we have to try to keep this one alive. we have no idea whether it is a traitor or a technical penetration so we have to guard against each possibility. with respect to the traitor side of the equation we institute what we still to this day affectionally call draconian security measures to simply eliminate almost everybody from those who are aware of our new asset. now we have got to address the technical side with respect to our staff communications and the possibility that they are reading our traffic on our soviet cases. ..

quarters and the field station where the new asset was. we went back to basic toes communicate. it wasn't the stone age, but it was pretty close we said. we did have a technical something that was sort of out of this world at the time. we have our new asset. he is okay. we are keeping this one alive. enter my co-author who is on assignment in garbone as our chief of stations. she returns home and she is trapped with trying to determine what in the heck happened. she has a small task force of people who begin this effort. at the same time jean and her

people are looking at our losses, the fbi has also established a task force. they suffered similar problems with their soviet cases during the same time period as we. all right. now we are going to have to fast forward. it is early 1991, a little over five and a half years later and we still don't have a clue as to what happened. that is not to say there were not plenty of explanations and leads. there were lots. each was fully investigated and each was discarded. meanwhile the fbi also doesn't have a clue as to what caused their losses. however, there is a bit of good

news. since we instituted the security measure we haven't lost a single new source and the number of our reporting sources on the soviet union had continued to increase and we were able to keep every single one of them alive. because of this there were some people sign senior positions in cia who believed what happened in 1985 and 1986 was largely a historical problem. it might be nice to know the answer, but it wasn't affecting our current operations. we were doing fine and were once

again back in business. e enter jean again. she is facing mandatory retirement and she still felt terriblely guilty she was unable to answer the question as to why he -- we -- suffered so many losses during that period. and she wanted to spend the rest of her time taking one more look at these old cases. she viewed this as a solitary effort. it would only be jean looking at the old reports. however that was soon to change. and again i have to be completely honest if was really due to happenstance that i ended up working with jean, looking

for the answer, as did two fbi employees; one a special agent and one a special analyst. we added a fifth member eventually, a cia officer from our office of security. now, the book takes you through our search for a trader. out of approximately 160 cia employees who over the years had information about one or more of the loss cases. the investigation itself and i will use one of jean's favorites words was many pronged. it involved months of mind-numbing work with the occasional nugget which kept us

going. that is not to say there wasn't a urekea himont. there was. it occurred in early august 1992, a little over a year after the group was assembled. i was given the task of creating a list of all of rick's activities. that particular august morning, i was able to create dates of meetings rick was having with a soviet development contact here in washington, d.c. with cash deposits he had made to one of his local checking accounts. this was the first link that the lead to his arrest and

conviction. it was cash. it was after meetings with the soviet national who wasn't an intelligence officer but arms controlled specialist. why was what he said he was. and every one of the depauosits was below the $10,000 reporting requirement that the feds put on the banks at the time. all right. lastly, were jean and i ever afraid rick ames was going to get away with treason? you bet we were. the task force was drawing to a close in 1993, several months

later an fbi analyst began to prepare a report of the findings. this wasn't a cia document. it was an official fbi document because we were turning everything over to them. jean and i had a say in the drafting of the paper, but the final wording was beyond our control. as we understood it, when the report came out in march of 1993, it didn't identify rick ames as the primary suspect. it did, however, have his name on a short list of other possible suspects. for jean and myself it was a pretty difficult time. we were convinced rick ames was the trader we spent two years

looking for and our analysis proved that to be the case. we know the fbi didn't share our belief and would continue to focus on others on their short list. but thankfully, and truly thankfully, additional information became available that didn't identify rick, but pointed in his direction. and most importantly, it forced the fbi to open a full scale investigation of risk ames. one year later, february 21st, 1994, president's day, a government holiday and we were at work. rick ames is arrested by the fbi around the corner from his house.

he was on his way to cia head quarters. not too long after that, his wife was arrested at their home. both pled guilty to espionage. his wife got five years and was stripped of her citizenship and deported to columbia upon being out. rick received life. it is almost 20 years. he is at the federal pen at alanwood, pennsylvania. as i mentioned at the beginning, jean and i are most proud that we have been given permission to

be able to tell the story of our assets. they are about real people, real spying and real contributions and most important and as jean and i and others at cia understood when these soviet intelligence officers volunteered their services to the united states they knew they were putting their lives in our hands and we, meaning the cia, failed them. we could not repay them for thor sacrifices or their flames, but we owed each of them an answer and that was the goal and mission and the story of "circle

of treason." questions on that sad note? [ applause ] yes? >> so this happened over 20 years ago? with today's technology, data mining and predictive analytics, do you think that would have accelera accelerated the search? >> not at all. i will use this as an example. rick ames had no personal meetings in washington, d.c. all of the meetings with his kbg handlers were broad. but like bob hanson from the fbi, if you keep it simple it tends to work. the basics don't fail you in spying. he loaded drops, made signal sights, unloaded drops and he

had complete technical coverage by the fbi and they are very good at that. i mean the phones were bugged, there were cameras everywhere, not just at his house, but cia head quarters as well. there were beacons on this car. so all of the that stuff, no, not in the terms of the spying we did. questions, please! [inaudible question] >> it has been a long time but i remembered questions about how people can't see the increase fluent and why that didn't raise

questions. >> rick and his increased consumption and the one thing you read in the papers all of the time was his red jag. let's put it this way, rick, as i said, he walked in and started to work for the soviet in april 1985. you saw zero change in ames until returning from the tour in rome and that was in 1989. he was still the rick ames i had always known truly. but rick said this was his cover story that he had gotten the money from his wife's family. her father died in the mid-1980s. we knew they were from a

well-connected family in columbia. as a matter of fact, the extended family gave the land to build the largest soccer field in bogota. she met rick when she was assigned to the columbia city third secretary. she got her appointment from the president of columbia. so it wasn't out of the question that obviously some of the money came from her side of the fam y family. but i always say with respect to the stupid red jag. rick and i parked in the same garage and i had to walk past three red jags before i got to my car and one was rick's. this wasn't out of the ordinary. the same are respect to rick's

drinking. i did socialize with rick a l litt little. we were not closed but we group in the same circles and close in age. even at the christmas parties, which were very nice, i never saw him drunk. i think he was a binge drinking and particularly after his marriage. whenever she was out of the country or out of town he would get drink. and i never met his wife, but she apparently was so difficult her lawyers couldn't stand her, even the poor borough guys

listening to the phone -- they thought rick was abused so just a human touch to ames. and i will add one think. if you told me rick ames was going to be one of the worst traders this country has ever seen i would have said not the rick ames i knew. >> were there other people around you other than rick ames that knew more suspension and have you thought what was different between him and the others? and do you know what happened to his wife in columbia? >> i will answer that one first. i don't have a clue what happened to her. i suspect she is alive and squel

living the good life in bogota. they did have one child. paul is his name. and he is in his 20's now. when she went to jail, her mother took paul back to columbia where he was raised. he was five or six at the time. okay. what am i answering now? oh, what was the question again? >> why he was so not-suspect and were there others who were more suspect. >> i am not going to tell you their names if they were. however, this is a fairly long story. when we started the task force, we have to look at 160 people, right? we immediately have a terrible

problem. there is no way we can investigate 160 without an army. so we have to find some way to prioritize. and this was jean's idea. simple, not scientific and i will say criticized by people in power after rick's arrest, but it worked. what we did was we had the four members and six others, four from cia and two from the fbi, we asked them to please privately write down on a piece of paper, i am almost embarrassed to tell the story, the names of five or six people

who made them uneasy. we are looking for a trader here. and made them uneasy and individuals they thought we should take a close look at first. then we asked them to put them in rank order. the one that made you the most uneasy first place, second and so on down. we say this wasn't a contest you would want to win. we took the submissions and totaled the numbers. and a real surprise! rick ames came out on top and he had the most points at 21. and i will toot my own horn here and as i say i will use jean's word of all those who voted only sandy gets the gold star. she had him in first place. we have a new short list because rick wasn't the only one who got

more than one or two points. what we did was we looked at the small group first and eventually ames became the primary focus. that is not to say we didn't continue to look at the rest of the people, by this time, probably 152 on the list, we did. but we focused on the short list. that is how it got sorted out. >> so, these events were '85, '86, and '87 and you four people were formed when? >> '91. i got there in may and the other guys end of june. >> and a timeline question: how long did the four of you meet

and before you zeroed in and thought he was prime? was it immediately because of the vote? >> it was about a year. it was less than a year. it was less than a year because the moment came a little bit more than a year and then there was no question. >> the rest was data to support it? >> exactly. and then what happened was the borough in 1993 came in after getting the additional information and then it was truly an invesigative affair. obviously we are very involved with the justice department and attorneys because they want evidence to be able to prove

espionage charges. it is one of the worse cases in the world to try so they would like to catch them in the act but we didn't. >> my question is how did they vet the members in the program to make sure you were not the mole? did they take a chance? >> i have to say you are the second person to ever ask me the question. i think it is great question. because it would be the first i would ask. jean and had both had to be repar rep repolied. we were lucky in that she and i knew all of the resources but we were doing different things in '84 and '85. she wasn't in the country and

unaware of the counturrent sour and i was handling activity to soviet europeans in africa. i knew one and she was one my branch was responsible for keeping alive. so i was aware of that one. but because we had insufficient knowledge. but you are correct, we did have to be repolied. it was determined that sandy and jean were going to worth together and the fbi guys were going to come over and then i got the news you have to do a polygraph. i got a speeding ticket on the way to the office that day.

>> was the rest of the agency aware you were in the middle of the hunt or was it kept quite? >> we didn't keep it from anybody. and i think that is an important distinction. this wasn't going to be a paper exercise. we were looking for a human penetration of cia. rick was aware of it. we interviewed rick. i cannot use that word, though. we talked to people who were aware of the operations to garth more information about how paper was really handled. you can read what it says in the file, nowadays an e-mail, but you don't know the interaction between people. >> two questions. i am surprised he could walk into the soviet embassy in washington, d.c. and wasn't that

embassy under surveillance. and i am wondering if there was a moment before we was arrested when we realized you knew who he was and if not what was it like once you realized it was him, but he had not been arrested yet, how difficult was it to have to deal with him? >> it was more than difficult. i think most of the time we are good actors and actresses, but that was tough. i smoked during those days, confession. you could not smoke in the building and i would go out to the courtyard. rick is a heavy smoker and he would always come over and say what are you doing? how is the search going?

i stopped smoking. [ applause ] >> i was so afraid i was going to mess it up. but in hindsight i did haven't a think to worry about. rick was so arrogant. there was no way two ladies, and add two fbi guys, are every going to catch me. it was really that. and then first part? the surveillance. okay. you are absolutely right. they have coverage. so what did rick do? after he leaves the soviet embassy, he calls his buddies that i assume it was the

washington field office and says if you see a guy going into the embassy at 1:15 p.m. today, it is me. he had sort of an excuse for being there. we never knew he walked into the embassy until later during the investigation when we giving the borough things to handle. at the time, beginning in early 1985, rick was developing a soviet national. he was an armed control specialist and there was nothing out of ordinary with rick doing this job. his contact with his individual was known to fbi head quarters, cia head quarters, it was

reported to each during the development phases and that particular day rick was sched e scheduled to have a meeting at the mayflower. and rick was an alias so he doesn't want anything to do with this american and that is if i do something with this american i have to report it to the kbg. he kept ignoring rick. and that day scheduled lunch and he doesn't show up again and rick throws down 3-4 vodkas and decides he is going to walk right into the embassy and if he is ever asked he is going to say

i got sick and tired of being stood up by the punk. so i walked in. and guess what? he showed up for the next scheduled meeting. so he had cover for action as we say. >> you had mentioned it was the finding of the fbi report and the way it was structured that could have made or broken your case. was there an internal path within the cia you would have followed otherwise or followed-up on their own based on the level of work they put in? >> i don't know the answer to that question. i don't know. i only know two things: when

jean and i started this, we always knew we would identify who the trader was. in our wildest dreams, we never imagined he would be convicted and go to jail. that just wouldn't happen. we would be able to answer the question internally and the fbi report, god, i don't know. it was on official fbi document. did we make mistakes? yes. and we talk about one thing we had done, but we didn't think about this. these were our buddies. the fbi and cia, right? and there was no question we were surprised at the final report. how and why that happened is beyond me. don't know.

but in hindsight, when that came out, yeah, we should have done that ahead of time on the off chance because we didn't know what the official paper was going to look like. we should have written our own, but we didn't, and it caused lots of problems. yes? >> this is about the tv program. i watched the two episodes that were air. is there anyway you can see the other episodes? >> i would like to see them as well. i will say this: there is hope. c and the reason there is hope is because the president of abc announced to the press that the

asse "assets" will be shown in one way whether it is cable, netflix or abc proper. he said one week after he canceled us. i did get to see episode three and it is much better than the first two. >> i am going to write to the president of abc and complain >> there is still hope. another think i will -- thing -- i will say is there is creative license. number one, i have never made pancakes in my life. and i certainly have never prepared a hot breakfast for my family during the week -- ever!

it was always cold cereal in the car for the girls as i took them to the bib baby sitter and no milk. dry! . >> what did you think about the new tv show "the assets"? >> it was a world that i had never been a part of and i will laugh, though. i wish that it happened maybe 20 years ago. a lot more fun. however, for you ladies here, the day i was on "good morning america" i had a professional make-up artist who travelled with me the entire day. it was wonderful. i didn't wash my face for about

three days. and false eyelashes! it was fun. >> thank you. >> you are quite welcome. >> hi, you said that you checked his bank records. and i am just wondering in terms of employee confidentality, do agents sign a release? how do you get -- >> it is called the national intelligence letter. i didn't know it existed simply because i was never involved in personal security. but it is part of the authority director of the cia but only

counter intelligence case, in other words there a has to be suspicious behavior. >> evidence? >> i would call it circumstantial. they could say no. and in rick's case they did. but the big thing was i would say part of it wasn't just his bank accounts, credit card accounts and two there were little things that would come up. i cannot believe he was so sloppy. he would charge an airline ticket. new york to austria.

and we were under the rules com legilations of the cia employee you travelled anywhere out of the country, whether it was for pleasure, you had to get approval from the office of security to do that and in all places the hot bed of spying east and west? there were little things like that. and i had to say as we were going along, it is probably like a police investigation if you are looking for a murder suspect. true are trying to eliminate rick as your suspect. every piece of information. you don't want to get the wrong guy. >> where did you determine were his motivation for spying? >> simple greed. it was money.

now, money, though with again a little twist. jean and i are absolutely convinced if it were not for his wife rick never wouldn't have committed treason. the material things were not important to him. but in early '85, he was facing a divorce, although he had not told his current wife that he needed a divorce because he had promise his new wife who was now in the states they were getting married in august. and rick knew he had to divide up his and nan's assets. there were not a lot. it was basically $20,000. that is all we needed. and he could have come to the agen agency. we help our employees.

and he chose not to. however, he never ever would have been able to keep rosario in the style she what she was due. neiman marcus and up the ladder is all she was concerned with. >> sandy, you indicated in the book getting the manuscript was a struggle and you got 90% a approv approved. you would think the agency would want the truth out. why the difficult? >> we didn't write "circle of treason" until nine years after rick's arrest and then it was

four years later, after serious medical issues, we had our first draft and submit it to the cia's review board for approval. it was painful. the first draft came back and we were shocked. it was pages of black. so it took us three years of back and forth. and i think a big part of the problem were the story of assets. this is the secret world of spying. however, everyone of those guys were gone. and the kbg certainly knew more about the operations than we did because they were able to interrogate them. there were other things the

agency asked that we remove. they didn't tell us why. although, we sort of had an inkling. times changed and things that may not have been classified. when you are dealing with human beings, things that might not have been classified in, you know, 19 -- i don't know. how about 2004. there can be a circumstance that would require that story not be released at that time. so for the most part, i would say we were able -- yes, 90%. and the 10% one where circumstances had changed and the other said were just stupid.

and i say stupid in the sense when you read the book you will see the first name and the first initial of the last name -- i don't know. i think it was like working for an insurance company. it was what was on the rules and regulations. it didn't make any difference these people had not retired under cover, it didn't make any difference they had passed away 20 years earlier, it didn't make any difference their names were in books all over the place. so finally we give up and said the heck with it. but i would say it was one of these -- it was just hard for them to accept that this kind of material should appear in public. but you paid for it! >> you mentioned that you did the straw pull and discovered

amongst the investigator, for lack of a better term, that mr. ames made people the most uneasy or whatever the right grammar is. in the wake of all that we have learned in the concept of blink and brilliant and manifesting itself after years of experience, did you every sit around with them what made you uneasy about him? >> it was his ego. it was so huge to the point that even his posture changed. rick was a tall guy and

slouched. he was erect and in charge of everything after coming back, smarter than everyone in the room, and we all knew that that certainly wasn't coming from cia. his career was a dead end. he was a gs-14 and that was it. and all of his classmates are rising through the ranks, but it didn't make any difference. you have never seen anybody with such a frightening ego. it really was almost frightening it was so huge. and that was, as i say in the book, that wasn't the rick ames i had known. he was a gentle soul. it was a personality change. but you have to remember, we worked with all of the these people. with a pretty small little group

we had known for years and i am certain if you ask the same question to your own organization, you can look in your office and say that person would never be a trader. you know? hopefully. and it was really one of those and i know the guys in the department said i cannot believe we are doing this. we said trust us. it is just like jean and i could never a find a spy in the fbi. we don't know the people or how the game is played. that does make a big difference. so, yeah, a lot of it is we could never find a spy working for the chinese and the reason

we could not do that is we don't know the chinese services. we knew the soviet services and probably better than any individual working in them. at times, you have to think like the opposition. it is that old story and i am certain there are a number of you who saw george scott in "pattent" when he said ronald, i read your book. and that is part of it. anymore questions? >> time for one more. >> go ahead. i already asked. >> thank you. not wishing bad on anybody, but if all of the evidence and then convicted, why was he given life instead of the death penalty? >> good question.

that is all that was on the federal books at the time. i think this went back and i am not positive but i think this went back years to frank church, the church committee. ...

[laughter] and their stories match on this. of install one-and-a-half years before he was arrested. she found the note that was obvious this had to do with the soviets. but she never once asked one question about the thousands of dollars were the bags of cash in the garage sale and she spent every single cent in that she could. [laughter] it is my personal opinion to listen to them something would happen to her.

but that is the reason she got five years. [applause] if thank you for coming. >> sandy will sign copies of her book which are for sale if you don't have one. [inaudible conversations]

[applause] thank you for coming out tonight. it is a friday night inth miami there will be plenty of time to get to the clubs on the beach. i will see you there.ng d [laughter] ping-pong diplomacy intrao extraordinary moment in 1971 with this deeply ingrained antagonism between china and the united states it seemed to happen in the blink of a knight and the story goes

the ping-pong players starting the process and the press loved it because it was the spontaneity almost too good to be true of a young american who be friends say chinese. they start the process that truly changes the world. that is what we were taught. but it is a pack of lies. it falls the the into what everyone when did you to know and the nixon and kissinger narrative but not the full story. this is the full story. i want to start off at the beginning and present three different vignettes to hold in your head. they are very different but will be connected. first of all, if you would

imagine the downton abby setting common 1908 i young boy five years old and will be a communist revolutionary but at the moment dressed in black velvet suit with silks muffles a and a patent leather shoes trying to get to the window but his nanny is holding him back from the window. he wants to get to the window because he knows someone special is coming to tea. the princess of wales. he is very excited because he knows there will be cold in carriages and 12 white horses. you rushes downstairs and sees his mom and dad and the woman comes wearing a brown dress a and they have t. then she gets into a motor

car he turns in says where is the princess? she said that was a and he feels a deep disappointment that will be returned to when the princess of wales becomes the queen and will bright a note of condolence not because he has died but has done something more unforgivable but barry's to class is beneath him. [laughter] the headlines sweeps the nation it ends up on the front page of "the new york times" it is a shock. now the second vignettes is of to 40 something chinese men in the cave there playing ping pong in the 30's. one has a slightly withered arm that was broken in a

horseback accident in the doctors told him the best thing he could to was play ping-pong every day even more strangely the cave is literally shaking as game goes on. the third vignettes and american hippie sneaking out of a hotel just to the side of tiananmen square. the first one stepped into china and escapes wandering through the streets but it is very early of crowd starts to follow them. they decide since everything is communist what they will do is barrault a microphone. they can tell the crowd does not like it. they start to get on the bike the crowd moves to them

so they dumped the bike and a sprint back to the hotel. those three vignettes is the beginning and the middle and end the end of "ping pong dilpomacy" to show just how political this game was. that nobody knew and no one has spoken about since then. the first young boy who becomes a communist revolutionary goes by the honorable ivan montagu. the two chinese men playing ping-pong is the future premier at that point. the american is a young free spirit from californian named glenn not doing much of anything gets into pingpong somehow invited to join the american team ended

today's later at he is a spontaneous diplomat out of the blue is on every newspaper in the world in the '70s. what i want to talk about is i don't think we have to concentrate very hard to know china has come a long way in the last 50 years and that relationship is more important than ever. they have been there before up until the 1800's and it is very hard you cannot see athens getting their stuff together or to come back anytime soon.

but the chinese have been here before. in they make mistakes getting back on their feet again. favor on the right road generally. whether the chinese intentions? with this whole industry who make a living in the other reason is we just don't know. if what we go abroad china if this relationship told the is that china are maneuvering around but just

to complicate matters. so maybe it is worthwhile to look at how the relationship started. but why ping-pong? "ping pong dilpomacy" this thought occurred to me in 2008 about beijing with the olympics and one of the things to do was to look although you can watch people go play seriously and you realize it was about acceptable face of nationalism. when you walked into the stadiums you were given a bunch of papers with lots of

information if you want to right about them. end of the very first fact 300 million will play ping-pong get least once her review have been to china it is a top down country. so that means someone has some time made the decision to tell ever ready to play ping-pong. it is a very strange idea but it is true. think of the things they could have told them to do. weightlifters or sharpshooter's. [laughter] why? why would they do that? at the height of the english empire they were codifying and exporting sports at an incredible rate from soccer to rugby to hockey but the chinese decided to concentrate on pingpong. so i ask a man who knew a

thing or two ancient how did that happen? it all starts with the englishmen named montagu so i went back and asserted to dig. why do the chinese listen? what i found out he was the son of the baron a very noble family relatively new and the third son the youngest of the three come with the least popular. a very, very rich childhood that has enormous country houses and he reacted against his family very young.

and started to talk about socialism by the time he was 18 federally he should take a step further to become a communist. the very first director he met was offered hitchcock said she started to produce films for alfred hitchcock. when you turn 21 in england you could finally travel without parents. of the day of his 21st birthday she rode the train to moscow if he is picked up by russian intelligence services. who wouldn't want to be friends with him? he is called out again they ask him to come work secretly for a communism international that had a very precise mandate to

bring communism to infiltrate foreign cultures so montagu had a very good opportunity now he is doing the hitchcock -- hitchcock's five movies and he has no idea his producer is a spy. [laughter] this revision ship continues over about six movies. some of the greats. what a typical week in his life he could move so quickly through social circles his other bobby was ping-pong them probably the only person in the world to start the federation to gets

the ittf going wittiest 20 to start having the world championships international table tennis federation he decides to write a letter to drop in on trotsky. it he was living in exile in turkey and very worried about being assassinated as he was but he had dealings aerostatic english man and had no idea he was a star. they set up all night and talk that the end of the evening he trotsky confesses he could be assassinated at any moment in hands montagu well loaded pistol. he was not a killer and then he almost drowned and

continues the ping-pong tournament but it was a very normal week. fdr, the prime minister, the king of england, a charlie chaplin, alfred hitchcock hitchcock, it is remarkable reading through the records it is comedic then no one has talked about montagu there is no one he does not know. when world war ii starts now the russians need him for something were dangerous. the it giu looks like chicken feed compared to the kgb. his brother happens to be

very high ranking naval intelligence. as montagu becomes a superstar for the soviets during committed four days did after the war ends the and there is an amazing, incidence in the four days that mao takes over china and montagu known as someone in charge of the most populist nation on earth the sword is an opportunity with culture, as forthcoming committed some, it is perfect for montagu. he gets on the plane to go to china to try to sell the chinese on the idea that ping-pong would make a fantastic national sport. he tried this in russia ended did not work so he tries again bid to his surprise they think it is a good idea.

they ran with it in the '50s they don't want to play yet because when they came out to play they wanted to win not represent themselves as weak. they worked hard and put a lot of state money into getting better and better. by the end of the '50s is a great leap forward in about the on the thing that's ended successfully in was ping-pong. the rest of the country was an absolute disaster. montagu has another friend one of the great soviet peasant scientist who had a wonderful idea that a few sprinkles seats close together they would pay one another to grow and would only strengthen. that is probably the worst

idea in the history of agriculture. sure enough, it is santa it all fails to radically across china. montagu mao everybody tries to standardize everybody puts on the homemade furnace and the country fails. if you believe the chinese statistics 70 million people died between 58 and 61. the most recent statistics by one historian the number is 44 million. that means if you left it tomorrow morning from maria me to walk to washington d.c. you would not see anybody on your entire walk. montagu wanted to do his part for the great leap forward in and that would be

tabled in is that they could show themselves in a good light. it seems like a nice idea but with the assumption of the disaster this is of vital opportunity for the government to show things are fine thank you very much with all the table tennis teams and i pulled this off but the whole point of propaganda not show a team from the rooftops but in this case that no one knows the 44 million died was remarkable these young men

into women you can imagine the pressure with fed chairman mao at the session and you did not want to disappoint him. isn't they become superstars in china. cute kid to have dinner with her and also gets home the dumplings they're having a great time. the other thing that mao does not like the way the cold war is going the adl though world is being divided between the united states did russia why not china the did the developing nation?

so he sends the ping-pong players across the world tour africa and asia and that is to be the spearhead. many officials who traveled with them and this is working really well and tell the of middle of the '60s in he unleashes the cultural revolution of china. then the whole country is turned upside-down then he turns the young against the old the distilled possible to practice a revolution against your elders. that basically means anyone who has any kind of success

and of course, the ping-pong team is persecuted or vapor carl they have their heads shaved in tortured so bad they feathery commit suicide for even those that brought the most sporting glory to china and here they are one did not commit suicide but was beaten to death. it is very sad story. so now mao is an epochal not only is he upset but said he was your every ambassador from around the world so nobody knows what is going on inside china intended does not know what is going on in the world it has decided he will try something drastic.

he decides in order to triangulate the world he will pick a fight with the russians with the northern border there was an ambush and they killed 38 of the patrol it escalate quickly within one week 1 million russian troops on the chinese border it looks like a miscalculation. but he decides to launch two nuclear tests on the chinese side of the border so of the fallout goes over the russian troops do they are hopping mad. they go straight to washington d.c. to ask america to greenlight a nuclear attack on china which of course, they don't because the light bulb goes off but kissinger and nixon think this is something we could exploit this is good

news. then of course, mao is seeking something not entirely different he tells his doctor a riddle. what do you do when all your neighbors hate you? even india hates us. the taiwanese from a japanese, the russians, what do you thank you should do? the doctor did not know. do what our ancestors recommended to reach across the ocean to contact the americans. he is horrified. there the imperialists against everything they have been told over 20 years but mao is very comfortable. he starts to reach out to america.

and and looking for channels so they finally find pakistan with a handwritten notes to go back and forth in things are coming along nicely but unfortunately now the next move is so subtle he took the left-wing american journalist to put him on his right side of thought that was brilliant that would be picked up by the cia and foreign services period nixon would understand it was the important message because it was so left-wing but he thought he was working for the cia. [laughter] that was a problem because nixon decides to continue with the vietnam war era and stars to bob the ho chi minh

trail so now the chinese think what is to win on? so now total silence. so with a signal so glaringly obvious that no one could possibly get a wrong this is why they used ping-pong. so suddenly he has a job to do to coordinate those whole thing to position with the green light so now he has to get a team to the world championships but there in of all countries come to japan did not have diplomatic relations so he jumps through hoops to finally get permission to go to japan. but the team is so were terrified nobody wants to

go. is in the end they don't have a choice. mao writes a note that says not everybody may come home we may lose a few but they should go anywhere. [laughter] so they get to japan now they have to reach out to the americans. there is an incident that has become popular where this hippie, :coming gets on the bus. in theory he gets dawn they have a nice chat then the pingpong players have relations not true. the chinese have their own bus their own practice stadium and their own hotel. they wait for glen they have been scoping him out to. he tried to practice was one

of them they know exactly who he is. glen has such a big ego they think he is skilled doubt because he is such a good player. the last thing fate need is advice from glen said he said he was waived on to the bus which is true then there is a famous moment he is given a silkscreen portraits. at the lows as a lot chinese is very precise about gift-giving there is a store in china if you go on a diplomatic mission i.m. beatty with ambassador, secretaries and pick from the right to your. he did confess i had to pick

something nice for the american that says little. it was not a coincidence that was the set up to get the americans into beijing. they are about as diverse as you can get. black, of white, latin, high-school girls come ibm engineers, a chinese immigrant that worked for the un. they have 36 hours ago suddenly in teeeighteen this takes the world by storm. of us in "new york times" offered to cover and they laughed at him. now begging him. it is a huge saying.

but imagine being stowe's table tennis players. someone on that team is carrying a large stash of drugs is about to declare his deep love of communism agent mao and the entire world is watching. nixon and kissinger are having a connection they have been practicing this secret lead now here they are and they don't know what is happening. luckily joe knows what he is doing. it is so skillful the story preens -- runs four weeks with the enormous feelings for the country's. the myth of trying because everyone has the same end

came which is to upset the russians. the more they can do the more likely it is russia comes to the bargaining table. the russia of love spee and now they thought that could go on forever. it was brilliant. that gives the enormous amount of leeway to mao for public support and nixon says he could not have done this and he says they always tell you what they are thinking. that is extraordinary. but of all the people with meticulous manipulation the tiniest of details and everyone was bamboozled. that really means the whole

world has changed in the greatest irony is it all started with montagu only to real gloves in his life. ping-pong and the soviet union will of the chinese and americans had gone their own way in an end to where are they today? thank you. [applause] >> this microphone does not project but it is important for the internet. please raise your hand to

come up to you. >> what inspired your research to even look get this story? >> yet was a mixture. going to beijing to wonder why on earth this happened? also writing about sports and politics white different nations chose different sports i have pictures and this took me four years and thank god i did not pick the one with six ports. [laughter] but the most remarkable thing is when i found the name montagu we have montagu in england. how am i?

actually it is made best friends hong called he had not been allowed in to now they know why. to launch the book next week [laughter] >> i was reading your review in "the new york times" in 1972 when the table tennis team was in the united states how was the political climate after that happened? >> it looked like the return trip it was very important

for the americans. there was still low but fed tightening was right at the end of day number two. so it is terribly embarrassing situation for the chinese. there one of the allies but no one knows the created outrage they had a total poker face they should not let anything disturb but who really gets upset is some who have gone on to be established with human rights in china.

there's so outraged when it comes time to visit the rose garden but for added six don't show up. nobody could talk. so it was extremely awkward. >> tell us about the research process. how it did you gain access? >>. [laughter] i don't know if i would have written if i knew what did would entail. i thought it i was very very asking for interviews in china like other countries.

but to it was not. i forgot just because you retire as an athlete 30 years ago does not mean you are still not managed and living in government quarters so every single person who's played in those 61 squads are taking care of by the state so i have to go through the sports ministry and it took a very long time and i had to submit a lot of papers in a in the end they gave permission i did not lie about it. i was more honest and i was with my publisher. [laughter] what was fascinating was the different reactions some

that had drifted away from the state but were open with me to tell me extraordinary stories but those that got to a high level they were very glad to see the back of me but generally i was kind and open. >>. >> it is interesting there were on this team and obviously as a way to reach out. that was the last resource civic there were many ways it could have gone horribly

wrong for the most obvious is the american team is to say are we allowed into china? the chinese just changed the tactics but they were really lucky when they rang the embassy in tokyo, the man who picked up the phone was extremely bright. and he remembered in a foreign policy reported that was several hundred pages long one line that said the athletic exchanges could begin the last thing he wanted to do was to get state department approval so he could not say yes but you are individuals, americans the state department has nothing to do with it but

you can go. they think it is a huge process of day but it is just the guy with a sharply but it was that fragile. credited require a little bit of blood from the american side. there would have been but it may will never know. probably in an archive not released yet. >>. >> through their research process where you where the soviets tried to wipe out i

did the new the nuclear standoff with its all the way into washington in the defense minister wanted to push of but in rethink the cuban missile crisis was the closest but this was close to the point there was us a digging campaign when they were convinced by the end the entire population of the cities were underground. one hell of a campaign. is remarkable zero lot of fun and is our breeding. you never have seen so many

hysterical embassadors all taking countries anywhere in the world and you cannot trust the chinese whatever you do. don't trust the chinese. kissinger reads the reports and is loving it and thinks it is billion to. he was right to. the russians were so intransigent than to they had no interest in and day vietnam. it was a game changer. >> talk about the highs and so lowe's when you are writing. when do you have something good or you throw it in the garbage chute and walk away. >> when teeeighteen saw her looking creaked the web and

the editor hands back the first copy. [laughter] and in this case i can dig indy 500 page book eighth came out that to a vendor to 85 pages. that is a lot of chopping. that just means you have wasted a lot of weeks and months in your life. there is a lot that naturally falls by the wayside but you just don't know what is what and editors of a company like simon & schuster is good at what they do you can be petulant for a while but we are grateful it is trevor.

[laughter] >> why did you choose the unhappy choice? >> for me had i initialized this side could not sell its it is too preposterous. [laughter] really. come on. with my first meeting with major endeavor is trying to find a new agent and i have this idea about international relations and espionage and a table tennis [laughter] use a the word a and the eyebrows go up. the story is so bizarre and montagu is such a strange character i don't have the

imagination to make up montagu. >> along those lines do you think nobody talks about it because the results were achieved or was purposely concealed once the story was out there? >> the remarkable thing is the way he compartmentalized information even when that incident happened the rest of the team did not know what was going on in. so people were killed four of lot less than signaling to the americans. but the blind guy who you knew when he was doing was

the team captain. he made a career out of that moment actually mao loved him so much he is also a very good diplomat and follows through on that said ultimately this is from central command minister of sports and physical culture. and was referred to be and when mao falls. the it spend 10 years in exile as a street sweeper. with the false dennis mann -- the most famous man occasionally he lets it slip

-- slipped but forget about all the changes. quincy was diagnosed with cancer there are many things he could have done it was with that compartmentalization of information was the opposite. >> how do you see the relationship going forward? said there other people who could answer better than me but my impression but i could sit down in to the

things that has always amazed me but my sense of history compared to theirs since. there is a lot of things with the chinese culture the last 180 years has been a blip of success stories. but they mark deeply and then the russians come in the germans come even americans. it is a hard thing to forgive and to with the

japanese invading of the thirties it is a very brutal occupation and that does not end and toe hiroshima. a -- and tell hiroshi meant with the chinese foreign minister there was the map at the held the stage and would like to get back to something like that. to do with very slowly and steadily without bloodshed if you look at the gambles that mao took we are all long way from that fate god so we are optimistic they are aware of their own problems.

everything is regional. >> one more question talk about making up a character such as montagu but today's headline on this cnn says dennis rodman you could do not make this up as well. [laughter]

people have really crazy stories as well. but talk about rodman. a great basketball story about frankenstein. [laughter] i don't know i feel bad for him in the end he says i am practicing basketball diplomacy like ping-pong diplomacy. and with the huge framework a very active framework that does not exist the chinese is very busy sending positive signals. in early 1971 as a signal.

that would be a very easy low hanging fruit to show political goodwill. more than anything else. rescue. please welcome lily koppel. [applause] >> good morning. so nice to be here. i heard there was a vicious rumor going around and i didn't make it out of new york city because of the weather's so i am so glad volunteers believe this is actually me and i'm here sharing the story with you this morning. i love great american stories and i love beehives.

and a combination of those two sayings as you will learn lead me to tell this amazing but looked over american story of our original astronauts wives. i want to bring you back to 1959. april 9th there is a press conference in washington d.c. and the whole country is riveted and waiting for the announcement of the mercury 7 astronauts. is the height of the cold war and we are looking to lease seven men, gus grissom, john glenn, allen sheppard, among them, as our cold war warriors, these silver suited spaceman who are going to take us to the stars and beyond. so you have these macho test pilots sitting up on this stage and something peculiar start happening. the reporters are raising their

hands and instead of asking tell us about your bravery, about why you wanted to volunteer, the reporters want to hear what does your wife think about this? she is going to let you be catapulted into space, and so there is this immediate attention to the wives of these men. i want to tell you about some of the women. renee carpenter is sort of the maryland monroe of the space age. she wakes up in garden grove, calif. early in the morning and sees these headlights hovering in her yard. is a the ufo? what is that? they are reporters who have come to interview her about what it is going to be like to be one of the wives of these spacemen. it is almost science fiction. reporters can't believe it.

renee wanted to be an actress in high school, she opens the door, offers the reporters coffee. some of them of brought doughnuts and they start taking pictures of her and her family as they are crawling all over her and she is a real dish. jfk would later say he found her the most attractive of all the astronaut wives because of course as they are going to learn, they're going to quickly go through this cinderella like transformation. in ohio at wright-patterson air force base, and gus grissom's wife betty received a phone call the night before from her husband, he said you might want to straighten up the house of that. some reporters might be coming tomorrow. she looks around, the house is a mess, she is just getting over the flu, she feels terrible but somehow pulls it together, goes to the doctor the next morning and as she is stopping at a

grocery store on her way home two reporters from life magazine encounter her in the vegetable aisle and want to know what she thinks about old gusts going into space. she just wants them to leave her alone. they followed her home. she is the shrinking violets of the group, very down-to-earth, folksy, always repeated a quote of gusts's which is we don't give a damn about keeping up with the joneses which is more along the lines of we don't give a darn about keeping up with the glenns, annie and john glenn, the superstar couple of the space age. you can't get more apple pie than them. they literally met in a playpen as toddlers in ohio. they are just both sprinkled with freckles, john glenn having

that mad magazine kid face, annie to go with it and annie was the ultimate astronaut wife. as the women soon learned, it is not only emission about getting their husbands, these great a military test pilots who not only are picked for their piloting skills but as some of the scientists say when they pick the astronauts, there were wild series what we're going to happen, where their hearts going to stop in space? would they stop urinating? was there blood pressure going to fall to zero, they were picked for being literally human cannonballs. can they withstand it? the why is too were actually investigated by the fbi before the couples were announced. betty remembers investigators coming over to her neighbor's home and asking questions about

her. would miss is grissom quote home cooked meal every night? she doesn't drink too much? doesn't have any communist leanings? all of a sudden not only the astronauts but their wives, a r astrowives wives are tisch step to the entire world as examples of the height of american family values and these wives, the most stressful time to be an american housewife, the late 15s and early 60s, has to hold up the model of perfection. so overnight they are transformed. i think of them as america's first reality stars. life magazine bought the rights. they bought their personal

stories, like magazine in 1959, a huge amount of money. in exchange for that, to reporters and photographers into their homes to chronicle their day to day lives. what was it like to have your husband sitting on top of that rocket, about to be blasted into space. the women were caught in this catch-22 which is they are supposed to reveal who they are, there is acute pressure to keep up the glens to be the modern american housewife, and the book is being turned into television show which is going to air this summer on abc and just looking at some of the story lines it is very funny because one of the other wives of this group, trudy

cooper was the only licensed pilot among the group, very adventurous girl, you had to be an adventuress woman to be married to one of these guys who were testing in their early careers these high-performance experimental aircraft, to go where no man has gone, first into space, then to the moon. trudy cooper had had a little too much of this top gun mentality and her husband bordeaux --gordo playing around on her. before he was picked as an astronaut, he came with his tail between his legs back is like saying trudy, i have this amazing opportunity, i will be picked as an astronaut. the only problem is they are not going to pick me if i don't have a white and we were just separated. they get back together for the sake of the space race. they would later get divorced after gordo's career is over. those of the kind of detail the

wives were very skittish about letting out as they are having this incredible public eye and spotlight shined into their lives. the program starts out in langley, va.. all of the families pack up and moved to virginia and the men start training and they are down in cape canaveral, florida and one of the most interesting things i learned just starting out in the book was how the cape, this sort of incredible men's playgrounds down there where there are working hard but also playing hard, was a no wives zone at first. going to the cape for a wife was totally off-limits. they weren't allowed to go out where the rockets took off from, all the wives would watch the early flights from the beach. at one point deke slayton's wife marge said this is ridiculous.

you are going into space. i can't go to the cape. what is going on out there? she tells him that he'd better drive her out there and he hides her under some blankets in the back of his car and they go past military guards and she gets out there and pops up her hat and it is sort of a lonely beach jetties and scrub brush and what not. the whole country is dying for a cigarette. this is the kind of spunk and irreverence that these women brought to this brave new world of being an astronaut wife. you have seven women, all different walks of life, allen sheppard's wife louise was very highbred. i think of her as the sabrina and audrey have removed character. she drew up as the gardener's daughter at longwould gardens and stayed on the east coast so when she met jackie kennedy she

almost treated jackie like she was an old friend, they were two private school girls almost, getting to know each other. you have this band forming, these women are in the public eye and they don't know how to deal with it at first so they start giving each other words of advice. if a reporter asks you, something you don't know anything about, don't worry, just say it is classified. one of my favorite stories, because a lot of the inspiration for writing the book came out of these technicolor looking photographs from life magazine because the wives were on the cover of life dozens of times from 1959-1972 at the end of the apollo program. the wives have their first cover shoot and they will be clustered around this mercury capsule,

which when you see it today at the smithsonian, this thing looks really flimsy, you can understand why its nickname was the can and you can understand how terrifying it would be to have your spouse ride in that thing especially since many of the early test launches had gone absolutely haywire with explosions and things just not going right until the last minute but the women are told by life and nasa that they are to where these proper pastel, the epitome of the perfect american housewife, so they set this tradition of the round robin phone call which will last throughout the space race and calling each other, i you going to wear that? what color lipstick you going to where? and they decide to wear pink lipstick and everyone will wear a shirt waist dress except for

run a carpenter, scott carpenter's life. usable character, intellectual, a really independent woman who will end up hosting her own feminist talk show in the mid 70s and looking sort of gloria steinem like in the dresses and skirts but she says according to the other wives i am not going to let the government tell me what to wear. we are astronaut wives now. our husbands are civilians, they are no longer military, so she shows up to the photo shoot and she is wearing this cocktail dress, big red roses and red high heels and of course other wives are sort of aghast. she makes the shot so you have that melding of personalities coming together. stuff of course the men, meanwhile, they are becoming rock stars. everything that goes along with it. they are getting $1 corvettes

which they can trade in every year and get a new one. alan shepard get the snazzy white corvette. they're getting $1 a night hotel rooms at the holiday inn. this is down in cocoa beach which is space city, lit up with all sorts of neon signs, moons and stars and intergalactic fanfare. the women actually come down to cocoa beach for a lady's weekend and jo schirra remembered walking into the lobby of the holiday inn and two women, the astronaut crew piece who come with the adorable name of cape cookies, fall to their knees in front of her astro not, her husband. what is going on here? so you have throughout the space

race, having to maintain this semblance of everything is fine at home, of course my husband, i am sure this goes home for the holiday, as soon as he finishes work. meanwhile of course there are all sorts of tabloid headlines coming out and everything. the space program moved to houston in 1962. i had a lot of fun learning about this whole area known as togethersville. this makes nonfiction writing so tantalizing. this was the space verbs' where all the astronauts and wives moved. it is almost like beverly hills of spacemen. there were tour buses that would wind their way through the streets of these little subdivisions where john and annie glenn lived next to scott

carpenter and his wife renee, where betty grissom and jo schirra lived a few streets down, where the media attention on these families was so acute that renee and jo had doorway built in between there two yards which they called the rabbit hole and that they could scurry back and forth between during a flight so the press wouldn't see them. astronaut kids were chased down the halls of the holiday inn when they went to visit and were always told not to open the door to many reporters because they had this exclusive agreement with life magazine. one anecdote one of the astronaut kids shared with me that i always have fun remembering is daring apollo levon, that flight, the wives first of all, janet armstrong, pat collins, buzz aldrin's wife joan, had to hide in back seats

of neighbors cars, go to the beauty parlor, the grocery store, there was a media circus on their suburban lawns. at one point of michael collins's kid opened the door and they were given a present of a panda bear, two journalists from china handing them this caddy bear, oh wow, this is great. turned out there was a microphone hidden inside its stomach. this kind of marx brothers relationship with cat and mouse game with the press and the wives. as one of the wives put it, she said our lives were composed of highs and lows, and what is so remarkable about this group of women is how down-to-earth they maintained sort of their personalities. they were strongly patriotic.

they felt they were given sort of an equal task in supporting their husband's mission into the stars. they were going to do everything they could to support the country's effort to support their husbands even when it meant tucking things in the backs of the worse, emotional things to deal with for later, sweeping things under the rug. as i mentioned they were living in an almost truman show existence, no divorce was actually allowed within nasa until 1967 when it erupted in the first space divorce. the women had to rely on each other. the men were away at cape canaveral, flying their teeth 38s to florida monday morning, they would not return until friday night when they would fly their planes down low over togethersville and rattle the houses. that was some of the

astronauts's way of saying hi, honey, i am home. put the rose in the oven. your astronaut is home. i recently went back to togethersville with some of the women and went into sue bean, alan bean's first wife, looking at the pool and alan bean who was the fourth man to walk in the route moon with pete conrad on apollo 12 did this mosaic bar with the ignacio zamora insignia and sue was very beautiful, blond, texan, looking out over the pool and said buzz and joan used to live over there and the bass ats were over there. thists were over there. thisets were over there. this was a really swinging place. the wives and 60s for the astronauts' wives club which would meet once a month to support each other and get t