping up that made no sense to me and completely deviate from the narrative of the final years, and as i kept doing research, more and more of these strange episodes kept coming up, like one of the things i learned is that clara never told her daughter to her grandfather was until she was in her 20s. or that she had never directed a monument in her father's honor until her first husband died, and then she chose to create a monument honoring them both and called her father why his pen name or the fact that when you
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go to the clemens' plot in the cemetery, the second husband who has my favorite title of anybody come an itinerant russian gambler and musician -- 20 years younger than the life she was the first tudor you could argue. >> his grave has no marker. one of the things i heard this that's because they hated. and all these weird little things kept popping up, and i thought none of this giants including the 475 page manuscript that makes sense in the context of the other story so i decided i read a lot of nancy drew when i was a kid and i was going to figure this out. ..
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and when the university press that can't start it doing a series on the first ladies at the 20th century, i was lucky enough to get the assignment to do that well since because i got to do to instead of just one. >> all of our authors today are going to be doing a signing. ar who is leading us to the signini area?ke t tertius of the compiler authors like the piehed p piper. thank you so much for being here. [applause]
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>> the pope has a very famous way of being church are meant dead which is a cardinal double post. the pope handpicks this person. this person decides in the pope is dead. he has been three times in the head with a silver hammer and calls that his baptismal name three times, which is carried over from the province. the romans used the method of yelling your name three times. even today the pope isn't dead until it is said he is dead.
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>> this is really about not just that lyndon johnson, the robert kennedy and jack kennedy and the personalities, particularly proper. and it's a very complicated story. but i don't think people know if to very complicated people. and robert kennedy and lyndon johnson. and i had to really go into that and try to explain it because it's part of the story all the way to the end of johnson's presidency. that is done and i suppose chronologically at the moment johnson is passing in the team 65 voting rights act. and that is sort of than one way for him up to now.
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has been a writer for "the newn york times" since 1989 and four that a writer for barron's magazine, the wall street correspondent for magazine, itws co ther the inveladelphia "philadelphia inquirer"trenton . in 2005, she's a finalist for a pulitzer prize and won a george polk award, the worst for investigative reporting and herbert goldsmith prize for her cds exposed in insurance and investment ripoffs of young military consumers. she's also a member of "the new york times" team that was a pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the 2008 financial crisis. "wizard of lies" is her fourth book. it may be her first baby. hbo and robert de niro tribeca films have commissioned a smith being written right on this too at the end of the month. so keep your fingers crossed for that one. [applause] and now, let's welcome him diana and recount.
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[applause] one game that is wonderful about this book is if you really are very unfamiliar with wall street come with the markets, hedge funds, with bernie madoff, it is a book anyone can understand. however if you are someone who is a sophisticated investigator and hedge fund manager, you will enjoy the book, to and won't feel that it talks down to you at all. so today we'll talk about bernie madoff, who he was, what he did or we don't want to leave anybody behind. so if you're not familiar we will start with who is bernie madoff, what he did and i think importantly why he did it. what he says in the book is that he really did intend to be a great financial advisor and he intended to get great returns for his clients and he just banged things got going on and
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he dug himself and he said julie couldn't get out. so i think to get your take on that. >> that is a classic ponzi scheme rationale. >> in fact is usually true. i ponzi scheme is for a typically and lasted themselves, thus the first big via ponzi scheme or has to sell this to himself. and they almost always ironman. i don't know why, but you can count on two hands the number of female ponzi skimmers. so i'm using my pronoun advisedly. i don't know if madoff is telling the truth about that. i do believe the ponzi scheme he constructed begins sooner then you claimed it did. but his story, that is footnoted was least reviled source in history, but his story is that
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some of its large client got nervous after the 1997 market crash and started to make with draws the fun they had promised they continue to invest in that preston and preston back into a corner and in 1992 he finally started stealing a little money coming in from hedge funds to cover withdraws from long-term clients, thinking the market would recover in this strategy would work in and he would be able to work his way out of this hole. by 1998, the whole was billions of dollars deep and he said he knew he would never get out. and he spent the next decade to expect dean to fall at any moment and dsa describe and trained to it almost did several times.
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so this is me not more cliffhangers then pauline. showing my age they are. he had so many near death experience as in fact that i'm convinced that at least for most of 2008, when the markets began that precipitous climb, he thought he might make it through this storm, to because you dirty survived so many. if i was highly liquid. this was their liquid asset. whenever i'm in the market started to get so nervous in the fall of 2008 and demanded their money back or they're going to get the money to pay those guys
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back. a lot of those are not liquid. they're locked up in chinese for mankind than he ariz real estate developments. but they had to cover these withdraws. they trusted him. he was their rainy day fund. he didn't start pulling money out because they suspected something was going wrong. instead, they thought he was a trustworthy place to take the money out of. money poured out in an astonishing rate. by one estimate from the trustee was liquidating the madoff estate, $13 billion poured out of madoff stretched on into destiny. half of that in the last 90 days. he was circling the drain very rapidly and told me that he knew right after thanksgiving put
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through the least reliable source in his dreams that he had decided going onesh that he just rther decided more time. he claims people were still offering money and those latter days, still trying to give them money to invest and he could've kept it going, but he decided to quit. but that i think made off hasn't pathological fear of admitting later it's interesting that he won't even admit that his ponzi scheme failed. no, no, he was inspired he quit. but when he was arrested, arrested after his son whom he
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had confessed turned him in to law enforcement, what they found was a man who was privately quite secretly managing more money than goldman sachs. more money than jpmorgan, much more money than george soros. this is a man who was allegedly managing almost $65 billion. so imagine that he was your money manager and he went to bat on december 10, 2008, thinking your retirement fund was a billion and a half, 2 million, 7 million, 10,000,002 see-through retirement and by nightfall on december 11, it was all gone. it's like what happened in
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tales. it is what happens in the made-up scandal. i knew early afternoon on december 11 that madoff had been recognized. it is a name i recognized. had this not happened he would've been a minor footnote in history and the formation of the modern and the counter markets. then i saw the headlines. how big are we talking about here? he said he was. anyhow not.
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this was such a profound trail of trust by him and then he was indeed per trade. i felt there is something universal about it. by any measure, it is the largest ponzi scheme in history. whether you count the $65 billion in paper wealth of people thought they had the day before his arrest for the $20 billion in out-of-pocket cash all, the amount of money people it given madoff in terms of dividends or withdraw, and is the largest in history. it is also the first global ponzi scheme. the victims included funds in korea, catholic school in st. croix, victims all over the world so it was historic by
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every measure and i think had some timeless lessons for us. as you can tell, i am obsessed by the story and it is one of the most interesting criminal cases and one of the most interesting human dramas i've ever encountered. >> it is often said of ponzi schemes and the people that spend that they played a role that human fate. but they were greedy and should know better to exercise due diligence but a lot of investors with madoff or financially sophisticated people who thought they were exercising due diligence. so let's talk about the role of trust in our financial position. >> now someone smart in the audience will stand up and say, you know, does it dims were greedy. if they had been greedy they never would've gotten caught.
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now one of made us brilliant innovation in the ponzi scheme is he did not appeal. 100% in the money is a classic. you'd have to be crazy to 5% being like that or it has to be creepy or ill-informed. but made-up wasn't making that. it was under forming the fidelity of magellan. let me say that another way. is that dems would've made more money by investing in the magellan fund and they made in investing with bernie madoff. they were greedy. they were frightened. the market had become increasingly volatile from the increasingly complicated. everyone is trying to run their
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own 401(k), their own pension plans and their spare time with him make the money to put in a and madoff offered consistency, not high return. so that is another twist of the night. his big dems are people who thought they were beaten more conservative than anybody else, you thought they were taking less risk than anybody else. they were going to give up the money they might have made in the magellan fund in order to be safe for bernie madoff. it is not true that ponzi schemes always that denies. madoff understood the times are volatile investors are straight and are desperate you convict denies. a master worries right now is that in this for the interest rate environment, those trying to save for retirement on a half of a percentage point are going
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to be scared about what to do with their money, how to make money and they will be vulnerable to the next bernie madoff figures that if they don't offer you the sun and stars just 2% a year. that's all. so the notion that the ponzi scheme has always been an outside personality, not true. the concept of ponzi schemes are always greedy joe wyatt madoff teaches that there's a lot of what we knew isn't true and that is why we need to learn about this ponzi scheme were not for us actually long time and if ira kraken wanted to know how to do
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it, i might take some pages from bernie madoff's story. i think it is important that we know that story. and when you read the book to be really struck. it's an incredible amount of hard work and creativity that went into sustaining this thing. "wizard of lies: bernie madoff and the death ofbernie madoff at deputy right out of high school and became really this computer wizard. the two of them set up this incredible amount of trickery. i just want to read a passage to show you what i'm talking about. there were two stories in the media. one was a publication for a hedge fund managers. one was then parents magazine. the book question made out and a lot of what he is saying doesn't make sense. a lot of things that he is saying he is doing in the
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market, for example, there is not enough money in the market. it's not possible to what he is saying is true. so neither of those got a lot of press. they're pretty obviously knew about them and was concerned and he called one of his biggest investors and he depend on for a lot of money. it had the guy come over. let me show you how i do what i do. his name is tucker, the guy who comes over. kentucky arrived for this visit, madoff was ready thanks to his efforts. besides the phony trade confirmations and account statements generated for more than a decade county set up a bogus trading platform to make it appear as if actual traits were conducted with european counterparties good of others perceptible traitor was an employee on another computer terminal hidden in a different room and he is a clincher, a
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