how you would describe he would get back at people. i don't know if you remember there was some comic that had been ridiculing sinatra, and a few days later his face was smashed open. do you remember that? >> i do. i do remember that. [laughter] i have not forgotten that book because before i had written a word, frank sinatra sued me for $2 million to stop the book. and it was terrifying, and i remember i called the publisher, and i said i don't understand this. i've just read that i'm being sued by frank sinatra. and the publishing lawyer said, well, that's very interesting. and i said, um, well, i know, but, you know, when you're sued, you have to get a lawyer -- and she said, well, you might want to do that. [laughter] and i said, well, what are you?

you're a lawyer. and she said, we don't have a manuscript. so i was on my own, and had it not been for a group of writers that stepped forward to defend the first amendment, i probably wouldn't be here. i would be in debtors' prison because frank sinatra kept this going until he finally dropped it a year later. .. i had stories, i had them all over the place interviewing

hundreds of people for the book, and one said, kitty, you don't have to worry about a thing. if anything happens to that blank, blank, blank, blank, i'm the first blamed, so i took a very false sense of security until about three weeks ago, and paul's book came out, and he said that there'd be a hit for that. [laughter] shows you how dumb they are. they probably didn't even know how to spell kelley correctly, couldn't find me. [laughter] any other questions? >> yes, if i may. there's so much controversies in the novel written, one of the more controversial questions for me is you break the code and love of the characters you write about, subjects you write about comes through. your

journalistic code in the law of love characters you are writing about, all on the subject you are writing about comes through. certainly this book lays it bear, makes it easy. >> this does. it really was a labor of love. i am a firm believer in what they called the unauthorized biography. unauthorized does not mean and true, it means that you are doing it without the cooperation and blessing of your subject and i do believe this a legitimate, wonderful way to cover history, especially public figures that have spent many years and millions of dollars creating their own image, so i think it is viable sometimes to go behind that, so usually i am ville one 2 is trying to get behind that

and tell you what is going on but in this book, because it was stanley, because he was my best friend and because he loved president kennedy, i felt i owed it to him to do the kind of book that he would have done and consequently you won't find anything too negative in this book. it shows my affection for stanley and his great affection for the kennedys but there are parts of it that makes you think. jacqueline kennedy lost many children, two or three miscarriages, she went into severe depression at one point and had electroshock therapy and

you begin to understand why the kennedys threw themselves into mental health because rose marie kennedy, one of president kennedy's sisters also had electroshock therapy and it never worked and there's always the party for ambassador kennedy and his wife so there are poignant parts of this book but

>> thank you for coming. i would also like to thank the consulate for having me here in this wonderful room, and i'd co-sponsoring this. i'll read a little bit of the book to you, and you must realize it is a nonfirstal book, so some of it may seem like fiction, but it actually suspect, okay? let me just start with something from australia. this is just the beginning of a chapter. on the first day of creation, the ground split and climbed from the cracks. some took the form of men. others, the form of animals. they went in all directions across the globe, singing, playing, hunting, creating all earthly things. when the work was done, the era

was done. the answers in their track as as mountains, and apts were cliffs, and bats were dark caves. the places where the formations can still be seen are sacred to australia's aboriginal people. for 40,000 years in australia, knowmatic tribes followed in their ancestor's footsteps criss crossing the continent like fine mesh. they set out out on foot, somets traveling thousands of kilometers, pausing at holy sites along the way and gatheredded for ceremonies to gather souls that lie in such places. in 1957, a young woman was on such a walk baht with the family. the journey commenced two years previously in central australia,

and the roots to the final destination in the south took us straight through the outback. hard to imagine a more hostile environment. some temperatures exceeded 50 degrees celsius and in winter, dropping below freezing, hardly any vegetation, just a few trees for shade and river on existence. they lived on rackets and lizards caught in traps, drank from hidden water holes used by foul lines. the landmarks were used to navigate the paths of the ancestors. at some place, they found a number of strange signs covered in characters that neither eddy nor her husband, neither who spoke english, could decipher reading, "warning, you're

entering a radio active area." they pressed on. when night fell, they looked for a good spot for camp. eventually finding a large hallow that offered shelter against the wind. the spot was not peaceful as it seemed. when the sunset completely and they laid down to sleep, they were startled awake by a dim of motors. seconds later, vehicles appeared, and soldiers in overalls jumped out. white men yelling in a language eddy didn't understand forced her and the family to get in one of the vehicles. after awhile, there was a laid out settlement. they ordered her and the family to stand under a stream of water. it was the first shower of their lives. once they were dry, they were sent back under the water. this was repeated four or five

times. in the end, they were given clothing and left them in peace. in the end -- outside, however, the family's four valuable hunting dogs were shot. she was pregnant at the time of the incident, but she lost the baby. her second child died a of brain tumor at the age of # and third born prematurely. she blamed radio active soil. bombs had been detonated in the desert. mark one, part of the british nuclear program in the 1950s moves from the developmental into the stage, and in london, selected australia as the test site because it was uninhabited.

nobody considered the fact an aboriginal path could lead through the test zone. i go on to describe the area, which was absolutely huge, talking of something like, you know, the state of new jersey, that kind of area, which they used as a bombing range, only a single person assigned to clear it of aboriginal people migrating through the area. there was only one man responsible for that. i must also say it's unfair for me to get up on the pulpit and kind of take on the british because the idea of places used as bombing ranges is not singular to the british program. the soviets did it in kazakhstan, set that place was uninhabited, it was not. they set off, i think, almost 500 weapons there, and i'm sure the chinese did sometng similar.

the united states and nevada, the pacific, you know, so it's unfair of me to pick on the brits. all this research i put into it is, of course, to some extent informed by the fact that i still remember some of these follies myself. i was born in 1973 and sort of caught the tail end of the cold war. you know, which had a lot of surprises in store for us. some of it were very skay. i mean, i remember the early 80s, the korean jet liner shut down, maybe you remember that, and it looked as if war was about to break out, and as if germany was the battleground where it would happen. i mean, that was supposed to be what was seemed to be designated as the battleground for future nuclear wars, so i do remember that. i remember a classmate of mine, he had a rich dad, and they were

digging a nuclear shelter in the garden. i remember my uncle showed me in the fridge he had, like, suicide curls like sleeping pills, which he said he'd take if the missiles came in. you know, i don't want to see that happen, so i'm going to take those pills, and i remember chernobyl as well. there was unprotection from the fallout, being in school, and the preset and guidance counselor. they are members of the youth. strange as they seem to young people, people younger than me today. i'm just going to skip on and read more from another chapter. we'll move on to the u.s.. one of the interesting things during the cold war, there was so many nuclear weapons, but they actually lost 40 of them. i mean, 40 of them went down with subs or planes crashed, or

they had various things happen, and they tried to find them and couldn't. the code name for that is broken arrow. i'll read you the beginning of that chapter. i need a sip of water. okay. so a small south carolina village surrounded by pine woods is just about the most peaceful place imaginable. if you take the main road east ward, at some point, there's the hamlet's pd in the town. 50 miles on is florence, the nearest small city in the region. this is typical backwards american, sleepy and seemingly endless. during the afternoon of march 11th, 1958, a rail conductor named waltering craig was piddling around in the yard when his 9-year-old daughter played with their cousins. at 4:30 p.m., greg heard the war of three b47 jets.

that was not unusual. there was air space across the border, and they flew over the vastly populated areas in inland south carolina. they watched the plaps for a bit and went into the garage. just then, there was a massive explosion. for a minute, the conductor thought the sky was falling, smoke everywhere. when the smoke cleared, there was a scene of devastation. one wall of the garage missing. the roof of the house was completely blown off, and the car that a salesman was driving by was picked up and turned around 180 degrees. there was a crater 2 # 2 meters wide in greg's backyard, and in the middle of it was a partially destroyed atomic bomb. this was the same model that had been dropped in japan, but this warhead was more modern,

powerful, and dangerous. when the bomb hit the ground, its chemical trigger detonated throwing 300 pounds of high explosives in the air with incredible force. greg's first thoughts when he came to were his daughters. both were unharmed, but their cousin was bleeding from a cut to the forehead. to be safe, they took her to the hospital. greg, himself, a u.s. air force veteran, knew that the explosion was caused by a bomb. he only found out later when the decontamination families arrived that the bomb was a nuclear warhead accidently dropped from one of the b-47s. the spot where dwreg's backyard was is open to visitors, and the crater has been preservedded. to get there, take u.s. highway 3327 west out to crater road, past the trailer park, and turn into a tiny path leading through

the yurpd brush. it's full of dark water. that has nothing to do with the bomb. in the forest, the crater is 5 pit for burning tree trunks. there used to be signs here directing tourists to the unusual attraction, but they have been stolen. no amount of imagination is sufficient to see this muddy little pond as a memorial warning future jen railingses of a near catastrophe. the danger bomb remitted was restricted to the detonator, and several slightly radio active components only spreading contamination in the immediate facility. the atom bomb belonged to warheads whose core was in another capsule called the bird cage. to arm the bomb, they had to take the capsule from the bird cang and install it. it was known as open pit. flight crews had explicit standing orders said it was only to be done in wartime.

in the case of mars bluff, the bomb set off without the most deadly component so there was no chance of a nuclear chain reaction. the safety system passed the test. as political tensions increased in the cold war and reaction times to presume nuclear first strike by the enemy was shorter and shorter, the superpowers began to rethink bomb designs. the models of bombs are so-called pit weapons. with a nuclear core integrated into the bomb itself. the warheads were easier to use and quicker to activate so both the united states and the soviet union needed more sophisticated safety systems. in attempt to prevent accidental detonations, engineers developed intelligence bombs to recognize their environments, and if the parameters were wrong, the switching circuits needed would be interrupted. warheads designed to be carried by rockets had to measure extreme velocities, change in

air pressure, and dissent back in the atmosphere before they could arm themselves. bombs designed for airplanes were equipped with comparable senses. speed and air pressure ruled out the chance of a nuclear bomb incidentally going off in ground storage, yet, despite precautionary measures, there was one documented instance in which the world narrowly avoided a detonation of the nuclear weapon. this was in 1961. i think it's in the carolinas. there was a plane in the air, a bomber, part of the chrome dome mission, a mission that kept bombers' nuclear weapons up in the air 24/7. when one is down, the other is up so they would have immediate second strike capabilities through that, and win of the planes went down and actually went down near the field of the farmer in eurorei cay, a small

town, and one of the hydrogen bombs that the plane was carrying dropped into the swamp. they dug for it. they couldn't find it. they haven't found it, so they put the dirt back, and that's it. to be fair, it's the secondary stage in large part of the bomb not found. the secondary stage of the hydrogen bomb does fusion. that makes the big bang. what was more worrying than that was the second bomb had gone into -- had gone into a tree and it was hanging off the parachute, and when they looked at it, they found that all of those safety measures had been tripped. all of them triggered other than one. including that bad sign because they were designed to explode in air so that's why the parachute

was open, part of the triggering sequence, so that was a close one. another picture broken arrow which i researched for the chapter. this is a picture taken from the submarine, american submarine, this is the claw, kind of looking around. this picture was taken in 1968 off the coast of greenland. similarly, a plane had gone down. what happened was this was also the chrome dome mission in an american air base listening post on greenland, and what happened this was a bomber with a construction related to the heating system so it got the heating from the hot air that came out of the engine, and the way relayed through the plane it the downside that it would

arrive at different temperatures at different places so you must imagine bombers had two storages. an upper deck with the pilots rn and there was a lower deck with the navigators and the offices for the bombs and so on. what this meant was that at the top, it was always freezing cold. below it was hot. what happened that day, it was really cold. talking of greenland in the winter. it went up, and want pilots were freezing. they cranked up the heating to emergency heating, the maximum heat. what happened was they got warmer, but the guy down stair is sweating like crazy in a sauna, took the jacket, stuffed it under the seat, and this was where the vent was for the extremely hot air that set fire to the nylon. there was a fire. he panicked, got out of the control, and the plane was on fire and went down.

i spoke to the man who was the first person at the crash site. this is the danish man who went out there with a couple of natives and dog sleds to look. when they got there, there was a hole there. to this day, there's a controversy about what's down in the hole, and he, himself, thinks there's one of the hydro jen bombs that made it through the ice and went into the hole. the americans looked for something, okay? this is proof of it. there are lots of documents which have been declassifyied, but they were looking for is blackened out, so you can just guess what it was. this is -- he's older now, in his 80s now, exhausted after being out on the ice, and he also was one of the danish workers that cleared up the mess because there's plutonium on the ice, get rid of the ice and put

it in tanks, and that was thrown out. they had no kind of safety equipment, no breathing devices, no gas masks, no protected suits, and they are suing the danish government to this day trying to get some sort of compensation because a lot of them were affected or claim to be affected as a result of the consequences of being subjected to that radiation. this is very briefly, i won't bore you, but this is what i said before. the hydrogen bomb has two stages. first is the fish stage, provides energy to then trigger the second stage which is fusion. okay, so the second stage is that which went missing, and it's also what some people say it went missing off the coast of greenland. the first primary state is unaccounted for in both cases if you believe the documents.

i mean, i actually do, but, yes. you see the american soldiers shouldn't be that close to the plume, to the mushroom. tests done where people were really subjected to radiation and so to see, you kind of, you know, similarly to what would happen, how they react psychologically, but we see the effings. this is not exclusive to the americans who did things like that. i pick on the americans now. i shouldn't be. i listed similar tests. these were tests done by the americans. in this case, they blasted the nuclear bomb under the fleet so

they dragged all these world war ii ships including the nagoto from which the attack on pearl harbor was ordered, draggedded all the ships there, and the navy didn't like that. they did the test, and it was nonconclusive, couldn't sink all ships, but some they did. one of the things that came out of this test is that ever since, has basically become uninb habitable. the radiation levels too high to live there to this day. it was lived in before. they were evacuated, can no longer live there. this is the slight commander of the fleet celebrating. i love the hat, by the way,. i really like this. this is after the cross roads

test. this is another pipe dream. suture energy about nuclear energy in the 50s. people wanted to do all sorts of things with the atom like nuclear cars. luckily, it was not made. this is briefly an idea someone had, a fellow, the father of the h bomb had the idea that he could maybe use nuclear bombs for peaceful purposes, engineering projects. a pet idea was to create a second panama create with 300h bombs. this was a simulation of that. it plowed through, quite of these kinds of -- that's the plume, that's the mushroom, and that's the way it would go if the wind was -- the winds never ideal. i looked into these things, and a lot of the time it meanders around, doesn't do what the scientists say, and it takes the radio activity in all sorts of

places it shouldn't go. actually, they never did this, luck ri, as you know, but what they did do is things like fracking like shale gas, and they released gases, but that was too radio active and couldn't use for anything so it was useless. they wanted to do a blast, a big harbor in the northern most parts of alaska, okay, so they wanted to put four bombs there and basically blast the harbor. they said it was uninhabited, it was not. and they put up a fuss, 150 people orchestrated a media campaign this a time when there was no environmental movement. talking of the early 60s, and,

yet, they understood it was hazardous, and they managed to stop it. we're lucky that happened. it was a depressing time realizing the atom was mostly a curse. it was what wiewld happen if the world ended, which, you know, look at the missile crisis and other instances, it almost did. one spector of the cold war was a weapon to destroy the world, a doomsday weapon, and, you know, theoretically, it is possible to build that which would be a hydrogen bomb, a huge one to absorb activity from the bomb and carried around the world and eventually, basically poisen everyone. this is from a popular science magazine. there were various fantasies what would happen if triggered,

sue tsunamis, and so forth. a nuclear plane, another pipe dream. it was not built, but things were tested. they tested now reactors react on power planes, and the problem is it would poisen the pilot; right? if you wrecked, it poisens the pilots. there was a need of some sort of led, heavy housing, you know, in which the pilots sit making the plane very heavy, and consequently, not such a good idea, and they realized that. this is the smallest weapon build, the davey crockett. it's tiny. that was actually manufactured, hundreds of those were in germany and south korea and other places. they deployed that. this is part of an idea nato had

which was to go to the enemy's home country, but they had the idea of eventually having tactical nuclear weapons used for the theater, for the battleground to stop the, you know, the nightmare scenario was the red army would just come to western europe and invade it, and, obviously, the german army would, and the nato troops there would not be able to resist that for long because they would be outnumbered, so the idea was that kind of plug that with defensive nuclear weapons armed at the army that was coming after you. also, the idea was to kind of deliver a warning shot so if you got, like, a little weapon like that, maybe they would stop and say, okay, we're going to have a peace conference or whatever.

later, after the end of communism, the down fall of the soviet union, someone tracked down the generals and asked them about it saying, look, you know, if you hired a single one of them, there would have been a nuclear explosion. we would have retaliated with a human massive nuclear strike. this is based on a wrong assumption. for them, a nuclear strike would have been the consequence. you can argue these weapons meads an all-out nuclear war likely rather than less likely. oh, i like this. this is john wayne, which i've seen back-to-back. i did it for you, my audience. i did it for you. it's named in all the lists of all worst of all times, always on there. if you see, you see why.

john wayne plays kahn, shot all of it in snow canyon in utah, and why am i telling you this? a year before they shot it, there was a big nuclear test in neighboring utah called the test terry known now as dirty harry because the amount of radiation that was released was absolutely massive. it ended up not doing what the meteorologists said, the cloud went around and around and settled in snow canyon where a year later they filmed this epic film. they had about 5,000 native american extras, huge wind machines which wound up all the radio active dust, and after they finished filming, 50 tons of the sonde was moved to the studio to shoot the closeups. in 1980, someone counted, and of

210 casts and crew, 91 developed cancer, and 46 died including john wayne, susan hayward, the female lead, and the director. now, the source of this is "people" magazine. there was no control group or scientific group. we don't know, effectively, you know, if one has to study scientifically. it's in the book because the effect, we know it had -- the producer was howard hughes, a very, very ease centric billionaire who lived in las vegas, and he was freaked out by this, and he was, and he was someone who lived close by the testing range, and vegas is not far, and he fought the campaign to move tests from nevada to alaska, and eventually they were. actually, two of the biggest

nuclear tests done in history, underground tests were done in alaska in one of the country's oldest natural reserves. that's why it's in here. oh, golly, that's it. i don't know how to go back, but that's okay. i'll read a bit more for you, and i'll get off the topic of military uses and talk about civilian uses. first is deadly detours of nuclear medicine. of course, it's a success story, but there's one of two cases where it didn't go the way it should have gone, so on september 29th, 1987, thereto brazilian province, and government officials there with

an announcement that passed the city with a 1.3 million inhas been tans needed to be evacuated. he encysted op speaking personally with the minister of health. at first, ministry employees trieded to brush the man off thinking he was deer -- draininged -- deranged, but they gave in. at 2:30 p.m., the stranger, who was a highly qualifieded physicist, was brought to the minister of health who immediately recognized the gravity of the situation. three hours later, the nuclear emergency task force boarded a plane, and i hope there's no bro sailians here because my pronunciations are lousy. they stopped, and two further specialists with radiation measuring devices joined him on the aircraft.

meanwhile, they contacted the medicine clinic with several severely ill people already being treated for what doctors believed was a alerly. they were suffering from acute radiation poisenning and should be quarantined. by the end of the day, the government acquisitioned the olympic stadium so others of hundreds of contaminated people could be examined and treated. they alived shortly after midnight and arrived in the clink, and they evacuated several neighborhoods, and the poorest districts. the organizers worked quickly and efficiently as the final act as the tragedy of the atomic age unfolded.

the accident had gun in an unspectacular fashion two years priestly. in late 1985, the private radiology clinic moved to a new location in the city. because of the legal dispute, a piece of equipment, they used to administer treatment was left behind at the old site. clinics -- your difficult language -- won the relevant governmental authorities about the potential danger, but nothing was done. part of the clinic was torn down, and the section of the billeting where the treatment rooms crumbled, and homeless would seek shelter there. a salvage of metal heard rumors there was plenty of valuable

scrap. on september 10th, he and an assistant entered the building and saw the f3,000. not suspecting any danger, and certainly not expecting radio active chloride, the two men disassembled the device over the next couple days. unwittingly switching the radiation head to the treatment position and causing it to emit steady busts of radiation. the two, and the wheel barrel to place under a tree. several after, assumes sickness the related to something they ate. the assistant went to see a doctor who diagnosed his diarrhea, vomiting, and swollen right hand as an allergic reaction. meanwhile, the device puntured

the capsule. about the size of a bill yard ball. mistaking the material within for gun powder, he initially tried to light it on fire. on september 18th, he loaded up the wheel barrel with parts from the f3,000 and took them to the owner of the scrap metal yard. when they entered the shop that evening, there was a strange bluish glow thinking the material could be particularly valuable. maybe he would possess magic powers. he took it home for his family to admire. in the days that followed, other relatives and friends came by to get a look at the glowing substance. he gave a portion of it to his brother, and others close to him. some of them rubbed it on their skin. they complained of the same

symptoms of the standpoints, she, too was diagnosed with food allergies and sent home with the instructions to get rest. it was suffered by the assistant got much worse. he was taken to hospital and transferred to the clinics for medicine. other patients with the same symptoms were soon to follow. the wife whose condition was deteriorating by the day was the first one to blame the mysterious powder for the illen. this was smart of the woman, by the way. she persuaded one of her husband's employees to gather up the remaining parts of the device and take tome in the local hospital. they put them in a bag over the shoulder suffering serious burps as a result. at the hospital, she told the doctor on duty that a machine was killing her family. the doctor thought the radiation

canyon was an x-ray machine and removed the baling from the office, placing it on a chair near the wall and decided to consult with a phase cyst he knew passing through. the next morning, he said set it off to examine the sus -- suspicious metal. the needle went off the scale before arriving. thying the device was defective, he went to a public institution that monitors uranium mining preserves, and borrowed a second detector. it, too, went wild before he reached the hospital. realizing that something must be grave in this, the physicist convinced hospital officials to close the building. the fire department was called. it took all of the fizz nighs' persuasive power to convince them not to just throw the metal

in the river. he then succeeded in retracing the parts back to the now totally contaminated scrap yard. early that afternoon, the physicist paid a call to the minister of health, and evacuations and other emergency measures ordered. several houses, including the one had to be torn down. tops of soil were dug up and taken away for disposal. the plastic bag and chair were sealed in concrete and removed urn the tightest security. in the city's olympic stadium, 200 people with poisenning showed up to be decontaminated and treated. ten patients flown from the clinic for better treatment. for some, help came too late. she succumbed to acute radiation

poisenning, and two workers at the scrap yard died. most tragically, his brother gave his 6-year-old daughter, lady, several grams of the glowing substance to play with while sitting op the ground eating. she, too, died of the effects of being exposed. the final toll of the disaster, four dead, and dozens ill and injured, but wows the quick action taken by the physicist and local authorities, this would have been far worse. so, yeah, again, i don't want to pick on nuclear medicine as such because it's a success story, but in this chapter, i got a chex of -- collection of things where it's off the rails and didn't have the effects you hoped for. i don't know if there's enough time for another short piece? ..

with a degree in nuclear physics. in the 1950's he went to the congo which was a an economy as a missionary and was soon able to realize two of his lifelong dreams. in 1954 he presided over the with the winning in the first university in central to date considered a whole generation of intellectuals who graduated from

the institution. he also lobbied for another major project, the construction of the nuclear reactor for research. they ultimately remembered him as the creator of the world's most secure reactor. in the early 1950's, he started his petition for the government and also advised top officials how to proceed with the project. the government he suggested should demand nuclear technology as a free issue of equipment. his argument was since the use of the atomic bomb that the united states dropped came from the congo, the noted the economy in favor. this reasoning was accepted and in 1957 as a part of the peace program, washington had the components delivered to congo.

the combat facility was made by the company called general atomic and was installed by the virgin technicians -- technicians. the magazine in front of the heavy water pool. the reactors were in progress in africa and the gift wasn't as it seemed. they had hoped that it would favor among the economy which possessed the natural resources. indeed it was a point for congo which achieved the dependence in 1960. but instead of the coming of peace and freedom, the nation quickly defended into civil war and chaos. a decade later they emerged victorious from the fighting.

the research reactor was to boost the corrupt regime and the aging facility was replaced with a much more powerful. scientists didn't do anything spectacular with this reactor using it to produce radioactive isotopes for a cup mint. the institute where the reactor was cat was anything but state of the dart. it had neither telephones or reliable electricity. calculations are made on the blackboards. at some point in the 1970's, they lost interest in the reactor and no one got especially upset when they disappeared. it later directed from the department of nuclear physics at the university professor

summarized without noticing that one of them was the reactor to be and when the journalists interviewed them about the security standards of the facility, he pretended to be unable to understand the question. 20 years later one of them turned up in italy and offered the uranium which is at least 20% enriched to what they thought was by the middle east and in reality the agents in the intelligence service. as a result of the operation the authorities apprehended all of the members of the mafia but none provided any information concerning the whereabouts of the other. the atomic energy agency experts had said that it's probably somewhere in the forest.

not as optimistic as they think it's already fallen to the wrong hands. this is obviously series of it is highly enriched uranium we don't know what it was and the institute says it is about 20% but i've also spoken to people that run these research reactors and they say they're handing out 90% uranium. why does that matter? because 90% is weapons-grade and you can't make a bomb from that. so we don't actually know what the enrichment and greed was. the national security, nuclear security agency which is part of the department of energy says that by 2014, all of the most sensitive nuclear material around the world will have been secure. at the top of the list is the highly enriched uranium used in civilian research reactors. in contrast to the military information, such facilities represent soft targets.

and while to conduct a material used in research reactors and to fuel bombs, it isn't impossible. interested in what happened to the research reactor after the downfall they can see for themselves the decrepit building complex and security is relaxed. it's the only thing restricting access to the buildings. usually there is no garden gate keepers' house. since 97, more had gone missing. in march 2007, 1 of the nuclear center directors was arrested. he was accused of selling and quantity of uranium over the years over the black market. but it's impossible to determine what is true and what is a rumor. it is the time that is gnawing

away at him. the debt would make its way into the interior of the reactor. they travelled upon the sunken pool. garbage was floating on top of the black water. the director of the facility was armed at the counter and hastened to tell the reporters they probably shouldn't spend too much time in their. if not all of the radioactive material that has been sold then 9 million residents are sitting on a time bomb and the building housing reactor was on the hill with a potential for the landslide and while administrators claim the facility is safe the world suddenly collapsed in 2000. what's more, the complex was hit by small explosives probably a way word rocket launched grenade. if radioactive emissions got into the water supply, the resulting dust a few feet beyond

repair. after the 2011 disaster, the commission of the center for the nuclear studies assured the world that the reactor was idle but safe. having the operation had been shut down for years due to a lack of spare parts. he told reporters at a press conference on march 17th, 2011, it was located neither in the earthquake region or up the sea. it isn't a problem. it's realized they are every bit as misguided as the research to revive actually talked about a few of them before. i think that we should call it quits here but i would like to invite you to ask questions and i think there will be microphone going around so please don't ask a question unless there's a

microphone of of friends here and on television will not hear you properly. [applause] >> thank you. >> there is a question right in the front. >> [inaudible] >> i either heard or read some place that they give control over some of the nuclear weapons with germany. is that referenced in your book? >> the question was did the

american government give control to its nuclear weapons from the one station in germany to the germans themselves? the answer is no. however there is a concept called post delivered weapons and the idea is within nato if they have the bases in the nuclear weapons and in the case of the war would be delivered by the host nation under the nation control. so they would say fly out and do it but people would actually be doing that, that would be of the host nation so that is correct, at this point there are nuclear weapons in germany a and it is slightly unlikely the weapons would be host delivered. that is correct. it is not part of the book but

i'm telling you now so nell minnow. >> i remember some of your stories from when i was growing up. you concentrated on a lot of nuclear actions, but also things that were not even recognized as accidents at the time. but anything the americans could do, they couldn't bear. you haven't touched on what might have happened in their program. do you have a rapid response to the question like that? >> very unfair getting on the carpet and picking on nations.

there is a whole chapter on the nuclear soviet program and testing. yes, yes, they went even further. they had their own the project they actually use nuclear weapons to create the water reservoirs would be the same as the propaganda and people actually swimming in those nuclear leaks afterwards. yes they went to the u.n. and - areas and set off nuclear bombs about 500, south of 500 nuclear weapons. the big problem there is that you have to realize the nuclear bomb when it is released only part of the material. a lot of the material, the nuclear fissile material is just scattered. so i think -- ayman not be right on that that it's about 30% so maybe a little bit north of that

the rest is scattered and maybe together with rocks and stuff. so what you have is full of the remnants of that and you do get weapons, stuff just melted with the rocks, and it's a huge problem because you could walk and pick it up. this is dangerous stuff indeed. and through the speed it's come out that the u.s. has a big program on going to kind of control that area. so there are drones patrolling that, but we have a problem. we are talking something that people i think knew about in the early 2000 but that's continued and it is costing the taxpayer something around $60 million every year to monitor that area

and cleaned up together because that is what in grades stuff. so yes there is a whole chapter on that with sorts of things and i'm not just picking on the united states and the brits. >> there is a question right here. >> would you know about weapons-grade nuclear material in the hands of jihadists at this point? >> they try to acquire it from the pakistanis but they didn't and it is a very difficult technology to handle. you need a huge amount of knowledge to handle that and saying that is also true that pandora's box is opened and this is only volume one.

some people have to write the other volumes and we're in the world that's we can already see that leaped in the nuclear proliferation would happen very soon. this is a dark scenario but it isn't all that likely if you think about it, places like north korea we've had a lot of aggressive rhetoric come and even though there is no nuclear war imminent this doesn't mean that they will hedge that debt, so if there's anything to learn from history is that it's the kind of nuclear armament. so if one nation acquires something, one would have to acquire it, too. so we may see the johnson proliferation and the more that it spreads the more dangerous it gets and the more likely to get that it would eventually fall in

the hands of jihadists if you think of a country okay you have iran and that country may be developing to double the fees. others like saudi arabia also want to acquire the bond. other countries but would mean a leave in the proliferation, and then it may not be someone peddling of the very complex technology that degrades very quickly to terrorists that it could be like the arab spurring and then all of a sudden you have a big problem so this could become very messy. we are not there yet but i'm worried about the future frankly. >> another one here.

>> as i said, they are under the nuclear umbrella of nato, so they are in big, delete and a clear stake in have breakout to the bloody that means we could theoretically build a nuclear weapon which is different than not being able to. so it's very mechanistic. did you know there was a man who was an engineer for the hydropower plants, and his idea was to use 200 h-bomb's to blast of the canal to the depletion of which is lower than the c which would then cause water to rush in and this would create a gigantic late and he got close

to doing it. he did a feasibility study and this thing was in the 70's when really everybody knew about radiation, so there were political reasons for which this didn't happen in the end, but it certainly that was not a great plan and unfortunately that one was a german plan. he was thinking big. >> can you tells the story behind the book, when you had the idea for the book, why, what moment in time, and the vast knowledge of this how long did it take you to research all these facts? >> it was a long process. i think -- i told you that is partly informed by my own memories and kind of thinking back to that time and there's a

kind of weird fascination for that subject. some of the chapters i intended as a film project like the first chapter on the invention of the uranium centrifuge which is the device with which it's like pandora's box, like splitting the nuclear technology and the military use of that and it was invented by a nazi scientist captured by the soviets so this is one of the stories i thought was interesting because it's like after the bomb the most dangerous after because it allows the bond to be dead quickly efficiently and out of sight. the man by the unfortunately and i have good sources here. to publish five or six copies. i never got to meet him and use

it for film and things like this started piling up. there's a reason for telling these stories. since i haven't felt the footage may be it would be the same after all seven would be the next step there is a question back there. >> what could you not include in your book? >> my favorite story i couldn't put in the book or didn't put in the book, well, this is a very random selection of things, that there were other things, there were plans to bomb the moon and i mentioned this in the book but i could do a whole chapter on that, the soviets and the

americans had plans to bomb the moon and more recently the kids that had reactors in the back garden through is just like a kid who found the nuclear material and started building a reactor which led to the big catastrophe. the stories kind of trickled in. there would be material for more, but i think this election is quite good frankly. i think it is quite a good selection. so, and ultimately i will have to live with it and you will have to live with it. it's very subjective what i put in their. >> one more question. that should be the last one and then we have to wrap up what is going on with it lately?

basically tells people without poisoning them. there are the kind of rumors. i don't go into it in detail i hope not that much is happening. you see a lot of this stuff is also classified. i did what i could but there is no specific chapter on that. anyway, i think we probably have to wrap it up now. i'm happy that you all came and listened to this. i hope we didn't just depress you. what we can take away with this is that germany now has 23% renewables silbey generate electricity and the figure is about to expect double in the

next ten years so actually shutting off the nuclear reactors that is a very good move even though the energy production methods have downsized, that has to be said of the problem of nuclear waste is a very severe one. thank you very much. [applause] really i have never seen in any report in the u.s. and any news. they go off every time it's close by and they have 15 seconds to get into a bomb shelter. i went to visit some elderly people and they were actually some of the founders of the

groups, and they were probably 65 plus, many of them in their seventies. this was in 2009 and it was during the flout operation. there was much proceeding that and part of what triggered it was this constant bombardment. people hear about this in a way that is back words. they hear that israel has made a strategic strike on a particular person or particular targets, and that was responded to with the rockets and that's the way that its reported most of the time when in fact it had been over 12,000 rockets in the last ten years. some of them are small, some of them were made in grandma's garage but a lot of them are iranian and larger institutions that are not just what they

would call the rockets which are small. these people have to get up and run every time there is a siren and they do it because they know they can be killed and people are killed whether they are killed in great numbers it depends on where it strikes, but these people were taking anti-depressant, the children were in the area. the people i went to see or being bused to the lot for a three day weekend so they could sleep in the hotel where there is no disturbance. these are old people. they don't want to leave but one said to me how can you come to me, my children will not visit. and there were explosions going on a nearby kibbutz and i didn't even hear sirens i just heard one of the explosions less than a mile away. these people were that way. the mothers that have to get their baby into the shelter there's a little piece i quote in the book that says which child should die drab, which one do i take first.

every time she's making these decisions, so that stage is ongoing. it's quiet right now because of this recent so-called truce with hamas. everyone knows a will start up again. i went to the north after janet was on the tour that i was gone, and we were in 2006 it was bombarded and these were larger rockets and we went and saw some of the places that the stock. have the house was gone. people had gone to darussalam or else the gone somewhere else. but some were in shelters for a month living in the shelter. the state of the war in israel is such a little country. it's the sites of new jersey so even if it is the south, everybody has a relative there.

it's not like america where you hear of this. this is everybody's problem. and the phone starts ringing when these things heat up and even my phone, and particularly recently when we actually have the sirens in jerusalem for the first time in 30 years that was an interesting experience because you find yourself saying should i take a shower or not take a shower. [laughter] or am i going to sleep in my normal pajamas? because i'm going to have to go down and deal with upon shelter and i don't want them to see me in my pajamas. these are stupid things to think the consciousness of what happens is on everything. as of the state of the war and israel is an ongoing effort and a consciousness. but it's also a way of going on with life no matter what and that is what they are best at is

the just go on and they celebrate life. they don't just sit around and worry. they have dinner and varmints -- barmitzfas and that is what sums up the culture in many ways. >> said that is shifting from the misconceptions of what life is really liked, and in the book you mentioned about when you were in the city north of israel that he met with a neighbor and he was i guess standing in the rubble of the city hall or something. but what was his -- >> the people who had been in the shelters for almost a month were upset that the war ended when it did.

they wanted it finished and they said we will live in the shelters for three months and this will be the end of it, but his feeling was they burned ten trees and we build 100. a day rebuild and prepare for the next time because some day we are going to be the gateway to israel and the lebanese will come and we will have dinner together. we want to be the gateway to the north. he was all about building and rebuilding and planting. trees are a very big deal in israel. it's the only country in the world that has more trees at the turn of the 21st century than at the beginning of the 20th century. everybody plants trees every time the turnaround. so the first thing they do is go out and plant trees and more than were burned and that's what he talked about. it's a defiance, but it's also a spirit of building and life.

the people were sorry the war ended when i did and everybody knew it ended badly because it was cut short of success. they just wanted to be able to get peace and live their lives again. that's what they wanted to do. >> sunday times of london washington bureau chief. this week better in a newspaper editor charles more and his latest book margaret thatcher the longtime reporter and editor and columnist from the london daily telegraph presents the authorized biography of britain's only female prime minister. the program is about an hour. >> welcome to "after words." i am tobey with the sunday times of london an