cities are some of the reasons why the wars target because we didn't have a government really care for the people. it's a really small country. if somebody is interested in shaping this country to be one of the best of the world can be done. we have leaders to care for themselves and how well they are actually serving the people. ..

>> so you do see a lot of people. a lot of people who are very dignified. there's nothing you can do, you know, you've just got to live with your life. that's one thing i love about my people. if it wasn't for that none of us would have realized what happened. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, "radiance of tomorrow," ishmeal beah's second book is coming out in january of 2014. >> you are watching 40 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> now on booktv from the

jimmy carter library and museum, brendan koerner talks about hijacking of western airlines flight 701 in 1972 by vietnam war veteran roger holder and his girlfriend, cathy kerkow. the larger goal of hijacking was to protest the vietnam war, but holder and kerkow were also trying to free angela davis, who is on trial for murder at the time. this is about 50 minutes. >> thank you. thanks to a cappella books and the carter library were having me. i've had this trip circled on my calendar for several months now. i am really looking forward to it. delighted to share this with y'all. writing the very solitary, i did work on this book for almost four years so to share with people face-to-face is incredible for me, so thank you for being here. i'll sort of want to get back to i first had the idea for this book but it was october 2009,

and i was reading "the new york times" metro section. there was a little peace in the about a man, and he had been a puerto rican nationalist living in the bronx in the late 60s with a wife and young daughter. in 1968 he and two of his comrades decided to hijack a plane from new york to cuba. he spent the next 41 years living in cuba until all of a sudden at the age of 66 he decided to come back to the u.s. and reunite with his wife and now adult daughter. this is about him being arrested the second he stepped off the plane at jfk. i was intrigued, first of all the story about fugitives and xl. that's kind of my sweet spot. something i was attracted to. second of all, just because of the how could he get away with hijacking which is maybe the most taboo frightening crime i could think of today, for 41 years? i never heard of this guy before. i was very the money with this

period when people take place to cuba. i don't know much about it. so i started looking into this case and i was overwhelmed by the sheer number of hijackings in this time pretty come late '60s, early 70s. between 1968 and the end of 1972 there were over 130 hijackings in america. sometimes at a rate of more than one a week. sometimes two a day. i was looking for a story i could explore more deeply. i was looking for people who have been fugitives from years after hijacking planes. i was looking at the list of people who are still on the run, and it was pretty much an all-male crew. sunday i saw this one woman's name, cathy kerkow, a 21 year woman from small town in oregon. i was just intrigued. i thought what would make this 20 year old woman turned her

back on everything she had ever known to hijack a plane to a foreign country and never be able to come home again? so that kind became a four-year obsession for me, a long journey to tell that story. i'm going to start by telling not about her story and the story of her accomplice, a more about the general history of hijacking in america. as she started in 1961 was the first hijacking in america, may 1, 1961. a cuban exile with out a statement on the miami to key west flight and told the pilot that he wanted to go to havana to warn the dell cast about an assassination attempt. shortly after that there were several other hijackings, and it was an epidemic. we have an outbreak, and maybe clusters of hijackings. then they would fall off and then they would come roaring back crazy and more violent.

but at this time pretty in the mid-the even late '60s, all people want to do was go to cuba. there's one exception, there was one guy who wanted to go over the arkansas to reunite with his estranged wife, but exceptions were the rule. all people and to go was cuba which they thought would be this amazing socialist paradise where they would get parades down central havana avenue and and live glorious lives. when the fact that didn't happen at all. fidel castro wanted nothing to do with these people, consider them dangerous and 90 and is usually throw them in prison or long stretches and they would be begging to come back. >> the airlines have choice during this time period, the legitimate '60s. there was no security at all -- the mid-to-late '60s. you could walk from the curbside all the way sometimes onto your blame without having a ticket, without having id. without having anyone ask or caring or change what you're

doing. people could bring anything up when you wanted. so when these hijacking start happening, in huge bunches from the airlines had a choice. they said we can spend millions of dollars and by metal detectors and security personnel. not only that, but force people to be searched and them i feel like criminal suspects and be bummebombed out of not want to t anymore. or we just put up a 24 hijackings a year and just comply with everything the hijackers want and will get the plane back and the passengers will be safe, and we will lose like 20,000 bucks per hijacking, but that's not that bad. they were treating it like he managed risk at this time. i'm going to read you a little bit from the book, a short passage about why it was a mistake to treat the sky jacking as a managed risk. the airlines strategy was the epidemic basic features would never change.

that the perpetrators would always be either fat sex our cuban exiles who were so intent was to reach event with a minimum of five. but as the hijacking pile up with a resistance from airlines or the authorities, the crimes appealed brought us, the democrats of the disenchanted. the epidemic -- second in 1969 when young african-american couple took over an eastern airlines flight. tyrone was the aggressor. held a gun to the head of a two year old boy and get a black power, havana. their success in drawing media attention was inspire more militants to embrace sky jacking as key to the stroke. later that month, a 19 you navy

deserter hijacked a national airline flight from key west to havana telling if to havana telling if stewart is at knife point to reduce to shed blood in the non. it was the first american hijacking which a member of the military side its opposition to the war as the motive. it would by no means be the last. by the second week of february 1969, 11 flights had been commandeered in the u.s., a record pace. in addition to the deserters, a former mental patient account about a three year-old son. a community college student armed with a can of bug spray, a purdue university dropout with a case for marx economics, and retired green beret who claimed that he intended to assessing castro with his bare hands. at the best of the house committee on interstate and foreign commerce, the faa formed a special anti-hijacking task force to develop possible solutions to the crisis. the group was immediately inundated with thousands of letters from concerned citizens, who recommended against --

inventive ways to frustrate sky jumpers. installing trapdoors outside cockpits, arming stewardesses with tranquilizer darts, making passengers were boxing gloves so they could grab guns, playing the cuban national anthem before takeoff and arresting anyone who knew the lyrics. [laughter] the most hyper suggestion was for the faa to build a mock version of the international airport in a south florida field so the sky jackets would be duped into thinking they had reached have been. that a disparate series interest at the agency but was ultimately discarded as too expensive. as the ethics task force sifted through the mountain of proposals, the hijackings continued apace, each more outlandish than the last. a 74 year world war i veteran pulled a knife on these two stories in the skies above south carolina. a black panther, wanted for his role in a sentence as the shootout, hijacked a twa boeing 707 over nevada.

an alcoholic used car dealer from baltimore took over an eastern flight while wearing bermuda shorts and sandals, so that he could hit the beach upon landing in havana. so shortly after this, there is one of two real milestone hijackings that would escalate the epidemic. this is the hijacking committed by raffaello. he had served in vietnam and earned a purple heart and upon coming back to the u.s. he had demanded the money he thought he was owed. he told the marines told the seller. he thought he earned $800 while in vietnam. memory and sony is wrong and the only earned $600. this became a huge sore spot for them, so he ended up burglarizing the post exchange at his apace for exactly $200 worth of goods. for this he was court-martialed. eesa to hijack a plane that's going from l.a. to san

francisco. he didn't want to go to cuba. you wanted to go to italy. he was the first hijacker in america ever to want to go somewhere other than cuba other than a guy who wanted to go to arkansas. so twa had no policy in place for what would happen to the hijack wants to go summer other than havana. they make a decision to let them go, fly him to italy. what is greeted in rome as a huge hero and sex symbol. he was very good looking and ends of serving 18 months in jail after which when his release he signed a contract to star in a spaghetti western film. and now he is still alive and has a very interesting youtube channel where he records according music. one year after this in june 1970 there's the other big milestones that shifts the epidemic in a much more dangerous terrain. this involves a man named barclay, an unemployed truck driver for an arizona bakery who

would been improved in a seven-year tax dispute with the iris over $471. he appeals his case to the supreme court. to reject his appeal after seven years and he decides to hijack a plane from phoenix to washington, d.c. and demand money, $100 million, to pay directly to them in cash by the supreme court as punishment for turning down his appeal. again, twa is the airline in question and again they have no policy in place. they never thought anyone would ever ask for money. they tried to mollify him, about $100,000. it doesn't work. he freaks out and the instead of being shot by the fbi. it's a long story in the book you can check out. out. but this sets a precedent and all of a sudden people are not just going all over the world in hijacking, they're asking for money, too. so that brings us up to what i think is the '90s year of the

hijacking epidemic and serving the last year, 1972. people are jumping out of planes with $500,000. there are shootouts on playing. people are being killed. then met a couple on the cover of this book. authority told you about cathy kerkow, a 20 year-old from tuesday oregon to move to san diego working in a massage parlor at the time when she meets willie roger holder, the man who would serve for tours in the non, had to lie about his age to join the service. when he was just 17 get a twin daughter at that age, had served with a helicopter crew chief, during his third tour he had been arrested for marijuana possession in saigon and sentenced to the stockade. and that led him to become very bitter and eventually what a wall.

it turns out they me met once before forever bury the children. roger holder's family believes -- lived a very briefly in coos bay, oregon. his i'm matt iseman one of the very for you black families in coos bay and actually been very much ill treated by some racists in the tent and forced to leave as result. and in the waning days of their brief stay in coos bay, roger and cathy have bumped into each other at a recreation area. and roger, big believer in astrology, thought this meant that he and cathy were meant to do something amazing together. and he decided this amazing thing he's going to do with cathy kerkow is hijack a plane and use the passengers as bargaining chips to liberate the imprisoned black radical angela davis. some going to read you a little

bit about taking may 1972, rogers been making this plan on the sly without taking cathy kerkow about it. to we are just a few days away from the hijacking. while cathy kerkow got ready to fly to seattle to visit her father on may 31, roger holder redouble his efforts to finalize his angela davis plan. he pored over newspaper accounts, taking note of what works and what didn't. the month provide no shortage of intriguing case study including a pair of hijackings that took place on the same day. the first involved a young north dakota and recently drafted into the army coach hijack the western airlines flight from salt lake city to havana. he did so with a note stating that he was just one of quote several heavily armed members of the anti-imperialist movement, who are working to ensure that the skies in america will not be saved again into the us government seizes its aggression against the people of indochina.

at almost the exact same moment the hijacked western plane touched down in cuba, a 49 year-old pennsylvanian man built out of an eastern airlines boeing 727 as it flew over northern honduras. he carried with him $303,000 in ransom, obtained from the airline during a stop in washington, d.c. he vanished into the jungle, amid rumors that he planned to donate the money to marxist insurgents. but the more information holder compiled, the more muddled is planning became the he concocted at least seven different sky jacking strategies of varying complexity. he couldn't quite decide which one to pursue. he scribbled a step-by-step instructions for each scenario in his notebook, along with a list of alternate destination for both himself and angela davis sure the hijacking go right. and he drafted the know to use in the course of the sky jacking, trying to nail the right language and tone.

as his notebook began to run out of blank pages, holder gave his mission and name called from greek mythology, operation sisyphus or my reference to the sadistic king sentenced to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a hill. that weekend, holder told cathy they should go for a special dinner at the very something important to discuss with the. the meal was quite extravagant giving the sorry state of the couple's finances. but holder swore there was good reason for the splurge. midway through the didn't he reached across the table and motioned for her to take his hand. the moment had come for him to invite her to join operation sisyphus. holder did not dove into many operational details. those were his responsibilities, and his alone. but it gave turco a rough idea

of what he had in mind beginning with his plan to address the hawaii bound jet from los angeles explain the plane would begin to doubt the range necessary for the mission. wants it command of language order to fund his emphasis international airport where he would exchange have the passengers for angela davis and a sizable amount of money. they would then head for north vietnam, stopping in honolulu to refuel and release the remaining passengers but as they approached have no way -- offered political asylum. once he knew davis was in good hands, holder would make a public show of donated ransom to get completely as a way of -- but the hijacking would not end in hanoi that after dropping off davis in the rent in the cup would fly to australia where holder claimed to be allowed to homestead in the outback. they would get married and then

-- and they would live happily ever after. cathy kerkow had never heard anything so incredibly far out to she always knew holder had a defined combat this plan was the stuff of true rebellion. there was only one way she'd respond to a deliciously extreme proposal. so, what do i wear to the hijacking welcome as you can probably guess from the magical blend the roger holder concocted, things did not go well for them. he had to pay attention to some very important details, starting with they paid for the tickets to hawaii with a bounced check. so they had a connecting flight in los angeles, was was get on a flight to hawaii and the airline represented stop them accidents or, you have to turn in your tickets. your check is no good.

so they were stuck in l.a. they have no money to be angela davis jury of a murder conspiracy trial is going to start deliberating that very day. and then cathy kerkow remember something. she has in her purse a round-trip ticket to seattle that her father had sent her to visit him. she missed the flight. it had been three days earlier as she went to the count is low, have this expired ticket, can a change in the two one-way ticket's to seattle? not only that they give for a refund. so they get on western airlines flight 701, and i'm going to conclude this reading by giving you a little theme of the beginning of the hijacking of western airlines flight 701 which is the heart and soul of this book, "the skies belong to us." roger holder was aching for a case of marijuana. just a few quick jokes to serve

his nerves. every cigarette packed full of joint in his breast pocket, but there is no way could sneak up off in the lavatory without attracting unwanted attention. he settled instead for a second round of urban, brought to them but the shapely blonde stewardess who said her name was gene. about the triplets cost or displace some liquor on holder's jacket, an action for which she profusely apologize. don't worry about it all, but holder. no harm done. still, gene thomas to bring in a dry cleaning voucher. holder turned his head to walk -- to watch her walk back. her comb we figure she's in westerns flattering peach and for. he briefly thought of asking this gorgeously to joining and cathy on their journey, to become part of the happy band of homesteaders in the australian outback. but he knew that it would be foolish to deviate from the plan. when holder ran out of

cigarettes, he bummed a smoke off the man sitting in 18 e., and auto sales executive from suburban seattle. the man used this exchange as an excuse to make small talk. he started the conversation by asking holder how long he'd been in the army. all, since before i was born, holder responded with a laugh, before explained that his father had spent his entire career in the military. that was the last true thing that roger holder told this evening. he proceeded to weave a fantastic tale of derring-do, claimed to be a helicopter pilot who just emerged in hospital after suffering grievous wounds in vietnam. he said he had served in korea, too, where he been shut down after flying a secret bombing mission over the 38th parallel. he was heading to seattle as part of his new gig with army intelligence, a job he earned by scoring a genius level 141 on an iq test. once his mentor career was over he hoped to train police violate any part of the face of maneuvering. four rows behind holder, cathy

kerkow was something less outrageous lies of for -- who are still make -- seatmate. she said she was traveling to seattle for father's surprise birthday party and she worked as a medical receptionist. soon thereafter the man sitting across the aisle from cathy kerkow broker into a game of gin rummy, which she played quite shrewdly. as the plane passed over oregon's mount hood, holder felt an acute pang of self-doubt. he worried that it already way too long to execute the takeover, a concern that sparked misgivings about the thoroughness of his preparations. he began to compose a new note for the captain, scribbling on a yellow legal everybody stopped writing after five garbled paragraphs, unable to put together a coherent message. his thoughts were slipping away from them. holder asked his seatmate for another cigarette and tried to read a life features about alabama governor and democratic presidential hopeful george

wallace, who has survived an assassin school on may 15. though he maintained a veneer of cool commute is just really trying to muster the courage to go through with his plan. at around 2:25 p.m., the captain's voice blared over the public address system. he directed e passengers attention to snowcapped minie wn the left side of the aircraft. all was running smoothly, he added, and they would be on the ground in seattle in 25 minutes. holder closes magazine and stubbed out of cigarettes. now or never, he thought. now or never. he removed his hands in a briefcase from the deceit in front of him and replaced it with a small black police. he opened the briefcase a crack and removed a travel size alarm clock. he wound it up and placed back inside the briefcase. could you watch my seat? old as the auto sales executive. with that, he rose and walked down the aisle toward the rear of the plane.

cathy kerkow watched him pass by. this was it. older hold back the aft galley's red curtain to find three stewardesses shuffling beef and broccoli into the mouth. the lovely gina stood closest to them. oh, no, thought gene. the dry cleaning voucher. i forgot about his voucher. i need to show you something, holder said to her, facing two sheets of three by five no paper on the galleys countertop. b-52's. the first sheet contained a neatly handwritten message marred by numerous capital session and spelling errors. but there was no mistaking its meaning. it read, success through death, athletics of the captain will leave the cabin. there are four of us and two bombs. do what you're told and no shooting will take place. your copilot and navigate i

deleted happen for pace of corporate take seats to the rear of the aircraft. place aircraft on i pilot a pleasure in on top of your head, leave the cabin door open. signed, weatherman of california. you have two minutes to the other sheet was filled with a diagram of what appeared to be a briefcase. selva rectangles each labeled one through four were sketched inside the drawing. a calm explain the briefcase is content. it read, for men, three guns and two bombs, one, plastic explosives, c-4. two, clock. three, batteries. four, one concussion grenade "one second after" the pin is pulled. keep smiling. turn over. she turned to note over. was just one more sentence.

to the captain, and don't stop. holder raised his left hand so the stewardesses conceded he was holding a black samsonite briefcase. a thin piece of copper wire with snake from the top right by the handle. it was connected to a metal ring draped around his left index finger. he made a show of rhythmically tapping the briefcase with his right hand, as if to say, in your ear older elbowed his way past cutcher and stepped into the gallery. he leaned against the countertop, pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, and locked eyes with cutcher to every trace of kindness was now gone from his face. you have two minutes, he said. cutcher did not hesitate to abate the notes on construction. she headed for the cockpit. so that was the opening of what will become the longest distance hijacking in american history. i won't reveal too much about it, but i will say it didn't end

up in north vietnam but it end up somewhere very far away from there. but want you to read books i won't give away too much. so thank you but if you guys have questions about this hijacking or is the golden age of hijacking general, please, i'm ready for them. [applause] >> if you could just raise your hand and wait for the microphone, and then ask your question and you don't need to hold onto the microphone. just wait for it to come there. first question right -- where? wait for the microphone. >> was there any significant incident or event that led to the end of that series of hijacking? >> fantastic question. so throughout 1972, there were 29 hijackings that you're in america and they were increasingly more bizarre and crazy for greater and greater sums of money.

and there were deaths, shootouts on 10 under in but there was one hijacking in particular that was really the one that broke the camels back and really brought about universal screening of passengers. that was november 1972. went three fugitives from justice to me from detroit and one of the brothers from tennessee hijack a southern airways flight over alabama. their demand was $10 million, which is by far record ransom demand. but they said that they didn't get $10 million they were going to crash the plane into the oak ridge national laboratory which has a nuclear reactor with uranium-235, which, of course, a comic bombs. urgently, what happens, they were circling around knoxville

waiting for the money to be gathered by southern airways which had a hard time getting the money. eventually they get $2 million a log the back of $2 million on the plane. $2 million with 150 pounds. so these three minutes need so these three minutes need money so these three minutes need money and they're like it's $10 million, it's got to be. so fortunate it didn't bother to county. if they would realize they've been shorted by $8 million, who knows what would've happened? it end up going into cuba and their imprisoned and things don't end well for them. but after that, shortly afterwards you have an executive order by the nixon administration saying that we have to start screening everybody. that commences on january 5, 1973, the first of all passengers had to walk-through metal detector's and have their bags searched. it's funny because right away, hijackings plummeted to like his hero. the airlines resisted her so

long because, people embraced it. people were so afraid of what hijacking become at that point and they saw in the not-too-distant future mass destruction if this were allowed to go on. >> [inaudible] >> i was just wondering if this was a particularly american trend and if we were the innovators? were others doing it? >> it was definite, as i talk about, abandonment, happening all over the world. in fact, before it started in america it originated pretty much in europe. from people from the soviet bloc after world war ii, like the czech republic and poland would hijack a plane to go to west berlin or copenhagen and escort but, of course, we didn't call them hijackers, we call them escapees because we like them. in fact, hijacker had he

majority back rent but it's from the prohibition era, gangsters would hold a liquor trucks and it comes from the thing, holger hands high, jack. so the truck hijackers for liquor is working from, kind of a criminal for jordan in addition to the people who originated in europe were escapees and then it became hijackers when it was in america. but it is happening all over the world. i talk in the book will be about the happening a lot with revolutionaries in south america, columbians a special were injured but a lot of revolutionaries in europe, germans, greeks were really into this. i think the most well-known practitioners of hijackings were palestinians. the popular front for the liberation of palestine was involved in several high profile hijackings and to talk about one woman in this book, very famous

command of who famously hijacked a plane in 1969 to syria and they destroyed her and her comrades destroyed the cockpit. she got out of prison, was only imprisoned for about a month and there's a very famous glamorous shot taken of her, and she was very beautiful. it has her holding an ak-47 and she has a ring on her ring theater made from a shell casing rifle shell casing. assembled a should engage to the revolution. she's a very glamorous accountant cultural figure who underwent six plastic surgeries to totally redo her face and they botched her face a little bit. she did it without, underground communism and palestine with no anesthesia. she tried to hijack another plane as a part of a massive operation. she tried to hijack a plane and

was actually stopped by passengers from doing that, i believe. she's still alive and speak to the media quite frankly now. the book is very much focused on america though, as much as i could. >> i was just wondering, what is your perception with the background of where we are today, as far as, you think things have gone to extreme? do you think -- >> one of the reactions to the book that i didn't anticipate at all, a lot of people say i'm looking for to reading this, i'm so excited but i'm afraid to take on a plane. because i feel if anyone sees me with it they will freak out and i would be like drag and strip search by tsa or something like that. it never occurred to me that we

have gotten to a place so far away from this era that people now are paranoid about reading a book, i if it were genuine histy of things that actually happen. i think that we are overly paranoid at this point i'm committed think there's a lot of fear that maybe is not justifiable. i try to talking about coming from a place of no security to understand we need some of it. but i think there's a case to be made if we have become so from the opposite direction with kind of rob a lot of our own sense of freedoms and belongings in society. >> [inaudible] >> i think people are scared of the tragedy it's understand to some extent, certainly, but, you know, i think that more distance perhaps from those events that certainly haunt us to this day, that paranoia doesn't service

necessarily. >> kind of economy in the question. i recall in the middle 1970s being stopped as a passenger about ready to board a plane, and because of a profile that existed, but i was more thoroughly inspected both physically and my baggage. so your comments bring back that memory. but the question i have is related to your writing style. there are intimate details that you express as you read from your book, for example, the thoughts that crossed the hijackers mind as he watched the hijacker watch away. is this result of your research

and interviews? or is this part of your embellishing what happened in reality? >> there's no embellishment. i interviewed roger holder. so those are all, i tracked them down. he was living in san diego when i watched them down. is a very difficult man to find, but i found him and i interviewed him at great length about his experiences. so that detail about him wanting to have gene come along on a great adventure to north vietnam and australia comes straight from you. at the interviewed gene cutcher as though. i pretty much, i spent four years on this and i tried to track down every single living person that i could. made a lot of uncomfortable cold calls to people saying you don't know me i want to talk about something that happened 40 years ago. so i was very assiduous about getting the work of history and nonfiction, 31 pages of notes to substantiate all that. this is something the faa did,

it was clear the airlines were never going to allow them it would assume they would never universal screen. it too much lobbying muscle. they would kill any bill. so the faa compromise was to come up with this checklist of about 25 behavioral cues that they thought might be indicative of potential hijackers. and so when you got your ticket for the boarding pass, the ticket agent was responsible to giving you the once over like, does this guy fit one of these 25 q. is? if you did in your back and aside for further screening. it was designed to apply to that half of 1% of all travelers. that was pretty much the threshold at which the airlines will accept that yes this tiny fraction of our passengers. it still secret, the profiles. in fact, they had a court case

saying that if it is to be discussed in opencourt, the quartermaster declared all spectators. some of the behavioral tipoffs are not exhibiting in of care about you like it, like not caring about your luggage. not maintaining and holding eye contact, and wearing army gear. a lot of hijackers at the time were veterans, the nonveterans. in fact, roger holder was wearing army gear. he was wearing an army dress uniform. he thought that would be a nice touch if he did that. they were not stopped by this. that's interesting. in the back. >> [inaudible]

>> has there ever been any situations -- on. >> there's two things. first of all i was surprised that several teenage hijackers, as young as 14 in fact. one story i talked to amy is not a 14 year-old boy who tried to hijack a plane from cincinnati to sweden. and he actually held any crap hostage in airport at knife point and brought them on the plane with it. there were several incidents of 16 year-old teenagers doing this. the interesting thing about children is there were several times where people brought along the kids on these hijackings to cuba in several instances but one i talk about here in the book at quite some length is a group of eight people, five adults and three children, called the hijacking them at the time to they were from detroit and the actual hijacked a plane to algeria. five adults and three very young

children i think the youngest was just a baby actually. it's really a sad story. i talk about in the book where they had to make a choice of like what they send their children back from algeria to live with the relatives back in use while they're still on the run. they made a choice to separate themselves. server many instances in the book where i talk about kids being along these rides with her parents who make very, very bad choices. yes, right here. >> you talked about that paranoia of today's fliers. could you talk about what the flyers paranoia was like and stick with you. so this is really a revelation to me, how much people took hijacking in stride after certain point in the epidemic. a lot of times because people assume that the hijackers just wanted to negotiate. and so the assumption was like, i have to go to a van and they'll be put up in a hotel for a night and a catchy show and buy some cigars and have great

stories for my friends. and, in fact, in 1968, december 68, "time" magazine published this guide if you get hijacked account to enjoy the. it was all about what to do. basically like don't freak out at the hijacker but if you're nice they will be nice. asked to go to this one hotel. there's good deals on clothing is there. one thing i and doing this a lot from researching all these hijackings, a lot of times airlines will continue to serve alcohol during the hijackings. so people would get wasted. [laughter] and it's funny because in this particular hijacking i've access to all the fbi debriefings and a lot to do nothing like camino, first time in giving -- to any break into your come into venues. so people took it in stride but think in 1972 when things got more and more crazy during this, people do a little more wary

because people, passengers were being killed. the demands of the hijackers were getting crazier and crazier but it wasn't just them at this time it wasn't just money but it was like money and parachutes and camping gear and cigarettes and a newspaper and like hiking boots and people definitely were not quite psychologically well and, therefore, perhaps unpredictable. so there was more fear in this time, but i was amazed time and again how much people took it in stride. >> this reminds me a lot of other times when i wonder about the media and you being a member of the media, if you talk about this, but was there an effort to muzzle the media when the demand kept getting worse and worse? it sounds like they were copycats, a cluster of copycats. >> no question in my mind that hijackers were influenced by news reports of other hijackings. in fact, they would use them to

study. roger holder told me about studying other hijackings to see what of the hijackers had done that was wrong. the amazing phenomena of these so-called pair of jacks, people who would parachute out the first the first guy to do it like really messed up the ended up like getting head in -- getting hit in head with a fire expert in d. b. cooper who jumped out and to my mind, and died on the way down. and yet the next guy who jumps out, and he makes it to the ground but he made one mistake but he wore cowboy boots. and so he sprained his ankle upon landing and find them like in a week you a mobile. the next guy to do it was better boots. and like they improve and improve and improve and become like one of each other. this person got 5000 i'm kind of get 502000. so there was no question that the media influenced, the virus

what i call this, traveled through the media reports. there was a lot of talk about limiting media access to hijackings. this was kind of like the early heyday of the 6:00 news, which flourish with the vietnam war. and hijackings were fantastic for the 6:00 news to you bring a camera crew out to the airport and you show the terrified families of the hostages crying and to show the airplane and this one is bring out a big bag full of money out to the airplane. great tv. there was a lot of chatter on the faa and people wanted to limit access to the media, to get those images to it never actually happened. one thing they did try to do, they try to limit media access through transcripts of communication between hijacked planes and control towers. so they are never able to criminalize.

they were trying youth organizations but they never did. the epidemic into before they could take further action. it was definitely discussed at the time, for sure. >> other questions? >> what, if anything come to the airlines do to mitigate the hijacking risk? >> not a whole lot to be honest with you. what they did to mitigate it was to tell th tell the truth, likey with anything and everything they tell you. never say no. if they asked for anything, do exactly what they say. because the assumption was if we do exactly what they say, we will get the plane back and the passengers will be okay. that's all they really cared about. the airlines, their biggest nightmare, was a hijacker doing somebody. killing somebody, killing people on board. and so they thought that these hijackers on what to negotiate and as long as we give them everything they want, everything will be okay. it was which is a risk

management strategy, like this is a much cheaper option than spending millions upon millions to like get new technology and hire all these cards for it. >> recently there's been a battle in congress through one of the airline mergers that asserting in -- coming progress. one lns secondary cockpit brace installed in addition to the reinforced cockpit doors. but they're moving them due to cost constraints. has the industry gotten to a point where since there haven't been any major happenings lately, haven't reached a level of complacency? do you think that's a smart move? >> i can't comment specifically on the. i can say one thing about complacency. after 1991 in the u.s. there were no hijackings at all in america intel 9/11. you have a 10 year. did, entering a 10 years get a situation where the people who

ran the security queues were private contractors. there was no tsa obviously a peep or not full-time employees. they were contractors hired by the airlines. and as this whole notion of planes being hijacked, their primary concern was who could submit the lowest bid to take my work to run the security queue at the airport? all of a sudden the average salary on the eve of 9/11 the average seller for an airport screener was $12,000 per year. typical training was a 20 minute tape showing you what to do. these were not security professionals in any sense of the word. so i think that grew out of complacency. so i see the danger in what you're talking about, certainly something that's happened before. right there. >> [inaudible] what are your thoughts on the?

we are all from the airline industry. it's a very sensitive topic. >> so this i think it goes back, this was the beginning of this is where the airlines, the government want the airlines to hire full-time personnel, and have security screeners be full-time salaried benefit, and their rationale being bus depots and train depots don't have government workers so why do airplanes have to have been? and airlines of course one of their to be transportation sector before they wouldn't have to pay for. i think privatization is going to have to happen, will have to be very carefully regulated. don't end up in a situation like we did prior to 9/11 where it's a race to the bottom. so i personally am very of giving that up at this point

that we can all have complaints about tsa security queues, but it's like something that is important i think we can have, argued more about process that security but certainly we don't want a situation where there's no oversight of who is doing those functions. >> last question. >> you said that the airlines made an economic decision to pay for anything they had to go as long as nobody got killed them but even after people started getting killed if they still not taking steps? if not, why? >> the reason people getting killed by murray was because of fbi shootouts. the fbi started to develop a policy like they were so up in arms about this, they started it all these undercover agents disguised as pilot someplace but i talk about one thing in your where one passenger was killed and two were injured including the man who played at the cook on bonanza. in san francisco the fbi sent a

sky pilot who was ordered to strip down to his underwear and actually had a gun in his pocket while he was doing this, they had a team of agents coming up on the day on both and sneaking up on the plane. they start a huge firefight in which both hijackers were killed and one passenger, and two passengers were wounded quite seriously. so actually the reaction of airlines office was let's not let the fbi on the plane. [laughter] and, in fact, some of the about and is hijacking western airlines flight 701 there's a lot of resistance on the part of the captain of the flight in question. to let the fbi on the plane but if i want to get on there with guns committed talked to one of the post about that many said there was no way i was letting the fbi on my plane with a gun because he thought it would end badly. as captain of the plane your

number one duty is the safety of your passengers. the only thing you care about. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or the book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also shoot anything you see on booktv.org easily i could venture on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 40 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> now joining us on booktv is michael cader who is the founder of a group called publishers lunch. start by telling us what that is. >> it's lots of things. publishers lunch is an e-mail newsletter that tells everyone in the book publishing business what's going on every day. we have a website that has databases and tools that all

people here used to find out information they need, reported yes, fight each other, get business done. >> why that name? what's your background? >> the origin was lunchtime is were people in the publishing business exchange information with each other. so when the internet came along and we invaded this business and were trying to find the right metaphor for information exchange in a digital environment, lunch is the thing that stuck out. i came up with publishers lunch and people automatically new kind of what they're getting in the business before they even saw what was in the newsletter. i've been in the book business professionally my whole life iran a small publishing company of my own for 15 years to i work for whitma workmen publishing bn '80s when i was a baby. it's a great industry and i'm happy to found a way to continue to be a part of it, even as times change. >> the year 2012, early 2013

them how has that been for the book industry? >> overall it's been surprisingly positive. in 2 20 '03 cup with his. one was the hunger games for younger readers as well as crossover readers which carried over into a lot of other young adult literature. "fifty shades of grey" brought all kinds of readers who don't read very much in bookstores and on to online bookstores. digital books have become very popular for a segment of people and have given them access to books that they might not have had previously. so the industry grew last year, and by most accounts it's at least holding steady so far this year in comparison to what was a good year for people. so reading, long form reading appears to be alive and well. >> we are here at book expo america, and i'm holding in my hand a book that essentially doesn't exist. buzz books 2013. this is put together by publishers lunch. what is at? >> it's a big fat sampler.

its prepublication excerpts of 40 very interesting highly touted books that are coming out this fall and winter. so it's really meant to be something for readers everywere eradates the expense ofwhat's going on here for trade insiders which is people are coming, they're hearing pitches about new books, taking samples, picking up free copies of new books that are not a devil for regular readers because the books aren't out yet. so we have surveyed the publishers and we've collected answers to a lot of those books that we think of the most interesting. now if one can kind of get the convention experience and see the books people might be walking about months from now when they come out. >> where is at the table right now for people watching? >> it's available in e-book form for everyone who's watching the show. it's a failed on every major platform. what every e-book store you like to read on, they have a copy and you can download it for free. >> i want to ask you about a couple us books 2013.

countdown. >> i read that one again this one because i like it so much. he withdrew to a best selling author of book called the world without us which speculated what would happen if humans went away, how quickly would the planet returned to its natural state. this book, the follow-up, canada is the world with us but what happened in the world in which we so may people competing for precious resources, how's that going to work, how's it going to work, how can the plant hold it works the excerpt we has is set in issue and looks at those issues through the lens of an israeli family and palestinian families alike have big families and they have different reasons for having big families and their competing for water because israel is a desert. so travel around what i think he went to 20 different countries and talked to people and found that how these issues lay out in all kinds of different places. >> valerie plame has a fiction book coming up spent she is

turned into a thriller writer. this is the first of a series. needless to say she brings to bear her life experience but it's free from being surveyed by the people she used to work for because it's all in the fictional context. >> one of the book is james swanson, under the young adults category, the president has been shot. >> that's a lot of fun to people may remember him for the book may not, the killers of abraham lincoln right after his death. what's happening this time it is written a book about the assassination of jfk and they are publishing an adult version is also done a young adult version for scholastic. what we have is a sample of young adult version. >> mr. cader, what are you excited about? >> i keep getting in and funny things that i like. the nice thing is that we've got all kinds of different stuff.

we have authors people know and love. we have a new novel from wally lamb who has a huge sign up here but we have great debut fiction lest you. we one of the first to tell people about the yellow bird which went on to be one of the best recognized award books of the year. this you have another six or so debut fiction's. so the best thing is it's got a lot of everything. regular fiction, debut fiction, young adult and some of the nonfiction that we've discovered. one thing that might be fun for television viewers, a man who is johnny carson's longtime lawyer, confidant, fixer, who is in the shadows for literally decades but carson called in his best friend, which he challenges in his book, and giftiest stories and insights into a man who everybody knew so well but doesn't know at all. >> michael cader, whose group is called publishers lunch. the website is publishers

marketplace. this is booktv on c-span2. >> booktv has been traveling the country exploring cities across america as our local content vehicle producers talk with authors and visit special collections and independent bookstores. ..