36 brutal days in the mountains had yielded only the rediscovery of the arkansas which he has been following since mid-october. so this was still the arctic thaw where was the red? texas was not one of the places that cross the pike's line. he decides it must be to the southwest over those mountains and he decides to cross. now some have interpreted this as evidence of pike's secret orders. he's going to get to santa fe no matter what even if he has to cross uncrossable bounds. maybe so bad a look at the santa fe trail map reveals that if he is on the arkansas the red river right here and santa fe right here are in the same direction.

the direction alone doesn't tell us much about what his objective is here but poncho pass does tell us something. this is the view that pike would have from his christmas day camp and for several days before and after. poncho pass is a low spot in the mountains a little bit to the southwest of the city of saliva and if pike looked south he would have found it very inviting place to cross the mountains. his mission is to get to santa fe. this is as good a place as any to try and do it. if he stands in the same spot and looks to the left he is going to see the high peaks of the northern end of the crystal mountains and he will realize if i want to cross its never going to get any better than this so he doesn't. he continues downstream which is exactly the behavior somebody who believed he was on the red river and intending to head home. decides

to cross this andre's there would be two men behind on the arkansas. the horses are shot in the plan is to leave a couple of men behind but the horses let the horses recover while the rest of the party goes and finds a good pathway to this andre and once they find that they will send back and hopefully will have found the easiest route for the mountains. that may have worked except for the events of january 17. on january 17 pike became -- me he colorado wet mountain valley near here late in the day the last waning hours of sunshine right about the time i took this photograph and he sees there is nothing in the way of water in front of him and he decides he's going to cross the valley not evident in this picture but at the foot of the

sandre's they had lots of streets coming out of the mounting canyons radiate against pike has mis-estimated the aerial distance. it takes them several hours and did most of this crossing in the dark. they crossed great creek near the modern town of westcliffe right about here and the men get their feet wet crossing the creek. several hours later by the time he gets to the trees on the far side of the mountains and gets a campfire going it's dark and the temperature has gone to 10 degrees below zero on pikes thermometer and several of the men have serious frostbite. this necessitates a rest for several days. by the time they start their march again without -- that they leave behind because of their frostbite by the time they start again of blizzard has

struck. the snow at some points are so so -- is so bad that sub five says he can't see more than a few feet and head of them and the party become separated. on one occasion they go three days without food and they get a small meal and then they go for days without food. it eventually becomes too much for john brown who grumbles something to the effect. [inaudible] and at first pike ignored his comments and later in the day they shoot a bison and a feast by campfire. after everybody is satisfied and has eaten their full, there fell however pike calls on brown seditious and mutinous and he says if you -- if i hear a comment from you like this again

i will execute you. again you don't need to absorb everything here but i want to point out some of the language that pike uses in criticizing brown language that is heavily laden with nationalist implications in the aftermath of the constitution of the bill of rights in the founding of the nation. he talks about equality. he talks about gratitude. remember what pike promise to do to return them to a grateful country and he's accusing brown of being the opposite, ungrateful. he talks about physical sacrifice and danger and he promises again the rewards of government and gratitude of countrymecountryme n. so when pike has lost everything, food, directions, forces, supported his men he falls back on the language of nationalism. pike looks pretty bad right about now.

getting over the sandres has obsessed him even though past after pass or block by snow. he alternates between the sub session and despair and the desire to just lay down and die in the snow. he has abandoned five men and driven others beyond their limits. he has threatened to execute anybody who grumbles. the secret orders theory sees this as the behavior of the man who is obsessed with following secret orders to get to santa fe. let's go back and talk for a second about bodies as organisms, the nature side of that bartley then diagram i showed you a few minutes ago. the men's caloric intake has been dangerously low since the christmas eve feast. they have alternated going several days at a time without any food at all and occasionally getting to eat for a day. the medical reports or research

that i studied about starvation and the physicians i have talked to have told me that it's unlikely that pikes gastrointestinal system would have been able to absorb enough nutrients from these occasional fees to make up for it the completion of fat and muscle that occurred during the fasts. on the day that brown grumbled they had not eaten for four full days. pike twice described the party as extremely emaciated and probably suffering the first effects of starvation, weight loss and weakness irritability if i went out verse anger impaired memory and concentration. if you couple this with the hypothermia they were also probably suffering from and the apathy and the clouded judgment that comes along with that not only, it probably means that not only are they exhausted but losing the ability to process information and make decisions.

literally pike cannot think straight at this point. pike's outburst might offend the action of the man who has secret orders to get to santa fe but they are also consistent with the actions of a hungry hypothermic organism that has lost the ability, lost mental stability and mental acuity. in any case things got better after their meal. on the 27th of january they do find a pass to get over the sandres and look out over a broad valley with a river in this line of trees, a river running through it to the southeast. the red, that was still in texas but pike went to the southern end of the valley and belted smoltz stockade on a tributary of the river. he sent a rescue party back. they sent back another rescue

party for him and while the second rescue party was still out he party of spanish dragoons showed up at the ford and told him he was on spanish soil. is this not the red pike told him just as he told wilkinson. he would be pretend to be lost. the rio delle mort. pike was camped on spanish soil. the spaniards marched himself to santa fe and then to the city of chihuahua the provincial capital before returning them back across texas to american soil later that summer. and pike patriotically expresses the excitement that he has upon returning to the united states. so let's return to the question by way of conclusion here. let's return to the question of secret orders.

i haven't given you all of the evidence that is relevant here but i have given you a bunch of it and it's an conclusive. the most certain thing we can say about secret orders is that we can't know for sure. it's tantalizing and even plausible to have secret orders but ultimately that theory on the existence of orders for which we have no direct evidence of their existence. the counter story of pike as an enlightened geographer and cognitively impaired organism squares not only with the available evidence but also with his habit of overreaching orders. pike was a naturalist remember and conspiring with byrd and wilkinson doesn't fit his mo. it's not in keeping with his character. going beyond his orders doing dangerous things making poor decisions specially when cold and hungry and exhausted to

square with this character. as a historian if everything can be explained by the available evidence i think historians ought to be very cautious in resting their explanation on conjectural evidence. his behavior although it's possible that he has secret orders, we can prove that he didn't i think his behavior is best described as part of a larger set of mistakes and poor decisions that were occasioned by the failure of all of his resources. his men, his maps, his horses, his mind, his body. the failure of those things to do what he had expected them to do and with that i will stop and i would be very happy to take questions or comments if you have them. thanks for your attention and for coming out tonight.

see where did he go from there? >> where did he go? from that point on. pike has a career trajectory. the question is worded pike go from this point in 1807 forward? he has a career trajectory first publishing his journals and that takes about a year for him to organize the scraps of paper he has gotten from his expedition and things like that and then he gets a series of military promotions. he promoted quite rapidly. by the eve of the war of 1812 he is a colonel and in the middle of the war he is promoted to brigadier general. this is in march of 1813. in april of 1813 the battle of

york takes place one of the few decisive american victory to the entire war. pike was killed in combat at that battle. york is now known as toronto. the war has been politically volatile and did james madison administration that started the war begins to see that the war has stalemated and it's incredibly unpopular. he started looking for ways to back out at this. the work that began as an attempt to seize canada and gain territory for the united states he backs off of that and says really the wars about testing american medal to show on her to demonstrate that we can stand up to the most powerful army in the world and not lose. as he's trying to reframe the unpopular war the end of it, the

deaths of martyrs like sub life who have physically sacrifice for the country become a great tool for the madison administration to demonstrate they honor, bravery and sacrifice of americans in the war. so pike rockets to fame. other than george washington he is the brightest military hero and i'm going to mix my metaphors, the pantheon of american military heroes for a brief time from his death to the early 1820s. in fact if you know anything about meriwether lewis he died in debt. lewis and clark are not at all popular in american culture at the time. pike is a major hero. those are going to reverse of --

over the 19th and especially the 20 century. pike gets the glory and fame that had always eluded him in life so it's too late for him to enjoy it but in the end physical sacrifice for his country does end up getting him the rewards. thanks for that question. any other questions? see how old was he when he died? >> how old was pike when he died? who was 34 years old and so i have course as i was writing this had to confront the fact that i was writing about someone who had accomplished more in his life even though i had lived longer than he had. he was a very young man. he was 27 when he departed on his expedition and 28 when he returned. the question is did he ever marry? did he have family? he did.

in 1801 he married a woman named clara brown who by all accounts of hers, his and other people's was a very impressive woman, well-educated. she spoke several languages and collected books in french, english and spanish this the sort of woman that pike said would share my ambitions. she was much wealthier than he was. her family was against the marriage. her father in particular. pike at this point was the lowest level of the army hierarchy and one of the interesting things and i never would have put this together except two books happen to be open on my desk when i came in one morning and i put two things it doesn't necessarily go together, put them together. there was a book called clarissa

it's one of the longest novels written in english language and also one of the most popular novels of the 18th century. it's a story. it reflects this idea that people are free agents. people are independent and they can make whatever they wanted their life so claris is born into an upstanding family and her father keeps her under his f-bomb because he wants to prepare her for a successful marriage that will enhance the family. the family's reputation. but she has got ideas of her own. you have the old idea that parents should control who their children marry in order to maintain the high standard of the family versus the upstart independent young daughter. he ends up messing up her love and she ends up committing suicide.

the moral of this is parents you should let your children be independent, to make of themselves what they are able to rather than trying to hold onto this old idea of parents deciding who's they should marry to protect family standard. pike and clara brown marry against her father's wishes. they named their daughter, daughter conceived in the rebellion against parents, they name her clarissa which again -- so after the heroin of the story one of the things that makes me think that pike has absorb these ideas of the 18th century that children should be independent and adults should make of themselves what they can and being born into high station is not what's most important but rather what you make of yourself. so clarissa is his only surviving offspring.

she grows up. she marries a son of william henry harrison who is a good friend of pike and has a similar military career trajectory has pike except he lives longer and becomes president and is elected president in 1840. he doesn't live very long, just a few months but many including myself believe had piked with longer he might have had the trajectory of other famous frontier generals like andrew jackson or william henry harrison to become president. >> would you say he was extremely bright or was he just a man with a tremendous amount of fortitude? >> i think both. the question was was pika man who is extremely bright or just a man with a lot of fortitude? i would say he --

pike has no formal education. even as a young child and teenager he was just getting whatever he could and absorbing whatever school there might have been at a frontier military posts in their -- as he was growing up. if you read mike's writing its variant polished. the syntax and the spelling and things like that are not super sharp. his perceptiveness, his ability to observe spaniards or indians or fellow military officers to figure out what's going on in figuring out clever and diplomatic ways of handling things strike me as somebody who is very perceptive and very bright. and jackson had a little bit

more, he started higher in life and had a little bit more education. william henry harrison not so much and of course the other famous frontier person is abraham lincoln born in 1809 who goes from humble beginnings to become president as well. intelligence took him far. i think his ambition and fortitude and hardiness of constitutional spirit would have taken them far as well. but formal education was not something he had. he writes letters to his siblings quite frequently. the 14 letters i mention mentioned most of them are to his siblings and he is always exhorting them. study hard, train your mind. he also says train your body. he tells his younger brother who is one of the first classes at west point academy. on several occasions he says you need to strengthen your body and your mind and that is how you get ahead in life.

so again sacrifice, study hard. >> he is very ambitious. >> yes, in addition to wit and intelligence he is long on ambition. in the ohio valley he is staying up late night after night so he does his army duty's during the day and when he is reading querra send all these things and teaching himself. one of his co-officers at camp allegany on the ohio river says that he taught himself the sick mathematics he had learned french, that's he was a good scholar at this officer says andy was widely read. if you can imagine again that

not only takes the intelligence but the physical fortitude to be dragging stuff up and down the river all day and instead of crashing in your barracks or your tent at night you are up studying and teaching yourself french in mathematics and military strategies. >> what was his handwriting like >> his handwriting like most people of the 18th century was highly stylized and actually let's go back to the santa fe trail. this is a little messier than his letters would have been but this is, if you can see this is handwriting here. it's got lots of loops and curly cues. double s is written as an f which is common in 18th century script and the first time you encounter this, it took

me to -- an hour to read a one-page letter but after you read his and other people's handwriting from the time over and over it starts to come because it's very consistent. >> he several old letters and they are always preaching. they are very stylized and beautiful. >> he's pike was indeed a preacher. >> do you ever get to enjoy the benefits of what he was doing and accomplishing or did he care about that do you think? >> did he ever get to enjoy the benefits of what he was accomplishing and did he care about that? i think pike cared more about fame and gratitude of his countrymen than about material comfort. that's my sense.

was he able to enjoy those things is kind of amex bag. when he returns he returns just 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. 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] by author

john jacob. this an is hour and 14 minutes. >> thank you powell's books and thank you for being here. normally i have a more formal presentation. i have a reading i show at readings. but tonight is a special night

so i am going to do something different. and i want to tell stories a little bit more and, of course, i will do some readings. it is special we are at powell'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.