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>> guest: win peter, i was trying to present the perspective, the historical perspective of the important decisions american statesmen have made in each stage in the country from colonial status to the position of unparalleled pre-eminence in the history of the nation state and in the whole world in the period of less than 200 years. and of course there's a very extensive and often extremely scholarly and the rigorous and well written literature on the history of the united states. the entire history. this makes no pretext to any history of the country but i am not aware of and henry kissinger

confirmed this in his introductory note any previous attempt to put in sequence with the ki american statesmen have made it would surmise that today would grow and grow and become more important because it had the english language and the space tradition the ability to populate a very rich continent and attract the motivated immigrants from all over the world and it just grew like something planted in your garden and there is that aspect to which and that thing could be said about other countries that have been less successful such as brazil or argentina and the difference has been in the state's ban and design the institutions of the government and directed the country at its most critical phases in the

development. >> when it comes to the founding fathers, who is one of your heroes? >> in this sense i don't think an innovative other than the reason. i think the principal figures were george washington and benjamin franklin. the of course are legendary figures and they don't need me to buff up with their universally held but i don't think it is widely known that george washington was in fact a brilliant under the low warfare leader and that is essentially what he conducted. he kept that army going virtually unpaid with continuance calls to new recruits and rotating the personnel for seven years and he had to move it around and he had to move inland to make it more

difficult for the british to get at him and move around with the british chasing him and occasionally the early phases of the war and crossing the delaware attack at princeton beyond and the active part of the war at yorktown did he come out and stage successful action that really turned even although he came very close on other occasions such as brandywine and germantown. but he was essentially a guerrilla war leader while maintaining the dignity of the career officer and was a very highly regarded officer in the revolutionary war mecca and in the case of benjamin franklin, he was a renowned academic and inventor scientist printer in the personality but he was one of the greatest diplomats in the history of the world.

and his achievement in assisting the persuading british to defect the french from canada that made the revolution possible, and then only less than 20 years later recruiting the french who were no parliament or anything like a parliament from 170 years an absolute monarchies to come into a war in favor of republicanism and secessionism and democracy was an astounding achievement and without the french, it would have been difficult. they would have won even chilly but they might not have won the independence of all 13 colonies and it would have taken longer to be in yorktown was a french battle. >> conrad black earlier in "flight of the eagle," a hundred page book, you talk about the seven year war and you also detail i would say george washington's failures as a military leader and his

aggressiveness, connect? >> welcome he made few mistakes that he did win after all. we don't know what he would be like commanding a large units like a grand, sherman, eisenhower, macarthur we don't know how he would have done with that but if he had come he certainly was not infallible. he wasn't napoleon. they almost never made a mistake. >> why do you open the book with a -- >> he made some -- well, because it was essential to remove france from canada for the united states as it came to have the opportunity to achieve its independence. and a few people led by franklin recognized the possibility for

america to become a great country. let me put it in different words from what i said a moment ago. the american achievement of people to and a half million free people and half a million slaves come for them to get the british to eject the french from the borders and then to help manipulate the greatest powers in the world was an astonishing achievement. and there was -- it wouldn't have been possible without the results in this continent of the seven year war since they are called the united states. that war had a different name everywhere that it was fought. it was elsewhere depending what part of it you are talking about. >> conrad black has divided his book -- >> was the first world war -- i'm sorry. i just said was the first world war in the sense that was fought

all over the world. >> he has divided his book, "flight of the eagle," into four sections. the first one is about the aspelin state and the dates are 1754 to 1836. what's happening during this period, conrad black, and what is the united states aspiring to? >> in the early part of the period, they aspired just to be rid of the french. but the leading columnists saw the potential for america in the most part they saw the potential as working in tandem and in partnership with the british but the relationship gradually changing. franklin come as early as 1740 predicted that america would have a greater population on the british isles within 100 years and he was almost exactly right. that did occur in the early

1840's and the time that president van buer dinh. and until the relations broke down between the british and the americans, the hope among these people including washington and jefferson and all but a few hotheads like samuel adams are patrick henry was that it would be worked out but instead of being the samore demint status, the two jurisdictions would be virtually cut week will sharing the same mark and then they broke down. the was the inspiration. once the independence was achieved was quite another matter to set up a system at work. the original articles of succession or not successful and led by thomas jefferson and was instructed by the continental congress to prepare the declaration of independence.

franklin was instructed to try to round up some allies in europe for the revolutionary war that was about to begin war had begun. there was also a call for a satisfactory set up of confederation between the different colonies and no such thing happened. what did happen is washington and franklin convened the constitutional convention in 1787 and resolving the boundary between virginia and maryland but quickly turned into a call from delegates all over the colonies to try to devise a system to govern themselves in a federal way. and it was a remarkable success. was a terribly difficult task and they produced a constitution that isn't working particularly well right now has certainly served the country enormously successfully and it is justly admired. they are tremendous achievements especially for james madison,

the principal author. >> why do you think it isn't working well now? >> i don't think the u.s. government is functioning well and i don't think most americans think it is functioning. but congress isn't well-regarded. there is a terrible antagonism between the factions and the parties and not much gets done. the deficits are large and the legislation tends to be ineffective. but i think there is a general concerning and i refer to this towards the end of the book i think it is quite reversible but at this moment thoughtful americans would do themselves an injustice if it didn't reflect on the fact that the education system is not competitive and that the health care system while it's very good for 70% of the people that's about 100 million people a relatively underserved compared to other prosperous countries. and the justice system and i have had my problems with it myself, but the fact that the

prosecutors and 99.5% of the cases, 97% of them with trials, and the u.s. has 6-12 times as many per capita as any other prosperous defense democracy such as australia, britain, france, germany, japan and canada tells us something. there are 48 million americans with officially criminal record. even if you just take the driving under the influence or the minor problems long ago, you still have 15% of american adults officially as felons. that can't be right and something should be done about it. but these things can be done and the u.s. always feels that these problems when it passed to. >> let's go back to the history of the united states before we go to the current times. you're first section stocks in the year 1836. why did you choose that year, was going on in the country and what was going on in the world? >> well, that was as general

jackson was leaving office as president. after the constitution was promulgated and the great offices were filled with john jay and john marshall as the chief justice in the early presence they were all quite distinguished i think. and other people. the congressional leaders, henry clay and so forth were daniel webster, they were all very substantial people. and but there was by the late 1820 is the beginning of the nullification movement. and this theory, this fraction between the slaves and free states and this theory that the state that chose to do it could simply say that they were not applicable within that state and that this was the position adopted by south carolina and the chief south carolinian politician at the time, john c.

calhoun who was under john quincy adams and andrew jackson's first term. jackson declared the formula whereby slavery would be tolerated in the missouri compromise line of 20 and would be tolerated and encouraged and protected but secession or any reduction of the prerogative of the federal government opposite the individual state wouldn't be tolerated. that effectively -- i don't think there is any evidence this was an andrew jackson's thinking of the time but it effectively enabled the states to become strong enough demographically and economically that when a showdown did happen 25 years later, the north by the narrow

margin and the brilliant leadership in the country's history was able to suppress the insurrection and abolished slavery. and that wouldn't have happened if the south had attempted to secede in jackson's times successfully. if the had actually attempted to secede i think it wouldn't have been possible to suppress them at the time. >> the second section of the book, predestined people come 1836 to 1933. what are you trying to relay? >> a tremendous period of growth. there was the crisis in the civil war. but for the reasons i just mentioned, the north was able to prevail. it was much larger than the south and the population and industrial strength. and the south for such fighters that was a great struggle to overcome them. but then the country just grew, let america be america.

and the population almost tripled from about 33 million to a little over 90 million in the 50 years after the civil war. and at the end of the civil war, the united states was next to or along with the british and about to be formed the german empire that formed in 1871 after the franco prussian war. those three were the greatest powers in the world and this was one long lifetime after yorktown and they were small children when the united states and america achieved its independence putative is a tremendously swift horizon and the following 50 years the population tripled and after world war i the united states was by most reckonings the most powerful company in the world and that process accentuates a self considerably.

the period and was in 33 because there was another terrible crisis. but there was a world economic depression and the there were extreme threats to democracy and other powerful countries in the world. and franklin d. roosevelt was inaugurated at a time when the united states was depressed not only economically but psychologically. and it was his task and his mandate to provide them. he also deployed a reviving strength of america to preserve democracy in the world of very successfully. >> the next section and "flight of the eagle" indispensable country, 1933 to 1957 conrad black, why is this end in 1957? >> well, to be honest with you because i wanted the sections to be approximately equal numbers of pages and chapters. it could have gone to the end of

the call for. but i felt that a would be appropriate to take the most desperate period of reliance of the space will of america and put them in that section. the united states, despite the tremendous terrorism of the british commonwealth and the british and canadians and australians and so forth in the period but in the fall of france and 1940 in the entrance of the soviet union and the u.s. and the war of 1941 a few months apart and the brilliant leadership of mr. churchill's and they couldn't have stayed in of war without the help of the united states. and then there was all -- bedle worked out under the brilliant strategic direction of churchill and roosevelt and some of the close advisers marshall and others that the russians took 90 or more than 90% of the

casualties subduing germany that the anglo-american power is and the space powers were the big winners. or 1940 france, germany, italy and the, japan were in the hands of leaders hostile to the last five years later all of the countries were occupied or liberated or in the case of germany almost entirely occupied by the british and americans in particular that were brought into the western alliance as flourishing allies where they all remain. there were 20 million more. it was a temporary occupation they pledged not to conduct of eastern europe where they were not popular and ultimately they

couldn't sustain themselves from which they had become evicted. is that on behalf of the western allies? >> you can't see that in 1933 roosevelt planned all with up to 57 but a planned each stage as it came. in the balance of the period arnove that section in the mid 50's, the strategics team that he assembled was in charge. of course he died in 1945 but president truman and general marshall as the secretary of state and defense, general eisenhower is the first commander of nato and the first term president dean acheson and george kennon and charles and others. these were people that roosevelt promoted and they continued to direct the country in strategic firm terms through the 50's and

they did it. there were mistakes of course, everyone makes mistakes but in general it was just absolutely brilliant strategic direction and was almost completely successful and ultimately of course as everyone knows the great rivalry and the soviet union ended it simply disintegrated then the shot in between them. estimate in the last section of "flight of the eagle" is supreme nation 1957 to a couple of issues during the recent history if we could explore those. number one the effect of the vietnam war. >> i think the effect was terribly cvs. the u.s. is over the paralyzing fear of using its military and some could make the case.

i have in particular we tried to make it because i'm not sure that it's true but i respect when it's made in a serious way. they are a little casual what times in the military engagements, but i'm afraid the manner in which the war was conducted and the manner in which the end of the war left a damaging impact on the country and i tell you why. the democrats into the war. johnson obviously. there was an american presence in before that but the act of the participation cayman president johnson's time and he

deployed 550,000 members of the armed forces. almost all of them conscript and not volunteers. he largely won the war and this was demonstrated in the tet offensive, but instead of coming to that conclusion, he became demoralized and began to the escalate the war and retired from his office president nixon managed in vietnam they withdraw the american forces entirely. in north vietnamese offensive in april of 1972 between mr. nixon's visit to china and the visit to the soviet union, the south vietnamese actually defeated the north vietnamese and viet cong on the ground. the head of the american air support but no heavy american ground support. and nixon submitted the p street

to the senate for ratification when he had the constitutional right simply to sign up by his authority to the constitutional authority to make such agreements. but he wanted the senate which was in the hands of the other party to agree to it. the implication being that if it was expected the north violated the terms, the democrats would join the republicans in approving the use of air power against north vietnam which is what brought them a essentially along with the the coping and the trend of the south vietnamese to accept the peace in the first place. and the fact that the vietnamese , the violations of the agreement came at the time of the watergate affair when the executive authority of the administration was the fabricating everyday contributed to the representative of simply cutting off all aid to south viet nam so it had no chance of survival and the implications of that are serious.

the fact is we won the cold war and in some respects it doesn't matter. but in the sense of the cold war there were a great many people who died in south viet nam and the killing fields of cambodia and among the people who would not have died if the treaty in the senate ratified that mr. nixon and his collaborators negotiated and had been upheld and enforced by the united states >> for the last 50 years or some is that you write about in "flight of the eagle" we give been conducting were talking about arms control talks with the russians. have they been important and effective? >> yes. >> essentially not particularly but they were necessary for domestic political purposes. this is a complicated history as

well. president eisenhower when he entered office in 1953 reduced the size of the standing forces looked accentuated the nuclear superiority of the american defense capability and called a more bank for the buck. they caught the essence of it and he had that famous exchange when khrushchev visited at the end of the 50's and said, you know, we have more conventional force in germany and we could overwhelm you there. and eisenhower said if you attack us in germany there will be nothing conventional about our response. and there was well understood that if there's an attack in west berlin for example it would bring in a clear response. and the kennedy johnson administration's undersecretary defense nightmare and secretary clifford adopted the policy of

allowing the soviet union to become equal in the military capability within the united states on the theory that then they would negotiate on the basis of the mutually assured destruction and we could stabilize the work. all i did was enable the russians when they got close to surge ahead because they believe in the concept so when mr. nixon was elected he did a job of calling it nuclear sufficiency so he actually reduced the defense budget but produced these multiply targeted warheads so they could have as many as ten independently targeted more hands and in this way he purportedly reduced the defense budget and introduced the concept of an anti-missile defense system and spoke of nuclear sufficiency.

they signed the greatest nuclear arms limitation and reduction agreement in the history of the world in 1972. it was good for domestic opinion and good for the world political climate. the always treated in these things and couldn't win a military technological contest with of the united states anyway. skeptical that temps to continue these and negotiated reductions in nuclear arsenal. they are tolerating a proliferation of nuclear weapons enhanced that are less responsible. >> over the last to under 37 years has america planned to

become a great country. >> it has done a bit of both but in general i think you're really fighting american were unanimous in the view that it would become immense power in the world. washington said it, jefferson said it in different ways and a alexander hamilton salles with a stunning clarity the american economy would take with a nearly institutions to facilitate that. sometimes it was possible to sit back and allow the defense to take the course. was the case but in the civil war and world war i. the country attractive to a million immigrants a year before world war i.

the economic growth rate was approximately 8 percent per year and was already the largest economy in the world giving it wasn't like china and our time having tremendous growth rates but from a very low base. when the decade began and is still grow at an astounding rate and huge increases in productivity accompanied by the pioneering advances in almost every industry they were finding steel for example, and in that period the u.s. could be itself. they were getting it through to the point that the states could abolish slavery if they were put to the test.

in the war between the states and again in dealing with the economic depression and focusing the frustration and anger in the country not on the rich or on the mythical categories of roosevelt conjure with own purposes, the malefactors of great wealth and profiteers is nonsense. but if he had once said the rockefellers and ford will pay for this, they would have burned their houses down but he focused on the real enemies for the nazis and the japanese imperialists and then the containment strategy was devised very imaginatively with no pressing to it and worked. there were some mistakes but it worked. and worked completely without a major war.

the total war but in the great powers. it was a combination of everything you said. sometimes it just happens. in general it has been a tremendously successful national history. >> the u.s. remains incomparably the greatest most successful country there has ever been. now complacent and most of the leadership cadres have failed it. it's neither les you were driven by a death wish. are there any of rivals to it? >> i didn't mean the adjectives for all that was that there are those aspects to it.

the irony of contemporary times is that the united states is responsible and the rest of us and other countries must never cease this or forget to be grateful for the triumph of democracy and the free-market system and with allies certainly i'm proud to be in canada and britain with close allies in those enterprises. but the united states lead us there but it is not today particularly a well functioning democracy. and i think that what we see is that without an international challenge to its pre-eminence or even its existence, and that is and to minimize the terrorist activities that are extremely dangerous and terribly provoking and cause a great deal of sorrow at times. but they are not a threat to the existence in the united states

the way that and antagonistic ideology and great power like germany or russia was. the absence of such a challenge has left the country somewhat under motivated and i think it's taken an inexplicably long time for it to recognize there is a challenge but its internal. it is the erosion of american society in some respects. i think once that is that it will be dealt with with the same efficacy and the same courage and determination of which the and i did states and its history has met every crisis. every severe challenge and it will deal with this one but it should get on with it and i think by the way i am saying nothing other than what all polls indicate americans think. >> conrad black, something that you mentioned earlier that i just want to read from the book talking about american society, a rogue for dhaka see terrorizes

the nation it wins 99.5% of its cases, 97% without a trial sestak is the judicial debt and whether or not the guarantees of individual liberties in the bill of rights, 48 million americans have a criminal record and there is minimal general recognition of the evils of the system. at that point you have a foot note saying that in 2005 you were charged with 17 counts of financial and related crimes and in that spending three years and two weeks in prison in florida. what is your status when it comes to the u.s. and the judicial system? >> well, there with the 17 counts and either of them were abandoned or rejected by the jurors were unanimously vacated by the supreme court of the united states. but in a very perverse manner that would not be -- wouldn't occur in any other sophisticated

country. the supreme court having vacated the accounts and excoriated the lower courts for among other things, and i quote, the madame justice ginsburg, the affirmative invent of wall remanded back to the lower court that task of assessing the gravity of its own errors and that completely self interested lee retrieved the two counts. so that is what i stand convicted of. my sentence was reduced, i serve the sentence and left the country. but in my previous book i describe all that and i felt that the disclosure required me to put it in there so people didn't think i was hiding it. i'm not ashamed of it, i was persecuted and i came through the best i could. there is life after episodes like that although it took a decade out of my life. but they gave me a vantage point to be quite qualified to say what i did say. and i know that my american friends are absolutely appalled

at the state of american justice especially the criminal justice system but not only that. you have 5% of the world's population, 25% of it is incarcerated people and 50% is -- the only county lawyers here have to go through some serious training to be a lawyer. i'm not talking about india or anyone that wants to struggle than on the core of common police and announced he is a lawyer. a professional qualification to be a lawyer and it takes approximately 10% of gdp. that isn't what the authors of the constitution had in mind by the society of law. what i said of the bill of rights unfortunately is true. the grand jury was supposed to be a insurance against capricious prosecution. the grand juries were completely compliant to the wishes of the prosecutors. the fifth and sixth and eighth amendments guarantee due process

and judgment and impartial jury access to counsel and reasonable bail. i was posting for $48 million. i didn't get justice, went around for years and years and years and i didn't even get access to the counselor trice because in the process frequently used, a completely false affidavit was implied and an expert proceeding to freeze the sale of an asset of an apartment that i was selling in new york which the government needed and i had a year marked paid a retainer of the trace $10 million theses that and the account on the basis was thrown out by the jurors. there was no basis whatsoever. but meanwhile i didn't have the counsel for choice. i had council and i had assets and other countries i could use to pay them but i didn't have the council wanted.

and this is not what the constitution says and it's not what people think is going on. and where are the media. instead of lifting a rock on all of this and get people like nancy grace declaring people to be guilty before they even been charged. media lynching of suspects. it's not -- it isn't a society of law and that isn't a true spirit of america. i've left the country now. i am officially not welcome there. and i have frankly no great desire to come back. as you can see from my book i have a considerable affection for it but it's not my problem. but it is the problem of of those of you that were there and 48 million people as you read to have a criminal record. even allowing for the fact that millions of those are disorderly at the university fraternity party 20 years ago or something.

nothing stigmatizing them would have an impact on a person's ability to get a job or even to be elected to an office. the former president had a dui conviction. but it still means as i said earlier that approximately 15% of the adult population in the u.s., and more than a fifth of the male adult population in the u.s. are officially felons. this is nonsense. it's simply not the case pitting it as the former senator said when he roared on the fact that as i mentioned earlier six to 12 times as many people per capita are incarcerated in the u.s. as well as the comparable countries i mentioned earlier, there for either of those other countries don't care about crime which isn't true and they lower the crime rates in the united states of americans are more criminal by nature which is rubbish of course they are not for the system isn't working. it isn't working as a you fix it and you will fix it but what do

you have to go through before it happens? i thought that when the fiasco occurred followed by the unjust conviction of senator stevens when he lost his election seeing the executive and the legislature to act like that by the prosecutors something would come of that but it hasn't. >> conrad black has written biographies of fdr and richard nixon and speculative history what might have been. a matter of principle was his book about his time in prison. now did you write that book in prison? >> it isn't only about that. connect to others but the largest part is the legal part. it covers approximately 20 years of which three of them were in prison but it does cover the period and returns when i and with my oman khanna but i haven't seen for five years because the intervention of the authorities in your country. >> over the years he's owned the

daily telegraph newspaper, the chicago sun times, the jerusalem post, the post in canada and the said me harold. finally in "flight of the eagle" you dedicate it to loyal american friends in particular. tina brown, and i and julie nixon eisenhower, henry and nancy kissinger, rush limbaugh, norman parts etc., etc.. why were you a specific about using the word leal in that dedication? >> in the sort of crisis that i went through in the onslaught against me, some people went out of their way to be supportive and some just want to cry out, and a few really were defective and became somewhat antagonistic so i wanted to show some

recognition of those who had been conspicuously supportive because the way the system works and this isn't confined in the united states, when that degree of official disapprobation is focused on a person, there is the intent by those targeting him to ostracize and isolate him and so all of those since i was writing about the united states i thought i would focus exclusively on americans. all of those who conspicuously resisted that temptation and many of the ones that came to visit when i was a guest of the american people including henry kissinger, i thought it's the least i could do and i have many american friends, those and others and the grateful to all of them. >> what's your next project? >> nothing builds your gratitude than this. the history of canada i don't

expect it to sell in the united states but for any americans and viewers that interested in canada while there is lots of good biographical work or studies of individual period or aspects a history of the whole country hasn't been presented with the subtlety that it deserves. a lot of the work is rigorous in scholastic terms but it's a hard needed and it tends to be simply narrative without a lot of analysis and the kind of attention to the personalities that make history interesting which i always try to bring out including in the book we've been talking about. >> "flight of the eagle" -- >> certainly in the united states. >> "flight of the eagle" is the name of the book. conrad black is the author and there is a note by henry kissinger. the subtitle the grand strategies that brought america from colonial dependents to oral leadership. it's in bookstores now.

thank you for your time from toronto. >> thank you so much, peter. thank you for having me. after moving from china to oakland at the age of ten. she expected to live a better life in california but instead found oakland to be broken city. this is about one hour and ten minutes. >> good evening. imagine being a fourth grader that left a rather isolated existence and was told about a faraway place called disneyland. she had heard exciting things about it. but she couldn't really comprehend the magnitude of such