people in the room. >> i work in nutrition and hearing your presentation i can understand the economic advantages of having an organized commodity market toward risk management and stabilizing prices. but i was wondering if you had any thoughts on the health i implications. i have been told the importance

of diversity in the diet. and that goes against what we have been taught to think. where you producing grains with higher yield, but everybody person has to eat a balanced diet. do you have thoughts on the risk-management tools having a positive for health implications. >> that is an interesting questions. i feel like you know more about this than i do. i think one way to frame this discussion is to think about --

i don't think that health implications have factored into the health commodities but when i look back at what is going on throughout the democrat a-- decades -- the health issues have been left out all together. it is strictly about pricing. the most interesting things have to do with scandal. i could devote an entire talk to those scandals. they don't come back to health issues necessarily. >> any other questions? go ahead. >> i am with the bank. and speak of scandals, would you mind tells us about the great onion scandal? >> i knew someone would take

the bait. the onion scandal is outlined in the book in greater detail. that took place in the 1950's and it almost served to tank the entire chicago trade exchange. traders were getting together and corner the market on onion and the prices were sinking so rapidly that the netting bags the onions came in were worth more than the onions themselves. and what happened eventually was the merchant had a table market. and it is still a federal

misdemeanor to trade onions in the united states. so they had to switch and became the center for trading livestock and pork bellies and cattle. you had this enormious divide between the grain traders on one side of chicago and they were the white-glove traders. and on the other side of town you had the livestock traders and these were more immigrants and hard scrabble groups. lots of italians and irish. that was what it was known for -- this divide between the two commodity markets. really fascinating. another scandal that fascinates me and we are coming up on the a

50th anniversary. there was the soybean oil scandal and that has been dwarfed around the jfk assassination -- which it should be. but there was a trader who called himself the salad oil king. called himself that. and he traded cotton seed futures and soybean oil features. and he created this incredible cloak and dagger scheme out in his warehouse in new jersey. he would have inspectors out to his warehouse and they would come and inspect the tanks which were allegedly full of salad oil. they would be about this full of water and that full of oil which floats on top of water. we had all sorts of schemes.

the inspector would come to check the tanks and they will check one tank that was filled with oil. they would go out to lunch and funnel it across to the other tank. when it blew up, it put 20 brokage firms out of business -- i will stop rambling now. >> wonderful. >> there are others but i am pulling pack. >> any other questions? you can ask about the cocktail

recipe if you like. >> any other questions? if not i think i would like to have you join me in thanking kara for a stimulateialating discussion on the secret life of food. stimulateliin >> here is a look at books that are being published this week: explaining the politics in the great debate and the birth of right and left. in the new democrats and the

return to power al from refount counts for reformation. and john dodson provides an a plan to track the mexican gun control with a guns and led to the death of a boarder patrol agent. and we have book on the middle eastern policy being shaked. in matthew hart details the history of gold in his book "gold" >> days of fire is the name of

the book. peter mabaker, whitehouse corresponde correspondent, how would you describe the president and vice president relationship in 2000? >> in 2000 they were close. he knew he need someone with a background in washington. close relationship at the beginning. >> how did it develop? >> it evolved over time. no question that chaney was influential. but they drifted away as the time went on. chaney was disappointed by the

approach and resisting that and loosing the fight he lost in the first term >> the second term is when the change took place? >> they found themselves on opposite sides of issues coming before them whether it was dome domestic or economic or foreign. the president on the other hand was trying to have a program that would survive after this term. and obama keeps a lot of the national security policies he inherited. >> it seems as if you int interviewed the people. >> interviewed 250 people. everybody except for bush who

chose not to be interviewed. the majority were on the record understanding it is time document what happened for the record. >> why days of fire as the title? >> that is from the president's second term inaugural address. war, terrorism, and more. so one this time we need to figure out what happened so we can figure out what happened today because we are debating the same issues under the current administration. >> here is a look at the best-selling non-fiction books.

bill o'reilly tops the list with "killing jesus "and next" decades that matter". to learn more about the book watch the appearance online. third is the "pioneer who cooks" and "double down is next" and you can see an interview with that writer on our website. "the elf on the shelf" is the last book. it is a tradition. sixth on the wall street journal

best-seller list, "the bully pulprit". number seven "soul healing miracles" and the guinness book of world records. and" david and goliath" and rounding out the list is sarah palin's book.

>> hello, everyone. so good to see you. welcome to the second installment of this month's new series of coffee and conversation about the constitution. i am jeff rosen. i am the new president and ceo of this wonderful center. we are the only institution in the country chartered by congress to disseminate information about the constitution. we are the museum of we the people, the center for education and america's town hall. i am thrilled today to introduce

you to our author. he wrote a book on the james madison of the 14th amendment. in the course of the conversation, you will come to appreciate now important john bb beinghb bingham was. this man had no definitive book written on him before. it is as a definitive job. it will eliminate the issues americas are fighting about today. i will introduce the author and then start the conversation. professor is the samuel rosen professor at indiana

universities. row -- university -- and no relation. that is at the school of law there. you have written three books, 20 articles on constitutional law, and active bloger. he spent a year as a law clerk as well. he shared a teacher that yale law school tell. tell me why you chose to write about john bingham. >> they say he is the author of the constitution article that

guarantees freedom for all-americans. and then i had weprofessors who emp who emphasised this his h import bs. i thought somebody shouone sho a book about him. and that is where this comes from. >> you say bingham turned lincoln's poems too prose. >> people are familiar with the address and see that as a representation from one that is focused on a state-center view

of national life and was a pro-slavery constitution. and that changed occurred to a different constitution during the period of the civil war and reconstruction. the story stops with lincoln's death usually. you saw the movie recently, right? and basically the war ends. lincoln is killed. and that is it. but in fact, that was the beginning for the constitutional debate about what the civil war meant. it was up to people like bingham who had to take them and transfer them into the law and that is where we get the 14th amendment. it was work that is necessary and had impact every sense >> we will talk a lot about the 14th amendment.

but i would like to take out my pocket constitution and let's read the 14th amendment and then i will ask you what bingham was trying to achieve. we will read section 1, which part that i garth bingham contributed the most to. did he write all of that? >> he wrote the second sentence of second one and that is the one we use the most. >> the second sentence is what i will read: no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges of the united states. nor shall any state deprive person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny any person in the their jurisdication the equal

protection of the law.tion the protection of the law. why does that make bingham the most important constitutional writer? >> he was trying to achieve to guarantee fundamental rights to all people. black and white. he liked to say that the word white isn't in the constitution. and what were those fundamental rights other than the doing away with slavery? he wanted them to apply to all of the americans against federal and state government. the bill of rights didn't apply

to all-americans and didn't apply to the actions of state government. the state of virginia could censor speech and that was perfectly okay. so his position on that took a long time to actually be adopted by the supreme court. we think it is obvious today to say the bill of rights should apply to states and federal government, but he contributed that idea in the most significant way. he wanted to guarantee equal treatment under the law for all people. it is less clear exactly what he meant by that. though again, of course, slavery and ending it was a big part of that story. he felt that the government should be taking steps to ensure there were equal enforcement of the law, especially in the south, but elsewhere as well

with respect to fundamental rights and civil liberties. >> beautifully said. many of the most important controversies are litigated under the equal protection clause and due process clause of the 14th amendment. bingham, though, believed that states had no power to infringe on the rights of people before this was passed. he had a theory that the original constitution assured this as well. tell us about this. >> bingham and others argued the

original constitution protected the fundamental rights for all people. they had to re-read a portion of the constitutional text that guaranteed to privileges of citizens to say that it included national privileges and immunities rather than the way most people understood at the time and that was one state couldn't discriminate against others coming in. he said there were words to be in there that would make it make sense to protect the fundamental rights. he had it is common sense to see those words should be read into this provision. that was putting it strongly and there were many people that didn't find that to be common

sense at all. part of the reason for the 14th amendment was to rectify this and cover them by the constitution in a broadway. that was one of the reasons for writing that. >> wonderful. and he was one of the main people bh people who coined the word bill of rights. we will display one of the 12 original copies of the bill of rights. it is pennsylvania's copy. it has been in new york for years and they are sharing it with us. but that phrase wasn't in use until the 20th century and bingham used it in 1866 when he produced a pamphlet in support

of proposed amendments to support the bill of rights. did he coin the phrase? >> it was want a common phrase in the way we understand it. it wasn't until the 1890s until the supreme court called it the bill of rights. of course everybody knows the first set of amendments is the bill of rights and is important. but things are things we contributed and persuaded everyone. it is like what are yhave you d for usilate lately? he emphassized that.ot as succes

might have been the case of this was true why it took a long time for the supreme court to except the position he was talking about but the most prominent person using that phrase a lot. >> host: but the original intentions that they should have to obeyed the bill of rights but it took almost 100 years for the supreme court to come around. how was it possible soon after it was adopted the slaughterhouse cases were ignored and refused to apply the bill of rights and why did it take years for the

vision to be vindicated? >> there was a train trips that. >> host: took bastille and congress with the supreme court justice who wrote the slaughterhouse cases that bingham was talking to him every day evidently that may not have worked out so well but the supreme court often does not go with what we consider the correct interpretation they have their own way to do things and that is part of the reason. support for the kinds of things he was interested in decline substantially in the years following the civil war once you got out after the end of the war there is much less public sentiment

because it was hard people wanted to move on to other subjects and that had an impact the way the supreme court review these questions and not really until the 1960's that you saw the second reconstruction led by martin luther king. >> there are some judges that say they believe in the original understanding that the supreme court was correct because the 14th amendment was not supposed to do that but you say that bingham intended the opposite. >> guest: but if you say that bingham was an idiosyncratic person so we should not pay attention attention, and nobody would say that about james madison , he was just one

person so why should we care? there is no doubt as to what his views were but unless you want to say he ought not to be paid attention to or the legal skills were inadequate, you cannot reach the conclusion by a fair reading of the evidence. >> host: he is dismissed as fuzzy head or insignificant but you paid to a different picture but bring him to live with his contemporary account sharp

been facing and all over he is nevertheless one of those endless debaters in the house give the picture of what sort of person he was. >> guest: and passion that and serious. not someone with a great sense of humor he wanted to do serious things someone who believedstronglyinin one of his best friends was his college class at who is african-american and they corresponded for years. that was a very unusual thing in the middle of the 19th century. he was an extremely eloquent man. basically when republicans in congress and did somebody to get up and make their case, they asked him. now, verbosity was more the style and is a pen that can be a little first trading when we read the speeches now. but he was someone who i think

was they were as champion of his views, the type of person right here in a meeting, he was among you with respect to the two because he maybe didn't like the person so much for thought they were really friendly, but you know if it are divided equally out very strongly, so their views deserve respect. he was also wonderful family man. he was married and had, well, three children who lived to adulthood. >> he lost many. you talk about the tragedy. the mackie lost many children to illness. two who died of typhus when it came through the time that he lived in. he was also kind of a pretty popular rock tour with tom. people you invite to dinner basically because he liked quoting shakespeare and was apparently very convivial.

and now that i think kind of paints a picture of someone who was more a politician than the sort of abstract thinker. he was a philosopher's much the way jumpers was. but he likes the rough-and-tumble of policies. he liked mixing it up in one of the things, my favorite aspects are reprinting some of his back-and-forth dialogue with other members from the south, some of them got not be. the mac i was struck by what a high level constitutional debate in congress on how recites the debaters were. just a more personal life. an interesting friendship with general custer. >> that is true. he's the second most popular subject of biographies and the united dave. i didn't know until recently.

custer was from a town near the downtown and big and as the person who got them into west boynton also the first and he was featuring bailed him out of trouble a couple of times and constantly kept promoting him during the civil war, telling the secretary of war, you really ought to look at this cut your guy. he would make a great general. we now after a little bit he did write a letter to custer's fathers and how sorry he was to have heard about this. that's about all we know about what he thought about the end of custer's career. perhaps it didn't work out well. be that despite the fact custer had an affair with my opinions daughters or something like that. juicy story. >> yeah, so custer kept going to be had, saying i want to get a reference letter to west point, works the same way that nasa does now.

the handset authority promised a couple of people i can't do it for you. and then, custer had an affair with a daughter of a prominent republican in town and this republican kind of thing usually went to his congressman and said hey, write this guy led her to rest when you get him out of here. i don't want him to see my daughter. sipping and it appeared the war at the time as davis. there is this letter that he recommends custer. frankly enough, bigamist off on a cut or, even though he had this affair. so there was some chemistry here that we don't know about. he liked his line. so i think it's fair to say he was nonapproved. >> u.s. however all over not only as of friday the 14th amendment wasn't enough, he was involved with the major cons additionally been at this time, including the trial of the

conspirators of john wilkes booth, who is that he did abraham lincoln. he tells the riveting story about bigamist criticized for his aggressive prosecution of mary sirota among others, and in the course of this prosecution, he advanced to extremely extensive use about the president authority of wartime that are relevant to our current debate, including the view that due process doesn't apply in wartime that all and therefore the conspirators could be tried in military tribunals. tell us more about that incredible job there and being unfair to insist power in wartime. >> is a member of congress are in the civil war, diggins suddenness beach that the due process clause is a cause for peace time. in wartime, you got or were entitled to only whatever to process become a public event to you. he played a role in drafting legislation that suspended

atheist or bit and said that the president could detain people without charges indefinitely. now, when the assassins -- when booth killed the president, his co-conspirators for arrest and end were tried by military court, not by a civil court. bingham was one of the prosecutors, gave the closing arguments in the trial and defended the constitutionality of this against charges that basically these people were citizens. the war was overcome is that they were entitled to a jury trial. they have had a variety of arguments he made against god, which to some next and have a resemblance that the argument that are made now with respect to the guantánamo detainees, at least the ones who were citizens in that you argue that low, it is still really wartime. the war just ended. it would be wrong to keep these people a jury trial when they

have committed an act of war, killing the commander-in-chief and also that really why should they get more product to any soldier in the union army who is accused of a crime and would only get a military trial. so even though there were a pot of people, including lincoln's attorney general, who did not think this is a const additional is to try the conspirators of the military court, vietnam was never apologetic about it. he thought basically they got a fair trial and of course they were all convict it. and some of them were executed. but he thought that it was a perfectly fair proceeding than he had done it today by participating. >> i was so surprised. how do you reconcile that extremely expansive view of the executive power at this great devotion to civil liberties and peace and quiet >> well, one answer is a distinction between war and peace and that a civil war in

particular was one where you might think all necessary steps had to be taken to win the war. that and i think that's even different from what we might consider other words in american has every and their impact on civil liberties. another thing one could say and i don't have any evidence for this, but i did wonder as to whether eventually his experience at that trial, especially as it came to be criticized more heavily afterwards influence his thinking in the opposite direction to think that yes, we really ought to be providing us with the guarantees, but maybe that was an unfortunate emergency, exception and that is kind of an example what we should be doing in the future. i don't have any direct evidence for that, but there is some causal connection you might try there. >> in that case, if you were writing -- if you are a law clerk justice scalia returned to tell them what john bingham with think about the guantánamo

tribunals, what would you say quick >> well, i think the answer is he before it because he made the statements very clearly as a member of congress and during the trial. there's not much doubt. of course the supreme court hasn't really followed whipping and it in this respect either, though you might feel differently about that is compared to some of the other things being had to say. but there was no doubt as to where he stood and to some extent that may be something that will eventually get taken into account into subsequent edits. >> completely fascinating. other great conflicts that he was involved in include the impeachment of president andrew johnson and that was so intricately tied up at the controversial ratification of the 14th amendment and johnston reluctance to enforce it that i need to have you about the different stages of this. first of all, tell us about the

controversy over ratification. obviously, the southern states were admitted to the union before they ratified. then the amendment would have been ratified because he wouldn't have gotten the necessary supermajority the states. what was bingham's plan for the conditions under which the southern state should be a quick >> the great debate that comes after the war is what do we ask of the southern gates to make them full partners again in the united states? the hemisphere was that there ought to be a 14th amendment to guarantee fundamental rights. the real problem was that the law was inadequate and needed to be fixed in the southern state in ratified the 14th amendment, then they could come back in and the state again. now in this respect, his opponent is patty stevens, who believed we should be demanding a lot more of this out, including taking property away from the farmers live owners and redistributing it to the free

plays. disenfranchising various people who had been involved with the confederacy and so on. they reached this great debate that lasted for about a year as to which we would prevail. they ultimately won that debate although he did make a few can -- and to stephen's position. it was bad it was just politically impossible and that you would never get the south to sort of do for the freed slaves what we wanted them to do if you check such a heavy-handed approach. now of course that was a very controversial argument and one which sort of didn't quite play out his torrid play the way may be bingham had hoped. andrew johnson, and can successor was against the 14th amendment entirely and did everything he could to try to block its ratification. so that her death that predicate

for the impeachment of the president by congress. >> tell us more about the impeachment. congress passed the tenure of office act. why did he pass it in house they relate to johnson's efforts on the 14th amendment? >> right, the difficulty was the south was occupied by the union army in congress wanted this have to do certain things to ratify the 14th amendment to have elections, to set up government, to get the freed slaves the right to vote in these elections. but the president was commander-in-chief. so he could tell the commanding officers in these places don't do what congress wants you to do. so how did they try to solve that problem quite one answer was the secretary of war at the time was that the secretary of defense now was a man named edward danton who was bingham's longtime friend. they were together in the same little town in ohio and the supporter of what congress wanted to do.

it was hard to get any contrary borders so they. do what i want and what congress wants. so okay, what if the president fired the secretary of war? so congress passed a law saying basically you can't hire any cabinet member by which they really just meant him unless the senate approves, which they were going to. now, this is a lot that i think today would be to chenault lee. based on subsequent things supreme court has had in the precedent before reconstruction. at the time, congress had the power to insist upon this. johnson eventually did fire because he was the only way he could 30th get his on the 14th amendment out there and in forest and that is why congress then impeached him. more accurately, might be to say he had an excuse to impeach him finally and so they did.

>> so this is not a trivial dispute over a legalistic matter. this is the center of the clash between the president who doesn't want to enforce the 14th amendment and being in congress. bingham was also afraid that the supreme court, as you said, might work the 14th amendment by striking down the tenure in office act in a radical proposal the supreme court should be wiped out and refuse to support reconstruction. tell us about his views on the court. >> right. well, it is fair to say that most of the reconstruction framers, if you will, were worried about what the supreme court would do in their solution to the problem was to prevent the supreme court from saying anything about the constitutionality of what they were doing. this sort of came in the form of variety of threats. for example, a law saying that you need supreme court justices, two thirds to declare a law was

something big and talked about. he also talked about the factor just wiping them out. he never made clear what that meant. but the message -- the message was clear and of course also there was a thought though it wasn't stated openly that well, if they've impeach the president, they could also start impeaching supreme court justices. eventually the supreme court found a graceful way to bow out and not decide any of the cases that were brought before them, challenging the various acts of congress event comes to chenault. but some people say bingham was a moderate. at least as compared to thaddeus stevens. in some respects, this was true. people call for abolishing the supreme court aren't really what you and i would call moderates. it's either a relative term marjah showing that people had different is on how to solve the problems that came after the civil war. >> he certainly was not a fan of the supreme court.

he described as fierce criticisms of the dred scott decision in his attempts to strip the court of jurisdiction to review some of the decisions challenging lincoln. so would he have thought that congress was the supreme court to take the lead in enforcing the right and the 14th amendment? >> he believes congress should take the lead. of course he was a congressman. one might understand that. his initial proposal for the section that we now have simply said that congress shall have the power to enforce fundamental rights and equality. they didn't really say anything about the courts. and that was modified because people thought maybe that would give congress too much power or it didn't give the courts they will and he modified it in to the language we see now. but he was also very active in the years following the ratification of the 14th amendment in putting together legislation that would've forced the 14th amendment the ku klux klan for other folks in the south who were trained to resist

the will of the people. now given what the supreme court did to the 14th amendment after he left congress were justified. on the other hand, you could save seats in congress was not my justified either because congress at a certain point stopped the vigorous enforce the 14th amendment guarantees. >> or is the vigorous debate today about whether the supreme court is correct to strike down landmark acts of congress designed to guarantee a quality under the 14th amendment, including the voting rights act, the 15th amendment. other laws, with he and have thought about that? >> well, i think that he never would have taken a very strong position that congress should be given great deference with respect to its enforcement of the 14th and 15th amendments. he didn't write the 15th amendment, but he played a role in the construction of it.

i think that also he would have been surprised to learn that an important principle of the reconstruction amendments is the states are all equal because certainly the states were not treated equally in the period immediately following the civil war. the south was treated differently than the north when it came to ratification of these amendments. therefore they're occupied in kind of an effect given a strong reason to ratified the 14th amendment under the threat that they would stay occupied until they said yes. now, bigamous certainly not against states working state rights. i think in the context of racial equality, he had a strong nationalist perspective. >> he had some extremely powerful things to say about reason he believes the essence of the 14th amendment was to eliminate any hint of caster firmin legislation.

did he believe the 14th amendment was about protecting african-americans? >> yes, although his vision went quite beyond that in the sense that the fundamental rights he was talking about would apply to all citizens, white or black, in the state with respect to the national government. what akin to a quality, what he was principally thinking about was african-american equality because that was the key problem they were dealing with at the time. so that was the central purpose. of course he didn't preclude the idea that it could be expanded further. for example, he supported the idea of unwritten constitutional rights. he said he believed he existed, though we didn't know what they were and certainly didn't make statements that were hostile to the notion that other groups besides african-americans were categories beyond race would be included in the guarantee of

equal protection. >> although he did not believe the 14th amendment protected women fully when it came to political rights because he didn't think the 14th amendment covered political rights. when a delegation of women's equality advocates came to him, he rebutted their claims. tell us about that. >> the question is what about my name? his position was that basically there was no constitutional right for women to vote. 30 states wanted to let women vote that was fine. but there wasn't a guarantee of that. so he was giving a speech about a quality one day when susan b. anthony was in the audience. she raised her hand. mr. bingham, what about women? his answer was that i am not a puppet of logic. i am the slave of practical politics. now if you think about that for a second, that's an interesting

political answer. what is he saying there? oocytes to help you but i can't get enough people to go along and help you out. or was that his way of dodging the question? hard to say. he didn't say much about women's rights in any of the materials that i could find. so it's really not clear what position he had. the answer is he probably didn't have a vision that much different than other people in congress at that point in time. >> but his view quite clearly showed that many congress that the 14th amendment protects civil rights are not political or social rights. the guaranteed to be less weepy and peered in other words, not discriminated against emesis of the right was involved. but does that say what he thought about affirmative action? >> that's difficult to say. of course some of his views for broader than what could be

passed. what have to distinguish what he thought about it and what the amendment was saying. for example, while he never took a direct position on segregation, everything, if you look at the whole arc of his life, it's hard to believe he would've thought that was called to show i would've supported it. with respect to affirmative action, i don't know. one way of thinking about it as he was kind of someone who believed in formal equality under the law. affirmative action and not fences struggling because it is not providing formal equality. it is providing something more like functional equality or equality of opportunity. he did so for things in the aftermath of the civil war that gave benefits only to the free slaves. one could say that while that was in a limited temporary emergency sort of setting, he

never really named why he voted for these things. so it's kind hard to answer the question. the historian in me says i can't really answer that question definitively. you have to read the book to draw your own conclusion. >> very responsible. the journalist in me wants you to keep channeling thing among contemporary topics. that raises difficulty because as you say we have to carry not only with them talk, but also with conventions that ratified the 14th amendment. these conventions are first to ratify the amendment at gunpoint. they basically told you can't come back in to the union that musty ratified. with that arrangement of the coin and not an does that complicate the status of the 14th amendment the supreme law? >> well, i don't think so. though it is certainly problematic. however, if you look at other examples of constitutional change in history, you will find there are lots of questionable legality is her illegalities

involved. if you look too closely, you might be disturbed at what you find. binion's original thought was simply to say, why do we say a three works of the northern states ratified the 14th amendment, then we don't need the south at all. he couldn't get enough people to go along with that. so then he went to this sort of plan b, if you will, which was the south ought to be given an opportunity to vote yes or no on whether he ratified. there wasn't an oral action. again it's been explained, these are not normal times. you know, so a government of the south had collapsed and only the army could provide some framework for making decisions. so really, what else could you do it unless he simply said that welcome in the south could come back in the way they were before the war and that would mean that the war was kind of endangered because all all of these people would guide him what would've been accomplished? so are there legal questions

there that are interesting when i teach a class about the subject like i'm doing now? sure. does that undermine the legitimacy is something that a clear overwhelming majority of americans on the victorious side of the civil war believed in? now, i don't think so. >> so the resistance of southern states to ratify brings us back to the impeachment rorie, which we didn't finish because now you have to tell us after andrew johnson fires dancing, vietnam is one of the house managers for the impeachment and he takes a very strong position that the president cannot refuse to follow an act of congress and unconstitutional. emacs are members of the house act as the prosecutors and the senate acts as the jury. bdm gave the closing argument in the impeachment trial.

and this kind of a very big event. he made a number of claims they are better a little hard to square with the mother city said. i mean, prosecutors sometimes are advocating for some name and will oversee things up with him strongly to win their case in a way that maybe doesn't quite work out otherwise. so for example, he said that, well, the president had no right to refuse to obey an act of congress, even if he thought it was unconstitutional and wanted to test it in courts. when people pointed out that if congress passes some really awful, clearly illegal thing, because the answer was that's why we have elections and the problem with that of course is there weren't elections going on, for example, in the south. they weren't allowed to be in congress until they ratified the 14th amendment. it wasn't really great to see

the courts could come in and do something because the supreme court was being threatened with all sorts of terrible things if they were to try to interfere with what congress is doing. now it is fair to say that pms position on that probably has a mirror with her is back to presidential refusals to enforce the law, just because they think a law is unconstitutional. that he might say it's going too far, except for some extraordinary circumstances. but vietnam was doing his best to try to persuade wavering senators to vote to convict andrew johnson and remove him so the 14th amendment could be ratified. >> it's an incredible image. you have the author of the 14th amendment became the impeachment charge against a president who is kind of for him. and yet against arguments were rejected in a sense that the senate refused to convict. what does that say constitutionally about the

standard? does the senate reject his views carry out the constitution? >> johnson was acquitted by one vote. they fell one vote short of two thirds. now, why did they fall short? part of it is because johnson met with senators and basically assured them that if you vote not guilty, i will stop interfering with the 14th amendment and also, by the way, i could be some may sugarplums in terms of jobs where friends and things like that. ironically, one of the senators that is discussing john f. kennedy's profiles in courage, a republican who voted not guilty and while he stood up to his party and so on, he's one of the guys who thought the nice jobs for his friends. he was sent really such a profile in courage. so the effort of impeachment and conviction failed, but the 14th amendment was ratified.

so if you think that was the goal, it isn't so clear that he and his arguments were good. you might feel so we were better off where president was actually removed simply because he was opposing the policies of congress. so in that sense, what was messy, you might think at the end result worked out reasonably well. >> we had the other night your wonderful cause signal conversation with chris to call, a conservative group that many people set president obama should be impeached as cozies refusing to carry out parts of the health care law. he's been select it without the employer mandate. what would be an say to plan? >> well, the one thing we can say is binger was a strong proponent of congressional power as a member of congress for his whole career. so certainly any dispute between congress and the president tended to take the side of

congress. now although he loved lincoln and thought he was a wonderful president, so that really didn't give -- didn't apply to a republican president basically. so i think vietnam was reluctant to go for impeachment. thaddeus stevens was saint johnstone should be impeached months before but never agree to that. ultimately, the reagan felt like he needed some reason to impeach, a good reason about the tenure of office was the reason to convince enough senators to vote for conviction. was something like impeaching president obama, the answer would be that's not going to work, so why bother doing it? >> that sounds like that may well be the case. they never had kind of sad sack in act or whatever after these extraordinary achievement that you describe, being at the center of major debates over

civil rights and liberties of his era. he then went off to be ambassador to japan and sordidness supreme court's refusal to implement, to tell us about that. >> welcome is not renominated for another term in congress in 1872. basically he's been in congress for 20 years at that point. people are tired of him in this district. so after he leaves congress, president grant appoints him to ambassador for japan and he spends 12 years as ambassador and by all accounts had a wonderful time, enjoy be ambassador with his family. he came back and retired in at this point he was 70 and he lived to be 85. unfortunately he just got old and also outlived his money. no pensions in those days, right? and so, by his last years, he was having all sorts of help problems, dementia basically. and also by 1900 when he died,

the 14th amendment was simply not doing what he hoped it would do. african-americans were not voted in the south. african-americans are not being given the treatment were being guarantee fundamental rights. when he died, the obituaries didn't even mention the fact that he had written this portion of the 14th amendment. he talked about other things. if you go to the county is buried in, there is a statue, which has an inscription on it. doesn't say anything about the 14th amendment. doesn't say that he was for terrorists that would protect industry, which doesn't seem like a rousing -- nice, but -- so that was sad. indeed, you could also say because he was in japan in the years immediately following the supreme court -- during the supreme court initial interpretation of the 14th amendment, and that he was unable really to influence those

interpretations that all by either arguing cases are just making speeches and so on. we all might have suffered as a result of his absence. >> i see this great photo of the statue and i was struck -- first of all comments are very nice nice photo. congratulations. these are not easily available photos. it's so striking and to physically take the picture of the statue. why is it that, as you say come with a statue in a coma no one remembered he wrote the 14th amendment. why has he been so ignored since then? >> part of the problem is during the period of jim crow segregation, the leaders of reconstruction were viewed unfavorably. are they to tell the story that there's actually a movie, a biography of andrew johnson that came out in the 1940s, where he's the hero. what a great guy because he

wanted to bring america together and get past all this bad feeling from the civil war. thaddeus stevens is played by lionel boring war. those of you who remember lionel doering wore -- a nifty pic it as the villain. so really, until the civil rights movement came along, people would not take seriously the idea that folks like vietnam or high-minded or were pursuing a cause of that bunch just. now since then, some of the discussion of being a has gotten caught up in a broader discussion of other issues like what you think about applying the bill of rights are with you think about different things he was for? if you aren't on board are some of the things he wanted to do, you tend to attack him rather then the ideas. hopefully that is going to change. who knows, maybe this will help change that a little bit. >> is certainly showed and well.

the obvious question now is how do we get this to steven spielberg and who plays bigger than the movie? >> someone with long muttonchops i'd earths would need to be the person. why not tom hanks. he can play anybody, right? >> lewis would be great as well. he would do just as good a job there. i think we have time for one or two questions from the audience if there are any. my wonderful colleague, robin has the microphone. >> when i'm wondering is what would you have think of the government think of the shutdown that is going on right now and the whole debate going on between the republicans and democrats? >> great question. thank you for asking.

>> yes, thanks. one thing to say is binger was a very partisan person. he was a republican. he didn't much like democrats and the whole of reconstruction was partisan. and no, there were very few democratic votes for the 14th amendment at the time. of course the parties are totally different band than they are now. democrats are mostly from the south and they had disbelief in different things than what would be the case now. besides the book talks about between congress and the president didn't say congress were very, very bitter. this is a time when a senator was beaten senseless on the floor of the senate and where people carry pistols into the capital and have been in the house chamber. so he certainly would've been comfortable with the thought of very partisan, very intense fighting for what he thought was

right. beyond that, it's hard to know what he thought about the specifics of health care for that sort of thing. >> that's great. yes, sir. >> part of the remarkable language of the 14th amendment, the two words, any person, any person. citizen comes up earlier. it includes children. it includes demented people. people who are not competent. do you think that vietnam really understood what he was proposing when he said any person? because children, old people, demented people, a whole variety of people don't get equal protection and will incarcerate people without due process all the time. about a million old people who are incarcerated without any due process. so i wonder, what do you think

he had in mind when he said -- when he wrote any person? >> well, one thing he had in mind was he wanted to protect people that were not citizens. immigrants who we would now call lawful residents. he was quite clear that they had rights, too. he even said that they have the right to free speech. i was a fundamental right that apply to all people, citizens or noncitizens. the reason for the language was he wanted to make sure that recent immigrants were protected in their basic rights. now whether he thought about it, you know, to the extent you are talking about, it covered all of those categories. i think in general he did. whether he saw tim posten thought about what about children and what about the elderly, that i don't know. but what he had in mind remake even sure that noncitizens were

protect data and what he believed were their fundamental rights. >> wonderful. yes, sir. >> you know, gettysburg with 150th anniversary. a movie came out july the third -- anniversary of gettysburg. peter finder was the only big star in it. it was called copperheads. copperheads were caucasians, right, that they were opposed to slavery. they thought it was were evil. however, there was anti-abraham lincoln because it took away habeas corpus. when you take away habeas corpus, even though they were supposed to slavery, they hated abraham lincoln and they were sane people that could have been an asset was like the human race has been violated and being taken away from. and then they also had a guy. i forgot his name.

they had a dude in the airplane and/or johnson as well. like you say, one vote saved him. the reason one vote saved him was his brother-in-law. andrew johnson was able to take his own personal wealth, give it to his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law was able to influence certain people appeared to call them? backroom deals. >> that's a great recommendation. what was the last question? what was big guns relationship? >> not friendly as you may imagine. he basically called them traitors. kind of gave the fiery speeches in congress, attacking the most prominent of the copperheads also from ohio. didn't have much send the for those who were sort of antiwar you might say during the civil

war. >> are called at the national constitutional centers for everyone to read it and educate yourself about it. i cannot imagine a better way of educating yourself about the 14th amendment reading this spectacular book. please join me in thanking gerard. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. he will be signing books. please come by them and will continue our constitutional conversation. [inaudible conversations] >> coming up next, monique demery recounts in 1962 coup that led to the different go madame nhu who spent many decades in conclusion.

ms. demery sound madame nhu and trust the author with her unpublished memoirs. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> well, i am glad to look out to the audience can see that actually there are a lot of people i'm sure who actually were liars like me who during the vietnam war and knew who madame nhu was. i was still born into the war in my family knows quite a bit about that history. but monique, i have to say what surprised me most, especially now the same to the introduction is that here is someone who actually was sent out of vietnam because of her relationship with the whole family and her role in the war. in 1963, you graduate in 2003.

why would you be interested in madame nhu? >> who wouldn't be interested in madame nhu? she from an early age just captivated me. everything that had come to know about vietnam. i was born in 1876. so after the war had ended. my father barely missed being drafted into the war. someday, vietnam was sort of images and books of all the terrible images of war that my generation of america has come to associate with vietnam. nothing about what a beautiful or interesting country oppose. it was really just a fine for me is the war. to see madame nhu's picture jump out, especially the captions called her the face of evil. i had to know more. >> well, before we get to her, there is a narrative that runs parallel in the book, which is your relationship with her in your search for madame nhu.

i think in some ways a journalist who's been working for 20 years plus, the investigative part is what i find really intriguing because you didn't know her address in here you aren't curious, searching for her absurdity. this piece of information that you've seen. tell the audience about this. >> sure. so if my husband is here, he would tell you in very persuasive. i really was determined to find madame nhu. and all of my initial research, i expected to find an obituary. there was nothing there. so everything i can sort of gather was that madame nhu was still alive and living in rome. i spoke to a journalist from "the new york times" who has spoken to her and he said as far as i know she is living in rome. a few people -- attach a few people tonight about how i very much try to study vietnamese and humbly admit that i didn't do a

good job of keeping up with it. for a while, i was practicing a part of my practicing was to go online and pulled the vietnamese english articles and translate them and keep my skills fresh. one of these articles was written by a vietnamese man living in the united states who claimed he had interviewed madame nhu. i'd never heard of this guy. i never heard of this journal. it was a catholic vietnamese website. but all of a sudden these lightbulbs went off in my head. when he was talking about the kitchen window. i had heard he known there an apartment chain 11 had gone to after she left saigon. i was at the foot of the eiffel tower. it struck me that maybe she's back there and it's not so crazy. long story short, i looked around paris for a tall buildings i could find around the eiffel tower. there weren't that many.

very persistently spoke to a concierge. now, she's not here. she's next-door. >> but that was not the end of it because of course, in some way in the book, she's portrayed a little bit mysterious woman who won't talk to anyone. your story is about finding her, and mediate her and also trying to capture who she is. so it was a long process have been in touch with her. a >> it was almost like a courtship honestly. at first i tried to really impress her and seemed very businesslike and smart. but she just put me in my place immediately because i was young and naïve but what could i possibly know. >> this on the phone, exactly. the first time that madame nhu called me, i wasn't expecting

her to call. i've been writing her letters for months. i'd knocked on her door that day. i had done everything except for see her. 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. in fact in the first conversation we had, she was really curious about not so much me, but why was i interested in her? who in your family works for the cia? who is a government agent? no one. i'm just curious. slowly, so part of it was the first day that she called me. my husband and i have been trying to get pregnant. it had been a long process. that morning i had taken a pregnancy test and found out i was pregnant, so i was overjoyed. but if i could wake up and has

been to tell him, madame nhu is calling me on the phone. part of this is make into her -- getting her humanity out with i told her early on, you know, this had happened in this coincidence in right away she was like it's not a coincidence. it's a sign from god that is meant to be. so there was this bastion then it developed into a sort of maternal thing. she would always call and ask about the children in lieu of really get into the nitty-gritty of motherhood. madame nhu each of her children for at least six months she told me. she was very precise about all of those things. i wouldn't imagine the dragon lady to be peered >> before we get to the dragon lady narrative, i am curious how many people in the audience know who she is? that's quite a lot.

so can you tell us in a few short sentences of who she is and why she's important? >> madame nhu was the first of 1954 to 1963. she was on a bit of a technicality. her brother-in-law was the president. tm was a very morrow, very catholic married to his country, really. he never took a wife. instead madame nhu was his younger brother's wife. his younger brother did all of the politicking that tm couldn't or wouldn't do. all of the running with an iron fist. everything from running the secret police to recruiting news

and running a political party. madame nhu was the face of the regime because she was beautiful. she 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 30 years old. >> yeah, but in some ways -- i hate to put it this way, but her career went up in flames. unintended >> literally. >> because of what she actually said. this is what she is remembered by. >> absolutely. >> in 1963 was when she was on the cover of the saturday evening post, "newsweek," life magazine. you name it, madame nhu was on the cover of it. it wasn't for anything good. it was a dangerous thing in the summer of 1963, there was a buddhist crisis in vietnam.

the buddhists were speaking out against the regime and was not responding in a way that was very good pr. i'm paraphrasing, but she said it, we will have a perfect year. she was sort of like a marie antoinette. she came across as very cruel. at that time, all of america new as the ominous loose way. we are helping these people, saving them from communism and doing us good thing. he was suddenly a very ugly, dark side to the regime the americans were helping. >> well, one thing i didn't know what she actually was not raised catholic. and in fact, converted when she married madame nhu. i always thought of being a french citizen.

>> her father was. >> a naturally converted to catholicism. but in fact they were buddhists. this is interesting because a lot of vietnamese families are 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 family split along that line. to see her be so pro-catholic and support about a regime to crack down on buddhism with a lot of the shock and in a way for someone who was raised buddhist. can you talk about the religions in vietnam? during that time. >> a little bit. she was born in hanoi, went way down to the southern very tip of southern viet on and then went back to hanoi. i didn't know until i was

researching a book that she was actually north vietnamese by birth and heritage because the regime that was the south vietnamese regime. so she converted her marriage, which was in 1943. madame nhu's mother was a devout buddhist. there was a lot of tension between mother daughter and i think the fact that madame nhu married a catholic, i think her mother honestly maybe looked a little bit down at her for that and i think madame nhu in her own way was like i can start fresh and not have to worry about that parental judgment all the time. sub one always sees his wife had called her his little he then because she was new to catholicism. she was baptized on the day before -- the night before her wedding with her baptism.

so he likes to tease her, but later in life, i think for madame nhu, that was her defining a receipt. both how to really make sense of her life by putting it into this religious framework. >> but she was also involved in writing law during the hearing. part of that has to do with her own insecurity. that's what you discussed in the book. it's interesting because she actually had her own sister incarcerated because part of the reason has to do with her sister wanted a divorce. >> yes, this is sort of the scuttlebutt in saigon. 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. she came up and people were quick to pass it. madame nhu has a very good

points. i mean, i don't think all of her laws were totally reactionary. she saw that the communists were making great gains by taking women seriously. until madame nhu changed the law, women in south vietnam were not able to own property. they were not able to honor a fake accounts. madame nhu made progress in a sense in that she saw a section of the population being excluded. she also saw that the communists were doing a good job of taking the were seriously. so as more and more foreigners, americans came into south vietnam, madame nhu didn't want it to seem like it was a party city. she wanted people to be like hey, we're at war. let's take this seriously. she banned prostitution. she banned gambling. she banned dancing, underwire prize. she banned all sorts of stuff. and the one sort of big bang was

she banned divorce. in the theory was that the time that she was trying to prevent her sister, her older sister from getting a divorce. the rumor was madame nhu would really never acknowledge. the rumor was that when madame nhu outlaw divorce in the country, which meant she couldn't get a divorce, she slit her wrists and went running through the palace in madame nhu honduran prison in the hospital. >> which is interesting because vietnam is full of rumors. there's a lot of narratives that goes around. part of that has to do with the fact that there is 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 in their heads in

the safe philanderer in a way. in many ways. he actually had a girlfriend, right? talk about that we'll get to the next question. >> sure. so i think we all could be guilty of sort of rewriting our own history and i had. i remember what i did yesterday in a very positive light. but you know, the guy whose seat is still on the bus might not feel the same way. i guess i am trying to say by the time of madame nhu was in 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. >> does the next question. go ahead. >> in this diary, all of that kind of rose-colored glass reflection is gone. she talks about how hard it was to be married to someone who cares 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 madame nhu was below him and certainly below her. so these little accusations came out in the journal. .. book. it's not a surprise but the fact that there is some recording of it or some observation of it. it's interesting, including this conservative family that madame nhu came from, which is the parents -- her parents who are really upstanding from this really respectful and the mother is from royal family, but in fact the mother is having sex with a bunch of different people, which is like, wow. >> 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 find references to madame nhu's mother having slept with the right frenchman at the right time, and then when the japanese were coming in, having slept with the right japanese men at the right time, and taking japanese lessons and going to din with the japanese. so it's very possible that the french man who was writing it down was -- had his advanced suspended and was bitter and so decided that would be her legacy. but this came from several sources and she used what she had to save her family. >> sex in all kind of royal courts, down to presidency, is the norm, but the fact that the french are going these parties and recording it is shocking.

and that's my other question. 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 is still true today. i think that there's a lot of know stall -- nostalgia in france -- my mother was born in 1946. so for her growing up, she grew up learning that indo-china was part of france, and feeling quite a bit of pride in that empire. and to think that -- i'm born in '76 so 30 years later, and that's totally bewillerring to me some could have assumed that.

i'm not sure the question today, what did the french know or not know, it's misplaced colonial nostalgia. >> let's get back to the role of powerful women in the world. politics of the '60s. she seemed such an anomaly in a world of men, and even jackie onassis, jacqueline kennedy, looked down at her for being involved in politics, it was not lady-like, and certainly among first ladies of asia during that time, the idea of this woman with a gun and speak her mind regardless of what the men were saying, and even tell the president to shut up, was something really shocking, not just to asian but the world in a way, and yet there she was, sort of blabbering her ideas without any sense of inhibition. >> before madame nhu there was

madame shanclek. she was well-opinion and had a feeling for what americans and americans were looking for in a first lady, and madame nhu didn't have that. i think madame nhu would have looked for her place in the world but there was no role model no shoes for her to step into. so she had to blunder her way through it, and the dynamic with the kennedy family and the nor family in saying gone is fascinating. two catholic families, family regimes, jfk and his family, and diem and his family, and then madame nhu, this first lady and

jackie kennedy in the white house. and in these interviews, jackie is asked about madame nhu, she says, oh, she's horrible. she is everything that jack found just ugly because she wasn't sub -- submissive, and wasn't quiet, and jackie described her own marriage as an asian marriage, what that means. she was subservients to her husband. >> when diem was murdered, kennedy was murdered not very long after, and there's this letter that madame nhu sent to her because she felt betrayed by the americans. talk about the all right and -- about the letter and the bitterness. >> goodness. where do i start? first i guess for those of you that don't know, kennedy gave the okay for a coup in vietnam, for a regime change in vietnam,

and there were several falls -- talls -- false starts and the coup didn't happen until november. she was in the united states at the time and no official would meet with her. the only publish official was the director of police in new york city because he had to guarantee her safety. people were throwing things at her. 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 a regime change in vietnam could not have happened without the okay by the kennedy administration. so she felled betrayed and made theirs eerie proclamation as she is leaving the country, 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.

we were there another decade. >> where is the irony which is she is vilified in a lot of ways in the media, and yet she was right 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, who were rise can against the diem regime, of being loosely organized and ripe for communist infiltration, which the americans would find out later, at least in '66 and '68 that would come to be the case. the just called it early and inappropriately. she also accused the american press of being infiltrated by the communists. actually i'll use her favorite word. intoxicated. 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 part of the communist system. >> very famous one, who actually -- stanley tarnow. >> yes. >> i was thinking of her this morning, and then saw lady gaga video, and i thought, in a strange way, she was the lady gaga of politics of the '60s because of the things she is saying that is so shocking. barbecue monks. and that sort of thing shocked the world, but people are no longer shocked by lady gaga so i was thinking of, had she had good public relation and in a different context, maybe the courses of events in vietnam might have even changed? she influenced so much of the public opinion. can you talk about the context of this now in relationship to her being a woman back then. >> with madame nhu have tweeted?

140 characters. it would have gotten her in a lot of trouble or saved her in some sense. maybe not lady gaga, maybe like lindsay lohan. madame nhu was this first kind of paparazzi -- not first but definitely one of the few political people that the media was so fascinated with her, just kind of daily -- what was she wearing, saying, that kind of thing. >> 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 person. how does one write a book about someone who has spent countless amount of hours dreaming and thinking and obsessing with that person and actually never met her before she died. and then -- how is that relationship and how does that inform your writing?

>> well, i think -- i always thought i would meet madame nhu, and when i started this book, and finally start talking to her, we would seat up elaborate meeting plans, and all on her terms. i know this church around the corner and it's dark and meet by the st. joseph statue. there's a park, really discreet. no one will see us. these cloak and dagger things and she would ask me to bring my children, and i did, sort of thinking that would make me seem sweet and naive and like i wasn't going to hurt her, because i real ya was curious. but she stood me up at each of these things, and i -- she always said, i'm really sorry. there was always a reason. and really, i had no power in this relationship. she was dictating the terms, and so if i wanted to continue to talk to her, i knew it would be on her terms there was a time when madame nhu stopped accepting my phone calls and stopped speaking to me. that was because of -- i tack bat it in the book.

i asked her something she thought was inappropriate or in fact i tooled her that something was -- i told her something that was inappropriate and she hung up on me and we didn't talk between for a year. so right before she died -- she died in -- easter sunday, 2011. it's so perfect for her. because she really -- like i said she was so catholic, and believed in the resurrection, and for thor pass away on easter was just perfect for her. before she died she new the end was coming and 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 reference 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, 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 many ways because not only did she lose a country but she lost a husband, and then her children died from accidents two of the four. a lot of vietnamese talk about her being cursed for the role she played during the war. but what do you mak of that? what does she make of her open tragedy? >> back to the kennedy thing. it's like -- people talk about the kennedy curse. there's the nhu family curse. certainly madame nhu had a very tragic life, so first in '63 she

was disopenned by her parents who she wasn't getting along with anyways. then her husband is killed in a coup. a couple years later her oldest beloved daughter dies in a car crash. and things keep getting worse in 1986 her parents lived in georgetown and were murdered by her brother. so, -- and then only just last year, in 2012, her youngest daughter, the daughter 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 took a really bad chain of events. >> would you like to read passage, perhaps something about your own relationship and your struggle to connect with center. >> sure. yeah. i'd be happy to. i do want to say that this book was -- it was hard to figure out

the structure of the book because i wanted to be as candid as i could about madame nhu and how she played me, and how she was this unreliable narrator but the first person i could talk to about her life. so i tell madame new's story, tell my story of finding her, and i hope i tell a story also of those years of the vietnam war that are confusing to those of my generation. this is a section about when i thought we might meet. we should meet, madame nhu said on the phone after tommy's birth. the first time she expressed any willingness to meet my face to face. she must he around i cooperate be conspiring to hurt her if i was with a baby so the insisted i bring tommy. paris be all right? i was going to visit my relatives and a stop in paris would be on the way. i didn't tell her i was visiting the french colonial archives in

the south of france to see what other history i could pull up. i knew how firmly she believed her version of the truth should be adequate and report unchallengedded when with obvious cracks. our meeting was to take place in a catholic church not far from her apartment. we would meet in the nave in front of st. joseph statue at 10:00 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, shut ought the bright sun. i thought i should be worried. i reminded myself i was just introducing tommy to a little old lady. she had been the dragon lady but has also been a mother four times over. i forced myself to focus on that aspect but i was ill at ease. i told myself i was nervous about making a good impression, and then she stands me up when

we poke next she didn't actually apologize but her voice surrounded contrite enough and i forgave her. the next time we would meet in their apartment. i believed her. i waited in the lobby but she didn't let me up the elevator. she told me 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 madame nhu you also discover vietnam. and for someone who was born in 1976, after the war ended, vietnam for most people of your generation really ills 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 for -- i can only speak for people of my

generation, and i can't speak for 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, who were we -- whose side was on whose side. so confusing that i think it's better to just say, vietnam, and sort of leave it. so what i really tried to do in 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. >> i can tell you from reading the book, it really helped my thinking about vietnam in some ways. a lot of this rumor, this

gossip, goes on within my own family as the years roll down and i become completely american, but when i go home to my parents, 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 conversations. and i never thought one day they actually find a way out into the limelight as a mainstream conversation in american households. so i find that really intriguing. i thought, wow, writing about it, maybe people are interested, even going back further. but then -- my last question before we open up, is that are you done with vietnam or are you still interested in, and if so, what's next for you? >> this book was really a labor of love. i started shortly every 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 to write the book. so i'm kind of just going to promote my book for pa while and talk about madame nhu because i put a lot of of time into it. so 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 just sort of the next step. but as i was telling andrew before, i'm not sure how the book will be received in vietnam. there's a chance that it may not go over well so i'm really very curious to see if i'm allowed back. >> we'll have to wait and see. all right. i can guarantee you that it would be pirated and sold right flexion to the lonely planet. just like my book. so that's one claim to fame. let's open up for questions.

[applause] >> we have a question on the right. >> three questions. first of all, how old was she? perhaps when she died? and second question is, did they ever do an audit of her estate when she died, and the third question is, do the french media ever do an interview of her? >> okay. the first question was how old she was when she died. she was born number 1924 and died before her birthday in 2011, so she was 86. the second one was the audit of her. i'm sorry? [inaudible] >> which is just across the street from the most posh neighborhood, the seventh. she lived in a apartment that she was very cagey about how she came to have the apartment.

she said it was gift, and the way she kind it, it made it sound like she thought the cia or the americans or someone had bought it for her and some small consolation prize for everything. there does seem to be conclusive evidence that the family in genoas not corrupt. they were not stealing money out of the country no swiss bank accounts. they had put money into buy some land outside of rome, for some sort of religious retreat they envisioned they would bring vietnamese monks from vietnam to rome, so it wasn't like -- it wasn't like there were stacks of gold somewhere, and now i have forgotten the third question. [inaudible] >> they did but nothing after 1986. madam new's memoirs are coming out in french, though. this november. they're being published by her children and family friend, and

they're -- i'm sorry. i'm blank only the name of the publishing house, but coming out in french in november. >> first of all, you mentioned four children. took care of two of them. what happened to the other two? and then 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, chuck, lives, i believe, still on the italian property. there's some question of property rights and boundaries, and i think he this defender of the estate, and the younger son, he went to business school and he worked for proctor and gamble in belgium for several years,

and so he is very, i guess, 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 on everyone. i come down hard on the south vietnamese family, the americans, the french, the communists nos. one gets off easy. but i'm not sure that it will be liked enough to be translated, official live translated. >> 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 the shat archives-and it's outside of paris and those are 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 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 madame nhu's husband's dossier, i found it and did the -- the french bureaucracy, it is just mind boggling.

much easier to do research in american archives than france. the next year i went back because i had been approved and they 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] >> are any members of madame nhu's extended family still in vietnam? and in fact, did any of them during the war support the other side? >> i don't know the answer to that question. i know that the noh family -- there were ten brothers and sisters or something so i'm sure there are descendents of them, and in fact one of diem's nephews became pretty high up in the catholic church, and i'm so embarrassed i'm not up to speed

enough on my catholic hierarchy but he came a really well-known bishop, i think, but a big deal. so he was definitely still in vietnam. >> question in the back. >> when the association was in hanoi for 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 you weren't allowed as a trial, and how did you feel you were received in recent times? >> well, the vietnamese people 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 i 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 a unified country under communist rule. ...

defender of women's rights for a woman so i am not sure she would have used that word to describe yourself but in my interpretation yes she was. >> in your conversations with her, did she ever have an opinion on what she thought about the modernization of vietnam and how things are going in the country now and a chip or 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 your house again in the place where she had grown up but the path that vietnam had

taken was the path to hell. she was convinced there was going to be another war or the apocalypse. >> are there any other questions? andrew do you have any other queries? >> i think it's great that we we are nearing the 40th anniversary of the end of the war and exploring the complexity of that pass. 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 for not understanding so many boards that we continue to wage. >> it i agree and i think that the 50th anniversary

commemorations start this year so it was 50 years ago that the coup happened in saigon that toppled the regime from power so 50 years ago was the turning point into the vietnam war as we know it. that was 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 and big hoopla shinkman and i think there's going to be a lot of awareness raising. nick terse just wrote that powerful book on vietnam so yeah i think there is more to come. >> hinchey so much. >> nick terse wrote the book this year called -- and it was her research into the american side into their actions in vietnam. >> thank you so much for talking with us and good luck with your