should keep up the narrative because this is very much a part of my life. and i should add because of these experimental treatments i've had my genome sequenced. i'm able to write about some quite exciting developments in the field which i hope will shortly become more available. it's a time to have cancer, some of my age, because there are treatments i can see that are just out of my reach probably just encouraging and annoying if you like and others are probably just within. my constitution is very good. all of my other vital signs were excellent. everything from my liver to my blood pressure. unjustly so. but if i can hang on through quite a few expedients i can and intend to try.

>> host: but you just have your gallbladder out? >> guest: i had a very bad episode of couple of weeks ago. i crashed very admirably. i had a meltdown in my bone marrow. that can happen in the crisis of white and red blood cells and i was in terrible pain. so i'm back in hanging on. c-span: what has this done to the old head clicks >> guest: the worst of the initial of the treatment is called kino brain -- chemo brain where you feel foggy and you barely want to read or write and that terrified me because i thought if i can't do that, i would be gone in the literal

sense i wouldn't have a very persuasive reason to live and i didn't want to get into this. but it turns out that chemo brain is transitory. i still suffered and i've got is not physically but i'm quite lucid at least in my own opinion. i could write a column today if i was lucky with some strong coffee. i could sit and read and converse but if anything was to spread in that direction, then i probably would feel that that was the end. c-span: what has been the reaction from other people to your condition? because you know a ton of people. >> guest: i also know quite a bit more people now. and because i had to cancel the two are just as it was beginning for a rather lavish but for back in the summer i could just do the fees and going to treatment, i had to go into the statement as if i were a public figure on why i couldn't keep these

appointments. i have to say something. as it became overnight a sort of news items. i guess it must have been a slow week. and i imagine partly because of my opinions about the supernatural and the religious life i must have gotten a lot of attention because people but surely now would be the time to make a reconsideration and withdraw from the principals to make my peace with some church or another. and there was a lot of public talk about that. i i took it kindly. there were other people that lobbied in the opposite direction presenting to instruct in either indicates thathem eitt seems present to us that people can't seem to help that. and i've had an amazing number of letters from people. i still get them from the house as well as e-mails to my office

and new york. saying the nicest things, most but not all. and try to assure me that my life hasn't been a waste of time even if it ends prematurely. i'm 62 in april if i make it that far. and believe me, that has been encouraging. i've learned something from it which is like most things those are important and already known to me that i really know it now. never put off writing -- it is very much appreciated and i'm not asking for more people to write to me that if they have someone in mind no into them i would urge them to do it. and i'm not particularly, what is the work is honorable in that way. this has been very moving for me. very concerning. c-span: has any of your professional enemies come to you

during this time? if they have, what do they say? >> guest: that would be rivals to take the opposite view. there've been columns written about me in "the new york time times." they've begun to feel as if i were reading my obituary because i'm still alive. i thought it's nice and it gave me this slightly creepy feeling of being premature as well. i don't know how many personal enemies i have. people just didn't like me in other words. a number of people have written to me saying they hope i suffer now and forever after i type and i would say that is heartening a

small. c-span: go back for a moment because it was quite a series of events. i have your memoir in my hands in which -- >> guest: so should everybody. c-span: is and the first seven pages are all about death. did you have any premonition at all? all? >> guest: no but it is weird. i have a free gift from the national portrait gallery in london that purchases a magazine for subscribers about its upcoming exhibition and there was an exhibition of the friend of mine that photographs which included me, and because one of the people featured died while the catalog was going to press, they put into words next to my name for the first time in my life i saw the word believe christopher hitchens in print and it does concentrate the mind. i think they thought that i was going to sue.

they've withdrawn and i said i want you to send me as many as you got because it makes a wonderful introduction to the memo that i have nearly finished. so, it's called prologue with premonition on tha death at that stage but at thatstage i had no. c-span: event on the daily show with jon stewart right around the time that you found out. >> guest: on the day that i was diagnosed yes. c-span: did you know at the time? >> guest: i knew in the morning. i woke up feeling very ill and had to be taken to the hospital and they said they thought i was having a heart attack. they said it's not your heart you can discharge your self if you want. we recommend you stay for observation. but whatever you do the next stop was to be the oncologist

because it is a tumor probably in your esophagus but it's spread. so i decided to discharge myself because i wanted to do the show and also that evening a big event at the 92nd street y. and i managed to do both of these showings but i just had the sentence read to me. c-span: lets watch a little bit of the show so that people can see and when they see this, they know that you have a problem. >> guest: i've never seen it. yes i've never seen it. actually as i saw you on "the jon stewart show" you look like you had a sense of humor, you are fairly normal. what was your head telling you when you are talking out there?

>> that kind of sealed the memory of it. it dealt with -- [inaudible] exhibits in? i said maybe. but there's no choice so it is too late now. >> i don't think people should be able to decide for you. when you said you turn 60, i'm very impressed that someone who is clearly from the story of the book lived, you've lived, you haven't taken it easy on this model body you have. [laughter] yet you don't look like and you should. [laughter] you actually look, i don't know, it's somewhat upsetting. [laughter] >> there is crying inside. and there's tension up in my attic that is beginning -- this jiggly distinctly -- >> it's starting to get out. c-span: as i saw you you

looked like you have a sense of humor and you were fairly normal but for post your head telling you when you were walking out of their? >> guest: i just buried a fought to do the show and later when the onstage went very well it was that the dinner after that i began to feel like i could carry on anymore. but i should get through it. i have every opportunity between the events i was violently sick. c-span: did you have any indication at all something was going on? >> guest: i had nothing but very good annual checkup reports. c-span: your father died of esophagus cancer. >> guest: he did at the age of 79. brian mack had penetrated? >> guest: it was in the book. i would have written that if i haven'hadn't found out myself. but no, i suppose because i used to smoke very heavily. i was afraid it was getting into

my lungs. the thing is you can have it for quite a while. it's very hard to detect unless you have another g.i. almost every month and you are looking for you are very likely to miss it and it doesn't usually present it just metastasized by the way that i time the doctor for the biopsy it was easy to do because you could feel it in the lymph node on my neck which is not a good sign. c-span: you begin with penetrated? >> guest: the treatment of chemotherapy, which made me lose my hair. it's growing back with the new chemical i'm trying slightly. it made me lose a lot of weight and very tired but not too bad. it was measurably reduced. c-span: where did you have this done?

>> guest: in bethesda. c-span: that started when? >> guest: july. c-span: and it ended when? >> guest: it's still going on. thanks to the francis collins at the institute of health and that includes the national cancer institute, who did the human genome project under time and under budget a marvelous treatment he and i met because we are on opposite sides of the religion debate and we became friends that way. he's a very convinced christian and we have become friendly d. baker's and he's taken a kind interest in my case and has helped me have my genome sequence and try to look for a more perfect identifiable match so they can find something peculiar to me for a special drug. so today is friday the 14th. i don't know when this will be

shown. on monday i'm going in and i have to try that if i'm strong enough and my bone marrow is recovered enough. that involves 6 billion dna matches of my tumor set against 6 billion matches of my blood to look for something that was individually mutated that wasn't in my gene can absolutely extraordinary what can be done now. i had to go to st. louis to do it. c-span: by st. louis? >> guest: that seems to be where the project is for finding out how it can be applied to individuals predicaments and medicine. it will be commonplace. there is a lack of funding and i would say a word about this right now so people can write their congressmen and the most recent budget a terrible collapse. and of course it is a stupid attempt to limit the extent to which actually existing cells can be used for this kind of

thing. and i've become -- but i was anyway before this but i would like to become more than i am not an advocate for overcoming these scientific obstacles for medical research. c-span: so you get your treatment at nih? >> guest: i've had various tests that i go to my regular oncologist in bethesda who consults over the internet with a panel of like-minded experts and they were gone catching elsewhere and work out a protocol for me and adjust it every few weeks. c-span: in the "vanity fair" december issue you wrote about a woman who came up to you when you were signing the book and she starts off by saying -- i have it here just in case but --

>> guest: [inaudible] which i might do, signing books in new york. so there is a long line and the woman at the front comes towards me and doesn't even have the book and says i'm sorry to hear that you are ill and i said that's very nice of you to say. she said a cousin of mine had cancer and i said i'm sorry to hear that. she said yes in the liver and i said that's dreadful. that's awful and she said that he got better and i said that's good. then she said he got much worse again and i said i'm sorry and she said of course he was a homosexual an and of course i'mt going to say of course. his friends and family abandoned him and he died alone in great pain and agony, piercing pain and humiliation from indescribable hard or and i was

beginning to run out of things to say with expressed consideration to that and she said i just wanted you to know i know exactly what you're going through and left without buying a book. [laughter] i thought would she have treated me like that if i were well of course not the people think they have a right or a duty to ask. and i think that the patients also need to stop this into reciprocate by not inflicting it on people. i have a button that i'm wearing it says don't ask and i will tell. some people do make a huge parade of their condition. i try to write about it in other contexts. i wrote about the national day of prayer and why i wasn't trying it and i've written about new treatments and stuff like that. i don't just want to write my own diaries.

c-span: you wrote in the prologue of your book as i said a lot about this which is called "hitch-22". i personally want to do this in the active and not the passive and to be there to look at in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me. why? and what does that mean? >> guest: is part of life so i would like to be conscious for it but this is what i thought then. and ideally i would like to be making a speech perhaps were making love, or i don't know, sitting with friends or if i hadn't been more noticed conceivably to try where people gather around and you try to make the first is a decent farewell. i have had cause to reconsider that now because if the cancer

doesn't go into remission is a very unpleasant way to die. one way is to choke on your own puke for example, not a very good thing and it can be preceded by all kind of human relations. so it's not that you're going to die and designed to reconcile to that as part of life. it's that the sentence includes iub torture debate before. so i now feel a slight bravado about when i wrote about. that. i would still if it were possible like to be awake and looking at people in different lucky talking to them that i'm not so sure that i would insist on it. it might be so well to sort of slip away in a narcotic stupor. it might be but still something about that may sound very

old-fashioned but it strikes me as noble. as i say it's part of life. i want to get as much out of it as i can. c-span: how much during this period have you talked about this with your wife? >> guest: a lot because she has been a great day for me. she does things i don't like to do, going on the internet and looking up every conceivable ramification of treatment, tirelessly looking for new doctors and new avenues so we talk a lot about it. without losing and what will happen when i'm gone. we have barely talked about that. my determination is that i'm not going to die. well i'm not going to die of it now. i might die with it years from now and that is a possibility. and i'm going to do everything i can to be an experimental subject for other treatments

even if they don't work for me. i feel that would be as i say in the book i quote a great american scholar who said so it was to reach on that and i thought i would be doing something for humanity even if it involved protracted treatments unnecessarily i would be willing to do it. c-span: in the middle of this a couple of weeks ago you debated tony blair in toronto. c-span: we covered it and i want to run a clip of you making some points. eitting othe st stage withw you. let's watch that and will come back and ask you about it. spent as long you don't want wn your religion taught to children to school, given a government subsidy, proposed on me, any of thesee things, you are fine byb.

me. i prefer --[app [applause] >> i would prefer not even toef know what it is that you do. [laughter] in that church a george. in fact, if you force it on me o will consider itn a breach.ave have your own bloody christmas. . do your offerings in and out of try going and don't mutilate your children. don't you think that is reasonably? has ever been honored by the other side? of course not in its history toy to me and i will share it with you. if i believed that there was a savior or an appointed to send or profit for example who put me

in mind and left me and wanted the best for me if i believed that and then i possess the means opossessed themeans of grd glory to phrase it like that i think i don't know but i think i might be happy. why doesn't it make them happy? [applause] don't you think it's a perfectly decent question? because they won't be happy until yo you be needed, too andy is that? because that is what their books tell them. [applause] c-span: when did you do that debate and when was that? >> guest: thanksgiving. c-span: what condition were you in? >> guest: i timed my treatment because i had a lot of notice so that it would come at the end when i'm usually much stronger because it would be -- it was a huge event with a lot of money that went into fixing it up and adding security and all this

stuff. i never like to cancel anyway but i couldn't do that so i was feeling okay. very tired but physically all right and mentally quite over. it was the first time he had a public debate since he started being premaster on any subject. c-span: and then you wrote about it in "vanity fair." what was your take on that? what was your position in his position? >> guest: i debate with religious people all the time, all kinds of people. he is of course a new convert to catholicism so i wanted to question a bit about that and then you can only do one thing at a time usually in these debates but the point i wanted him to concede was that the evils that people like myself speak about when we talk about religion they would've basic

knowledge and say this was done in the name of religion and i said you must drop that there is a warren and authority very clearly in the holy books which is supposed to be the word of god so it's a copout to use a vulgarity to say it is in the name of. you can't just say it's a parody of. you have to face the responsibility. well intact when we were asked by one questioner to say what had been the strongest point made by the other he said that he agreed that i was right that the problem is there is authority for the great atrocity and cruelty and stupidity so that is my best memory of the evening i suppose. when i asked him with of a long quotation from cardinal newman who he just recommended to the pope and supported very wicked in my view quotation and i

wanted to know if he thought the catholic church was the one true church it was quite strange he didn't come up to fight me on that. you could not tell from anything he said if he was a roman catholic adult. he could have been a very weak sort of christian socialist liberal who basically says christianity is okay because it makes people do good work and give money to charity. it has nothing to do with the relevant to the truth of the matter. so, but he's a ma he is a man wi sympathize in other ways and i never will -- i know a little bit of it for quite some time so it was an interesting debate. excuse me. sorry.

c-span: the first interview i ever conducted with you is november 71983. it was a call-in show and i want to just run one minute and 24 seconds and then we will talk about this. i think journalists have lost the ability based on the past performance of the american people are speaking out now. i just feel that without any type of check and balance on the journalists they are doing exactly what this gentleman is doing here they bring them over to the country and report of the faults but don't take a deep enough look at the positive aspects of what the free press really is.

>> guest: north of philadelphia how do you presume to know that the american people are speaking out clicks to the extent you do know that you can speak to them you can only know through reading the free press and watching free tv. the truth is they are reporting the fact that they are unpopular with the administration and the column admits it is true that the public opinion is probably on the side on this one but if you want your press to be treated as the british treated their press, you're going to end up not knowing very much about what's going on if that is whatt you want, don't read the papers but do not present me or anyone else from reading them. c-span: you can see how the times have changed from that clip. there you were on the set smoking. >> guest: i was doing that till quite later on. it's incredible now when i see as one often does that shot.

the old studio stretching as far as the eye can see. c-span: i also appreciated you calling me david on that show. it was humbling. >> guest: it was a distinguished correspondent david lamb. i think it's important to get people's attention. c-span: it's fun to see this for both of us to go back at that time. but in those days there's a lot of bravado about smoking and drinking and for the first booknotes book i went with you to a bar and you have your computer and a glass of something and a cigarette. >> guest: i used to write my columns in the bar. c-span: do you think ever that this wouldn't happen if it weren't for that and did your father spoke? >> guest: my father was a pipe smoker and reasonably consistent drinker, too and i can't but

think that is what contributed to it. we didn't learn much from his death my brother and i because he was diagnosed and died almost right away. we didn't find out much -- i know it was lower down than mine is and probably inoperable but it wasn't a teaching moment. c-span: is yours inoperable? >> guest: yes it can't be cut out. its spread and can't be cut out and it is too close to my heart and my lungs to be radiated so it has to be chemotherapy and/or targeted gene therapy. brian over the years you were smoking -- this could answer the question of course i always knew there was a risk and i decided to take it because whether it is an illusion or not, i don't think it is, but it helped my concentration and it stopped me

from being bored and stopped other people from being boring to some extent. it would keep me awake and go longer for conversations. if i was asked what i do it again the answer is probably quite earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. easy for me to say of course and not nice for my children to hear iit sounds irresponsible. if i say i would do that all again but the truth is they would be hypocritical for me to say no i would never touch the stuff if i had known because i did not. everyone knows. and i decided all of life is a wager and i'm going to wage it on this bit and i can't make it come out any other way. it's strange i almost don't even regret it though i should because it's impossible for me to picture life without win whig

and other things fueling the company and keeping the reading and traveling and energizing. it worked for me. it really did. c-span: was over the years has bored you? >> guest: i think that it's one of the deadly sins to despair and feeling that nothing is interesting. i am prone to it. i get easily tired of the y. don't know, committee meetings though i don't have to do any of those or waiting in line with. a very impatient person. so i'm very happy by myself and lucky in that way and for me to

add the edge in the box to the left. but it's been a formula. c-span: during this time of your illness how do you pass the time and have you had a lot of pain during this time? >> guest: especially before i found out it was the gallbladder and not the side effects i was becoming worried that i was overdoing pain killers. it should have been the other way around but i said i'm living dangerously from pill t the hot. i shouldn't be taking this much. i was beginning to feel woozy. but i like to think the gallbladder was the cause because before that the pain had been spent. it was quite manageable. but it became unbearable. c-span: how many days ago did you have your gallbladder out clicks

>> guest: ten. c-span: did you have the lab pro scott? >> guest: they removed it very quickly once they found it. c-span: do you feel better? >> guest: knock it because the general anesthetic takes a while to wear off, at least it has with me given how weak i was already and how much weight i've lost and how little food i have been taking. i couldn't have done this yesterday for example. i could hardly get out of bed. c-span: about 30 some years ago a man named stuart column list for "newsweek" had with key media, difficult kenya and wrote about it. have you gone back and looked at any of his columns? he told the story i think he might have had a bone marrow transplant i can't remember for sure but i know i was glued to it and he took us all the way

through the process. how much more are we going to hear from you about your situation? >> guest: i hope a lot and i don't just say that for my own sake. c-span: what are you thinking of telling? >> guest: the main thing is to despise the extraordinary innovations in this kind of becoming available based on our new knowledge of our genetic makeup. as far as the treatment are applicable to me as some of them are, i'm hoping to write in some detail and alert people to the possibilities they may not know about that exist even for quite hard advanced cases. c-span c-span: any thought of writing a book? >> guest: i wanted to write a book both about facing death and

about the struggle for life and how one motivation for the latter from the obvious is precisely to see if i can purchase it again pushing those boundaries back and enlarge in the area of scientific knowledge. c-span: have you lost interest in certain things in the world clicks >> guest: no. c-span: not at all? and as you sit here today what would be your number one interest of things going on in the world clicks >> guest: read-out? looking at today's paper which is the first thing i do today still i suppose it would have to be one version or another of the confrontation with islamic jihad. in particular the serious news in pakistan the last few weeks

where the whole threat seems to have been noticed in a way that we have not quite internalized where the chief minister of the most important state is murdering cold blood on the grounds that he opposes the law not even that he's committed blasphemy. so anyone claiming to be a muslim is entitled to and the endorsement of all religious authorities. it used to be bad enough on conviction by the court of the charge you could face a death sentence in the appeals process. bad enough warren did but no permission for anybody to

appoint himself and execution on the spot and could be the agent of their religion and murdering anyone they like is dangerous. .. especially if we appear to be their patrons. how do you, i mean,. c-span: what about this process of having to face this illness are you surprised about? the reason i ask you about, you went off on some substance there and some people just give all that up when you're faced with this kind of situation. what's changed, what about this process surprise you? >> guest: my into process? c-span: your process of becoming ill and they tell you you've got stage four esophageal cancer and all that.

are you surprised that any of this the last six months? you've really thought about it. he wrote seven pages about death. >> guest: yes. i think a memoir of a person who just passed 60 has to face back. so i thought i owed that much to the readers. know, it hasn't been all that surprising. i don't know. it's a commonplace thing. i mean i don't -- i wrote this summer. i don't sit around asking myself why me, and if i did the cosmos wouldn't bother to favor me with reply. wouldn't even say why not. it's a commonplace thing that's not in my age and previous habits. it's almost laughably predictable. the only interesting thing about it is it's possible i mean ability to treatments are unknown until very recently the

outcome, brilliant work by devoted people, some of who i'm very lucky to count as friends. c-span: you know there are many examples we hear from friends and people we've known over the years where a doctor will say some very straightforward and crude things and make life very uncomfortable. i remember those reported in this town with the "washington post" you told me one day, he's no longer with us, the doctor called him after he attacked us and he says, guess what. you got a big see. i couldn't believe that he actually, you know, that it happened but for the reason i bring this up is what marks would to get a medical professional in the way they've treated and have they given you hope that this thing can be linked? >> guest: did give me more of a margin of hautacam elect, yes. they haven't pronounced on what chances unless i've asked them, which i decided not to do it

first until it occurred to me that it would be very useful if you like accounting purposes to have a rough idea. one has to plan for one's loved ones and descendents. i thought for actually the reasons i like to have a just. they don't like being asked because they don't really know. the best answer i got was the following. if you took 1000 people who were myself, in other words, my age, my state of health, my gender i think, thousands of us today, half of us will be dead in a year. of the remaining half, others might hope to live more than a year and of that number, quite a number, to live for a considerable number of years. they can do better than that. that was from a very senior person at nih was expecting the question. c-span: what is your reaction to people like me? we come to your apartment. we want to sit down and talk.

we want to hear this story and you've had a bunch year. are you surprised at that? >> guest: a little bit, yes. i was, but a lot of it i know has been to do with my stance on religion. a very large number of people have asked me doesn't it change your attitude to the infinite, eternal, the supernatural and so forth. i've said that i really don't see why it should. i've never thought of it as a ticklish urgent question. i spent a lot of my life he citing that there isn't any redemption, there's no salvation, that there is no afterlife. there's no supervising boss. if i was to tell you well, now i've got a malignancy in my esophagus, that changes everything, you would think, i

hope, the main effect had been on my iq. it's a complete logical non sequitur. it's nothing to do with it. so i've enjoyed taking part in that argument. there's a certain ghoulish element, even about the nice people who have been praying for me. they are not just praying for my recovery, they are praying for my reconciliation with religion. i proposed a trade off the of the day. i said i'll tell you what, what if we secularists stop going to hospitals and walking around the wards and asking people who are religious when they're in extremists in the last days and saying look, you still got a little time, why don't you live the last few days as a free person. you'll feel much better. all that nonsense a touchy. you could have every chance to give it a. experience the life of a freethinking autonomous person. don't live in fear, don't believe in mythology.

i don't think they would welcome it. we don't do that. but it seems to be considered the right of almost everybody to do it the other way around. i don't rescind it at all because i like every opportunity for the argument. a lot of it has been to do with that. i don't flatter myself as a public figure. i rate all that high. c-span: the book that we did in 1983, a short clip. i want to run this and get your reaction to it. >> there was a number. for me it is ours ben the first. and i think the hatred that presides often as a terrific way to of getting gambetta morning. it can be. and in this country where people like to be not judgmental and they can be, which translates as on wholly into whether an awful lot of reputation's got around that one would not be

doing one's job. so says it is not really avoidable i think the question is how to -- and it is like turning to advantage , one of the things i don't like about christianity is that you have compulsory love. which is bound to lead to hypocrisy, people pretending to love more than they do and since it is coupled with the injunction i got here you are also supposed to fear there is every chance of that curdling. so it almost seems honest by contrast to find someone completely unbearable like henry kissinger, for example it is a bit like alcohol, if you like, i good servant, but a bad master. i have a completely cold hatred and contempt. it does not waste much of what time.

it just enables me to penetrate, i think, the sort of fog of sentiment and reputation in which he is affected. and it does not eat away at me. does not keep me awake at night. does not poison me. does not fill me with pile. i can't pretend is just a matter of the political disagreement. i think there is such a thing as evil and the world to was sometimes personified and i think i was under no obligation to be ambivalent. c-span: changer mind at all about mother teresa? >> guest: what could not exactly hate her. because in the way i detested the influence that she had. i can tell you why in a sentence, if you want. the very reason they she is so celebrated, her concern for the poor of the world. well, as it happens, we know

with the curious. it goes under the name the empowerment of women. it works everywhere, bangladesh, bolivia. give women some control over their reproductive cycle, get them off the animal routine of being a breathing machine. and the level of quality will decline. sharply. it is never known to fail, consistent. just for an example, my central point, spent her entire life opposing, opposing all forms of birth control and abortion which she called murder joyfully in a nobel prize speech that is basically it. the reputation, the sanctitude she got for preaching this nonsense. but one could add to our with the richest of rich, people like charles keating

was a great friend of hers. she took stolen money from him. she took money from that duvalier dictators in haiti which treated the poor like pace towards. it does on. and her whole effect was entirely retrograde. one story about her. in that book, very short. five or six other direct accusations against her back up the fact. that book has been reviewed by every newspaper in the world. no one is ever pointed out a mistake and it cannot one. none of what is commonly believed the latter is true. and this is now. people need, every now and then to make complete solution to win this is one. c-span: what would you do if henry kissinger decided to call you and try to bury the hatchet from these years? >> i would be extremely

interested. one of the reasons i detest him is i know that that could not happen. he would not even agree when i was writing a book about him to have questions submitted in writing let alone to meet me. he has made it a condition when he appears on television programs that he not be asked about the book. end of this from producers, several of them. he raised a condition that he not be asked about the book. never mind me. no reason to like me. but if i was some, who is this guy hichens? but i know more important if you think of the things that he has been found out as having done it like lying about vietnam, chilly, bangladesh, the deaths of so many people needlessly, and that history, robert mcnamara, the kennedy

brothers, others who in their books and memoirs try to make somewhat restitution . we sort of suspected at the time that it was bad. may be worse. we are sort of sorry and actually we have some evidence we feel we should share with you, discloses should have at the time. kissinger never said a word of self criticism, not one. and he gets very petulant and angry in spiled with ugly when he is criticized as he said, a contingency, that he was to try it i would be fascinated to begin, of course. c-span: we don't have much time. >> guest: don't say that. [laughter] >> guest: i will be the judge of that. c-span: if you knew that there was a certain amount of time left, no idea, six months, a year, however, things you want to do?

>> guest: yes, but what they don't tell you is what kind of monthly's would be. as the other reason they don't like being asked the late congressman had the same thing is me. debt recently, but before he died he had about four or five. he had done a lot of traveling. he kept up his interest in human rights and international post. then he got word that it was back and probably that was it. he made fairly short work time, a few weeks ago. and that is what i need to know. you know, the great loss to me in the last months is the inability the travel. i got to toronto for thanksgiving. that was not that hard. in the california. a very kind of him to send for me to do the speaking. got to see little big horn, which i always wanted to. and the wonderful national

park the 39 states. c-span: which one? >> guest: that because a nebraska. c-span: any plan to go back to your own country? >> it is sentimental, no, but someone said to me renee the other day, i realize i can't bear the idea of not going back at least once. i could not do it now. i would have to be told i was on what they called a chemo holiday. it. c-span: we are out of time. the best way to end it is to say analysts see you in a auple of yars. >> thank you very much.leasu >> my pleasure.. ♪ ♪

>> for a dvd copy of this this program call 1-877-662-7726. for a free transcript or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. q&a programs are also available at c-span podcasts. >> here's a great region and do some reading list. c-span's latest book "sundays at eight," collection of stories from some of the nations most influential people over the past 25 years. >> i always knew was a risk in the boating lifestyle and i decided to take it because whether it's an illusion or not, i don't think it is, it helped my concentration. it's not me being bored, stuck other people from being went to some extent. it would keep me awake and make

me come that evening one longer, along the conversation. if i was asked would i do it again, the answer is probably yes. i would've quit earlier possibly hoping to get away with the whole thing. easy for me to say not very nice which opened here. it sounds irresponsible if i say yes, i would do all that begin to you. but the truth is it would be hypocritical to say no, i would never touch the stuff if i don't because i did know. everyone knows. >> soviet union and the soviet system in eastern europe contained the seeds of its own destruction. many of the problems we saw at the end begin at the very beginning. i spoke already about the attempt to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political life and social life. one of the problems is that when you do that come when you try to control everything, then you great opposition and potential

dissidents ever. if you tell all artists have to paint the same way and one artist says i don't want to paint that way. i want to paint another way. you have just made him into a political dissident. >> if you want to subsidize housing in this country and we want to talk about a populist agrees that is something we should subsidize, then put on the balance sheet and make it clear and make it evident and make everybody aware of how much it is costing. but when you deliver it through these third party enterprises, fannie mae and freddie mac, when you deliver the subsidies to a public company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of that subsidy for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing homeownership. >> christopher hitchens, anne applebaum and gretchen morgenson are a few of the 41 and engaging stories in c-span's "sundays at eight" now available at your favorite bookseller. ..

sunday, on real america arranges interview with president herbert hoover. let us know what you think. call us or e-mail us. join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter.

>> tonight on booktv, hillary clinton discusses her book, hard choices. ben shapiro lays out a criminal case against the president in the people vs. barack obama, and then green green walled discusses nsa surveillance in his book "no place to hide." >> in her new book, "hard choices"" hillary clinton talks about her time as secretary of state in the obama administration. this is an hour. >> our guest of honor is known primarily, of course, for her political role as first lady, u.s. senator from new york, and the 67th secretary of state. but she is also just published her fifth book, and has several prevus