cheer not because they indoorsed the act as this might give us an opportunity, one individual said, sometimes you might have a lucky event like pearl harbor, and that to me is a pretty atrocious type of a statement. ...

>> also in 2008 military historian bing west published his book, "the strongest tribe," detailing his thoughts on military strategy during the war in iraq. and jon meacham's boyle by of andrew jackson was also released that year. visit booktv.org to watch programs from the last 15 years and continue watching booktv all weekend long for more nonfiction authors and books. >> you're watching booktv. coming up next, monique demery recounts the coup in south vietnam that led to the exile of the de facto first lady, madam nu, who spent many decades in seclusion. she found her in paris where the woman dubbed the dragon lady entrusts the author with her unpublished memoir withs. this is about 45 minutes. [applause]

>> well, i'm glad to look out to the audience and see that, actually, there are a lot of people, i'm sure, who actually were till alive during the -- still alive during war and knew who madam nhu. i mean, i was born after her exile, but still, i was born into the war k. and my family know quite a bit about that history. but, monique, i have to say that what surprised me most especially now listening to the introduction is that here or is someone who actually was sent out of vietnam because of her relationship with an old family and her role in the war. but in 1963. and owe you great in 2003 -- you graduate in 2003. why would you be interested in madam nhu? >> who wouldn't be interested in madam nhu? [laughter] she from an early age just

captivated me. everything i had come to know about vietnam -- i was born in 1976, so after the war had ended. and my father narrowly missed being drafted, so for me vietnam was images in books of all the terrible images of war that my generation of america has come to associate with vietnam. and nothing about what a beautiful or interesting country it was. it was really just defined for me as the war. so to see madam nhu's picture jump out and especially, you know, i think the captions called her the face of evil or something. i had to know more. >> well, before we get to her, there is a narrative that runs parallel in the book which is your own relationship with her and your search for madam nhu, and i think in some way as a journalist who's been working for 20 years plus, the investigative part is what i find really intriguing, because you didn't know of her, and here

you are in paris searching for her from sort of very loose pieces of information that you've seen. tell the audience about this. >> sure. so if my husband was here, he would tell you that i'm very persuasive. and i really was determined to find madam nhu. many in all of my sort of initial research, i expected to find an obituary, and there was nothing there. so everything i could sort of gather was that madam nhu was still alive and living in rome. i spoke to a journalist from "the new york times" who had spoken to her, and he said, yeah, as far as i know, she's still living in rome. so i've talked to a few people here tonight about how i very much tried to study vietnamese and to humbly, humbly admit that i didn't do a very good job of keeping up with it. but for a while i was practicing, and part of my practicing is i would go online and pull these vietnamese articles and try to translate

them and sort of keep my skills fresh. one of these was written by a vietnamese man living in the united states who claimed he had interviewed madam nhu. i had never heard of this guy, his journal, it was a catholic vietnamese web site. and, but all of a sudden all of these sort of lightbulbs went off in my head. and when he was talking about interviewing her, he said something about seeing the eiffel tower through her kitchen window. and i had already known there was an apartment she had gone to in paris after she left saigon that was just at the foot of the eiffel tower, so it kind of struck me, you know, maybe she is back there, maybe it's not so crazy. i looked around paris for any tall buildings i could find around the eiffel tower, and there aren't that many. so i started knocking on doors and very persistently spoke to a concierge who said, no, no, you know, she's not here. she's next door. >> ah. but that was not the end of it because, of course, i mean, in

some way in the book she's portrayed a little bit like marlene dietrich, this mysterious woman who won't talk to anyone, who won't see anyone. and in some ways your story is about finding her, meeting her and also trying to capture who she is. so is it a long process of being in touch with her? >> it was almost like to courtship, honestly. i tried to -- first, i tried to really impress her and seem very businesslike and smart, but she just put me in my place immediately, you know? because i was young and naive, and what could i possibly know? >> this is on the phone, right? >> this is all on the phone, exactly. so the first time that madam nhu called me, i wasn't expecting her to call. i'd been writing her letters for months, i had been -- you know, i had knocked oner door that day, i had done everything except for see her, and she called me out of the blue.

so she dictated very early on the terms of our relationship; when she would call, who she would leave messages with, how i should address her. very specific things. and, in fact, in that first conversation that we had she was really curious about not so much me, but why was i interested in her, you know? who in your family works for the cia? who's the government agent? i was like, no one, i'm just, i'm just curious. so slowly i -- so part of it was -- the first day that she called me, my husband and i had been trying to get pregnant, and it had been a long process. that morning i had taken a pregnancy test and found out i was pregnant, so i was overjoyed. and before i could even wake up my husband to tell him, madam nhu is calling me on the phone. [laughter] so part of this, i think, making her -- getting her humanity out was i told her early on, you

know, that this had happened and the sort of coincidence, and right away she was like, oh, it's not coincidence, it's a sign from god, right? this is meant to be. so there was this -- and then it developed into a very sort of maternal thing. she would always call and ask ant -- about the children, and we would really get into the nitty-gritty of motherhood. madam nhu breast-fed eachover her children for at least six months, she told me, and she was very precise about all of those things that i wouldn't imagine the dragon lady to be. >> well, before we get to the dragon lady narrative, i'm just curious, how many people in the audience actually know who she is, madam nhu? oh, my. that's quite a lot. that's not your typical readers, i don't think, these days. but who knows? yes. so can you tell us in a few short sentences a framework of who she is and why she's important in the vietnam

history? >> sure. well, madam nhu was the first lady of south vietnam from 1954 to 1963. and she was first lady on a bit of a technicality, her brother-in-law was the president, and dix -- diem was a very moral, very catholic, he was married to his country really. so he never took a wife. so instead it was, madam nhu was his younger brother's wife. and his younger brother did all of the old ticking that diem -- politicking that diem wouldn't or couldn't do, all the running the -- all of the running the country with an iron fist, recruiting youth, running the political party. and madam nhu was really the face of the regime because she was beautiful, he was the hostess, she was smart, she was well spoken.

and so i think initially the media was charmed by her. she was so young too. when she became first lady, she was 0 years old -- 30 years old. >> yeah. but in some ways she, i hate to put it in this way, but her career went up in flame, i mean, pun intended -- >> literally. >> because of the self-immolation and what she actually said. and this is what in some way, unfortunately, is what she's remembered by. >> absolutely. so in 1963, really, is when she got the most press. she was on the cover of the saturday evening post, "newsweek," "life" magazine. i mean, you name it, madam nhu was on the cover of it. the buddhists were speaking out against the regime, and the regime was not responding in a way that was very good pr.

madame nhu she said sort of, oh, good, a monk is self-imnolating, we'll have a barbecue. sort of as a marie antoinette, came across as very cruel. at that time all of america knew of vietnam in this loose way, like, oh, yeah, we're helping these people, we're saving them from communism, and we're doing this really good thing. and here was, here was suddenly a very ugly, dark side to the regime that the americans were helping. so -- >> well, one thing i didn't know was that she actually was not raised catholic. and, in fact, converted when she married. i had always thought being french, as she was, french citizen, she was a french citizen. >> her father was. >> yeah. that they naturally should have converted to catholicism but, in fact, they were buddhist. a lot of vietnamese families are

sort of split in many ways, and the religious divide is definitely part of it. my father, for instance, was raised catholic, and my mom was raised buddhist. there's a lot of families split along that line, but to see her being so pro-catholic and supportive of a regime that cracked down on buddhism was a little bit shocking in a way for someone who was raised buddhist. but can you talk about the religious divisions in vietnam? >> a little bit. >> during that time, yeah. >> a little bit. so, yes, madame nhu was raised in hanoi for most of her life. he was born in hanoi, went way down to the southern, very tip of southern vietnam and then went back to hanoi. and i hadn't known until i was researching this book that she was actually north vietnamese by birth and heritage, because the regime that was the south vietnamese regime. but the religion -- so she

converted at her marriage which was in 1943, and madame nhu's mother was a devout buddhist and didn't -- there was a lot of tension between mother/daughter. and i think the fact that madame nhu married a catholic, honestly her mother looked down on her for that, and i think she was like in her own way, that, now i can -- ha, now i can start fresh and not have to worry about that parental judgment all the time. nhu always teased his wife, actually, and called her his little heathen because she was new to can catholicism. she was baptized on the day before her, the night before her wedding was her baptism. so he liked to tease her, but later in life i think for madame nhu that was really her defining characteristic, it was how she really made sense of her life by putting it into this religious framework. >> but she was also involved in

writing law during the -- [inaudible] i suppose. and part of that has to do with her own insecurity. that's what you discuss in the book. and it's interesting, was she actually had her own sister incarcerated because of part of the reason has to do with her sister wanting a divorce. >> yes. so this is sort of the scuttlebutt in saigon was that -- so madame nhu was elected to the senate. so she was a member of the legislature, but, of course, no one would say no to her, i mean, she came up with a law, and people were quick to pass it. and pad dame -- madam nhu had some good points. she saw that the communists were making great gains by taking women seriously, and until

madamearnings nhu changed the law, women in south vietnam were not able to own property, own their own bank accounts. so madame nhu made progress in a sense that she saw a section of the population that was being excluded. she also saw that the communists were doing a good job of sort of taking the war seriously. so as-and more foreigners, americans, came into south vietnam, madame nhu didn't want it to seem like a party city. she wanted people to be like, hey, we're at war, let's take this seriously. so she banned prostitution, she banned gambling, she banned underwire bras, she banned all sorts of stuff. ask and the one -- and the one sort of big thing was she banned divorce. and the theory was at the time that she was trying to prevent her sister, her older sister, from getting a divorce.

and the rumor was madame nhu would never really acknowledge this, the rumor was that when madame nhu wouldn't grant her -- you know, outlawed divorce in the country which meant her sister couldn't get a divorce, she slit her wrists and went running through the palace, and madam nhu had her imprisoned if the hospital. >> which is interesting, because vietnam is full of rumors, and there's a lot of this narrative that goes around. and part of that has to do with the fact that there's no way to validate certain things. but how would you characterize her? i mean, you mentioned in your book about her own feeling of being isolated, and her husband was a philanderer many in a way with in ways. i mean, he actually had a girlfriend, right? and we'll talk about that, and we'll get to the next question.

>> sure. so i think we all could be guilty of sort of rewriting our own history in our heads. i remember what i did yesterday in a very positive light, but, you know, the guy whose seat i stole on the bus might not feel the same way. i guess what i'm trying to say is by the time madam nhu was if her 80s, she remembered her life very specifically, and it was as a devoted wife, and everything i did was for my husband. but the diary that i found that she wrote -- >> that was my next question, but go ahead. [laughter] >> i'll tell you about this diary. in this diary she, you know, all of that kind of rose-colored glass reflection is gone, and she talk talks about how hard is to be married to someone who cared so much about building this new political philosophy if that's what you can call it. he also apparently did have someone else on the side, someone that madam nhu, you know, thought was below him and

certainly below her. so these little accusations came out in the journal. so -- >> yes. um, there's a lot of, um, tidbits that i find titillating because there's so much sex going on in the book. which came, i mean, not a surprise, but the fact that there is some recording of it or some observation of it is interesting including this conservative family that madam nhu came from which is, you know, the parents, her parents who are, you know, really upstanding from this really respectful, and the mother's from, you know, royal family. but, in fact, the mother's having sex with a bunch of different people. which is, like, wow. [laughter] >> that was great. the french are very good at this. >> of course the french are. >> when i was in the archives in france, i would, i would find references to madam nhu's mother

having slept with the right french men at the right times, and then when the japanese were coming in, having slept with the right japanese men with the right time and taking japanese lessons and going out to dinner with the japanese. so it was, it's very possible that the frenchman who was writing it down was, you know, had his advances spurned and was bitter and so decided that that would be her legacy. but considering that this came from a couple different sources, there was probably something there. she used what she had to get ahead and to save her family. >> no, the sex is not shocking, the fact that it's recorded is. [laughter] was sex in all kind of, you know, royal courts down to, you know, presidency is the norm, but the fact that the french are going to these parties and recording it is shocking. and that's my other question that i wanted to know since you're half french, and you're viewing vietnam through the french lens as much as an american one, what is it that the french know about vietnam

that the americans still don't? >> oh, good question. i'm not sure that that question still is true today. i think that there's a lot of nostalgia in france for in this idea of -- [speaking in native tongue] i know that my mother, my mother was born in 1946. so for her, growing up, she grew up learning that indochina was a part of france and feeling, you know, quite a bit of pride if that empire -- in that empire. and to think that, and i'm born in '76, so 30 years later, and that's totally bewildering to me that she could have assumed that.

>> shocking not just to asian, but the world in a away. and yet -- in a way. and yet there she was sort of blabbering her ideas without any sense of inhibition. >> well, before madam nhu, there was madam chiang kai-shek. she was schooled in this america, she went to college in georgia. and she was very well spoken b,

but she also had a feeling for what america and americans were looking for in a first lady. and madam nhu didn't have that, i think. i do think that madam nhu would have looked for her place in the world, but there was no role model for her, there was no shoes for her to step into to follow. so she already had to forge her own way and blunder her way through it. and i do think that the dynamic with the kennedy family and the family in saigon is a fascinating one. two catholic families, very much family regimes, right? there's jfk and his family and diem and his family, and then there's madam nhu who's this young first lady, glamorous, and jackie in the white house. and both of them sort of francophile, we can say, and jackie did. in these interviews that have come out where she's asked about madam nhu, she says, oh, she's

horrible. she, she's everything that jack found just ugly because she wasn't submissive, she wasn't quiet, and jackie characterized her own marriage as an asian marriage. whatever that means. [laughter] but she was subservient to her husband. >> of course, the other irony, of course, was that whendiem was murdered, kennedy was murdered not long after, and madam nhu sent her this letter because she felt very betrayed by the americans. talk about that letter and the bitterness that's involved. >> sure. oh, good withness, where do i start -- goodness, where do i start? first, i guess for those of you who don't know, kennedy gave the okay for a coup in vietnam, for a regime change in vietnam in august of 1963. and there were several false starts in saigon. and the coup didn't actually happen until november. madam nhu was in the united states at that time, and no

american officials would meet with her. the only public official who met with madam nhu on her trip here to the united states was the director of police in new york city because he had to guarantee her safety. people were throwing things at her. and so she felt really slighted that here she was first lady, and no one was paying any attention or sort of giving her her proper due. and she knew that a regime change in vietnam couldn't have happened without the okay from kennedy and kennedy's administration. so she did, she felt very betrayed. and she made this, like, eerie proclamation as she's getting on the plane to leave the country. she said, again i'm paraphrasing, something like i predict that the story with vietnam is only at its beginning. america will have this long history with vietnam. and she was right. i mean, we were there another decade. >> which is, of course, the irony is that she's vilified a lot of ways in the media, and yet she was right in a lot of

ways about the future and america's relationship with vietnam. >> yes. and she said things that were hard to say at the time. she accused the buddhists of being very loosely organized and, therefore, ripe for communist infiltration which the americans would find out later, at least in '66 and '68, that that would come to be the case. she just called it early and kind of inappropriately. she also accused the american press of being infiltrated by the communists. actually, i'll use her favorite word, intoxicated. >> yeah. >> everybody was intoxicated by the communists. and in that case, too, she actually wasn't so wrong. there were informers working for the americans that were, you know, part of the communist system. >> yeah. very famous one who actually worked with stanley -- [inaudible] >> yes.

>> i was thinking of her this morning and then saw a lady gaga video, and i thought -- [laughter] in a strange way she was the lady da georgia of the politics of the '60s because of the things she's saying that's so shocking, you know, barbecue monks, you know? that sort of thing shocked the world, but people are no longer shocked by lady gaga. i was thinking had she had good public relation and in a different context, you know, maybe the courses of events in vietnam might have even changed. because she influenced so much of the public opinion. so can you talk about the context of this now in relationship to her being a woman back then? >> what would madam nhu have tweeted? [laughter] 140 characters. it either would have gotten her in a lot of trouble or saved her in some sense. yeah, maybe not lady gaga, maybe

like lindsay lohan or something, you know, watching someone go off the rails. [laughter] madam nhu was this first kind of paparazzi -- not first, but she was definitely one of the few political people that the media was sofas nateed with her just -- sofas nateed just her kind of daily what was she wearing, what was she saying, that kind of thing. >> uh-huh. [laughter] let's get back to your relationship with her, because i find it really interesting that in the end you actually never really met her in perp. how -- in hearn. how does one write a book about someone who won't spend, you know, countless amount of hours, dreaming, thinking and obsessing with that person and actually never met her before she died? and then, so how's that relationship, and how because -- how does that inform your writing? >> el, i think i always -- well, i think i always thought i would meet madam nhu, and when i started this book and finally started talking to her, we would

set up these really elaborate meeting plans. again, all on her terms. i know this church on the corner, and it's dark, there's a park, it's really discreet, all these kind of cloak and dagger things. and you would ask me to bring my children, and i did sort of thinking, oh, that would make me seem sweet and naive and i wasn't going to hurt her because i really was just curious. but she stood me up at each of these things, and i -- she always said, you know, i'm really sorry, you know, there was always a reason. and really i had no power in this relationship. she was dictating the terms, and so, you know, if i wanted to continue to talk to her, i knew it would be on her terms. there was a time when madam nhu stopped accepting my phone calls and stopped speaking to me and that was because, i talk about it a bit in the book, but i'd asked her something that she thought was inappropriate or, in fact, i had told her that something was, you know, inappropriate, and she hung up on me, and we didn't talk again for about a year.

but right before she died, so she died in, actually, on easter sunday of 2011 which just is so perfect for her, because she really, like i said, she was so catholic and believed in the resurrection, and i think for her to pass away on easter was just perfect for her. but she, before she died she knew that the end was coming, and she sent me her memoirs. and she had written three volumes, each of them several hundred pages, and they were all about sort of the mystery of life, and it was totally dense with biblical references and things i couldn't really understand. but then peppered in there were these narratives of her life as a child. so at the end, i feel like i kind of got what i wanted from her which was in her own words a recollection of her life and the

meaning of her life which even though i didn't necessarily understand it, she believed very strongly that she was predestined to have led this life. >> her life is quite tragic in ways because not only did she lose her country, but she lost her husband and then her children die there accidents, two of the four. a lot of vietnamese actually talk about her being cursed for the role she played during the war, but what do you make of that and how -- what does she make of her own tragedy? >> back to the kennedy thing, i mean, it's like -- [laughter] >> yeah. >> people talk about the kennedy curse, there was the nhu family curse, certainly. madam nhu had a very tragic life. so first in '63 she was disowned by her parents who she wasn't getting along with anyways, then her husband is killed in a coup. a couple years later in the

'60s, her oldest beloved daughter dies in a car crash, and things keep getting worse. in 986 her -- 1986 her parents lived in georgetown, and they were murdered by her brother. so -- and then only just last year, in 2012, her youngest daughter, the daughter that she famously, she would dress her up in these little paratrooper outfits and dress her up like a little soldier, and she passed away as well in an auto accident in italy. so just a really, you know, bad chain of events. >> yeah. would you like to read a passage? perhaps something about your own relationship and your struggle to connect with her this. >> sure. yes, i'd be happy to. and i do want to say that this book, it was hard to figure out the structure of the book because i wanted to be as candid as i could about madam nhu and how, how she played me and how she -- [laughter] how she was this sort of

unreliable narrator but at the same time the best person i could talk to about her life. so i tell madam nhu's story, i tell my story of finding her, and i hope it's also of those years of the vietnam war that are confusing to people of my generation. but this is just a little section about when i thought we might meet. we should meet, madam nhu said on the phone shortly after tommy's birth. it was the first time she had expressed any willingness to meet me face to face. she must have reasoned that i couldn't possibly be conspiring to hurt her if i had a baby. would paris be all right? i was planning a september trip to introduce the baby to my french relatives. i didn't tell madam nhu i was also planning to visit the french colonial archives in the south of france. at this time i knew how firmly she believed that her version of the truth should be reported up challenged.

she planned the time and place. our meeting was to take place in a catholic church not far from her apartment. we would meet in the knave in the front of st. joseph's statue at 10 a.m., then we can go to the park across the street to talk, it will be very discreet. when i got inside the church, the doors closed behind me. i thought belatedly that perhaps i should be worried. i reminded myself that i was just introducing tommy to a little old lady. sure, she had been the dragon lady, she had run an armed militia, but she had also been a mother four times over. i was ill at ease. i told myself i was just nervous about making a good impression. and i think i told you all, she stands me up, and we're not there. but just the end is when we spoke next, she didn't actually apologize, not in so many words, but her voice sounded trite enough, and, of course, i forgave her. the next time we would peat in her apartment -- meet in her

apartment. she didn't let me up the elevator. she told me a woeful story, she wasn't sure she could trust anyone again, i would have to prove myself. the dragon lady was keeping herself tantalizingly out of reach. >> in your discovery of madam, this hu, you also discover vietnam. and for someone who was born in 1976, after the war ended, vietnam for most people of your generation really is not that clear or as extensive as your research. what do you think americans don't understand about vietnam still after all these years, and after your research what do you feel like you discovered most about vietnam and its history? >> great question. i think that that i can only speak for people of my generation, and i can't speak more everybody, but i will try to speak for myself and what i see is that the war was so massive and so tragic that to

boil it down into the distinct parts of what we were trying to accomplish, why we were there, who were we helping, whose side was on whose side, it was so confusing that i think it's better to just say vietnam and just lee it. so what i -- leave it. so what i really tried to do if my book was to find one narrative, one story to get in and give a little clarity about what was going on in this woman's life and how, perhaps, a person of my generation can relate to that in whatever way. >> well, i've got to tell you from reading the book, it really helped my thinking about vietnam in some ways because a lot of these things, this rumor, this gossip goes on within my own family as years roll down, and i've become completely american. but when i go home to my participants, you know --

parents, you know, the old ruling class of vietnam, the french-speaking people, this kind of narrative still goes on at the dining table. but it goes on as private conversation. and i never thought one day that they'd actually find a way out into the limelight as mainstream conversation if american households. so i find that really intriguing because i thought, wow, all this stuff i could write about as well and, you know, maybe people are interested and even going back further. but my last question before we open up is that are you done with vietnam, or are you still interested? and so, what's next for you? >> this book was really a labor of love. i started shortly after i graduated from harvard in 2003, and it took me a while to meet her, and then it took me a while to woo her, and then i had to figure out how i was going to write the book, so i'm kind of just going to promote my book

for a while and talk about madam nhu because i put a lot of time into it, because i want a lot of people to know her story. and then we'll see. i would really like to bring my kids to vietnam. that, for me, would be sort of the next step. but as i was telling andrew before, i'm not sure how this book is going to be received in vietnam. there's a chance that it may not go over well. so i'm just, i'm really very curious to see if i'm allowed back. >> yeah. we'll have to wait and see. all right. i can guarantee you that it's going to be pirated and sold right next to "the lonely planet," just like my books. [laughter] so that's one claim to fame. but let's open up for questions. [applause]

>> the most posh neighborhood which is the seventh, and she lived this in an apartment that she was very cagey about how she came to have the apartment. she said it was a gift. and the way she described it, it made it sound like she thought the cia or the americans or someone had bought it for her in

some small consolation prize for everything. there does seem to be pretty conclusive evidence, though, that the family in general was not corrupt. they were not stealing money out of the country, there were no swiss bank accounts. they had put money in to buy some land outside of rome for some kd of religious retreat that they envisioned they would bring seat vietnamese monks from vietnam to rome. so it wasn't like, it wasn't like there were stacks of gold somewhere. and now i've forgotten your third question. >> [inaudible] >> um, they did, but nothing after 1986. madam nhu's memoirs are coming out in french, though, this november. they are being published by her children and a family friend, and i'm sorry, i'm blanking on the name of the publishing house. but they are coming out in french in november.

>> first of all, you mentioned four children. you took care of two of them, but what happened to the other two? and second question is, has your book been translated into vietnamese to be published in vietnam? >> first question about the children, so she has two sons that are left living, and the oldest, jack, lives i believe still on the italian property. there's some question of property rights and boundaries, and so i think he's sort of the defender of the estate. and the younger son, he went to business school, and he worked for procter & gamble in belgium for several years, and so he's very cosmopolitan, european and living a life over there.

translated book, as i said, i'm not sure if my book is going to be well received in vietnam. i come down hard pretty much on everyone. i come down pretty hard on the south vietnamese family, the americans, the french, the communists, sort of to one gets off easy, but i'm not sure that it will be liked enough to be translated, officially translated. >> i'll come back to you. >> testing. i was fascinated to hear that you were in the archives in france. my first question, were they receptive, and did they clue you that there might be stuff that they won't release until -- like our american national archives? we have sensitive records that are only released every so often through a committee. so i'm kind of curious if you're monitoring that to see if any new stuff is coming out. >> so my french research took place in two main archives.

one is at the not very nicely titled shat, and it's just outside of paste, and those are really -- paris, and those are really the army archives, and then there's the colonial archives which has all of the -- as much as they could get out of vietnam before 954. 1954. they know that a lot was lost through the cracks, and, in fact, it's all sort of so suspicious still. when i went to go look for madam nhu's husband's dossier, they found it, and i did the, you know, the french bureaucracy, i can say this as having dual nationality, the french bureaucracy is just mind boggling. and so it's much easier to do research in american archives than if france. but the next year i went back because i had been approved, and today found the file, and i got to france, and it was officially missing. and as far as i know, it's still

missing. so -- >> [inaudible] >> any members of madam nhu's extended family still in vietnam and, in fact, did any of them during the war support the other side? >> ooh, i don't know the answer to that question. i know that the ngo family, there were, oh, my goodness, ten brothers and sisters or something, so i'm sure that there are descendants of them. and, in fact, one of diem's nephews became pretty high up in the catholic chump, and i'm so -- church, and i'm so embarrassed that i'm not up to speed, but he became a really well known bishop, i think? but a big deal.

so he was definitely still in vietnam. >> question in the back. >> when the -- [inaudible] association was in hanoi tour years ago -- four years ago, our ambassador told us america has no better friend in asia than vietnam. and i wondered how you felt received there. you told me earlier that you went a lot a as a child, and how did you feel you were received in recent times? >> well, the vietnamese people that i met in vietnam were never anything but wonderful to me. there was, my first trip to vietnam was in 1997, and at that time there was a lot of resentment towards russians but not so much towards americans. so i think perhaps this is very much just my interpretation, but i think because they were successful in the war and because they studied in hanoi, there was perhaps an easier

forgiveness in some sense in hanoi towards americans than there is in america towards vietnam. because they sort of got what they were looking for, which was the unified country under communist rule. so i don't -- i certainly think that vietnam is a strategic ally with the united states. there's a lot of power dynamics in asia, and america needs some, needs to balance things out. so, yeah. >> hi. i know that she is a very complex person, but would you describe her as being a feminist? >> yes, because i think the word "feminist," to me, means defender of women's rights and pro-woman, and so i'm not sure madam nhu would have used that word to describe herself, but if

my interpretation -- in my interpretation, yes, she was. >> in your conversations with her, did she ever have an opinion or remark to you about what she thought about the modernization of vietnam and how things are going in the country now? and did she ever express a longing to return home? >> no, she did not express a longing to ever go back to vietnam as it is now. she expressed sadness that she would never see her house again and the place where she had grown up. but to madam nhu, the path vietnam had taken was, you know, the path to hell. she was, like, convinced that there was going to be another war or the apocalypse. [laughter] >> there any other questions?

andrew, do you have any other queries? [laughter] >> well, i think it's great that we're having, nearing the 40th an resterly at the end of the vietnam war that there are more that explores the complexity of that past. i wish there were more young people who are intellectually curious about the vietnam war, because we need this kind of sort of intellectual investigation into the past as a way to create new conversation about understanding or not understanding so many wars that we continue to wage. >> i agree, and i think that the 50th anniversary commemorations start this year of -- so it was 50 years ago that the coup happened in saigon that toppled the regime from power, so 50 years ago was this sort of turning point into the vietnam

war as we know it. that was kind of the decisive moment when america got really involved. so i think that we will see more. the department of defense is doing a big hoopla in washington, and i think there's going to be a lot of awareness raising. nick turst just wrote that really powerful book on vietnam. so, yeah, i think there's more to come. >> great. thank you so much. >> [inaudible] >> nick turst, he wrote a book this year called "kill anything that moves." and it was research into the american side, into their actions in vietnam. >> well, thank you so much for talking with us, and good luck with your book tour. >> thank you. [applause]

>> david bacon argues many mexican workers have little desire to come to the u.s. and would happily stay in mexico if they can make a living there. this is about an hour, 15 minutes.

[applause] >> so, first, i want to deal with the language question here. so who here speaks english? okay. [speaking spanish] well, that's a tie. so we need to do a little translation for -- spur spanish. [speaking spanish] >> [inaudible] >> okay. [speaking spanish] before getting started, first of all, i want to thank the professor and institute for mexican studies and