he carries these views into iran-contra. he is a member of the house republican investigating committee. he feels a little bit insulted by the way because senator inouye on the senate side has seen fit to name rudman as vice

chairman of the committee. lee hamilton by all accounts refus to name cheney as vice chair. it sets off a kind of a running conflict. throughout the hearing, cheney asked the point repeatedly that the problem is not the president, the problem is congress. congress overstepped its bounds in the 1970s, tried to take over presidential power. it was unconscionable, unconstitutional. and it is the cause of a whole lot of serious problems for the american way of doing politics. he repeats this in the minority report at the end of the congressional hearings, and that report gains new life years later when cheney reminds people who are -- this is i think 2005 -- so he's been in office as vice president at this point for

four years, and people in the media and public are still trying to figure out where does this guy come from and what does he think about all the stuff. and he points out to the press on i think air force one at this point, he says if you want to know what i think and what the issues, serious issues are of a presidential power, go back to this little-known manuscript that we put together back in the '80s and that will give you a roadmap, and it does. it's a very powerful message about how the real problems are not excesses in the presidential power, abuses of power. its abuses by congress. i think that explains a lot about the actions that he and president bush took in the 2000. >> questions? please identify yourself, and please give a question, not a lecture. barbara. >> that's my job.

>> malcolm, thanks very much. barbara slavin from the atlantic council. i wanted to focus on the iran policy aspects of this which i did in a review i wrote a week or so ago, and still i find it just stunning how people in the government can take x and y and put them together and get, you know, c. your documents that show people arguing that selling arms to iran will somehow promote people in the government who want to overthrow the government, at the same time these same people are expected to get american hostage is freed from lebanon. how in god's name can you reconcile these two things? and how ignorant or officials in the us government about iran? >> well, they were very ignorant as you know, and one expression of that was -- they acknowledge

it. this is why he went to paris but is why the idea, had some traction with a lot of people who thought about these issues, people at the cia under the people in the nsc. everybody wasn't after hostages alone. there were people who seriously wanted to see improvement. as i mentioned earlier in the early part of the administration this idea had surfaced more than once about getting back into better relations with iran and even using weapons to do it. this came up like a 1982 and in 1983 again, there are materials that relate to the. so there was a wide recognition that we didn't really know what was going on there, and a reflection of that is the weight that was given to a document that was put together by none other than -- about the internal power structures inside iran. i will say that somebody who has had something do with iran as a

subject of study and the last 10, 15 years, when you look at that document it's not that is completely off the mark. there's some interesting stuff in there, but where it's right in where it's wrong may seem subtle to somebody who doesn't know a lot about the subject which is very -- very to these guys to back them. but those differences make a huge difference overall. so they understood their ignorance. when he saw this kind of analysis they thought wow, this is fantastic. and ledeen is quoted as saying this is the real deal. this is a breakthrough. given where they were to got to say was kind of a breakthrough in that they found somebody, as bruce said, he failed polygraph constantly. the cia had wanted nothing to do with them. out of 15 questions he sailed on

13 i wanted him was his name kind of thing. but the fact was that by hook or by crook he was able to establish contacts with no less than an assistant to the prime minister of iran at the time, who we all know has can change his stripes and came out as one of the moderate candidates in 2009 election. back then he was one of the hard-liners and was very interested in getting weapons for the war. right there you've got the kind of disconnect that barber is talking about. how is it that you don't know that even though ghorbanifar and israelis will pay will be dealing with moderates and they will help you unseeded this regime, very soon after they get started they see their dealing with somebody, their dealing with people who are

self-professed members of the revolutionary guards and someone, and they are told repeatedly over the course of a year and a half that the people they are meeting with includes some of the hardline factions. they broke this down into factions, moderate and hardline and so they're pretty simplistic. too simplistic to be really helpful ultimately. and yet they refused to see what was right in front of them. and there was even a point after they finally got tired of ghorbanifar and after the failure of the mission in tehran in may of 86, the americans decide let's ditch this guy, let's find another channel, look for the second channel. there's a whole story about that. and it leads them to the nephew of rafsanjani. rafsanjani turned out to be a secret moderate, if you will, at

least a guy who has demonstrated an interest in trying to have a better relationship with the united states. for what reasons? i'm sure plenty of reasons, that he had given signals as early as june 85 when the hijacking took place and the navy diver -- diver was executed and thrown onto the tarmac in a very ugly scene. rafsanjani personally interceded and helps resolve that crisis. and that i was able to establish registered with people like george schultz and others, and mcfarlane, that this was something that probably helped them think well, you do, maybe something like this could pen that. but even when they got to rafsanjani's nephew as it happens, and they felt they were reaching finally the centers of power really responsible officials in iran, the commander

of the air defense forces in iran, they never met with him but he was definite part of it. he was named. they felt okay, we have is breakthrough and we're getting to the right people. well, it doesn't take long before the nephew tells them, good news, folks, this has reached the point where our side is going to form a commission to deal with this issue to do with the americans. over a longer term. americans a great. was on the commission? well half of them are the same people they dealt with before, the same assistance, the same revolutionary guards, deputy head of intelligence who still run by the way. he was considered such a negative force by the americans at the name they gave him was a monster. the engine because he was

driving think that the monster because he was a bad guy. he's named to the commission it's going to deal with these situations. time and again they are hit in the face with the fact of who they're dealing with but it never stops them from this misguided adventure. >> how could they believe they could get the hostages freed? >> they would probably say the proof is in the pudding. they did get three hostages out. erase a long and arduous and frustrating episode, but they did get three hostages out. so they clearly had some kind of contact with people who had influence. there was frustration on the american side because they were always being told i ghorbanifar you get all the hostages out. with the next shipment, promise, you will get them out. never happened. that's part of why the mcfarlane trip was abuzz

because they said we will not take this anymore. but there was enough of a tease that they're willing to go along with but never more than three more hostages were taken in the course of this operation, but it's a mystery to some extent. >> do you think that the u.s. arms to iran have tangible or measurable effects on -- stomach? spent a good question and the new york next per on that war. the official word from the reagan administration was that absolute not, this was a miniscule quote-unquote amount as reagan said in one of his speeches they could easily fit into the cargo bay of a single aircraft. oliver north acknowledged he was tasked to go find a plain big enough to make it real and, of course, it is a c-5 transport which could fit northern virginia in it, but that's okay.

airline is really had no effect whatsoever. when you go back and talk to iranians, and even some american officials, will acknowledge their belief that infected did have some effect. i've talked to several iranians who were in the war, were at some of these battles in early 1987, and scholars who have studied this, have done their own interviews with revolution and guard commander and soldier their belief is it did have an effect, that it helped against tank counter attacks at that operation. and also there is the view, one guy who was the highest level official in the foreign minister i talked to said he was pretty sure that the hawks that they were getting, not just from,

they were getting from other countries as well, that those kinds of weapons did have an effect on iraqi attacks or their willingness or readiness to attack iranian cities. i don't know how you quite nail that down to be sure, weather was missiles that had the effect or was it something else? but there is evidence to that effect and, of course, the iraqis we now know believe the same thing because saddam hussein and some of his officials, their papers were taken by american forces when they occupied the place in 2003, and some of those are now available and they have been studied and produced. you've probably been there to the place. i've listened to some of the state of saddam talking to his advisors and read some of the transcripts. and, of course, this is a whole other chapter of the story, what was their reaction when this

affair became public. of course, they were shocked. to some degree they were shocked. saddam claims he was really shocked. he knew these people were untested, these americans. but not surprisingly they also believed that the weapons had an effect. >> take one from the further back, all the way back. >> thank you. i am leon. university of wisconsin. i was in the state department of the time this is all happening. i wonder if you could set the scene for what led to this. i'm glad that an earlier speaker mentioned documents in lebanon. we have the history of the civil war in lebanon and hostages. i wonder if you could set the scene, the kind of pressure this was put it on the white house on the number of hostages, on the number of deaths and executions of hostages. kind of help us understand what was an essential driver in all of this.

>> they were absolutely at the heart of this, as you know, and it was great pressure. as i said earlier that was personal pressure and political pressure. i don't doubt for a second reagan's genuine desire to see them come home. as bruce will be able to be much better than i, but from the reviews and interviews i've done, well, i mean, it's clear to everybody that counterterrorism and prevention of hostagetaking was a huge focus for the reagan administration added build up the infrastructure to an extraordinary degree and they had a lot of successes. charles allen would say that, you know, other than this kind of blip, there was a lot to be proud of in his work in the reagan administration. so hostages were central as the cia guy said in addition to the personal side, reagan was acutely aware of the yellow

ribbon phenomenon. we all remember that during the iran hostage saga, the takeover of our embassy in 1979, artist tens of thousands of yellow ribbons all over the united states. there's no question that reagan was determined not to see that phenomenon happen again. it was also particular concern in a few personal instances, and the main one being the face of the cia officer william buckley who was tragically reassigned to beirut very shortly after he had left, and this apparently violated tradecraft by putting him in danger by relocating him there so soon after he had departed. and sure enough he got bungled off fairly early on in 1984. this is when this all started. there was one hostage in 82 and a no one i think and 83, but 84

is really where the next phase starts, and buckley was the guy that was of most concern to bill casey, to mcfarlane and others. of course, we know he was tortured and he died and reportedly produced a 400 page transcript of his agonized whatever, discussions with these people who took him. that created huge pressure for the intelligence community as well as for the president. and, in fact, the hope was that buckley would be the first guy released. that was what mcfarland wanted from the first of august 1985 shipment of missiles. nobody came out, and buckley of course never did. >> of course as casey sent buckley to beirut, he felt personal as well as professional

responsibility. >> thanks, mr. byrne. i'm garrett mitchell, i write the major part of his did get the memo about socks but my argyle's were at the laundry so i couldn't -- >> we would have had you appear otherwise. >> there's one name that hasn't come up yet and i'm interested to know, where's george h. to be pushed in all of this? and what does that tell us about the pardons? >> well, actually question. george h. to the bush in my reading of it was -- george h. w. bush left no footprints in the sand. i can find the document you he as you are never came under a

lot of scrutiny when he was running for president to succeed reagan in 1988, and his whole story was i didn't know anything. i was out of the loop. i wasn't in the cockpit. it was a difficult lion for him to tread because he's trying to show himself simultaneously as right there with the gipper, and yet coming, conveniently offstage when trouble hit. it turns out that bush left a diary of sorts that was not known about until way late in the investigation. this was a whole other aspect of the socket and that goes to question the kind answer what was the reaction of the administration to the investigation. sad to say, direction of several key officials was to take their personal notes and hide them and

withhold them from the independent counsel he was treated as the devil by a lot of them. there's some controversy over whether weinberger's mature was a bill at the library of congress and so on, but the fact is it's very clear at least to me that these guys new exactly what they were doing and they withheld the stuff deliberately in order to protect themselves. bush was no example. this is a page from his, it's called the bush director kay started keeping it on november 4, 1986, the day after the iran deal became known. but he did it allegedly for his own purposes to record his upcoming campaign, and he would dictate onto a tape and secretary would transcribe it. so the very second they of his notes -- these all came out to the independent counsel who eventually recovered the notes and diaries of weinberger, up

george schultz, donald regan, and one or two others. all of them claimed they never kept notes and didn't have anything of the sort. outrageous. november 5, this is bush's diary, on the news at this time is the question of hostages. there is some discussion about mcfarland having been held prisoner in iran for four days. i'm one of the few people that know fully the details and there's a lot of flack and misinformation after. it is not a subject we can talk about. weinberger also has notes that show that bush was very much involved, and so does schultz is a, charlie hill. i would love to try to read some of this, but i'll see. i think i won't read it, there's a lot of contested midterm that's out there, and this case

i'm thinking of, there are conversations between george shultz and bush were schultz is a, not just schultz and bush but schultz coming back committing talking to charlie hill and others going all my god, what is happening? this is late november 86 when the trouble hit the fan, and schultz keeps going to these meetings of the white house and coming back going, this is another watergate. these people are lying. they are following into the -- falling into the same trap. the vice president is one of them. who does he think he is getting? he was there. he was in the room. to his credit he confronts bush, more as a friendly warning. you said you got to watch out what you are doing here because you are treading a very fine lion, you know, you know that you approve these things they've got to be careful which is a. and bush said i am very careful. true her words were never spoken. shells comes back and says you may think you're being right

what you're saying but you can't be technically right. you have to be right and be careful where this leads to. very strong stuff to show no doubt whatsoever. not only on the iran side but also on the countryside. wonderful aspect of these scandals -- well, the stand of dealing with the contra had to do with attempts by, not ollie north who assert a very busy doing all kinds of illegal stuff, no question about that, but of higher-ups, including the vice president and others in their attempts to try to get foreign governments to donate money that congress refused to appropriate. there's a whole legal question about this. these were known as quid pro quo deals, and the question surrounded whether or not it's

legal to do a quid pro quo deal with a foreign government. and the short answer is no, it's not. you can have a conversation with the head of state, as mcfarland -- or reagan did with king fahd, and if that conversation results in the foreign leaders saying, you know, i think we can help you out here and would like to make location, that's okay. but what could he have a on a number of locations was american officials going to these guys, and bush is one of them, want to talk in honduras, and saying to them bluntly, we need your help. we need you to keep going with the contras, help host them on your territory, help us get some weapons shipments through, give us money, whatever the situation is. and bush is on the record having made that kind of approach.

and each of these cases the head of state or the official, whoever it is, is also on paper saying, what's in it for us? how are you going to help us? even king fought -- king fahd, seen as a nice gesture that fahd gives -- i don't have the document with me, but i just recently found the document that in a meeting, seven minutes, national security planning group, and it's discussing the escalation of conflict in the persian gulf. it's in may 1985. and early 1984 and february 1985, saudi in two stages tell mcfarland and reagan that they're going to

give a lot of money to the contras. the first tranche is $1 million a month. mcfarland reported to reagan and reagan says that's a great. and reagan meets with fahd and fahd says i'm going to double it, 2 million a month. shortly after that happened, by coincidence, there's a meeting of the nfc g8 and it starts off with john poindexter saying we've got, we've just gotten an urgent request from king fought to help us help them out in these various ways in the persian gulf because shipping is being attacked and it's time for us to step up and do something. so this is the subject of this mean. but it doesn't take a math genius to add two and two together and see that there's an expectation that are. that was the case i if you're exquisitely and all the other instances, including one case where bush admitted, admittedly

went down to try to get the same deal. >> if my memory is right you also described in the book a meeting at the king david hotel in jerusalem between the vice president and the israelis. you have alluded to this before but i want to zoom in on a little bit more. as i read the scanned it never would've happened -- let me put it this way. the idea of arms to hostages, arms to iran, arms and general for iraq, whether not there for hostages or strategic reason or whatever, would never have stood in washington without the israelis saying this is the right thing to do. this book is not about israeli foreign policy, but how would you characterize the weight which israel had been moving for united states in this direction?

and particularly the weight shimon peres, one of the most respected figures, probably up there with david ben-gurion in the history of israel had been moving as into what turned out to be a disaster? >> right. there's a question they played a key role not only in helping spark as i said earlier on but encouraging as the process went on. it wasn't completely one-sided though. they were clearly people on the american side were uncomfortable about this, and george shultz was one of them, and george bush was another one who are skittish about to it of an israeli role. one of schultz is criticism which he says in one of his angst ridden discussions with charlie hill is that the problem is that we do this kind of thing, even if the president says it's miniscule and so on, it opens the door for israel to do even

more. and there was of course a past history going back almost immediately after the revolution of israel providing arms and spare parts to iran. often in spite of america's disapproval. i talk about this to some extent a sort of the lead up to the a lot of pressure from israel sank let us do it, let us do it, and even menachem begin early on uses of some of his arguments, the same arguments that were used which is we can get you intelligence, we can to getting good with some of these moderates in the think this can work. just to go back to barbara's question, adding just a shred of legitimacy to this notion of moderates is the israeli argument that one of their best sets of relationship with the old regime was with the military. and they claimed we still have friends who are still in the military, and we think they may

be able to be helpful. that's a little strand that goes through. it's not just come one of the interesting things to me about this story is the personal side of it, and it's not just the ability of one government to sort of hone in on what they think is going to register with the of the government, which is the united states, but it's also the interplay and personality. and it's striking how many of these people have twins in other countries. i went to issue and interviewed a bunch of people who were involved him and qa person they said paris is the crazy of the box guy who comes up with these ideas as tom pickering said, peres has a million ideas come 2% which are brilliant. so he is willing to go out of the box into this kind of stuff.

like casey also. and doesn't care what the rest of his group things. he's got an arrangement, a power-sharing arrangement. they all get together. they don't necessarily each other. i don't like with the doing what they know their turn will, so they'll out things to go forward. on the operational level there's another storm which is a counterterrorism adviser who met an untimely death after this event that still the subject of much interest. he and oliver north were twins separated at birth. just a maverick guy, no real extremes in the field, made as many lifelong friends as he did in a maze, charming, gregarious guy. hated by the mossad, reportedly, but able to sort of cozy up to

people enviable have a lot of influence. the two of them got together and they just melted. they had a mind meld and the work of all kinds of secret operations that are alluded to in some of oliver north's notes. get all kinds of wacky ideas about how to expand their operation than just the iran site. >> more questions. right here. >> you spent so much -- kenneth. since you spent so much time thinking about this, and this is very, very interesting talk, i'd be interested to know your opinion on how we are going to move forward, not just america but the human population. i mean, this has been going on forever. you go back way into our

history, everything has been distorted and mismanaged and taken advantage of. have you come to any ideas about how we can move forward as a human culture to avoid these types of things? because it inevitably gets the average person whose money is being spent and whose lives are being taken, and the population, local population. it's a big question, but do you have any thoughts about that? >> fortunately it is a history book so i don't need that's not a policy book or a psychology book. but yeah, you can't help but think about those things. not being an expert in any of those other areas all i can do is throw out some reactions which relate to this case. and those are that, you know, you need to have people in

office who take their responsibilities seriously. you need, as a population, we need to do more to hold them accountable. we need to be less enthralled up their arguments that we are facing some kind of crisis because there's always a crisis. 9/11 being an example but it's not that they aren't real but we have to be more aware of a often as you said these kind of things have happened, and that it's tough. it's up to the media. it's up to congress but it's up to the court and it's up to the officials themselves to hold themselves and for us to hold them to a higher standard. one of my deep regrets about this whole scandal is i think that it cheapens that. it lessens that since by letting these guys get away with and by letting, giving them, the ones

who worked so hard to try to minimize the responsibility and excuse and justify the actions, by giving them so much credence when the evidence seems so stark in the other direction, and i'm talking not just about ollie north are used travelers checks when he shouldn't have and took illegal gratuity and took all kinds of liberties, but also all the way up to reagan himself and all the other guys, and i believe that it could not have had any other effect but to give the american people the sense that there doesn't need to be a higher standard for these guys. they are just like you and me. this is why i think the north trial had the result that did come and reaction. the jury came out and said i can

put myself in his shoes. he's just a regular guy at work. and we all cut corners can wield his sorts of things. no, we don't shred evidence. we don't lie at every opportunity to our colleagues, to our superiors, to our counterparts, to the public, to congress. you should find that you are facing serious consequences for that kind of thing. i just got the sense at the time and again reading back into it that that sort of sense of ethical responsibility just took a nosedive after this episode. >> a couple years ago i wrote a book larger about john poindexter so we had a chance to talk about which was great. to question. one contract in one iran. i don't think i heard you say in your remarks, maybe i'm sure you go into it in the book, what you

come down on whether reagan is about the diversion or authorized it so that the question the links iran and contra together? the second is, how do you think the obama administration now which, of course, is grappling with this issue of negotiating for terrorists and there seems to be a lot of gray area even around the question of whether ransoms are being paid. maybe not by the u.s., maybe but others. what lessons do you think they should be drawing from how the transport handled it and what pitfalls they should hope to avoid? >> so a diversion question was the watergate question of the iran contra scandal, and i argued and others have argued that that was a mistake to consider that a central place that it was put out to be. several of us, including ollie north, me and all the agreed that it was basically a really clever idea of ed meese to

divert everybody down the wrong path. so as north said the diversion was a diversion. why? because in the course of his investigation, these are the investigations that are way too big a word for it. damage control operation from november 21-24, 1986. his aim was to find out what the diversion was all about because that's when they found out, found the spam which i have a copy of your were north says we will have hi its arms sales to n and going to take 12 minute i'm going to give it to the contras. it's a perspective thing, not something that happened. when meese said, when the deputy fight, the first thing h he said was whether a cover memo on that? they said why? no reason. because a cover memo would've we said the president has seen, or something like that. it's an important question because it does identify an act

that virtually everybody, except north, sees as a blatant, blatantly illegal act. but it does deflect from the other key issues that were at play than. when meese was able to figure out that the president could deny ever having done anything about the diversion, then it became safe to go in front of the public and say, there was this diversion. what a terrible thing. but don't worry, we're on top of it. we fired the guy who did it. his boss has resigned, and then we're going to look into this some more. but meese was really worried at that point before he found the diversion memo was the realization that reagan had authorized key shipment to terrorists in iran without any

of the legal groundwork that was necessary to do that without signing a find, with a report to congress, without any of that stuff. and he says himself, that is a violation. he tells shultz, that's the violation. he said i don't think the president knew about the shultz in the same conversation tells him no, i just talked to the president. and he said oh, yeah, i knew that. i mean, it's blatant cover-up by meese when they have a couple of in these with all the high level people and they basically spin the story. okay, here's what happened to the president didn't know. okay, and nobody says anything. and shultz goes back going all my god, they're building a wall around the presiden president oy go. but at the meeting nobody says a thing. even weinberger noted. they all, you know. so even as far as whether reagan did, in fact, know, this was the

big question in huge disagreement among all concerned, among investigators, among anybody that you talk to. half of them can't believe that reagan didn't know about it because this was one of his mo most, you know, important subjects for him, policy topics. is aides, as bruce knows, on the iran side did nothing but try to go out and get answers to the hostages, every meeting you had, as i understand it did with well, what are we going to tell the president about what hostages are. the same with the contras. it's conceivable that reagan would just stop asking questions about how we're keeping these guys together audie and sold for two years. seems inconceivable. the other half says, well, but poindexter is just taking, he was such an arrogant guy that he

saw it as fully within his responsibility to decide what the president knew and didn't know, and that's what he said during the hearing. that looking like a grey ghost in sync know, the buck stops with me. i interviewed him. i found it completely fascinating, and i started leaning in the direction of going wow, maybe he's actually telling the truth. to this day he says i never told the president because i knew he needed deniability on the other hand, he says i told him and everything else that happened and they knew all about what ollie north was doing the he knew about all this because we talked about all the time. we talked about how the nsc staff should be conducted covert operations. we did all that stuff. if he's willing to say that because that's in me makes it an impeachable offense but if reagan you all about that stuff, his own staff with the indirect violation of the boland amendment, the law of the land and it's clear enough.

imagined obama in that same situation if you're asking sort of comparisons with obama. how long would obama last if that information came out? at least before calls for impeachment. if poindexter is willing to admit to all that, what's in it for him to say no, i kept that a secret. that's not true. into a minor poindexter is much more loyal servant the north is. north used those hearings to spill his guts. why? because you are smart what they said you'll be going on trial soon. we will begin to immunity for anything you say. what have you got to say, say it. poindexter did go that route. poindexter got found guilty on all of his charge. north didn't. both had charges vacated because of the immunized testimony problem, but poindexter was in a position to do just what northgate and save his own skin. he took all the heat for that.

so that gives them some credibility i don't say i know for sure, but it's a fascinating question. >> we have unfortunately reached at the witching hour. you have a second question if you want to make comment about hostage lessons learned. >> maybe i can deflect it a little bit and talk about u.s.-iran relations a bit and just it, and there are people who know a lot more about this that i do, but my sense over the years is that the u.s. has slowly, slowly, slowly been learning lessons. the reagan period offered several lesson. first of all there are people there you can talk to. it's not 100% clear what they want from us, but there's enough evidence for people like george k., the retiree from cia who was part of this mission, and others who firmly believe that some iranians wanted more than just weapons. they wanted to talk longer-term. that's a very interesting weapon

but, of course, the scandal from this just put all fought of conduct of that sort into the decrease for a while. that's one of the outcomes of the operation. but each president seemed to have to discover something for himself. so clinton, for instance, decide okay, we've got a new guy, a moderate in office, let's try to make an approach to them but let's do it directly. we won't do it through intermediaries who can't be trusted the way that reagan did. fine, so they write a letter in 1999 that was made possible and helps to convey to the iranians indirectly. but it blows up in their face. why? because he isn't the guy who should be addressing a. it's the supreme leader you should be addressing it to. obama seems to have figured that out. what kind of effect that said, hard to say but there are these kinds of pieces of evidence that

the u.s. is gradually picking up from each of their predecessor. so what hostages -- with hostages, i pity the people whose profession it is to try to work this stuff out because in the course of digging through all of this trough of the weird operations that these guys did, there's a lot of material out there about what else is happening, and the incredible lengths to which people went, creating these different organizations, the hostage location task force, the operation subgroup. a huge amount of effort went into try to figure out how to get these guys out, whether to mount a rescue operation and so on. it always came down to not having enough intelligence. where are these people right now and where are they going to be when we want to go in? nobody ever seemed to be able to figure that out.

and i think now as isis is showing, it's like everything evolves and back then even the reagan at one point was terrified that the hostages were going to be executed, just as carter afraid his hostages would be executed, in fact there's a great memo, another memo from one of these meetings where reagan showing a decisive side that i think a lot of people might be surprised about approved undertaking military strikes and other acts like that against not just hezbollah, but in my reading of it against iranian targets as well if anything happened to those hostages. a meeting and with poindexter sing so we are agreed we will come if this happens will conduct of these strikes. reagan snaps his fingers and goes, like that. poindexter even, krazy poindexter says well, don't you think we should have one more meeting just to confirm?

and reagan said no. only if it doesn't delay the strikes but, of course, there's blacked out text on all sides. the lesson is you've got to be super careful because if you don't get it right, then i think isis is showing the stakes are as high as all of these folks here. >> well, i think this last hour and a half has given you just a sample. it's a great book. i urge you to get it. we have copies on sale here and i want to thank you, malcolm, for coming today. i want to thank you for writing the book. thank all of you for being here. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]