[inaudible conversations] .. .. >> and his war on a new type of american enemy, radical terrorism, and david linden on why the good stuff feels so good in "the compass on pleasure."

>> there's this myth, always has been, that he established his prize for peace out of guilt over his invention of dynamite. and i think i say in my book it's hard to know exactly what's in a man's head and heart, but this seems not to be true. it seems he was quite proud of his achievements in the areas of explosives. >> peace, they say. sunday night at 9 eastern and pacific on booktv. every weekend on c-span2. >> king's counsel is the memoir of the late jack o'connell who was cia station chief in amman, jordan, from 1963 to 1971 and became king hue same's friend and close -- hussein's friend and close adviser. up next, vernon loeb and sean o'connell -- jack o'connell's son -- talk about the book. this is about an hour. >> good evening, and welcome to

our middle east policy forum tonight. it's wonderful to have all of you here. this is a special program for me both because of the subject, the topic, but one also for years i was in the foreign service and having served in jordan twice both in the 1980s as deputy chief of mission and 2001-'4 as ambassador. i knew jack o'connell personally and very well for many years, and i can tell you he was a great man and deeply involved and deeply committed, and he had strong, strong feelings. and thank heavens, he put them in a book. thanks to vernon loeb who worked with him as author, and we're happy to have jack's son sean here as well to share some things. but let me just say that, again, the middle east policy forum is a program that we run through the institute for middle east studies here at the elliot school to try to bring programs, four, five or six during a

semester, where we bring people or talk about the events in the region or in this particular case a book which also deals with an issue of importance in the region. and we are very thankful to the generous support of exxonmobil that gives us a grant each year to have this forum. that allows us to have this forum. so without further be ado, jack o'connell who was station chief or cia head in amman, jordan, wrote his memoirs, wrote his book about his experiences and his very close friendship with king hussein. and he died, it was about a year and a half ago now, sean? >> july 12th -- >> july 12th, yeah, and had done it and had written his book, and we -- he worked very close hi, vernon loeb, who is on my far right is metro editor at "the washington post" and previously

served as deputy managing editor at the philadelphia end quirer -- inquirer. in additional to king's counsel, he is co-author of the education of general david petraeus, and that book, i think i -- i think you know, is on "the new york times"' bestseller list. previously he covered national security issues at "the washington post", and during this time he wrote extensively about the cia, numerous issues affecting the broader intelligence community and a series of breaking news events involving u.s. intelligence be such as the bombing of the -- sorry, pharmaceutical plant in khartoum you may remember about, the cia's role in the wide peace accord, the kindred spirit investigation at los alamos national laboratory and the mistaken bombing of the chinese embassy in belgrade.

so we're very pleased to have him with us tonight and, also, just to my right close is jack's son, sean o'connell. he is a member of the d.c., maryland and virginia bars. he obtained his llm in comparative and international law from georgetown in 1989 which is all right for us here. >> thank you. [laughter] >> born in 1959, he moved with his father, mother, and oldest sister, kelly, to beirut where his father was deputy chief of station -- that means of the cia in case you don't follow the vocabulary -- from 1960 to 1963. in 1963 he moved with his family to amman, jordan, where his father was chief of station, a position that he held there until 1971. very unusual, i might say, assignment in the federal government for those of you who have any experience. we rarely get to serve at a post for that number of years, but it

was a tribute and a commentary, really, on jack's very close relationship with the king. sean lived in amman except two evacuations, one immediately after the 1967 six-day war and the other in june during the black september conflict. so jack has had his own experiences in the region. um, sean had mentioned to me that he worked with his father and had been involved in efforts to get the book published and that one of his father's very last words was get the book published. [laughter] so without further ado, vernon, i think we're going to have you come up first. and then we'll have questions and answers after. >> thanks for coming. um, so let me tell you a little bit about how i came to work on this book. um, jack and i actually had the same agent, and i was working at the time at the philadelphia inquireerer, i got a call one

day from scott moyers at the wily agency in new york and said i have a manuscript written by a cia legend, and he needs some help to, you know, get this book across the finish line, and i wondered if you'd be interested in working with him. and he told me his name was jack o'connell. i kind of racked my brain to see if i'd ever, um, you know, bumped into him when i was covering the cia. i think i'd heard of him, but i never actually met him. so i drove down to arlington one day, one saturday and spent, you know, several hours immersed in jack's, the manuscript at the time and just talking to jack. and i quickly realized that, yeah, this was a great project. um, and so my role was to, basically, take jack's manuscript and work with him. he was, i think, 88 at the time.

and he was frail, he was in a wheelchair, but he was very sharp mentally. and i was, i probably interviewed him over the course of the next year for, i don't know, probably 100 hours. we would spend four or five hours together most weekends. and i was always impressed even at his age how he didn't remember everything, and there were gaps in his memory, but what he remembered, he remembered. he remembered it exactly, it was exactly the same every time he told it to me. and, um, i was impressed by how committed he was to this book. this book grows out of a promise he made to king hussein. king hussein, before he died in '99, wanted to write this book and tell the truth, what he thought was the truth about middle east peace talks and his role in them really going all the way back to the mid '50s. and jack had engaged, first he engaged a guy be named phillip

galen, and he was going to write the book. galen began working on it, he flew to jordan, met with the king. the king basically said anything i got is yours, i want the truth to come out about my dealing with israel, about my dealings with saddam, about my dealings with the plo in plaque0 september, you know -- in black september, you know, no holds barred. galen became sick, he ultimately couldn't finish. then the plan was around 2000 dick helms, who was a good friend of jack's, was working on his memoir. so the idea sort of became maybe dick could kind of write the points that jack, that the king wants to make into his memoirs, and jack began working with dick helms. in fact, the book has a few interesting memos in it that dick helms wrote to jack during the course of this collaboration but, ultimately, dick helms

decided, you know, this just isn't working for me. i didn't really have that much to do with these events in the middle east that king hussein most wants dealt with in this book, um, and he gave up. and at that point jack ultimately decided, well, if anybody's going to -- king hussein had died by now, and jack basically decided if anybody's going to write this book, it's going to be me. so he sat down one summer and produced a manuscript, and the manuscript was just chock full of, you know, little scoops. and, um, i came in, you know, at a point where he had this manuscript, the agent felt it needed just a little bit of a lift, a little bit of filling in some gaps to take it to publication. so that was sort of my role. as i said, the book is full of -- i don't know how many of you have read it, but it's a fun read, it's a fast read, and it's full of lots of little things

that, you know, haven't been known before beginning with, um, the book begins with jack on his first overseas assignment for the agency is given tapes that the fbi had made here at embassies in washington that showed that there was a coup underway within the jordan, jordanian military. and he was sent with these tapes over to amman to sort of unravel this coup in the mid 1950s. so that's where the book begins. and, again, this, prior to this book i don't think the existence of this coup attempt or the cia's role in unwinding it had ever been known. and from there the book tracks his career, and a great career it was. he then goes to lebanon in the early 1960s where he encounters ken fillby on the

streets one day shortly before hety appears as a spy and ends up in moscow. ultimately, jack goes back to jordan and happens to be in jordan on the eve of the '67 war and one of kind of the little scoops in the book is how jack is told on the night before the 967 war that --1967 war that the following morning he's told this by the u.s. military attache he's told that israel will attack egypt and begin by bombing egypt's airfields in the morning. and this was quite something to jack. i mean, war was in the air at the time, but nobody knew, you know, if this would be a war and when, and jack of his own volition, doesn't clear this with anybody except the ambassador, he tells the ambassador. he gets in his car, he drives, finds be king hussein, knocks on the door, asks the king to come out, and he tells king hussein

what's going to happen. the king thanks him and says good night. and for years jack had no idea what king hussein ever did with this information. later in the book we resolve the story which is king hussein called nasser that night and told him what he had been told by the cia station chief in amman, and nasser did nothing because he didn't believe it. um, so, you know, there begins the sort of intrigue that jack unfolds. i'm going to let sean talk a little bit about the run-up to the 1973 war where jack feels very strongly that henry kissinger played a role in, um, i want to phrase this diplomatically, but played a role in -- [laughter] encouraging egypt to begin hostilities. one of my, one of my favorite

parts of the book are, um, jack's -- jack had a very sort of zoellick-like career. he always seemed to be where the action was. i should say he retired from the cia right before the '73 war in 1972 and came back to washington where he became king hussein's lawyer in washington for the next, you know, almost 20 years up until the king's death in '99. but he remained very much involved in middle east diplomacy through the rest of his, through the rest of the king's life and beyond. and so it was jack, for example, who came up with the idea that donald rumsfeld would be a good intermediary to go to the middle east and meet with saddam. so that famous picture, the 1983 picture of saddam hussein shaking hands with donald rumsfeld was jack's idea. and he remained very much involved right on through both

iraq wars so that in the run-up to this most recent iraq war, jack was meeting in london with call by. in the run-up to the first iraq war in 1991, jack was very much involved in trying to find a solution to prevent the war from happening. jack believed very strongly that both iraq wars were wrong and were needless. um, he believed that there should have been and could have been a diplomatic settlement to the 1991 war, and in the book we spell out how there were efforts afoot, diplomatic efforts afoot by the u.s. to try to find that solution and that at a certain moment everything seemed to change and that was taken off the table, and the administration seemed intent on going to war and forcibly evicting saddam from kuwait.

so, again, jack believed very strongly that that war should never have taken place, and certainly he felt that way about 2003. and, um, let me just close my remarks by saying jack o'connell was first and foremost a lawyer. he was a very well educated man, but he was a lawyer. and he believed very strongly that, um, the key to middle east peace for the palestinians lay in the law. and he, his advice to the palestinians was, um, you know, forget about armed conflict. the israelis are much too strong for you. forget about politics, they're much better at this than you. use the law, martial the law, international law is on your side. use that, and you will ultimately prevail.

and i know shortly before jack's death, he felt, you know, i think he felt very, um, enthusiastically about some of the things he heard president obama saying about, about middle east peace and about the term of a two-state solution. i'm not sure how he'd feel now given all that's happened since then, but jack was a man who felt, who believed very strongly in peace in the middle east, in the prospects for a negotiated settlement and, again, i think the book, the overarching theme of the book is king hussein's attempts to do this throughout his entire career and, ultimately, his failure to actually accomplish this. and it was all of the things that he tried to do to bring about peace that led to this

book. finally, i mean, i feel very privileged to have worked with jack because i came to see in this, um, you know, a man of real principle and a kind of old school, um, first generation cia person who really was all about the collection of foreign intelligence and not at all about covert action or assassination attempts. jack thought all that stuff was kind of craze is si, and he was really -- crazy, and he was really kind of a classic, um, spy in the sense that he believed in collecting foreign intelligence as a, to bolster a diplomatic solution in the middle east. and, you know, i regret that he didn't live to see the book published, but i'm grateful that we got it done and that he was able to read the manuscript in entirety before he died. thanks. sean?

[applause] [background sounds] >> good evening. my name is sean o'connell. i am jack o'connell's only son and his only daughter is kelly o'connell, sitting in the back. kelly? and he passed away on july 12th in if 2010 and is missed, and it is true that the last thing he said to me was to make sure that the book gets published. he also said get rid of the apartment, but that's really not relevant here. [laughter] but those are the two things.

now, he believed and i believe that his book is an important be book, and -- important book, and i'll hold it up because he was a witness to the past 55 years of history in the middle east. in a unique way, he was, in fact, a witness to the back channel diplomatic history -- much of which without the book no one would know about -- and he felt that if people didn't know about things, they couldn't make good decisions. i think it's also important that you know that while he and vernon had worked on the book, it was completed in the spring before he died, the manuscript was completed, and it was submitted to the review board. and he submitted the book to the

review board -- >> [inaudible] >> that's correct, the cia review board, despite the fact that he -- because he joined in '48, he did not, and that was, he did not sign one of the famous or infamous agreements, secrecy agreements which the current law focuses on. and never the less, he submitted it, and they sat on it until after he died. there are and, in fact, we thought they'd be finished reviewing it in june, he died in july, and it was in august that our lawyers from arnold and porter contacted us and let us know that the basis that they had previously been sitting on it and refusing to let it go forward is that they said he was still classified. in effect, they were saying he was still a spy which he was not. if he was a spy, it was for free be.

[laughter] but in any case, um, so they, the review board had to admit, i suppose, at that point that they didn't have jurisdiction, and they asked us to take out a few references to things which weren't important and we accommodated. originally, the book was titled "outside the frame," and the reason for that other than scott moyers' brilliant idea to call it "outside the frame," the reason that would have been appropriate is that even though my father was very close to king hussein and very involve inside many of the important things that happened from 1958 to the time he died, but through certainly 2006, was that he always made sure that he wasn't in the picture. he was in the room, but he would step outside and move away because he understood that if he was identified with, you know,

in the picture, that would be damaging to king hussein, and he didn't want to do that. and that was one of the reasons why he was effective. he didn't force himself into the situation. now, what i'm going to do now is go through a few of the things in the time that we have that he thought were important and encapsule in a short way because we don't have enough time to do it in an in-depth way -- you'll have to get the book for that -- some of the things that he was, thought were important about the things that i'm going to mention. and the first is the 1958 mission that he had when he was, he flew out and working very closely with the jordanians was able to unravel a coup. there are and within three months he was able to produce 21 signs confessions without torture.

he thought that it was important that we not torture people be. in fact, information and intelligence that you gather through torture, he thought and i agree -- but in any case, he thought -- is unreliable and, you know, things like abu ghraib damage not only your interests in the area, but your ability to collect good intelligence. if you're dealing with somebody who thinks you're going to torture him or just tortured somebody else, they don't like you. and when he first went to the middle east, he thought his basis for success was we in the united states had a better idea than, at that time, the soviet union. or if there are, say, radical terrorists involved, you could simply talk to someone in their family, maybe try to talk them out of it. so, in fact, of those 21 people that he obtained confessions from -- and they were doing a coup -- many of them, there was

a few of them that went to jail for some periods of time. none of them were executed. most of them, if not all of them, returned to government service or involvement in the elite, the ruling elite of jordan. so that's one of the secrets to jordan's success or has been one of the secrets to jordan's success and their legitimacy is coercion on the lowest level possible to achieve what you need to achieve. and the lesson, again, is that he thought that we shouldn't be in the torture business. and he was very dismayed by some of the things like waterboarding, etc. both because he thought that the people who did it were not part, were not of the caliber that he thought existed in the cia when he was involved there and because it was counter to our interests, and we probably just got bad intelligence from it. people will say anything to stop the pain.

that doesn't mean it's true and, therefore, it's not reliable and, later, they'll turn on you if they can. now, i'm going to try to be a little bit more brief about some other things so i can get through them. um, he thought that in the 1967 war there were mistakes that the united states and israel made. primarily because we were sold a bill of goods by the israelis that the israelis needed to essentially destroy nasser, otherwise the american influence in the area would wane. and he thought that wasn't true and, in fact, one of the things in the book is, was also covered recently in a new york times article about mayor 'em met who was an israeli intelligence chief at the time and that

johnson had secretly given him the go ahead by writing some cryptic parts of some letters. and that's covered in some detail. um, he also states in the book that king hussein wanted the truth written which meant that he was free to write the good and the bad, and he did. so he talk about how he thought that it was a mistake to place the jordanian army under egyptian command, and he describes how that occurred, and he also discusses as vernon said, the fact that king hussein, he advised king hussein that it was about to happen. and he did so because his job was to keep the king in power. and the ironic thing is that king hussein used that information but didn't tell nasser -- but did tell nasser,

and then nasser didn't believe him. later we talked about the 1973 war and the build-up to the 1973 war, and in the book he describes how gene trone who was a cia operative -- excuse me. and was detached to henry kissinger in early 1973 set up a meeting with the head of egyptian intelligence, ishmael, and that there was two meetings set up, one in new york and one outside paris. and in the second meeting ishmael was weeping because what he told gene trone was that ishmael had, essentially, offered what would be the camp david agreement which is that]4 give us back the sinai, and we'll make peace with you. and kissinger is reported to have told trone that we don't, that we don't do that -- we're

not -- they weren't willing to commit that kind of political capital, that they deal with, they react to crisises. and that he wasn't willing to help him. and can trone, apparently, afterwards was weeping by the stream, and trone says that ishmael says that he told us that to get our attention you're going to have to create a crisis. you're going to have to quote-unquote spill a little blood. whether connectioningier said spill a little blood or whether he just said you're going to have to create a crisis, or whether he said we're not interested in spending the political capital for peace, it's very clear that kissinger was told that the egyptians were interested in making peace but then the alternative, war was inevitable. they hadn't decided on wars. kissinger in his memoirs says other things which, quite

frankly, are hard to belief because if kissinger's to be believed that the war was a surprise, then why was he meeting with ishmael, why did he have the cia detach someone who knew ishmael and set up these two meetings? what was the purpose of those meetings? it doesn't make any sense. the idea was, apparently, that connectioningier was to -- wisingier us to, not that he meant to have the kind of war that occurred, it was a bit of a disaster. but nevertheless, that he was interested in that. to move forward, um, on just a few of the other items, well, probably the most important item of the book is that he was seconded to the state department for the negotiations of 242, and he was the go between between the americans and the arabs in the new york hotel where the negotiations were conducted.

and he has some insights on some assurances that were given to the arabs by the americans and, essentially, they were that there would be reciprocal adjustments, minor ones, to be approved by both parties. and he had them typed up and had them approved by the americans, and then, of course, handed them in to the state department and subsequently the people that were involved in the negotiations denied that those representations were made, and the papers don't exist now. so this book is the only evidence that that occurred. and that would be one of, one of the things that they said about the book is betrayal, and that would be an example of that. now, another example is in the aftermath of something that was in the book that is also not historically well known, is that

in the aftermath of the '67 war, there was a november, well, there was a meeting, a conference of arab leaders in khartoum. and because we knew it was going on, my father had people from greece come down and bug it. at the end of the conference, we knew exactly what everyone had said. and what they had said was that there would be no more war and that everyone was free to cut a deal as long as they checked with the other people before they actually cut it, that they were free to negotiate it separately. the history of the middle east now is because the one person that was there that didn't have an army was the plo, and they said there were three noes, no negotiation, no peace, etc., and that just wasn't true. we knew it, the israelis knew it, but it's been used ever since as an excuse not to have peace, but we actually knew what

was gown on inside -- going on inside the can conference at the time. some of the other things that the book coffers that i think are important are how the 1980s, essentially, escaped us without any progress. because there were things that were happening, and there were approaches. and they were constantly undercut. by american inaction and by jordanian mistakes and by israeli desire not to have a deal. and that is one of the themes in this book is that land for peace is the deal that's available. and it always has been. and what this book shows is negotiation by negotiation, position paper by position paper how the israelis and the americans chose going forward to

have land, specifically the west bank, instead of peace. thereand next i'm going to moveo the iran -- no, excuse me, the iraq wars one and two. saddam hussein asked the united states whether he could invade kuwait or not. he didn't say it just that way, but that's, in effect, what occurred. and the american government through a series of miscalculations which my father feel were unfairly blamed on april glassby, who was simply operating under the instructions that she had been given by secretary baker, a distinguished diplomat and intelligent man who made, who many people think and my father thought made an error in not telling the iraqis more

forthrightly that if you don't, um, i mean, that if you move into kuwait, we will, essentially, invoke the carter doctrine and meet you militarily. that's clearly not what occurred. it was a much softer statement than that. and after that, and my father happened to be in spain at the time with some other influential arabs, and after that occurred and he invaded, my father immediately flew to amman and conducted negotiation through king hussein with iraq and obtained an agreement to begin withdrawal of forces from kuwait within four days. in fact, saddam hussein did withdraw some forces from, from iraq, and there was an admission , and there was an agreement through ambassador pickering and secretary baker. ambassador pickering was at that

time the u.n. ambassador and secretary baker was, as we all know, secretary of state. and there was an agreement that if saddam did certain things and if king hussein was able to get saddam to do certain things, that they would be moving on a track wards peace. and when questioned about this afterwards because, actually, the mission to negotiate was successful, and yet, you know, that didn't occur, pickering later admitted that there was actually two policies, a peace policy and a war policy, and we were doing them both at the same time. i suppose that would be machiavelli rather than an american politician speaking, but in any case, that's what occurred. so the idea that the war was necessary when there had been a secret agreement for saddam to withdraw isn't true. now, you can argue that it was important to defeat nasser in '67, and you can argue that it

was important to defeat saddam hussein militarily and defeat his power in 1990, but you can't argue that either of those wars were militarily necessary because neither of those people were an actual threat. one wasn't militarily competent, and the other wasn't a threat because he had agreed to withdraw after having asked our permission and having gotten what he thought was a nod and a wink. the second iran -- excuse me, i keep thinking, iran's on everybody's brain these days, so you'll excuse me. [laughter] the second, the second war, the 2003 war, wasn't necessary, and it's hard to argue that the. it certainly was very expensive. he did, my father did fly to -- each as old as he was, through his death he was still a lawyer for jordan. but he also had substantial can connections in the intelligence community. and there's two vignettes that i want to tell you about that are

also in the book. one of them is that in february of 2003, before the war, he flew to jordan, and he met, as he would have, some of his old friends, and some of them had baathist connections to the iraqi regime. and in those meetings it was very clear that, number one, the iraqis didn't have weapons of maas construction, the program -- mass destruction, the program had been dismantled, but they were making this up, and they were stating it so they could protect themselves from their own people and the iranians who they were concerned about. and the other thing that he learned was that they knew that the united states was going to invade and that they knew the united states was going to win. so rather than fight a pitched battle, they all went home, buried weapons caches throughout the country and, and waited to wage what became a bloody

guerrilla war. now, if he knew that, he figured that the american intelligence associations and organizations must also know that. but we acted like we didn't. and apparently, one of the reasons that was the case is a friend of his who he knew through dick veets and had many meetings with was a man named ahmed call by who was a wealthy ex-pat iraq can key who had sold the cia and the justice department a bill of goods. and that bill of goods was that he was going to be president of iraq x he could somehow put together -- and he could somehow put together this national iraqi congress, iraqi national congress, excuse me. which, of course, was never going to happen and didn't happen. and when he got there, he didn't have any base of support, but he did have the americans, and he was able to leverage that.

but he was, he was as much running us as, and the israelis, as we were running him. the one thing that wasn't happening is that we weren't getting the best intelligence and the best advice. so as a result and an example of the outrage of this is the fallujah campaign. you know, there was a lot of -- first there were some contractors kill inside fallujah, then there were a lot of american marines killed in fallujah, and it was unnecessary. because as general petraeus would eventually show, if you do business with the sunnis and you try to make deals with them, you can. but this isn't conjecture because before the war -- and it's in the book -- there was a contact made by the head of of the fallujah clan, probably one of the most important clans in iraq who was in germany for medical treatment. contacted, made a contact, my father tried to do something about it, but nobody at the

defense department was interested because they had their own people that they were listening to who were saying exactly what they wanted to hear. and what it was was the fallujah clan knew we were coming, as everybody who read a newspaper knew we were coming, and they were willing to work with us. but we didn't work with them. how many marines died because we were listening to people like ahmed call by and people like paul wolfowitz instead of the people who really knew what they were doing. be and so there is a price to be paid, and it's a severe one, for lying in public policy. or believing who you want to believe as opposed to who you should believe. now, what i want to do to close, i have just a minute more, is to read something that my father originally wrote sometime around

2009, late 2009, early 2010, certainly before the arab spring. and this is from 241, 242 in the book. nothing has changed between the israelis, the palestinians and the jordanians since the '67 war, but we're kidding ourselves if we, if we start to see this status as permanent. every single ruler in the middle east is in danger of losing his job, and if he loses his job, somebody from the opposite end of the spectrum takes over. fifty years from now, everybody who wants nuclear weapons will probably have them unless somebody stops talking and writing articles and does something about it. once iran has nuclear weapons, saudi arabia will have to get them and so would egypt and maybe syria. then everybody's got nuclear weapons, and somebody's going to fire one. and then i'm going to skip down a little bit. so the people who should be

negotiating are israel and iran. israel might just have to live with an adversary having the bomb. we did. we lived with the us, r for more than -- ussr for more than four decades. it would change their behavior, and they would need some friends because everybody else in the area feels the same way, that they are threatened. i wonder if iran is going to welcome this new position in which everyone is their enemy, but i can certainly see that they would want a nuclear option. weapon, excuse me. um, in any case, this book is not my book. i just happened to be born boo this family, and i -- to be born into this family, and i happened to commute through my high school years during the summers to jordan with my father. i sat around tables where a lot of these things were being discussed, and in his later years i spent almost every weekend taking him up to our

lake house in gettysburg and talking with him. and the important thing is that the history that the things that actually occurred be paid attention to. because as someone once said, if you don't learn from history, you're condemned to repeat it. and that's all i have. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, jack, and thank you, vernon. i guess i feel because i did know jack personally so well that something you said, vernon, just, i think, characterized jack in a very, very nice way, and i just want to kind of emphasize it. jack was someone who was in a very important relationship with an extremely important leader. but you don't see him in the pictures. and this is not just because he's a spy, just because he's

cia. it was his personality. it really was that he believed that if, that he could not undermine the authority of the king by any -- if it looks like there was an american always next to him. as a result of that, i know even in the last few years of king hussein's life, jack was a very close personal friend as well as lawyer, i guess, with a little l? so anyway, be happy to take some questions. i think i will, maybe i'll call upon people, but then if you want to direct them either way, or they both can talk. we'll start here at the back. >> yeah. >> first of all, let me just ask if you would identify yourself and -- >> my name's will nichols, i'm from george washington university. i just wondered what do you think the real motivation was that these wars weren't necessary?

>> let me take that one. >> okay. >> um, can you stand, please? each war is a little different. the war that i spoke of most just now be was the 1973 war, and i think that what jack felt was that henry kissinger wanted to resolve the issues in the middle east but felt that there wasn't the political capital to expend at the time, if you'll recall this was 1973, nixon had been elected strongly but was under some pressure as a result of watergate, and that this was a way to -- it was miscalculated, but nevertheless, if egyptians could create some sort of cry is sis that he could react to. i don't think he planned and i don't think jack thought he

planned the full-scale war that occurred. but that particular war was so that henry kissinger could do his subtle diplomacy thing and that, of course, would elevate him but also allow him to solve what was sort of intractable problem. because what was occurring was if you have -- and we'll notice this now because we have aipac in town. and there's earlier in the book there's a story about how when he was in the early '60s trying to convince the state department to back a weapons sale to jordan, and the head of the state department, then near east division, said, look, the arabs, you know, we work for a democratic administration, the johnson administration. they don't -- and 60% of their funds come from jewish cribbers.

and -- contributors. and we similarly aren't interested in arming arab armies, so it's not going to happen. now, as a result, one of the things i didn't want get into is we practically lost jordan as an answer. but that's an answer to one of your questions and a feint to the other. which is that we have interests as a country, and some of them are to secure our allies. and one of our allies is israel. but there is such a disproportionate influence and popularity of the state of israel in this country that it makes it hard for us to advance our interests. and so, for instance, if the israelis want to destroy iran or egypt or iraq, we'll often be asked to cooperate in any way that we can. so i guess the answer is the wars that we've talked about mostly have to do with israel and advancing their interests. and often, by the way, not

necessarily israeli interests. but it has to do with the fawning of american politicians over israel in such a way that israeli interests really aren't advanced because there are too many wars, and wars aren't necessarily the answer. >> up here with a question. >> [inaudible] >> one second, we have a microphone. and your name, please? >> yeah. i'm, my name is -- [inaudible] i'm a minister counseller at the embassy of jordan in washington d.c. not a question, i just thank you to the o'connell family, sean, thank you so much for this great effort to bring this book to reality. jack was a great man, he was a great friend of jordan, friend of king hussein and he served his country's interest and overcan as well -- jordan as

well, and we thank you so much for this. the book is clear testimony for what jordan stands for, what king hussein was standing for, for peace in the region. and i hope that the lessons that we read from this book will help us all to achieve what we all want to happen in the region, peace for everybody. thank you. thank you, ambassador. >> thank you.% let's see, we have another question right behind you here. >> my name is charles piercy. were there any in the process of the review and the involvement of the review board, did that, were there any redactions requested or imposed, or did that have any effect on the final text as it was published? >> um, it actually had very

little x that's primarily because jack was very careful about revealing agent names or information that the cia would have a big problem with. um, so there were lots of little, minor things that were almost comical in terms of what they wanted out of the book. and almost nothing really of substance. they wanted, there were a couple of names of cia people they wanted out of the book even though those names were in the public domain which, again, is almost comical. but we tried as best we could to, um, adhere, you know, adhere to their wishes, and we kept some of the things they wanted out and put some back in. but all in all, they were really pretty minor. keep in mind a lot of, i mean, the book begins in 1955, so a lot of the things were, you

know, pretty historical and, you know, less sensitive. so it was kind of a nonevent. it took for months, and there was this mix up over cover and when is all -- all is said and done, jack had died, and what they wanted out was minimal. >> [inaudible] >> i'd like to spread it around if i might. yes, over here. >> i'm paul, i'm a freshman at gw, and my question is for you, mr. o'connell. i was going to ask you if your father felt ever or if it's written in the book that he felt that the united states in favoring kind of israeli interests in the renal kind of -- in the region kind of hurt, you know, it's arabic relations in places like jordan, syria and how that effected and what he felt the effects of that were. >> i any not only -- i think not

only did he feel that, but he felt it damaged israeli interests as well. because with, for example, it was very difficult after the, after the '67 war, the jordanians needed to rearm because their tanks had been destroyed. they had no air force at that point, and they were sitting ducks for any nationalists or anyone to take them over, essentially. and they needed weapons. but because it was so difficult to get that kind of a program through the congress, the administration didn't really want to take congress on. so one of the things that the book talks about is that the jordanians actually went to the soviet union and had arranged a meeting where they were going to get substantial weapons. now, that didn't happen, and the book explains how it was thwarted by my father. sounds self-serving, but it's true.

and in the process of thwarting that when the '73 war eventually occurred, jordan was an american ally and was able to stay out of the war against israel. which, of course, made it a different military thing, and it was already a close thing to those who have studied the '73 war. so when i say enlightened self-interest, i'm not being anti-israeli in saying that the israeli desire not to have anybody but israel receive substantial amounts of aid or have a good relationship which, certainly, inyou ared through most of this period and probably still does today to a certain extent, is damaging to israel. israel needs to be able to have strong friends in the area that are also pro-western. and the congress and the israeli lobby in this country are so strongly against anybody being strong but them, that it actually doesn't serve their own security interests.

>> be right behind this, question. >> my name is steven. still some mysteries about the 1973 war and one of which is the what many military observers view as kind of timidity on the part of the egyptians and the syrians, that you could make a credible case that with more aggressive action, the egyptians could have swept through the two key passes in the sinai and toward the me give and that the israelis could have been pushed off the golan heights. so is anything in your father's experience that would shed light on this '73 war? >> you want to take that? i think that my father felt that in its inception, the '73 war was planned by the egyptians and that the egyptians didn't want to go to war, they would have rather made peace. and as a result of that, they thought a political war, and that's what the book describes,

that they went as far as they went, and then they stopped. i mean, i think this is just military history. they didn't move forward. the syrians who weren't in on the game did try to move forward, and it looked like they might even win. it was a touch and be go thing. but in any case, the egyptians did stop after they crossed the canal and went into certain passes, so that allowed the israelis some time to regroup and get a bunch of new planes and equipment from nato and, eventually, encircle the egyptian third army. >> are there questions on this side? sir, did you want to ask -- >> yes. >> hold on just one second. >> there was an account, i guess, about three-quarters of the way through the book about the process that the national security adviser then, condoleezza rice, felt she had to go through. this was, i guess, once removed

from a direct knowledge of jack o'connell. but was there any, has there been any pushback on that particular episode and how it was characterized? has it been denied by anyone? or -- >> why don't you handle that one. >> yeah. the denied by the principle. jack claimed that he was told that a certain state department official or certain nsc official had to be cleared with the israelis before he was appointed. and the official in question whose name, um, is escaping me right now has publicly said that was not the case. >> well, i mean, let me just add that there was an article written about the book that said

that he said that. but i haven't seen any -- at least i haven't seen his actual statement that he hasn't said that. it does appear in print that he said that he hadn't said that, but he didn't sign that article, and what had occurred was my father was trying to bring to the attention of condoleezza rice one of the things that he was trying to do which was something that he did, and throughout the book he was proposing various things to try and work out various peaceful solutions to problems. and in this instance he met with a fellow who i think his name was hadley, is that correct? it might not be, but in any case, it was an assistant to condoleezza rice. >> the american he met with was bruce riedel. >> bruce riedel, sorry about

that. thank you. and mr. riedel told my father, you know, there's only so far i can go with this paper because i'm leaving, i'm going back to the agency. he was an agency guy. and that he said, and do you know what's going on? my replacement they're basically sending over to the israeli embassy a list of names rather than fighting after the names get rejected because the israelis don't want someone like that in that position. and, you know, it's a conversational thing, and maybe mr. riedel after the fact wishes he hadn't said that or wishes jack hadn't published it. but i believe it. my father wasn't given to make aing things up. making things up. and, anyway, there's that story. >> vernon, did you have, did you have anything, vernon, you wanted to add to that? >> the person in question was elliot abrams, and abrams, i

think, in a review of the bookg basically said that neverg happened, so we were left with jack's account and abrams' denial. >> you mean the fellow that wrote the review, right? >> yeah. it was abrams' review. in the his review of the book, he basically said i checked with bruce riedel and was assured that no such thing was ever said. ..ñ

>> he was viewed in a positive light by a lot of people who interacted with him and government officials around world. i wonder what your interactions were like with king abdallah and whether he feels in the last 13 years or 12 years that has been a leader of jordan whether he has positively carried on mr. o'connell's mission, king hussein's mission and beliefs. >> i have to admit i am a little prejudiced because i grew up with abdallah and found him to be of all the kids -- i don't know that we hung out per se but we played together and there's always the kid who is nice to the other kids and belize etc.. he was a kid who took care of the other kids and nice to the other kids.

after king hussein died, my father tendered his resignation and of the law did not accept it and continued to advise him throughout the rest of his life. i am sure he would not have done so if he felt he was not doing a good job as king of jordan. one thing i did not get to was something abdallah and my father organized was also in the book although frankly his role, my father's will was not as large in the book as a was in real life and that was the case in the world court where the israeli law on the west bank was declared illegal. and abdallah back to my father's actions and hired lawyers at several. my father thought highly of abdallah as well.

>> explain what that was. >> that was a decision. the israeli construction of a wall around is really part and mainly actually in the west bank on palestinian soil or jordanian soil depending how you view that is another complicated legal issue but that wall was deemed to be illegal. in addition to being an atrocious way of making a prison of an entire people on the west bank. it is also illegal under international law and it was declared so in the world court

after extensive litigation on the subject. >> other questions? in the back? >> thanks for the book. my name is paul and i am a graduate student. your father was able to witness a huge period of time within the cia. was very particular time when the cia was performing a mission was created to do? or did he have a personal belief about what that mission was? >> i think he thought up until the church committee did their exposs that the cia was a more effective organization. he thought there were periods and operations which he didn't improve of and didn't think were good and that included the bay of pigs not because of a failure

per se. he thought that the cia should be collecting intelligence and it wasn't capable and it would probably negatively affect the culture of the agency and what it was supposed to be doing to encourage military activities. he did not approve as i said of the reports that the agency was engaging in torture and said when he was there he didn't see anybody believe that way. >> i want to thank you for an interesting program and i hope it would be nice to have you back. thank you. [applause] >> vernon loeb was really instrumental in his skills and

knowledge and integrity and it was a gutsy thing for the industry. to step forward and let the chips fall where they may. [applause] >> the copies of these book? want to. thank you very much. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs use the online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left of the page and click search. you can share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top

nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> when we talk about the founding fathers what is the era we are talking about? what are we talking about? >> talking about the american revolution and the writing of the constitution. those are the two key event and everybody who played a major role claim to be a founding father. obviously the older ones have careers before the american revolution and the younger ones had careers that went on a few years after the founding of the constitution. that is what we are talking about. >> who are the old ones and the younger ones? >> benjamin franklin was born in 1706. that is how old he is. he died in 1790. he signed the declaration of independence and the

constitution. james madison was born in 1751 and died in 1836, 85 years old. he has seen the fight over missouri being admitted to the union. he sees the nullification crisis. he is the last one. aaron burr dies after he does but that is sort of the other side. >> host: you wrote what would the founders do? in that book, you write the founders invite our questions now because they invited discussion as they live. they were expensive know alls hanging their ideas out to try in speeches and journalism. they set up a republic. >> guest: they set up a republic and are proud of doing that.

this is virtually unique in the world. and kind of a republic leaders will at the same time. a unique form of government being created and compared to all the competitors, marquees and what not, based on popular. there is a franchise. the electorate has to be appealed. a lot of them are journalists. they write for the newspapers. some of them are professional journalists. alexander hamilton still going on at the new york post. he founded it. benjamin franklin was the great

american publisher. sam adams was a publisher. it is hard to think of founders who didn't write journalism. george washington didn't. that is very rare. even someone like james madison who didn't particularly like it, it wasn't great at it, he screwed himself up and wrote 29 federalist papers which were op-ed pieces and in newspapers. so these guys, these men know that they have to put themselves out there for the american public which is their constituency. know ir all. they were -- it was a small tr . they were -- it was a small al. they were -- it was a small

country. harvard or kings college or yale or princeton. they have a few dozen students unlike the thousands they have today. most of these men were college graduates. those who weren't made shore they read all their lives. they felt they had to be up on the news of the day and the political period of the day. if you listen to there debate you would have thought montagu's first two names were the celebrated because he is always called the celebrated montagu and they knew their ancient history. they knew their english history and their recent english history and their ancient history, history of rome and history of o'connell. it and always admire what they

read. in hamilton and the federalist papers he says the history of the little greek city states is disgusting because they go through cycles of tyranny and chaos and he hopes america can avoid that. negative examples as well. >> host: tell me if i am paraphrasing this wrong but our founding fathers were less well-traveled and less sophisticated than the high school seniors today or veterans from iraq and afghanistan. >> guest: it is harder to get around the world. crossing the atlantic ocean takes 20 days if you are really lucky. it can take 80 days. icebergs and storms. john adams crosses the atlantic on one of his voyages and the ship is struck by lightning and everyone on board has to pump until it makes landfall in

europe. all the passengers have to take turns. it is hard to get around. is hard to get around the united states. from new york city to albany, new york. if you took a horse, that would take you three days on your own horse or in a coach. if you kubota up the hudson that would take three days if the wind was right. it could take ten days to get from new york city to albany. it is a few hours. so yes. there are restrictions that come from not being able to get around. the flip side of that is what they did note they knew very well. >> you can watch this and other

programs online at booktv.org. all day today on booktv, the gaithersburg folk but the-book festival is live and run through the day. notables include timothy noah on the haves and have nots in the great divergence. and j. edgar hoover's war on a new type of american enemy, radical terrorism. at 3:20 narrow scientist david bin laden on why the good stuff feels so good in the compass of pleasure. on afterwards, alfred nobel and his nobel peace prize. >> there's this myth he established the prize for peace out of guilt over his invention of dynamite. i think i say in my book that it is hard to know exactly what is in a man's head and hard but this seems