as aronberg goes on trial before trying to foam and the secession of the western states and territories and by coincidence of the timing of the expedition to berg. there is a cloud that hangs over his whole expedition. a lot of people write similarly nasty things about him in the newspapers and he spends a lot of time trying to clear himself. one of the things that he does is he gets absolution from jefferson and the secretary henry dearborn. they both write letters which he sends to congress saying you know we no pike was not part of this andy petitions congress for a reward. when lewis and clark got back congress voted the men parcels of frontier land and double pay for going out in crossing and

risking their lives instead of staying at home on the ohio river and risking their lives a little bit less. so pike makes the same request of congress. he forged letters from jefferson and dearborn and secretary of state james madison and things like that in congress, the committee reviewing the request votes in favor of granting him this but by this point the expedition is inextricable from the politics dividing congress over jefferson and burr and wilkinson in general and congress never votes. my guess, there is no record of why they don't vote. no one made the decision not to vote but the last evidence we have in the congressional record as of the committee voting to bring it to a vote on the floor and then it just disappears until the 1840s when we have a comments by his widow clara who is requesting that the reward be

paid to her. by this point she is destitute. then she dies before they do anything. my guess about what's going on is twofold. one is burr is acquitted and he has a lot of political enemies so pro-pike friends, he has a lot of powerful friends in congress, there aren't enough of them and they can't manage to get it to a vote on the floor. the other thing that may be going on in addition or instead is that the government is very cost conscious during this time. they are cutting back the size of the army substantially and making other cuts and some of the people who criticized him in committee said you have all these expeditions out there. we can't be giving double pay and land grants to everyone who goes him one of these things and it will break the government. their point is we are spending

too much. we have got to cut back. this is one place where we can cut back so i think it's a combination of those things going on. he never fully gets the glory that he wants but he does publishes journal. they are favorable -- the journals are favorably reviewed. he gets the military promotion so he he kind if i would say partially gets it in life and in death he gets the other half. too late to enjoy as i said. >> thank you very much. >> thank you all for coming out. i hope you enjoyed it. i'm sorry? the question is when did they name pike's peak? the next round of explorers to come west for traders and trappers who carried pike's journal in their hands.

a couple of the 1820s and a lot in the 1830s and 1840s and they started calling at things like pike's peak, pikes mountain and the mountain that pike climbed in those kinds of things. the man who climbed it first was a member of steven long's expedition which came in 1820, long's peak and his name was edward and james. some people started calling him james peak and those names coexisted until the army topographical engineers officially gave it the name of pike's peak. i don't know that there was any point when they started doing it but it kind of came into usage in the late 1830s and 1840s and james peake kind of fell out and not macs be other than the pastor at and about november 11

and february 27. he did manage to climb the peak. he climbed another mountain but he did not climb the peak and four trivia purposes it's certainly not -- but there's debate about it. if you look at the crest line between colorado springs he sees pike's peak and the lower one and the third one to the south. it's almost a perfect triangle. so thanks a bunch. thanks for coming out. i really had a good time. it's a pleasure to meet you. [inaudible conversations] >> what's your name? ian?

jared, thanks for coming. >> he i have never seen that little sliver. >> he basically because united states occupy did, swayed the alliances of indians away and by 1819 and in 1803 spain was weakening but it was strong enough to contest the united states definition and by 1819 the entire hemisphere of spanish holding from argentina to the present was an open rebellion. spain was just really weak. the spanish were toppled by the french french government didn't 1808 and spain pretty much had to accept the united states terms of that point in and two years later of course mexico

falls and becomes an independent nation. so really the united states was strong and occupy that space. >> when they sold it they didn't have a drawn out? >> jefferson's diplomats and spain asked the french secretary of foreign affairs for a ministry what were the boundaries and he allegedly said i don't know exactly but i suspect you made a noble bargain for yourself. so spain and france had contested the boundaries of louisiana going back to 1682. france said we are selling you louisiana and the french understanding of that was much broader set jefferson adopted that. the spanish understanding was much narrower and they adopted that.

you guys have a good evening. [inaudible conversations]

>> you what we are seeing right now some technologists disagree on this but i personally consider the smartphones that week carry around with us or 70%

of the american population carries a run for us to be an example of the internet of things. we are becoming human sensors because we are all carrying around an extremely powerful computer in our pocket but it takes the form of sensors that exists in the physical world around us. we pass underneath when we access easy pass on the new jersey turnpike. takes the form of weather sensors that are all around us. certainly surveillance in cameras collect data and send them somewhere else. this is all part of the internet it's basically the embedding of computers into our rural world.

next a discussion on the evolution of american intelligence. eugene poteat a former intelligence officer spoke at an event hosted by the institute of world politics. this is just over an hour. >> we are going to go ahead and get started. there will be some people coming and as traffic allows but good evening and on behalf of the student body i would like to welcome you all to i did bp for this events lecture entitled the

changing face of american intelligence from oss special operations to analysis of high-tech reconnaissance back to the special operations of mr. eugene poteat. more than 20 years ago world politics was founded as a graduate school of national security and international affairs dedicated to developing leaders with a sound understanding of international realities in the ethical conduct of statecraft based on knowledge and appreciation of the founding principles of the american political economy and western worlds edition. this evening we are especially pleased to meet you all here as a guest lecturer mr. poteat is one of the fine professors that has helped make i did bp what it is today ready to meet the distinctive demands and challenges of their professions today. mr. poteat is a retired senior cia scientific intelligence

officer and the president of the association of former intelligence officers also known as raphael. he was educated as an electrical engineer and physicist and he holds a masters in statecraft of national security affairs for i did bp unit believed that costs in 2009 and in his career in intelligence he has included working with u2 and sr-71 class of your wrapped in various space and naval reconnaissance systems. he also managed the cia's worldwide network -- he holds patents on covert communications techniques. his cia assignments have included the directorate of science and technology, the national reconnaissance office technical director of the navy special programs office and executive tractor of the intelligence research in developmental counsel.

he served abroad in london and scandinavia the middle east and asia and he has received the cia's medal of merit at the national reconnaissance office is meritorious civilian award for his technological innovations. following mr. poteat's lecture we will have a five minute rape where we will ask if you have any questions you write them down on the cards that were provided on your chairs, have been passed to the side where we will collect them and that way he can go through them and it will help a little bit with the q&a session afterwards. and now without further delay i would like to welcome mr. poteat back to iw p. and here you go. [applause] >> perhaps in the future you

will have a lectern that has a flat place to set a cup of water. i want to be sure that i can be heard all the way in the back. does it work okay back there? it turns out that the cia got into the intelligence business really in a very strange and interesting way. during world war ii office of strategic services or oss was our intelligence arm during world war ii. at the end of the world war ii however the head of oss whose

name was william donovan had the idea that we needed an intelligence service in peacetime. that's a rather radical thought in the u.s. at the time. with any other intelligence activitieactivitie s such as naval intelligence, the army intelligence, the state department so we had a lot of people that were interested in the subject but when donovan came up with his idea for a new central intelligence service he ran into a lot of trouble. everybody thought he was infringing on their turf and they all objected. it took three years before the

washington could settle down and agreed with something called the national security act of 1947. it turned out that president truman had been ignored by a president roosevelt during his tenure and when roosevelt passed away in prison truman stepped into his shoes, he had no idea what had been going on. it's interesting that joseph stalin ahead of the soviet union knew about the american atomic bomb before harry truman did. that is how bad he had been kept in the dark. nonetheless, it was decided this warfare and watching 10 went on

for three years and finally something unusual happened. the congress stepped in and did a good job. they fixed the problem. they decided that we did need such an intelligence operation. they modified it and it was finally passed however in virtually identical to the plan that donovan had three years earlier. so he prevailed but something happened. he wanted to be the head of the new central intelligence agency but harry truman did not like donovan and they couldn't get along. harry truman said i don't want anything to do with any cloak and dagger types and yet something happened when that

national security act was passed churchill made his visit to independence missouri when he made his famous iron curtain speech. every student knows about that iron curtain speech but shortly after that event truman who didn't want anything to do with cloak and dagger types did something unusual. he signed the marshall plan which went on to save western europe from falling under the communist guild and then he did something else most unusual. he dispatched the new cia to southern europe to save italy, turkey and greece from being taken over by the communists.

now the interesting thing that happened, the original cia had been staffed by donovan's old oss voice. they knew two things. they understand the threat from expanding communism and they knew what to do about it. it was not to collect secret intelligence. they knew what was going on. they knew covert action was the answer to it. as a matter of fact that cia succeeded. they went to italy and they work with the catholic church in italy to take over the election and they defeated the communism that was trying to take over or around the time of the elections and converted it to a communist nation.

the man that was working with -- with james angleton and he was working with the priest who was a bishop in italy. that priest later went on to become pope paul so you can say in a way that the catholic church and the pope were working with this cia in those very early days. they succeeded in italy but then they moved on to turkey where they did the same thing. they succeeded in defeating the communists who were trying to take over turkey but the most interesting success they had was in greece. the communists had advantages there in the very rocky rough terrain but the cia got a load of missouri mules and took them to greece.

they were able to outmaneuver the communists in that terrible rocky terrain so it's often given credit to their successes. anyway they had these incredible successes that the things one wonders why is it that truman made the sudden change that he didn't want anything to do with cloak and dagger types and suddenly he is dispatching intelligence and he is a strong supporter of it. well it turns out that when churchill visited missouri and made this iron curtain speech it is said by many people that three days after his famous speech there was a. period of time where he was alone with president truman and

it was that time that the educated truman on the threat from the soviet union. as a matter of fact had president roosevelt died four months earlier guess who would have been president of the united states? a communist. the vice president in that early time before truman turned out to be a communist. nonetheless, the covert action was the order of the day. the cia didn't succeed in every case they tried. as a matter of fact what they did was beyond belief. they were also while working in italy turkey and greece, they were also dropping agents behind

the communist lines in albania and eastern europe. they were parachuting in these young men with radios to infiltrate and be there behind the lines, eyes and ears. everyone of those 300 young men that were parachuting and behind the lines were compromised and picked up and never heard from again. the reason is it was a joint operation with the british and it turned out our famous kim philby who was one of the british agents that was actually working with us on that operation turned out to have been a spy for the soviet union so he compromised a he operations. it was sometime later when

philby defect did that we realized that we had been had. nonetheless, the covert action continued and some of them were successful. there was an interesting operation that i'll bet you have heard about. the united fruit company owns a lot of land in guatemala and they also had built railroads in the country and the else a port. of course it was all about the banana monopoly on by the rockefeller corp.. interesting, president r. benz who is the president of guatemala and his wife in particular were leftists and it was understood that they wanted to nationalize the united fruit

company in guatemala. well, when that word got out, united fruit went to work in washington and set up a campaign to discredit r. benz and guatemalans from nationalizing. as a matter of fact the cia then was claiming eight coup to eliminate guatemala. ..

well, it was clear that that to by the cia had backing from washington, and it was a great success. the cia created a small, private airforce and army. they had one plane -- they had two planes. one of the planes dropped one bomb on one model silly. that's an easy way to handle it. but the second plane dropped a bomb on a share leaving the harbor. they thought it was a czechoslovakian ship that was bringing in arms. well, it turns out that then made a mistake. the ship was a british ship hauling bananas and coffee from guatemala.

so covert action was discredited after awhile, but they had one last test that was important. eisenhower had approved a coup against castro's cuba was simply because it was clear now, no question about soviet communism entry into the western hemisphere surf through using castro. well, the cia was called on to do another covert operation. this is an old story, but it was interesting in that eisenhower approved it as a covert operation rather than as an overt military operation to eliminate castro. and the cia proceeded to plan this operation under the assumption that castro was not

yet fully in charge, in control of cuba. but at the same time the cia analysts have made it clear that castro was complete and charge and had said fighters, and the cia had old world war ii piston engine bombers. by jfk came into office at that point. and when he was briefed on the cuban operation they made changes. they changed the entire plan for the operation. they changed the landing site from the original place over to the small called the bay of pigs. now you know where we're going with that. they also said, we will not allow u.s. military, meeting in this case the naval aviation to

back up or support this operation to insure that it succeeds. well, kennedy said, i will not allow u.s. military to support this operation. but the cia, perhaps, made a bigger mistake deciding to go ahead with the operation in spite of what the president has said. it is a good guess as to what happened. the kennedy brothers felt they knew more about covert operations and the cia. that's one terry, the cia, meaning dick bissell, the head of the operation, believed that the operation would fail the u.s. navy would come to their rescue, but we know the story. it was an abysmal failure, and i

think that the cia covert operations came to a screeching halt that day. that was the end of covert operations. now, during this time the cia had no spies inside the soviet union. they were not doing spying. they were giving covert operations. but the cia had a man named sherman kent who also had come from the os us, and he had been an analyst. and he believed that an analyst kid to all the intelligence work that needed to be done. as a matter of fact, with covert action dead sherman kent became the leader, if you will, of the cia. he believed that he and his analysts could produce volumes,

encyclopedic, information about every place and every situation of the world. the policy makers needed anything to know about a particular place, they could give him a stack of papers. still, in% one thing. gigl, garbage in, garbage out. so analysis without any input from intelligence collection made serious mistakes. as a matter of fact, in the mid-1950's says the basic question of the day was that the military attache in moscow were reporting back that there are

operating these icbm and missiles through the streets on may day parades and flying over head are very modern jet bombers, the likes of which we had never seen. they had modern jet fighters, and the panic struck washington. the panic was, are we suddenly outgunned by the soviet union? do they have military superiority? furthermore, they had already exploded, stolen and exploded atomic bomb, and now they have the means to deliver them. missiles and bombers. so it was called the bomber and missile gap. is the u.s. in trouble? eisenhower turned to his cia analyst to said, what is the answer? they had no answer. they have no clue about whether

or not we had military and ranch or inferiority. eisenhower, however, had experience from world war ii from photoreconnaissance, and he called in his science advisers at the time, and this was an amazing group of men. the president of mit, william baker from bell telephone laboratories, we had president stanford university, we had a man named to the lay of it was one of america's greatest innovators. he had invented the polaroid land instant photography. and he was -- but these men working with eisenhower came up with a plan to answer the biggest question of the day. they came out and advise to

eisenhower, and eisenhower called a special meeting. he called in the head of the cia, the head of the military commander force, secretary of state, secretary of defense and someone. he read the orders. three things have to be done. the first is, he looked at allen dulles and said, get spies inside the soviet union. that's your job. yes, sir. then he said, we will do photoreconnaissance. we will go look, overfly the soviet union and see for ourselves what they have got, missiles, bombers, fighter planes. and he said that plan will have to fly high enough that it cannot be shot down by russian missiles were fired plans. but he added, the air force, we

know how to do that. we are in the airplane business. eisenhower said, no, i want the cia to do it because it has to be done in secret. and if you recall, eisenhower had said he got ideas about the military-industrial complex. he said, you have to do it in secret. but the air force, you support the cra. he said that third thing, that plane will eventually be shut down, so let's start building satellites, reconnaissance to replace the airplane. again, the air force knew how to do that. they were working on missiles. he said, no, it has to be done in secret. i want the cia to do this. but they will need your help, so you support them. that was a sad day, but the head

of the cia said we are not in the high-tech business. we don't build their plants. we don't build satellites. eisenhower said, you are in that business now. i can assure you they got in that business very quickly. turns out that the lockheed corporation was given the contract to build the satellite and u-2 aircraft. now, they had the design long before it was ready to go, but the air force had not wanted an airplane that could not carry bombs and had no guns. now the cia has a job. and like he had that plane flying over the soviet union in less than nine months. not sure we could do that nowadays, but that's how and when. now, the plane lasted four years

, and it came back with the answer to the bomber missile gap. there was no bomber missile gap. youtube was labeled. the bomber factories, the air fields and sullen. and the u.s. now understood that they had military superiority over the soviet union. because of that president kennedy during a thing called the berlin crisis in 1960 when the russians were trying to get the u.s. and allies out of berlin so that they could take over all of germany says, western germany, jfk made the statement, no, we are staying in berlin. now, the reason he could say that and called christians bluff was because he knew that the

u.s.-led military superiority. khrushchev had known it all along. so we did not go war over that. the same thing happened again later, two years later in the cuban missile crisis. russia had been slipping. the military intransigence superiority. the same thing happened. he had no choice but to back down. he made the right decisions of the right time. we avoided nuclear war because the u.s. said military superiority and khrushchev knew it. kennedy made a couple of mistakes in dealing with that. however, he agreed that with khrushchev when you will not

interfere. we will not invade cuba and the russians can stay in cuba says. get the missiles out is all that mattered. he kept secret the fact that he had agreed with khrushchev that we would remove our missiles from turkey and italy. so there was a quid pro quo, but it was kept secret for six months. kennedy wanted credit. khrushchev wanted missiles, armed vessels on of italy and turkey. so that was of fair trade commission seems to me, but that was high water mark between conflicts between the u.s. and russia. thereafter we had something called mutual assured destruction. that kept us -- in other words, says it kept the cold war from getting hot.

it did not stop. it turns out the satellite had problems. there had been -- it started at the same time with a u2, but on the enough they had swelled fairs and a row. and we never thought that that would ever get that satellite working. so as a back up the ca start of another program in case they never could get the satellite is working. and that turned out to be an airplane that can fly so high and so fast that even though russian missiles did not catch it. that was called the a 12. you know it by a different name, the sr-71 blackbird. but the airplane turned out to be so what france that nothing

has matched that today. it has been over half a century and a plane is still a high fire him. there was a secret part of that aircraft project. it had to be invisible the soviet writer. that was the first effort the united states made to develop and build up a still the airplane. i was very lucky in those days. i worked on most of those projects. i thought i had died and gone to heaven. it was a wonderful time to be alive. but nonetheless on the 13th attempt to launch the satellite it works, and they got more intelligence from that first satellite operation than they youtube got in four years. it was like turning off love

light in a dark warehouse. you could see everything. you're not allowed to turn on your cell phones, but i forgot to turn mind off. terribly sorry. well, it turns out that the technology that came out of the cia in those days, the 1960's, they have the most advanced research and development capability in the laurel at the time. and it -- don't ask me what it's like today. i have lost track of what's going on over there. but -- i described three phases of intelligence, covert operations came to an end. analysis only came to an end when the science and technology works beautifully.

it turned out that the cia did despise in the soviet union to do their job. but then something happened that changed the world. it was called september 11th 2001. the united states had to stop the terrorism attacks occurred our overseas in the middle east, africa against our embassies and against american ships in the persian gulf and so on. but now teat -- 9/11 occurred, here, in front of us. so the cia had a small group called specialist activities division. it was the only paramilitary covert action group in the country. it was ready to go into afghanistan immediately to

counter the terrorists overseas. so they are settling back into the covert action after all. well, it continued to develop in such a way. the new enemy does not wear uniforms. they hide among civilians. they are happy to die just to kill you. it's a different world. what was the solution? how did we countered that? guess what? is back to covert action. but it is a different kind of covert action. while we have now, we have intelligence collection taking place. we have military collection underway. we have the special operations command in florida, and everybody knows the perfect

example of the perfect covert operation. it was the seal team six boys that went to bonn about pakistan and finally caught osama bin lot that was a new type, new age of covert action. it brings in all the elements of intelligence, the technology is there, the cia predator drones, the men from the cia in the field. the dia has a new service. there during the tactical, in the field collection. the satellites are beyond belief now. the real time imaging satellites are incredibly effective. you know, they say you can read the license plate of a car if he tilted up just right. i've not seen it, but it's

impressive, nonetheless. and then this new age of covert action is very effective and it's the current age. so if you go back to covert action, let's go back and look at it again. let's look at the -- let's look at the greek and the trojan horse. that was a covert action. thomas jefferson sent the marines to the shores of tripoli when he was president. that was covert action. it has been with us forever, but it is changed. at think we have only gotten it right during the present time. i want to leave that with you. i will try to make this as convinced as i can. that would like to give you the opportunity now to, if you have questions, write them down. i don't guarantee the best answer, but i'll give it a try.

>> at this time if you have not already put your question is down to take a few minutes and pass them this way. we will collect them. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> it is true then i only covered a couple of examples of

covert operations, but they have taken place in every war. it took place in vietnam. it took place in laos. some of the covert operations during the korean war were impressive. they were very effective law but there are always failures that go with that. but i think the -- not all of the covert operations have been publicized today. a lot of them are still classified. indeed, the question was asked, there are plenty. i don't -- i had not planned on going and all of those. i pick just a couple of good case is that everybody knew about. no, there's a second question.

it turns out in my generation recursive. now most people scribble or print. so give me a second to try to adjust this. there is, indeed, a question about the church committee hearings. indeed that was the watershed that i think was probably -- did more good than harm, although church himself made a comment long after the hearing that he probably over did. but a lot of people don't think he did. if i had been some early problems that happened in any bureaucracy. under allen dulles the did not give, i think, sufficient adult

supervision to their ranks in the cia. in many parts of the agency agents ran rampant. as a matter of fact, you remember the operation where the -- one division called technical services division had been experimenting with gusty. and they had, in fact, been dispensing lsd to people that were not aware of it, and that did cause the deaths. that was rarely be single most important issue. and they also had developed a gun that could dispense or shoot poison darts. and i remember senator church holding up that gun in front of the tv cameras and waving it.

it never was used, by and all, but it got a lot of publicity in its time. i think that the church committees served one purpose, and that was it created the committees that gave oversight to intelligence. that was necessary. before that the only overside was from the armed services committee. and i remember hearing one of them say about up plans cia operation, good. see you have all the money you need to? those days disappeared after the committee. i think this provision in the cia took a turn for the better after that. thank you.

here is a good one. in the past several years we have lost to stealth aircraft into the hands of the enemy. our stuff technology compromised or obsolete? not null. turns out that indeed the smart principal jobs was to work on the stealth technology. eisenhower made the comment that that, one stealth airplane will not fly over the soviet union unless you prove to me it is invisible to soviet raiders. indeed, that was one of my jobs. what we did, by the way, i make this brief.

legionnaire and electronic aircraft that we could spook the soviet radars and the thinking there are seeing is still their craft. we get very is size of the radar target and therefore listen to them and determine the smallest size of the blip on their screen that they could see. so the answer came back, soviet writers were good and they could detect that stealth airplane and we had. and so it never was permitted to fly over the soviet union because of that, but the answer we got from knowing how small the target the radars to see, that information was passed to lockheed corporation, and they can i guess what, they then designed and built the f to 70 which was in the invisible to radar. one guy shot down, as your member over bosnia. what happened is the plane was

operating out of a base in italy, and spies were all around watching the f-117 stealth fighter take off. so they knew when it took off, they knew where was going. and then when it got over the target area the 117 open up the bomb bay doors. then radar could see it. they knew he was coming, so they fired the missile and knocked him down. fortunately the pilot survived. then -- but having lost the answers that lockheed none knew about, they designed a whole new generation of fighter planes. the f-22, the f35. completely invisible to radar. all they need to do is to be a smaller target, then the enemy

that they're facing said that they have an advantage than have getting -- firing a missile before they can receive one. so the stealth is still valuable, but it does not solve all the problems. does that answer the question enough? that is how they shot it down. it was simply waiting until it opened its doors. well, this is an interesting question. what do you see as the next biggest challenge for intelligence carried it? well, i think we see that already. the biggest challenge is obviously the war with terrorism , is like terrorism. it is not going to be won by having bombers and missiles and satellites. it is going to be one and fought

primarily by to waste, good intelligence and covert action. you have to be able to identify the enemy before he can do is damage. that comes down to the one question we all understand, better data, maturing communications is one of the most effective tools that we have and it is one of the most difficult ones for the american public to except. i might add that president lincoln during the civil war, the telegraph was brand new, and he set up an operation right away to monitor all telegraph communications for many in everybody. we were at war, and the people know. there was no questions. as a matter of fact, this pair

reporters and it up in jail because they tried to report what lincoln was doing. but mitt is not listen to your conversation. it simply identifies numbers to call and someone. they have prost put it together and try to identify potential sources, but it is -- i think that that is the challenge. if we give up too much intelligence capability will lose the war. >> this is a similar question. what is the greatest intelligence advantage we have today? i wish i could answer that honestly, but i think that the united states is multi-cultural. we have more capability in this country in terms of language,

cultural background, skills and so on. catches our advantage. but, you know, it is mission impossible right now. i hope that the nsa survives. i can only hope. we have someone here that knows a lot more about this subject than i do. perhaps i have to ask him to answer that question. but it goes back to world war two. the csi -- actually in the balkans in the 1940's, the 2,671st special reconnaissance one guard to confess, i don't know the answer to that.

i don't have a good answer for that. but the person who is as that question as the answer. i would like to here. any volunteers on that? all right. what is next for american intelligence? what technical concerns are you most -- how will that impact covered ops? the technology is changing drastically. but i think everyone in this room has an iphone and then i pat and a computer home. and though world now is awash in communications. the challenge that the u.s., i think, intelligence has is

taking advantage of that. in some way it is susceptible to the american public to read you know, americans always have a love-hate relationship with intelligence. let me remind you that in 1923 the secretary of state made a statement. he said he found out that the state department had been monitoring communications of the enemy. he made a statement, and gentlemen, don't read each other's mail. interest in sin was his name. in the congress that passed a law called the communications act of 1924 that said, it is against the law to monitor anyone's communications, including that of an enemy.

that was the law of our land. however the army and navy broke the law just in time to save the united states in world war ii. as a matter of fact, at the battle of midway the japanese had a superior fleet and you're going to finish us off with one final operations for, but the u.s. had elazig capable fleet but decisively defeated the larger japanese fleet because the navy had broken the law and was reading the japanese codes. the american fleet won that

battle because of that advantage and save the united states. they have lost that battle we would have had to a reach an agreement or trees with japan as much on their terms as ours, but we did not have to. so the communications, everybody uses it. that is the challenge command we have to be able to manage and control that. communication is changing. the enemy now knows how we do it therefore, they are changing their way of communications. it will make it ever more difficult. as the biggest challenge we have, because of the loss of that important technology.

what does the future of intelligence look like? in light of the recent communications rather than recent criticism from congress -- from the congress? well, it does not look too good. it turns out they're claiming that the cia has been monitoring the congressional traffic. the cra has responded. at that -- i fear what happened if we don't allow. i don't believe for a minute that the cia was tapping the congressional committees telephones. i don't believe that. so all i can do is give you that opinion. but i know i don't think that would ever be considered. they might want to, but they

would not dare. it is going to affect the agency and cia nonetheless. criticism is not accurate idea, and it causes heartburn everywhere. because of that word snowden, to you believe that the intelligence committee will revert back? not at all. i don't thing so because if it reverts back we have less serious problem without -- before 9/11 -- we miss it by the way. how is it we missed 9/11 and did not see it coming? i will give you a short war story. a very brief, i promise. but 9/11, that morning ellis

having a second cup of coffee and reading the paper when the phone rang, and it was a friend that i had known from the associated press, and it was early in the morning. is your television on? well, yes, but i never pay any attention. well, turn around and look at it and tell me what you see. i turned around and looked at the television. i saw that first tower burning. while i want stylus on the second plane fly into the second tower. and i am on the phone with the associated press fellow. what in the world is going on? what all weird accident. it is not an accident. it is a terrorist attack. and they have their own trained pilots.

have you know? well, no american pilot would do that even with a gun to his head . then he said, -- i said, it has to be their own trained pilots. any way, says he put that on the associated press ride away. came -- it was on the wires immediately. from. they wanted me to tell them the same thing. after three days i had to disconnect my phone. i could not keep up with it. i call the fbi that afternoon. i said, i can tell you where to find the pilots of those planes. they thought i was a bit crazy.

they get a lot of phone calls like that, but i said, with the united states, the trains people , foreigners to fly these kind of airliners. you check the american flight training schools and you will find them. furthermore, no one here in marin working in my health club from saudi arabia that is taking flying lessons, and he's not interested in lending in taking off. he just lost a fly on the simulating. though women on the phone say, well, as this man done anything wrong it? i said, no, ma'am. i don't know that. is that your job? no, it's not my job. i can't do anything until after he has committed a crime. anyway, i went through another friend and got the mess is to the fbi. check the five schools. in less than 24 hours then named all 20 of them.

but the -- right now the problem that we face is that all the advantages we have, if you go back to pre 9/11 you're going to have pre 9/11 problems. i think the terrorists will have a field day. i am not answering all of the questions. j you believe that the community properly separates analysis from policy decision making? i am not a fan of sherman kent. he just about ruined intelligence. does back to what i said earlier .

analysis only works if it as input to from intelligence collection. it is that simple. so unless you have, you know, -- there is problem when the policymakers -- i have to tell you -- here is the bad news. intelligence works for the president of the united states, not anyone else. the president can accept the intelligence and use it for he can ignore it said. it happens on many occasions. sometimes the president does not want to hear the intelligence. he may have other reasons that are legitimate that he wants to take action and it or that particular intelligence. that is the way that it is. he is the boss. that incident in 1964, i believe, where president johnson

withheld to american attacks. he used that to start bombing in north vietnam. he started bombing hanoi that day. well, it turns out that the head of the cia was in the white house and heard that decision. but head of the cia knew that the cia had information that there was no attack. but johnson when to have and made the decision ignoring the intelligence to bomb north vietnam. now, i thought maybe we should have bonded myself, but he has the power. this is nickel. you don't -- policymakers depend on intelligence in practically

every case. i don't think that there is any problem. intelligence has improved to the point that it is credible now, thank goodness. i have to turn it over. this is a long one. this question deals with covert action. the early directors of the cia resisted taking over the covert action. that is true in the office of policy coordination responsible for covert action. placed outside the cia. that was in the early days and it was not clear exactly how the

cia would be organized and operated. turns out to you agree it the cia was initially skeptical of covert action? i don't agree with that at all. the simple reason, the cia was manned by covert operations experts. fitzgerald's. i named those people. they were from the ellis says. there were covert action specialists. they knew how to do it and succeeded with it until they got to the bay of pigs. so it is to five things are different. after it settled down. right now if you look at the abbottabad operation covert action is the key to success. we are doing it right. so i don't think it matters. i think it has been so effective by the way, there is even a new intelligence agency that works

in this covert action called national zeal spatial intelligence agency or in see a. that is the group that has access on every sensor of every type from every satellite day, night, whatever. this organization is no one that helped plan that operation to catch the . they built a model from their centers of the entire compound, and they even plan the round in and out. they have that capability. now, there is no way that we can give up that capability right now. covert action, i think, is being done right finally. took a lot of. i will stick around awhile if you have questions you did not want to ask in public.

that always happens to my found out. anyway, thank you very much and enjoy. [applause] >> coming up tonight on c-span2 book tv in prime-time features books on exploring american. next peter stark on a story it, john jacob astor and thomas jefferson lost pacific. in interview on the book our america, a hispanic history of the united states. later the life of zebulon pike, the namesake of colorado's pikes peak.

>> more than a year there have been allegations and insinuations that i knew about the planning of the watergate break-in and that i was involved and an extensive plot to cover it up. the house judiciary committee is now investigating these charges. on march 6i ordered all materials that i had previously

furnished to the special prosecutor turned over to a committee. these included tape-recorded 719 presidential conversations and more than 700 documents from private white house files. on april 11th the judiciary committee issued a subpoena for 42 additional tapes of conversations which it contended were necessary for its investigation. i agreed to respond to the subpoena by tomorrow. >> forty years ago on april 209th president nixon responded to last judiciary committee subpoena for additional water gate tapes. his response bless reflections from former "washington post" journalist carl bernstein sunday night at 8:00 eastern, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span three. >> supreme court justice ruth pater ginsberg took part in a conversation with other female supreme court justices from canada and israel.

they share personal stories about what it takes to rise to the top of their field. here is a look. >> judges don't make agendas. we are receiving. we don't make the controversies that come before us. but we do our best when there are on our plate to decide them. the political biases that to have an agenda. attributed to us. when we make -- remember the 80's and 90's. the discourse was a stir in the critical. it was critical because they said they had an agenda which is the worst thing you can say about a judge. what it suggests is that the decision maker has an intellectual basket that will accept the evidence of information and keep the shape of the basket.

judges are supposed to listen. so when someone says you have an agenda it is a way of dismissing the result and saying, well, what do you expect. it is absolutely a contradiction to what judges really do which is to actually -- we listen based on who we are, no question, but that's not -- that does not mean we have an agenda other than trying to get it right. >> he said, you don't sit alone. imagine making every single major decision every day with a has since. they didn't choose you and you didn't use them.

the collegial aspect is really extraordinary. forced marriages. >> former sec chair read caresses me to discuss the digital media regulations' impact on the internet service providers. you can see the vendors to buy machines to universities : center for to let your indications management and long thursday at 2:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> next a look at the partnership between business magnate john jacob astor and thomas jefferson fog to create a colony and the pacific coast and the 19th century. astoria. this is an hour and ten minutes john jacob. this an is ho and 1

>> thank you for that nice interaction and thank you all for being here. normally i have a more formal presentation. i have a video i have shown. tonight is a special night. i am going to do something a little different do something different. and i want to tell stories a little bit more and, of course, i will do some it is special because this is -s books, we are in oregon, astoria is nearby and we are also here with c-span so we have a national and oregon audience. i will tell stories and you may know some of them and may not some of the others. but i will start with how i came to this story.

and actually, what is surprising about it is how this story was very-well known in its day. in 1836, when washington irving was commissioned by john john jacob astor to write these, irving's book also called "astoria" was a best seller in 1926. they have been forgotten now. i think some of you know about them. but in the national consciousness they are largely forgotten except along historians and people that follow western history. it is a really important story. it is historically significant

and a great adventure story. that is partly what attracted me to it. it is also a store that i feel needs to be told because those events have had a big impact on the shape of the north american c continent and on the course of the american empire over the years from 1810-1813. i stumbled across this story randomly. there are many things about being a free-lance writer, which have been for 30 years, that are a struggle. uncertainty. but the cool thing is how one idea leads to another. that is what happened in this case. 7-8 years ago i was working on

my last book, a book called "the last empty places" in which i profiled four unpopulated areas of the country. and of course, one of them had to be eastern oregon as i am sure some of you can guess. i was driving, in the course of my research, one evening in late may, down a very long, lonely empty highway in eastern oregon. it was getting dark and i thought i was going to sleep by the road. i came to a town finley with a hotel and spend the night there with gratitude of this being there. and the next morning i said how did the town get the name of john day. and i know you have heard of the john day river, and dam and there are many things called

john day. but i am not sure everybody knows how all of those john day's got their name. i did research on john day and in a nearby historical society and it turned out john day was one of the original historians who was sent from john jakeer pastor in 1810 to find the first colonial on the west coast. what john day, i didn't know the bigger story at that point, i just knew john day was this guy who, i am trying to think of where the trauma started, but it started early. he was a 40-year-old kentucky hunter and he ended up being

starved to death and poisoning himself with cames. survived by shooting a wolf and eating it's skinned. was helped by a number of indians on the way. was left behind by his main party. wandered a winter trying to find the tracks of the main party. found abandoned indians he thought would help him who ended up stripping him of his clothes and leaving with him nothing. after that, john day was done with the wilderness. he had to go back the same way he can and he had what looked like to me to be ptsd. he tried kill himself. he tried to shoot himself.

he didn't survive. but he sent back. so i read that and thought that was incredible. the more i looked into john day's story i realized he was just one tiny part of this undertaking john jacob astor took to the west coast. that is what got me intrigued and the more i looked into it and i thought this should be told in a book. i write exploration history. these are the stories i love. so i took it on as a book publisher. and luckily i found a publisher with harper collins and becker. in the introduction you heard a little bit about what the expedition was. john jacob astor had a vision of

global grade on the pacific rim. this is five years after lewis and clark were here. and thomas jefferson had the same vision. astor had this idea, approached jefferson and he endorsed it at the whitehouse. it was astor's idea to capture all of the furs through and funnel them through the mouth of the columbia river and sell them to china. in china these furs, especially sea otter, fetched high prices because the chinese mandarin used the sea otter furs which were luxury and the finest and densest coast of any animal in

the year. astor wasn't the first ship on the west coast but he was one of the earlier ones. he came up with this idea of sending trade goods from new york around cape horn by ship to the mouth of the columbia trading them to the coastal indians here for furs. trading things like knifes, beads and pots. and then taking those furs to china, trading them to the chinese for incredible markups in both places. taking chinese luxury goods like silks, keys, porcelain back around the world to london and new york. his idea was to have especially a fleet of ships circling the globe continuous and trading along the way at an incredible

markup. and thomas jefferson was hoping that the settling along the west coast would be the first seeds of a democracy. not even an american democracy. but just the first seeds of a democracy. something like a sister democracy to the united states and it would speed to the east and the two would join in the middle and make the whole continent a democracy. that is the background. so what i am going to do is read a snipit from four characters. and that is what attracted me to the story. there are different leaders and characters and personalities. they react in very different ways in these situations and

their actions in the course of these expeditions going across the country and at cape horn determined a lot of what happened in the decades to fall. in some ways, these personalities shapes our destiny on this continent. the first one is from marie dorman. she was the wife of piere who was the interpreter.

one went up oversight and investigations overland and the other was near cape horn. the senior was the ininterprete for lewis and clark. and maria was a native american women. and dorian insisted his wife come along. she wasn't too happy about the idea. she had two small boys and learned in-route she was pregnant. she has the most incredible survival story you can imagine. a friend in missioula has studied a lot about lewis and clark and pointed out to me as i

was reaching this story that sack juwea met with dorian and they certainly did. they were in the same camp. this is when she was going back up the river to, i think, the man dan villages and marie dorian was going up the river for the first time. sally said well i have always wondered what sack gee said to marie dorman and wouldn't that be an interesting conversation to hear. so i tried to guess a little bit. i am speculating. this is a non-fiction book but i

say one likes to think what they said to each other. it is likely they knew each other. two indian women in the small settlement of st. louis and wise interpreters in the fur trade. what would they have said to each other? it will be very long and difficult to reach the ocean. you and your children will suffer. by then, five years after her journey with lewis and clark, she adopted european dress and manners and understand whites with powerful guns and urge for furs and profit had just begun their long reach for the ocean. she might have started this represented the end of her people's nomadic life. one imagines her saying to marie

dorman don't go. or join them because they will come to our homelands whether we join them or not. or you will see amazing things. organizing into four river boats layed with 20 tons of goods and equipped with ors, sand and tow ropes the party left from winter camp on april 21, 1811 with sails set in a favorable wind. they hoped to reach the pacific in late summer or autumn. the second passage i am reading takes place as they are going up the river from their winter camp which was about 400 miles up river from st. louis. and as i mentioned, they were to follow the lewis and clark trail that is going up the missouri,

over the rockies and down the columbia. thaws went up the missouri, the father they went the worse the stories got about the indians at the head water. the overland leader was a young new jersey business man named wilson price hunt who was known as a nice guy, serious minded, conscious, and liked to lead by c concensus but he had never been in the wilderness before. astor knew that hunt would remain loyal to astor. but astor hired a lot of other scottish fur traders, french canadian voyagers. he was looking for the best and that happened to be the canadian

fur traders but they were loyal to the british crown and not necessarily america. so he had wilson hunt leave his party that was twice the size of lewis and park's expedition. several hunters and wilson price hunt, marie dorman. as they are going up the missouri, they are hearing about the black feet and one of the problems is mary heather lewis had killed two young black feet. and they left a jefferson medal hanging around one of the black feet's neck and thread the territory. and the black feet were angry about that insult. so there had been a previous party going up the missouri to try to establish a fur pacific

coast at the head waters or the missouri. and it disappeared. and no one new what happened to it. so as hunt's party is going up the missouri one day in may of 1811, they are sitting on the river bank and resting after the morning's poling and rowing having breakfast. they see canoes and in it are white men. and there are three ken tutucki. and edward robinson is one of them and he is wearing a scarf around this head. underneath the scarf he was s p

scalped. this told deeply on wilson price hunt. the young new jersey business man. and the three trappers said, well, look you don't want to go up to the head waters of the missouri, we know a better way. we know a way that you can leave the missouri, strikeout overland, cross several mount ranges and we think we can get you to the river that is part of the head line of the columbia. and that meant for wilson price hunt to strike out into a thousand miles at least of uncharted terrain that was unmapped. hunt, the serious conscious businessman had to deliberate what to do. so that is the next passage i am

reading is hunt's decision in this situation. the four boats made good progress up river under sail that day. that is day they had breakfast and met the three trappers. and camp that night. may 27th, 1811 on little cedar island. they were 1, 075 miles up the island of st. louis. a grove of cedar tree grew in the center surrounded with vines and flowers. brad bury and nettle, these are two british bought botonist scrambled about gathering plants.

hunt was bothered by his own problems of deciding if he had to turn from missouri. the best route became a subject of anxious inquiry. hunt closely questioned the three kentuckians about the proposal and consulted with others who ent went up the island. hunt polled them as we would throughout the journey on their opinion about the way to go. one pictures hunt's party camped on the islands in the river that granted safety from indian attack with a large fire of long driftwood longs throwing sparks at the bright stars. 60 men, women and children move

in to the fire. hunt moves from this fire and tent interviewing and deliberating. what lay out there in the vast prairie night in the whole western continent. when mountains would let them past? which rivers and tribes seemed unroamed in the darkness? on little cedar island, wilson price hunt tasted the flavor of unknown. hunt, responsible for a large group of people and the expectations of great men probably found it either romantic or exhilarating. there were men that surely awaited him and on the other was the route that left missouri and skirted south of the black feet where his party might wander

loss through snowy mounts and starvation deserts. the questions confronting one are mundane, this route or that, this river drainage or another, the implications are profound and sometimes fatal. by morning he decided. it isn't surprising that on a concern fight or venturing out on terrain, hunt who waited fighting, chose the latter. fear of retreating for the party and himself. whatever the prospective, hunt made the faithful decision. the overland party would leave the missouri and veer to the south of the planned route

avoiding the black feet and go on foot and horse back into the swath of unknown terrain. the decision made. hunt sat down to write mr.astor of his change of plans. i will skip back to astor. he was a focused business man. came to the country as a young man from waldorf, germany. we have heard the name waldorf, astoria and it is named after that. we started importing musical instruments from england and exported furs from the north american continent to londoned.

he was a very focused, driven toward his bottom line. meticilous in his planning. he spent years laying the ground work for this expedition. in all of his planning and preparation, he had not allowed for one major factor. mountain climbers talk about exposure meaning the risk in a situation. on a cliff when a small mistake can result in major consequen consequences. in 1810, this far wild edge of the north american continent with his brutal storms, hostile neighbors, difficulty of

communication, vulnerability to empires, exposed as any habitable place on earth nor was it able to what this would do on to the men chosen to host the empire. under stress, each one succumsu to traits. this trading scheme joined the dream of two powerful men. astor would dominate the market, pacific rim trade and reef profits as would his fur trader partners. through john jacob astor, president jefferson and his successors established an

outpacific coast on the dim pacific coast. jefferson's vision embraced the envision of north america and recorded astor's enterprise in shaping the undertaking. i view your take as it was said on your side of the continent and liberty and several government spreading from that side and this side will ensure complete establishment over the whole. there was a lot of weight riding on wilson price hunt when he is making the decision. wilson price hu wrestling on cedar island with this thoughts. another leader in this is a scottish fur trader by the name of duncan mcdougal.

he was hired from canada where the experts were. there were many different personalities but duncan mcdougal would be short, feisty, looking out for himself and manipulative. astor made him second in command of the west coast colonial. hunt was supposed to be first in mand. but in hunt's absence, astor said mcdougal would be second. they were supposed to arrive at

the mouth of the columbia at that point in the fall of 181 # 1. but fall came and went and they still hadn't arrived. duncan mcdougal was in charnel there. so i am going to read some of his thoughts. and what happened was at that point, i should back up a little bit in the story. the one expedition was hunt going over land and the other was the sea going party coming around cape horn. this was led by a sea captain, john thorne, who was a naval hero against the barbary

pirates. a fearless guy. the ship was just stuffed with trade goods. it was called the tong kim. and some people in the room might know it. all different ways to pronounce it. it was stuffed with trade goods, 9,000 pound of powder and cannons. it carried captain thorne, his crew of yankee sailors and these fur traders. the scottish fur traders as well as a number of french-canadian voyages. and several young clerks from canada. several educated young men who

were keeping journals. captain was materialisically minded in the sense of discipline. he had a boatload of shaggy fur traders and voyagers and the first night out, by 8:00, they were drawing pistols. when captain thorne ordered lights and out the fur trader said no. and thorne said lights out at 8:00. it came to death threats at that testimony and they went down hill from there. these accounts are amazing. the fur traders are in a robo

boat and they are sailing out to sea and expecting it to turn around and come back. it is six miles out to sea and they are mildly rowing after it. the falcon islands are barren and uninhabited. what saves them is the nephew is on board and he goes up the thorne and draws two pistols and says turn around the ship or you a dead man. he turned it around. that is one of the misadventures on the way to the columbia. they stop in hawaii and lots of adventures there. they pick up hawaii swimmers and they are experts at canoe and

sailing and growing gardens and they buy a lot of pigs from them. finally make it near the mouth of the columbia. we all know in this room at least what lies off the mouth of columbia and that is the columbia bar. that great sand bar that blocks the mouth of the river where the huge volume of water of the columbia river goes out and the huge volume of water of the pacific ocean and its trumendious swells are kicking in and the swell is like this. and it is one of the most dangerous waters in the world. there was one channel through the columbia bar. today it was marked it stretch

and known. it wasn't known then. so the charge from john jacob astor is to drop the men and supplies inside the columbia bar and thorne is supposed to go on his way and trade sea otter furs on vancouver island where the rich stretches of sea otter habitat were that at point. thorne is in a hurry to get past the columbia bar. he starts spending small boats with sailors and voyagers to find the channel. they loose two or three boats. nine guys die trying to find there channel in three days. the fur traders and sail arors e

saying this is madness. it was very rough weather but thorne was relentless sent them any. they get over the bar. almost wrecked. they finally chose a spot for the first american colony. we know where it is. it is where astoria, oregon is. where they lay the cornerstone of the first building they decide they will call this astoria after john jacob astor. thorne drops the men and supplies and goes up to vancouver island to trade for furs. this leaves duncan mcdougal behind wondering where the

hunting is. the indians who had initially created them and traded with them and were around their settlement disappeared, too. late summer, early fall of 1811, it is really spooky out there. their sense of exposure deepened. their camp was nothing but a wilderness in the vastness of the pacific with its crushing wells and storms. it felt like the end of the world. there was an unseen network of indian tribes each with loyalty and packs hidden by a communication network. the astorians could only guess what the native people were thinking. should the astorians need to

free they had nowhere to go. the nearest reliable help laid a year's journey away. paranoia set in for mcdougal especially. he had drawn a target on his back. he set himself up telling everyone of his importance and the glory and power of his empire. now with men gone and stewart's party, this is another party coming up the columbia, traveling up river and the indians forest and river quite, mcdougal realized me was a king who posesed either castle or

army. he posesed the tribes through the wisdom of his own thinking. he was given the chance and wondered why when they wish to grow powerful and healthy at his expense? he had a trove of trade goods that the tribes coveted. the indians could see the treasure lay unguarded after they went up the river. the paranoia strengthened. so mcdougal is coming up with this idea that he calls all of the mashing chiefs of the neighboring tribes to come to his settlement and he gathers them around and pulls a small,

glass wile from this pocket and he said in this, i hold the deadly small poxs and the indians were decimated by them 20 years ago. i have to pull out this cork and everyone dies. and that is how we tries to regain power. he later marries the daughter of one of the chiefs as another insurance policy but that comes some tistimulatotime later. we have wilson price hunt, before i read the last passage, who made the decision at little ced ced ced cedar island. he dawdles and doesn't under the

urgency of the nature. he needs -- he has 10-15 tons of gear and supplies with him. 60 people. huge parties. he needs horses to carry this. he stopped at the village and started trading for horses but the problem is indians don't have enough horses so he scrambles to find more. weeks past by and it isn't until late july he leaves missouri to head in the swath of unknown terrain. he treks for four months on food and horseback. marie is there and she found out she was pregnant and due in december and this is july.

the scottish fur traders are riding. the voyagers some walking and some riding but eventually they got 1500 horses. they cross what is anyhow the dakotas, wyominging, over the t ton mountains. are into idaho on this side and they come to a small river and the three trappers say, well we are sure this leads to the columbia. here you go. this is the way down. and so they build 15 big dugout canoes out of cottonwood. they pile into the canoes and there40 voyagers and they are eager to get off the horses and

can canoes are their their. they start down the river and it is happy first day. second day they hit a few ripples. third day, they swamp a canoe in rapids. by the 9th day they are going over major waterfalls and voyagers are drowning. they have to abandon the ship skwp they have run out of food and they are in the snake wharf cannon and winter is coming up. they start off on foot. and they end up in hells cannon which is the deepest cannon in the area. and hunt has to make a decision

on whether to leave starving partners behind because they are too weak or trying to keep the party together. that is where hunt while mcdougal is waiting, wondering where hunt is. he is struggling through these c c c c c c canyons. and he has someone with him who crossed the continent 10 years before with alexander who crossed the canadian north in 1793. so he is one of the experienced fur traders on the ship. and pick up on interpreter at

what is now grace harbor. they end up in what is now near the sound in bc. the interpreter actually says you tonight -- don't -- want to go there because the indians here have resentiment for earlier traders and thorne ignores them and goes in anyway. throughout the book, i write in a number of places about the american tribes and the culture. and i will not go into detail other than to say it was irony that astor's parties ended up coming against two of the wealthiest tribes.

one being black feet and the other being the northwest coastal indians with the salmon runs and the sea life like whale whales, oysters and ducks and on and on. in many ways their way of life was materially better than many in london and new york. they lived in lawn houses. they had an elaborate culture with pot latches and beautiful artistic traditions and huge war voyages. and so he dropped anchor out in the cove out in the sound. and josey, the interpreter, and mckay the experienced fur trader go into the shore to talk about

negotiati negotiations. thorne stays on board but the big canoes come out to the ship. thorne sees no reason why he should not start trading on his own and that is where this passage begins. out in the cove on board, negotiations unfolded less smoothly. i am saying i am sure mckay and the interpreter were welcomed by the chiefs in the village. negotiation unfolded and the indians big cedar canoes with their long snout like prowls ran around the ship's hull. they wore weather-proof comical hats and had rolls of see otter

to trade. captain thorne with no experience on the indian trade ordered them to spread out blue beads, pots and other trade goods. an elderly chief climbed aboard to establish the prices to trade goods for furs. captain thorne said two blankets, and beads, in exchange for one sea otter. he rejected the offer as too low. it was a clash of two cultures on the purist of economic terms. account vary to the exact detail between the two but follow the same general pattern as a whole.

they wanted five blankets instead of the two that thorne offered for a sea otter. thorne didn't budge. he had a vast deal of pride in his nature wrote washington irving. he held the whole race in salvage contempt. they were at a stalemate. he wasn't a bargainer. he could he had given a fair price. but he entered a culture where trading was a way of life. they were not ignorant. he dismissed the low price. thorne stalked off angery among the deck and he followed him and

ridiculed his offer, harassing him and pestering him to train. captain thorne spun about, temper exploding and grabbed a sea otter fur and rubbed it in his face. dam your eyes, he said to the chief. kicking away the trade fur on the deck and then through thomas off the ship. the other indians left in their canoes. the two returned to the ship and when they heard what happened they urged him to weigh immediately because they will look for insult he warned. thorne laughed them out. you pretend to know a great deal about the indian character doing ross's account that captured the

spirit of the encountering. you know-nothing at all. don't be so saucy now. it didn't end well. but that is where i will end. thank you very much. we can talk and take questions. [ applause ] feel free to get up and leave. but we can keep talking. let's see. here we have the microphone. there is a question right there. >> what is so interesting about this story is how much you had to leave out to get it into pages you got it in. one of the fascinating pieces was during the war of 1812, mcdougal sold fort astoria to the northwest company, the

canadian company for pennies on the dollar, but none the less it was sold to a canadian company and that could have ended there and this could be southern british columbia except that the treaty -- then a british ship captain of the raccoon came in and conquered the port during the war of 1812. and because of the treaty of gent all conquered possessions had to be returned. and so because it was conquered it had to be returned to astor and it was in 1818. here we are in oregon. if they had gotten their three months later this would be southern british columbia. there is about half a dozen of these. >> and you are bringing up a good point.

this book focuses on 1810-1813 so the aftermath. this whole region is in limbo for 40 years after these events. and for just the reason that the questioner was citing that the war of 1812 broke out and that made astoria a prize of war or potential prize of war. so mcdougal basically, i will not tell the whole story, but mcdougal heard war had broken out. that will royal navy was coming to seize astoria and so he sold it out to a rival and was made a partner subsuantly. i say he fashioned himself a

golden parachute and then died out. he died in a nasty way in canada years later. it is like what happened now section of this book. and there are no details about how he did. but it wasn't so many years later. but the epiitting is he died tag a terrible death. that was mcdougal. there were so many things that could have gone differently in this part of the continent. if astoria had succeeded this might not have been southern british columbia, but the united states might poses the entire west coast from alaska to mexico. or even more if we were a trading power across the pacific. it could have been a separate country.

but as it was because of the war of 1812 and it wasn't the treat of gent but in 1818 as many of you know the u.s. and great britain signed the join occupation agreement for the northwest that meant neither americans or british could be here even though the british established themselves in this region and this area was in limbo until the 1840s. it could have been all british or all-american. other questions? >> if wonder if you go into detail about jacob astor and the struggles he faced trig trying

to get the ship out here >> terrible struggle. you can imagine it is 12,000 miles around cape horn in new york city. it take as year to get a message. sorry, it is 25,000 miles. 12,000 is china. that was one of the problem with astor's vision was the lag in communication. not the lack of communication because he tried to communicate. he didn't know rather hunt arriv arrived. he did, mostly entact but he was there. he was wanting them to stand fast and he was willing to put endless resources behind it. but his men didn't have the

will. hunt, i can, thought that astor was that willing to spend as much money as astor was willing to spend. astor, at one point, spent over a year trying to convince the u.s. navy or the president, secretary of state, everybody in washington, d.c. to send an armed ship to the mouth of the columbia to defend astoria against the british navy. and the u.s. navy was going to send the ship but the crew got diverted last second. he was a planner and outfitted other ships. bought a ship called the well armed. he sent two captains undercover to see london.

and he gave them a blank check to buy a british ship and sail an armed british ship to astoria in the company of the royal navy. it was going to defend against the royal navy but left from the royal navy. it was a stealth ship. but it wrecked in hawaii and the crew mutiny so it was one thing after another. >> john jacob astor was forming the party that was to go by sea did we have the idea of the dif

culty he had face? >> i have thought about that a lot. the people in the decision of facing the unknown and the mental stress interests me and could astor under that. he was a fur trader in the hudson valley in new york. he dragged his wagon swamp and forest. so he had some understanding. but now one realized how much terrain there was between here and new york. that was a long walk. in those days, there were tribal territory the whole way. some densely populated. some unpopulated. there were deserts and that was a big issue.

in southern idaho there was no food. i think astor knew little about how they would suffer. he learned in the long run. ...

>> the spanish or in california. were they aware of what was going on in the northwest? they had a little bit. >> yes, good point. the spanish -- of course of this historical background i could go into. i will try to limit myself, but the spanish and started building missions from what is now blog, california, from their settlements in what was nomex go

up the coast and a 17 70's, and they got as far as san francisco that was the farthest north mission. and they have gone up to stake claim to that territory. they more or less stopped around san francisco. the russians have started building foothills down from alaska. that is where the gap ifs in the settlement was between what is now alaska and have san francisco. that was all essentially unclaimed. that is what jefferson saw, this huge unplanned chunk of northwest coast. >> i read once that the russians tried to put a settlement down on the coast of washington or oregon. i only read it once, and i was not sure of the facts of that. i have never seen a sense. i know the russians were trading >> well, that is a sort of follow-up to the question.

the russians to build a post in california they year after the store was founded. says it is now called for ross. it had a different name and the russians, but that is an hour's drive north of san francisco. in fact, a beautifully restored museum today. so both the russians and the spanish were aware that astor was doing this, as were the british. the british said, putting a settlement on the pacific coast. so they said david thompson, well-known great explore to come out. thompson got down to columbia and putting flagpoles of saying, you know, i will build a post here and here as you went down to columbia.

what is now the tri-cities he put his notice that he was going to build a post. the guts of a mountain. what did he get to? a story was already there. he missed it by three months. otherwise -- you're saying, he could have done their first. and to over there. >> thank you. >> in the writing of history the story has been dealt with. a book comes out about every 20 years. and david lavender wrote, you know, the early writers. how do you see your writing as being something that adds to the complexion or the depth or the brunt of the story? >> what i have done is, you know, the books that have come out previously have not really focused on these expeditions the way -- with the depth that i have. and that is really what i have focused on. i am an adventure writer.

i focused on the exploration and the venture of it, and i really tried to get into the minds and the physiology and the indian tribes and that, the very detailed specifics of what it was like on those overland journeys and trying to bring those to life as much as possible. so some wonderful books. james p. rhonda, that is a really well, beautifully researched scholarly work. if you want a historical detail, that sells everything that there is to now. and that was not my mission. my mission was to -- my self-appointed mission was to focus on the adventure story of these expeditions and use that. what i wanted to do is, there is such tremendous story and dramatic story. the hardest thing for me westerly things out. there are so many stories. the difficulty was keeping

things out. and even then, you know, it's not a huge book, but is not a small book writer. or i wanted to do it -- and by telling these stories, these dramatic stories of one to use those as a lens to get into the history, as a vehicle to get into the history as a way to bring no reader along. so my first priority was to tell a really good story. so that's what i've done. that is allied added depth. washington irving does a wonderful job telling the story. start over there. >> could you say just a little bit more about david thompson stripped-down and coming into a story about the same time? >> there is so much to say. so david thompson works for the north west company which was a british rival, canadian rival.

and he proposed a partnership to start a west coast colony. and did more less kind of him than hot and finally apparently declined in. he went ahead and started one anyway. as soon as the british heard that he was starting one, says a northwest company heard that he was starting one they sent a message through their interior network of rivers and lakes and the voyager canoes to as far west as they could. they sent it to david thompson who was then the exploring a spin the northern rockies region he had been up there several years and was just coming back east. he finally won it a vacation after during this huge amount of exploration. and the indians, and the stargazer because he was always using a sexting to mappings. he was on his way back and gets the message coming up toward the

rockies by who forger can it assess turn around and go to the mountain. it's not clear exactly what the details of the message work, but he immediately turned around, tried to get to the mouth of the columbia, crossed over the rocky mountains, had to winter up in some past with all the snow, built canoes the next year, paddled down the columbia, you know, just another day in the life of david thompson. but he got there and was three months -- by the time he got there they have been three months. and then he went back upstream. he actually i know within. these guys, even though they might be rivals in enemies there was this cordial but jen ominous. he was welcomed with all the, you know, dinners and per geology. stayed away, and then they all turned around and went back a stream. >> so he was one of the most wealthy men in the country. you mentioned the of a blank check for the