leaders drop this thing. listen to johnson in this telephone call is to see a genius in human nature because johnson saying of course we can't violate the house precedent. and he says what other ways do we have? [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or boat you like to see featured on booktv? ..

>> now on booktv's jonathan katz a reporter who lived in haiti during the 2010 earthquake when it was destroyed by talks about the failure to rebuild the country even though billions of dollars were pledged and many aid agencies took part in the effort. it's about 45 minutes. >> hello? thank you for the introduction. that was very cool. this is my first book so if i

look like i'm really not accustomed to this it's because i'm really not accustomed to it. so the book is called "the big truck that went by" and there is a bit of spoiler in the subtitle, how the world came to save haiti and left behind a disaster. sorry if this is breaking news but that is what i do. i'm going to read to you by little bit about it and talk about it a little bit and i hope that we have a good discussion that this topic usually provokes. so i'm going to start by reading from chapter 1, the end. before he do that i'm going to get myself some water. talk amongst yourselves for a moment. it's actually really funny, this grand of water is in the book. how did i know that? i would have picked that section and try to look for an little bit but these were actually delivered to haiti after the

earthquake in the u.s. military. it's called fiji water neck comes from fiji, which is you know caribbean geography not in the caribbean. and it was sent at quite a lot of expense and quite a lot of effort. it was a very beautiful project for photographers to get pictures of these gleaming palace of bottled water coming off the frames with the concept being that there was this incredible water crisis and incredible food crisis and the way it was reported that haiti was under the verge of a famine following the earthquake and there were real problems -- there were real problems and you know they're certainly needed to be a response but this is an example of the response that was not terribly well thought out. a was a very nice gesture on behalf of fiji water company and

to the water company here today. it was a lovely gesture but it was sort of ridiculous because they actually do have water in haiti. it's an island much like fiji and what really needed to be done was for the water to be purified and cleaned up and distributed better for the existing system of water in haiti to be improved and frankly long before the earthquake for a system of potable water to be implemented and maintained for government institutions to be supported and formed that would be capable of doing that kind of thing, which would have eliminated a major part of the crisis when the earthquake struck and could be done now to help eliminate and ameliorate and address present crises including the cholera epidemic which we will talk about a little bit later and another crisis in a future the future so thank you for the visual aid, fiji water. now i would like to drink some which may make me a bit of a

hypocrite that as you read in the book that is also part of my character. [laughter] okay, so the end. the phone was next to me on the bed. ignoring this was proving difficult. it was a hot slow january jen'nan just passed for 45:00 p.m. in the hills above port-au-prince in the news between christmas and carnival offered a distraction. by burin residents were quiet. my lone housemate was on home. at our main translator and driver was finishing phonecalls and the large first floor office space before heading down the hill where he had been living since his divorce. the only other person around was the hard-working haitian mechanic who was outside under my hope is 13-year-old geotracker. i was upstairs in my room. the call i was waiting for was -- the call i was waiting

for was from somebody at ap. what the color was waiting for was someone from ap telling me i could ship out after two and half years of political intrigue and there was not one utility i could count on. i was done with haiti. my friends were great. the house was terrific but two-story with creekstone walls in on the first floor and a big terrace set back among hibiscus and lime trees behind the hotel. from the slum rising behind it the sound of children playing and i would fall asleep to handclap hollowly is from the church and i. the ap it had talked about getting ready the house and my foreign friends done with a two year rotation ship docked to the next crisis. ap told me i could pick my next position so long as was kabul legos or baghdad. [laughter] i chose afghanistan. it's not a really good place for a break.

i played on line trivia against the friend in the states. is sitting on my bed in a sleeveless undershirt and i will allow you a picture that for them moment. sweating from the noonday he. a started new game. and named the human body part for every letter of the alphabet. i didn't know was spelled like that i typed as time ran out. you win. i heard aloud rumbling outside. i looked out the window of the yard was empty. it must be a water truck i i thought. and then the fed started to -- i heard plates rattling in the kitchen downstairs. the wooden mast from mexico i had always worried might fall started to sway. medicine bottle suntan lotion and bug spray shimmied on the round black table i left cluttered because i never counted on staying in haiti long enough to get a dresser. there was a rumble before little ones when i was a correspondent on the other side in the dominican republic. this couldn't be one of those.

i stood up from the bed against the wooden floor and felt nothing. the roar outside got louder. than the floor started to move. vibrations got thicker. christ, maybe it is one of those. what do you do in one of those? the doorway. something about the doorway. i walked toward it but for some reason kept going into the hall and then everything shoved. i lowered myself, or maybe i fell in the initiative came the other way and then another and another. suddenly the house was an airplane in the storm and everything was falling. the framed photo from jerusalem barely miss my head and cracked on the floor. everythineverythin g was flowing with glass coming through the walls. it was a contest between the up and down and side to side. who is going to shove harder, the up and down at the side to side? they were both winning. i answered no, no, no, no, no. the world turned gray and everything blurred things falling that should have been nothing left to follow.

the horizontal slats of the window shot from their frames and burst across the floor. i watch the front wall crack into daylight pushing through the throbbing dust with every heartbeat the floor disappeared from under me and reappeared and was gone. it was going to fall. i was going to fall. i heard a sound like trees being mowed down in a forest in the house next-door collapsing seconds ago. i thought about running through the shattered glass and coming down the stairs but there was no time. the second floor went i could either be under it or on top of it. i went with on top embraced for the pain. the beginning of the end. fortunately at that moment not for me. so i'm going to jump forward a little bit here. i'm just going to read a couple of short sections. so the book actually takes a large step back after the first chapter and then goes through quite a lot of haitian history that approximately 60 million years.

and then it comes back forward and talks about the immediate aftermath of the day after, the first chapter goes through after what i just read in them we come into the chapter called crossroads which is about the immediate tip of the spear response when most of us outside of haiti saw on television, the responders coming in the military and such. soy talk about a lot of different things happening at that time, but one of the things that i'm going to talk about here is search-and-rescue. i will explain why with the first sentence. search-and-rescue was the highest priority of the responders. banking moon cult of the most urgent need and obama noted the six u.s. search teams in his speeches. general keane informed southcom

the morning after the quake that cloke not hundreds but thousands would need be extracted. the rescue team specialized technology and training exemplify the advantages and the developed world offered haiti sensitive microphones, listening devices and rescue dogs. news coverage set it on the rescue. journalists traded officials to make sure audience didn't miss a single survival being pulled from the rubble. the tone of the reporting took on a religious tinge. quote the new york rescue squad pulled two miracles from the rubble of haiti read the new york daily news. skala forney governor arnold schwarzenegger remarked quote many of us were able to watch the california rescuers live on television performing all of these miracles. the first u.s. team to reach haiti was dispatched to u.n. headquarters in after 10 hours of spying pulled out a hustonian otte guard with minor injuries. ban ki-moon called a small

miracle. the supermarket where we have bought or 10-dollar boxes of cereal and the collapse of the hotel which had 200 people inside mostly foreigners when it fell. general keane who is the head of the u.s. military response would both quote the hotel montana at one time had 16 alone because of the number of people trapped there. the places were ordinary haitians lived and worked, schools, stores homes and offices with easily ghastly numbers inside god more attention. two days after the quake cnn's ivan watson watch the team of haitian rescue runs try to free an 11-year-old girl whose legs were penned under the concrete. it could reach her but they didn't have equipment to take her out. tiberi child her sunlit rates with powdered concrete whales when severing her leg. without blood for transfusion the invitation could kill her.

watson his voice shaking told the anchor in atlanta on a neighboring hill there's a hotel a posh hotel a lot of foreigners were staying at. there were dozens of american french and chilean rescuers they're working to rescue at least one woman named sarah who is trapped but then another heartrending heartrending scream in the rubble stop them cold. even with international attention now on her took the rest of the day to find a generator and a power saw to pull the girl out. she died of her injuries two days later. there are many reasons for this disparity. most foreign rescuers arrived without clear orders where to go. the haitian government had no formal coordination of rescue efforts either between international organizations are between general keane boss mass u.s. task force and the government. foreign officials near the u.n. headquarters hotel montana had created supermarket. one of keane stoneman was one of the buried at montana. those that ventured the language barriers security concerns and some impose curfews outside the high and compound for treating waste on reports of quote civil

unrest. the coverage of those few featured rescue sites provided a much-needed uplift for viewers a broad. their miracles were floats of hope in a sea of sadness. luxury hotels and high in supermarkets broadcast around the world and win new refugees came and they knew where to go. they had already seen the priority sites on tv. and i will jump to one more in the middle of the book. and a chapter called angela. i could explain but by the book. it talks about a conference a very important conference that was held in march of 2010, the end of march of 2010 in which the international community left those governments major international organizations such as the red cross came together in new york at the united nations to make pledges for the

long-term rebuilding of haiti and that is in this chapter and this part is just one part. as the donors' donors' conferene approach organizers went to haiti to draw attention to what they consider priorities for reconstruction. you secretary general ban ki-moon arrived on march 14. the days are getting longer now dry tropical winter giving way to spring he. farmers beyond the weight and so waited daily rains to nourish their corm potatoes but the weather looked more ominous in the city. it was impossible to say exactly how many people were sleeping under open skies but the most widely estimates wagered over 1 million, about one tenth of the countries publish in. overseas journals and policymakers realize weren't going anywhere begin reporting in unsanitary crime-ridden hot beds of simmering unrest microcosm in other words for the widely held view of haiti. the secretary-general's trip was a visit to one of these camps.

the most famous of all three-quarters of the hill from downtown port-au-prince on the golf course of of the club. variegated clubhouse was still an operating base of the army 82nd airborne and young paratroopers. as the south korean -- [inaudible] waiting out front was a more family or face smiling between a blue t-shirt and a blue trucker hat. it was becoming more powerful than the soldiers. sean penn had arrived in haiti nine days after the quake spearheading a new ngo bankrolled by diana jenkins a philanthropist who lived near california. for a few days the landing team in the jenkins-penn haitian relief organization or jp h.r. distributed water filters and medical aid here and there and an army officer invited -- to a beggar on the team soldiers with the most excited about the fellow turned aid worker who played a bartender and coyote

ugly. both actors lived in a structure talk safely behind the clubhouse which protected them from the elements. he stops to -- at the clinic he highlighted the on going need for medical aid and the u.n. and haitian pleased and emphasized the need to protect women and girls from sexual violence. cameras he had shouted out before thousands of blue white orange and silver tarps. once everyone is in place that spoke for come concerned the rain season approaching. what will happen to those people who are living here quick secretary-general wouldn't sleeps toward the 45,000 people in the gully below. we have to move these displaced persons to a safer place. once again it was important to understand both the threat and its limits. on a normal day in port-au-prince rain is dangerous. there's little drainage on the streets causing roads to back up like bathtub's.

the storms hit hard. there would be one drop in than 1000 drops and suddenly river falling from the sky. it's an old joke in haiti that street merchants will sipri gunfire but run over one another if true drops hit their head. the rain goes on long enough some pedestrians will get swept away in the house or two might get knocked into her routine. it was a major overstatement to believe the rains would cause a quote second round of death unquote in any way commiserate with the earthquake is bill clinton would soon warn or the ground would become more dangerous or disease than it had been before the quake. the rain can be bad. but it isn't usually that bad. the danger of floods and landslides would be somewhat greater with hurricane season got underway in the late summer and fall but in march there were still several months to mitigate the danger. nevertheless after turning to new york band would expand on his concerns writing that quote the dp sloping ground would soon quote turned to mud dangerous

fantasies. he joined the drumbeat of warnings about the approaching of the range. 8 inches in a race against time led a press release by care. once again it was as if the only way to get aid groups and donors to act was to create indiscriminate panic and again media were not a man. when the first piece of land shower hit in february my editors rushed me into the storm to where else, the golf course. rain jacket and poncho with a waterproof notebook and headlamp i looked as if i was intrigued they may consult in july. is questioned the camp to the miss gratings of two men playing cards playing outside of their 10. no mother would want to spend the night holding her crying baby in 2 feet of water. and you can find out with this bleep is. what the wind blew and thunder crashed over the t.a.r.p. and no just world could stand by watching what she had to.

nearly every major and you had signed on into thousands to a minimum global standard for disaster response that people have sufficient covered living space providing thermal comfort fresh and protection from the climate and sharing their privacy safety and health. this was a lofty goal and many haitians have not enjoyed those conditions before the earthquake that was part of what bill clinton meant when he said that haiti should quote build that her. responders would have done well to avoid the panic so much in the early going. after all had those who rushed in after the quake not panicked over imagined threats of famine and widespread civil unrest and had the clusters carefully considered strategies to take advantage of the decentralization of 600,000 people into the countryside after the earthquake the quake may not have ended up with huge -- in the first place. secretary generals hit the golf course notwithstanding no one would be relocated before the rain started in our sport to the haitian government's attempts to find relocation basis stall because the wealthy families controlled most of the land in and around the city but it was a

clan like they been an unofficial as diligent and cautious as ban ki-moon would have made such a statement without knowing that people would be relocated soon or at least wear. he knew something we didn't. i ran to ask you more but after a few days he was in the local spy cameras and then i saw sean penn walking alone. i reach the actor before the population spokesman came over to introduce a blushing colic and ask questions. with a plan for the rain the spokesman asked and to my surprise the actor answered in detail. what is the plan or what should be the plan penn replied drawing in an impatient breath. what should be the plan is total location. penn started getting the answer to the secretary-general hadn't and his delivery was everything band wasn't. demonstrative vivid and intense. you can can forgive all those wearing heel is that it. he was handsome if weathered by 49 years on earth around hollow

cheeks and a pair of aviator sunglasses dangling from his neck line. as penn explained the details of camp life he drew from his recent portrayal of really start the charismatic of predictive governor of louisiana and the remake of all the kings men. where that doomed character sees of 1937 populism penn in haiti went for the modern ngo. quote another thing that i think has to be very clear is that a t.a.r.p. is not a tent he said squinting in the mid-daylight. the t.a.r.p. structure is not a temp. start -- t.a.r.p. structure sits on toxic dirt which covers back area which could carry high numbers of life-threatening bacteria very shortly and finally he nailed his point. this camp should be relocated and frankly in my view we have to work to understand how to address the relative unlivability currently of the city if only for children. every good deed of the day is

another cancer patient tomorrow. the actor set of parameters for relocation with the confidence of the hard on field manager. outside port-au-prince which was this centralization not in a flood zone quote large-scale urban camps manufacturing land lands for agriculture and the ability to build communities unquote. with a passion play unafraid to contradict u.s. policy that tarp was a measly solution and especially considering came from a newly minted and very and very recently a fried egg worker but perhaps it wasn't so hypothetical after all. in the population fund spokesman asked penn if he was helping choose the relocation sites do not question for an aid worker let alone a celebrity when he think about a penn surprise me again by saying that a quote had a meeting with president group all the other day in washington and is extend the members of his government on this. we are going to be shown some of these sites.

i was confused. sean penn had a meeting with president preval in washington? granted the actors were official u.n. ambassadors more influential than ban ki-moon himself. george clooney organizing satellites to monitor troops and said don. penn have been involved as an advocate and seem to be taking the next step contributing directly to policymaking. perhaps there had been more to ban ki-moon's visit them in one off round of -- that is all i'm going to read. [applause] so i think the best thing to do, because i will find a way to go beyond any topic whether my choosing or yours, is to open it up to questions.

so there is a microphone going around. also please speak up so that everybody can hear you well. >> are you planning on going back to haiti soon? >> speak up a little more. >> are you planning on going back very soon? >> yes. [laughter] >> so, i understand that why clough john started a foundation and raised an enormous amount of money. the money disappeared. he is under investigation. can you give some substance to that whole story? >> why clough is in the book as well. very interesting guy interesting character by his own right. the thing is best known for in the course of the story of 2010 is that he wanted to become president of the republic of

haiti and actually mounted a very promising campaign until a last minute when he was left off the ballot. depending on who you ask. at that time his financial problems both personal and the party from haiti his charity ngo were factored into that. i would say interestingly enough even though he was quite common knowledge in haiti that there was a widespread allegations of unpaid taxes in misspent money that had gone to as a group, most people that i was talking to, the haitians who lived there, didn't really care all that much. they were much more interested in his promise as somebody basically who could lift the dream of growing up outside of port-au-prince moving to

brooklyn and then making it huge and coming back as a major star. i had a conversation that is in the book here, where i'm talking to somebody who is actually a waiter in a restaurant. i was saying who do you support in the election and he said oh wyclef jean. and i said why wyclef jean? he is an american and he speaks creole like i do, which he does. i don't know which one i'm flattering more. [laughter] and he said yes, i know but if he is american that means that when he is elected president we are all going to -- [inaudible] [laughter] he said this. in terms of the allegations which have only gotten worse with time, you know it's hard to

say. there hasn't really been any substantive proof brought forward that the allegations were wrong. the allegations are mostly based on paperwork and filings or lack thereof by the irs. one of the nice things about the way businesses conducted in this clearly and clearly not without problems but at the very least there are filing agencies and oversight agencies and usually when you have done something wrong, so long as somebody is willing to look for you it's less of a paper trail. and he seems to have gotten caught up in that. you know, it's interesting when you talk to wyclef jean i think like a lot of people haitian and otherwise who come into work there ,-com,-com ma i think he really does have big dreams and i think he really does mean what he says when he says that he wants his organization to help

life get better. but the organization has been shut down. i don't know if there is going to be a criminal follow up to what has happened but it's pretty ugly. things didn't turn out well for the people he was supposed to be helping. >> with all the problems that occurred during katrina, why do you think they didn't do a more effective job, particularly with engagement of president bush and clinton in haiti? everybody here? correct me if i'm wrong but after everything that i gone wrong with katrina why didn't they do a better job with engagement at presidents bush and katrina and haiti? the that's a very good question. basically this is not the first time that aid has gone wrong,

that it does not than what it has set out to do in many cases made problems worse. people who work in aid and development can tell you development can tell you over and over again story after story after story of places they worked where they came in and they thought it was going to go one way and it went the other. these are deep-seated structural problems. it is not really a surprise. it was no surprise to me and i don't think it was a surprise to anyone who knew haiti well or disaster relief well that many of these issues occurred. they occur everywhereverywher e. they occur here in a very different way but after sandy you know i was paying very close attention but after the storm is coming up and you saw a lot of the same tropes coming up again. i fear for instance that in the wake of the storm there was going to be a wave of panic or go there was going to be looting and society was going to break

down in the mob mentality would take over. people were out there looking for people, the media and people in disaster relief. officials were out there looking for any sign that they could find of society breaking down but the looters coming in and usually blowing it out of proportion. really while there were isolated incidents, as there are anywhere, it wasn't that big of a deal. now in katrina, more like haiti that attitude had major major ramifications. you end up with people innocent new orleanians who had survived the disaster and were just trying to stay alive, getting shot to death by the police because the police assumed that they were stealing something. so that's the long way of saying

that it would have been nice if there there had been this period of reflection. new plans were made for disaster relief going forward that when the haitian earthquake hit at the hour of its choosing could've been implemented but it's not really a surprise that reflection hadn't taken place before and the one piece of good news is that it's never too late and i think this would be an excellent time to have that period of reflection. >> i have three questions for you. number one is what do you think of the current president and what do you think should have happened to era street when they return to returned to haiti and what do you know about robert? i heard the discovery of gold and other raw materials and haiti and third, what do you think are some of the solutions for haiti right now with all the

problems that they are having? the u.n. is down there and then i hear stories of women being adopted and kidnappings and things like that. so you asked me what i think of the current president. i am just going to dodge that. what i think should have happened to jean-claude duvalier when they return. and what i know about the raw materials in haiti and what can be done? easy. [laughter] i have been waiting for this question, let me tell you. the answer is one word. plastics. [laughter] i have no idea. so a couple of things. first of all, this actually ended up being one of the arcs of this book.

president preval who was the president of haiti at the time of the quake ended up being quite made your character in the book, and in many ways the arc of the book is what happened to his political trajectory and how that led to the elections which because everything in haiti has to happen at the same time occurs the same year as the earthquake, compliments later in november of 2010 and the earthquake was in january which is resulted in the election of michelle marc alief do was best known before coming present of haiti for becoming a carnival singer and taking off his pants. usually in america we wait until they become president but in haiti they decided to reverse it i like michelle mark tully because of his bald head.

[laughter] right on. he was very interesting because he came in as the political neo-site. he was seen as amazingly kind of the haitian wyclef. and not really a serious candidate and he quickly became a very good incompetent candidate who people really liked. at surprise a lot of people that he become president and there were many people who will cry conspiracy and there are many who will cry conspiracy no matter what the election. i have to say while there was certainly, you can read about it. the election was a mess and there were all kinds of things going on. he did have a large contention especially in port-au-prince and

people really did seem to like him and they did have high hopes so far what i can say, i think the safest answer is that it's a little too soon to say what the results of the presidency are going to be. things haven't changed all that much in a general sense one way or another. my friends in the press and haiti i think feel a little more restricted than they did under president preval. it's not in any way the depression that occurred during dictatorships of the past but that is a concern. but he is very charismatic and likeable and much more willing to play ball with the united states for haiti. of which i am critical of many. but i guess we will see. it's a dodge but there you go.

in terms of what is under the ground is certainly gold. or are certainly all kinds of minerals and haiti. in the dominican republic right next door on the same island in the same mountains contains enormous reserves of gold so it wouldn't surprise me at all. there a many people and i don't know if you're one of them who believe essentially everything that is going on in haiti is a grand game to secure rights, mineral rights for american and canadian companies. if it is i will write a story about it. i certainly couldn't prove that at the moment. president martelly has been willing for mineral exploration rights in a country that previously had not been sold. mining, not that pleasant if you have him deliver around an open pit mine. if you are further than the dominican republic -- mom i

spent about two years ap and a mango and reported from an enormous open mind project in a country the country which have been open for a while and closed when the price of gold went down. as you probably know the price of gold is up and keeps going up so it was going to be reopened. it was a huge fight over cleaning up that mine area because it was a mess. rivers running red with dead fish and people who had lost their water sources have now had to walk miles or abandoning the places where their families had lived forever because the land had been ruined. if that is the future of haiti it just seems like another problem and in most countries where large-scale mining takes place it's not usually the host country that benefits from it. i know this wasn't your question but responding to another question. as to whether or not everything

is -- the key to everything is rather than plastics, old. i'm not really sure. gold has been a big deal ever since chris columbus stumbled on haiti and it was a second place he decided to move and had to leave and go to the dr.. but, i don't think there is one single answer that explains everything going on. it's probably part of the mix and i will let somebody else -- i'm going to leave this up to you. i'm going to dodge this largely aside dodged the question last week. >> was the intent -- make impact of the earthquake largely in the port-au-prince area but largely outside of the too? >> it's a fantastic question because it's often overlooked. it's even hard to write about in the length of the manuscript of the book.

the earthquake, the thing is port-au-prince has often stood in for haiti to the imaginations of people outside. i have described the country by its capital at the enormous area in which millions of people live, most of the country's population live which is not in port-au-prince which is a big deal if you are trying to increase tourism which they're people who want to do. they're good their good and bad things about that. thinking outside of port-au-prince extremely and important because the odds of haiti becoming a tourist destination like the other islands or ask a quite strong. the odds of port-au-prince becoming a tourist destination arnel. that is a long long way away. it's a crowded big city and very hard to get around not drawing in the crowds. that is one thing. but it also impacted the way that people thought about where

to direct their aid and it caused issues in haiti because there were people in other parts of the country who are dealing with problems they had long been dealing with that where crises and emergencies. and they were very angry that the agency concentrated in port-au-prince. [inaudible] this was the thing, is that because there are two parts to this. on the one hand, the impact of the earthquake was basically in southern haiti. the epicenter was close to port-au-prince. port-au-prince was by far the largest center of mortality and it was by far the largest area of homelessness and other kinds of neat however was not the only place that was impacted direct he. it wasn't even the epicenter of the earthquake. the epicenter is closer to lay upon. port-au-prince is an area

including sometimes port-au-prince. the reason chapter 4 is called the crossroads. another beautiful city in southern haiti on the other side of the mountain was also very hard hit and so it's ironic because there was this concern that all the aid was being concentrated in port-au-prince, and the part of the country that had not been impacted by the earthquake were being forgotten. the aid efforts especially immediately after the earthquake didn't do a good job of hitting the entire quick sell. we are asked a ride on top of the epicenter and i can say, because as the president correspondent an enormous team under many journalists who came in for us -- before us to report which really freaked us out to do all kinds of different

things. i spoke real -- creole, i kept getting sent out to places like layout gone and also places outside of the quake zone that people were fleeing to. and i can tell you a couple of brief once. layout gone especially was wiped out. it was the level of destruction, even having survived the earthquake in port-au-prince and seeing what is otherwise an unimaginable level of destruction it looked like a jerry bruckheimer film. it look like a monster that had come out out of the ocean vetted just smash the city. it was flat in there was nothing left. it was just a dead zone. many people died and many people survived but that place was gone. this was the story that i will

share with you. i was actually sitting on the back of a pickup truck in leogone three or four days after the earthquake. i had to file and i was sitting there just sort of typing what i saw. i think they been typed jerry bruckheimer's hell in my notebook and a group of guys from the united states came around and we were sitting next to the whole of what it did in the hospital. everything basically in front of us was flat. and they came through and they said excuse me are you american? yes i am. is the hospital x. i said well literally. i think i just said no. clearly not operating.

what they said to me was they had come from kansas city and they had raised money and they had bought pharmaceuticals and bandages and medical supplies and they had come to haiti. they had driven to leogone because they heard that leogone was in dire straits and they wanted to help and they asked me if i had seen any ngos walking around that they could get the medicine twos of the medicine could get to the people and they said no. they said are you an ngo? i said no i'm not an ngo. they thanked me and they walked out into this rebel field. this was i think four days after the earthquake. the situation was like this for a while. so is really interesting. as i said people were overly focused on the parts of the country hit by the earthquake but so focused on port-au-prince like they always have been that they weren't even helping other

places. i will just say very briefly it was a major reason why there was so much confusion at the beginning of the cholera outbreak in october of 2010, nine months after the earthquake. there was a supposition in most of the world outside of haiti that was paying attention to this news that surely the cholera outbreak was a result of the earthquake. and one of the most important things i think repertory that we were doing in our stories in the beginning and ultimately we ended up showing the link between u.n. peacekeepers having brought the cholera bacteria to haiti and essentially all the evidence showed that the u.n. caused the outbreak. but it was very hard to explain to people because they were like haiti got hit by an earthquake or go yes but the cholera outbreak started in may. there are two different places and in the popular imagination haiti is haiti and haiti in

port-au-prince is hard to explain. this is outside of the quake's own and this is outside of the quake zone so it's unlikely it was a direct result of the earthquake and i can talk more about that later. yes? one fast one. >> jonathan, what do you see as the future of haiti 10 years from now? >> that is fast. i don't know. thank you. [laughter] i don't know. i really don't know. i don't know. you know, i can say this. haiti is a country and port-au-prince is a city and the other cities of the quake zone and other potential quake zones as there has historically been large earthquakes in northern haiti and northwestern haiti routinely hit by devastating floods and tropical storms and

hurricanes. and those places are no better prepared for a disaster than they were on the 12th of january. in that sense, if there there is another disaster and there could well be because the bar is set very low, the storm, their other places that would be basically a bump in the road and could be devastating. that remains very high. there is a chance. there can be optimism and optimism needs no evidence really so i don't have have to give you any. if you want to have optimism please go ahead. i share it. as long as people are life there is hope. as long as you know, people still have an opportunity to make choices, they can make better choices. we in developing nations who are dealing with haiti, we are all in one way or another because we

are fully invested in the countries path and we have literal investments in in the future. we can decide to make the decisions that will make the country stronger and more resilient and better able to withstand disaster and more productive on its own. we can decide to step back and allow haitians to lead the way. this doesn't just apply to haitians. it applies to all countries. and we can decide, we can decide to allow for the possibility that we have been wrong and that we make mistakes and we can try to do better for the future. if those things are done, it's going to be a slow process. things are going to turn around immediately. at 10 years from now, things could be a lot better. if we keep going down the road we are going right now and we keep doing what we are doing, what we did before the earthquake and it immediately in the aftermath and frankly what's happening today, 10 years for

now probably things are going to be worse. more people in more disaster and more suffering but there is no reason why that has to happen. one of the things i'm hoping for and i'm not an evangelist, i'm a journalist. i'm just trying to show how it is but i do care about the country. it was my home for three and half years. i made a lot of friends there and it's a wonderful place. i really think if there is some good that can come out of this is if you look back at the good things have happened in the past and we can choose to make a better future. [applause] >> from the very start organized militaries have always been a lot of their time fighting unconventional irregular warfare and you know what? those terms don't make a heck of a lot of sense. that's one of the big takeaways

ahead from doing six years of reading and research for this book. the way we think about this entire subject is all messed up. we think that somehow conventional warfare is the norm. that's the way you ought to fight how these conventional armies slugging it out an open but the reality is those of always been the exception. just think about the more modern world. was the last conventional war that we saw? this is a hard question to answer because in fact there was the russian invasion of georgia in 2008 which didn't last very long and yet all over over the world today there are people who are dying in war whether in afghanistan or mali or syria or the, or myanmar or columbia or many other countries are gall of these people are victims they are there being ravaged by unconventional warfare.

>> if we turn away from the needs of others, we align ourselves with those forces which are bringing about suffering. >> my half of the bully pulpit and you ought to take advantage of the. >> obesity in this country is nothing short of a public health crisis. >> we have little antennas that went up and told me when somebody had their own agenda. >> so much influence.

it's just a shame. >> i think they serve as a window on the past to what was going on with american women. >> she becomes achieved hopped on. she is really the only one in the world they can trust. >> many of the women who were first ladies, they were writers. lot of them are writers, journalists and they wrote books. >> they are in many quick cases quite frank they more interesting as human beings and their husbands if only because they are not first and foremost consequently limited by political influence. >> dolly was socially adept and politically savvy. >> dolley madison loved every minute of it. mrs. monroe hated it, absolutely hated it. >> you can't rule without including what women want and what women have to contribute. >> you are a little breathless and it's too much looking down.

a change of pace. >> yes maam. >> probably the most tragic of all of our first ladies. they never share their marriage. >> she never wrote in her memoir that she said i myself never made any decisions. i only decided what was important and when to present it to my husband. if you stop and think about how much power that is, it's a lot of power. >> prior to the battle against cancer, is to fight the fear that accompanies the disease. >> she transform the way we look at these bugaboos and made it possible for countless people to survive and to flourish as a result. i don't know how many presidents have that kind of impact on the way we live our lives.

speech speeches walking around the white house grounds, i am constantly reminded about all of the people who have lived there before and particularly all of the women are ghosts be the first ladies, their private and public lives, c-span is teaming up at at the white house a stork all association for a first of its kind original series for television. first ladies, influence and image, airing over two seasons. season one begins presidents' day at 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span. c-span radio and c-span.org.

next, david roll recounts the life and career of harry hopkins adviser and friend to president franklin d. roosevelt. mr. hopkins who did not have an official title and the roosevelt administration, was a confidant to the president who assisted in the establishment of the new deal and communications between roosevelt, churchill and stalin during world war ii. this politics and prose bookstore event is about an hour [applause] >> thank you all.

no brilliant questions. i will give the brilliant answers. so, harry hopkins. the editor that i had at oxford likes to call him a spectral figure. he was a spectral figure in the administration of president franklin roosevelt. i'm going to paint a little bit of the word picture at the beginning. [inaudible] is this working all right? can you hear me? all right. i will put it right here. slightly sinister, kind of a ramshackle character, but boyishly attractive. he was gaunt, popper thin but full of