general ham let me start with you. sort of going in proposition

with africom in many ways is you're not going to have large amounts of american troops under your command on the ground, if any. did you feel at times that you were a general in charge of the contractor army? >> no, not at all. there is a proper role i think for the contractors but there's also a proper role for the uniformed military. like the other combatant commanders and the service chiefs i was part of a discussion with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of defense that yielded the defense strategic guidance of 20 to which was approved by the president, and conduct with regard to advocate says they will seek a light footprint innovative and it reads low-cost, approach to africa. not only because i was part of that discussion but i think that is the right approach. i don't think there is a need

for a large standing u.s. uniformed military presence in africa. but there is a role and there are places where the u.s. military is wanted and is desired, and there's also a primarily a support role for contractors specifically was contractors here but i think it's a little bit, again one of the things you learn about africa is as soon as someone says the africans think this, or this is the way things are in africa, that person has no idea what they're really talking about. the or at the least 54 different ways of thinking about how things play out in africa. in some african countries there was a very, very strong desire for the uniform u.s. military. they wanted that relationship with their own military and most of the cases were able to accommodate that. in other places that desired

was, we really don't want much of a big uniformed presence and we are happier and it's more suitable for contractors to fulfill that role. so again i think at least in africa, i think we have to be careful of generalities and make sure we're looking at the individual circumstance and then tailor the right force. mary silva will it be exclusively uniformed because almost every place the uniformed military ghost in the u.s. there is a contractor support for that, whether it's just take what sustainment or infrastructure communications and sometimes it will be a contractor have a presence. as the theater commander, it was in collaboration with the ambassadors around the continent seeking to say how do we tailor the force to achieve a specific mission. it was different in each case.

>> so how did countries you contractors differently from american military? if you have trainers by dyncorp, why was that different than having a special forces group do the training? what was the difference in the eyes of nations that asked for contractors as opposed to u.s. military? >> there's a couple of issue. some are driven by u.s. policy. select somalia u.s. politics was will not put u.s. military folks on the ground there. the contractors filled that void and it's a pretty capably. in my view. there are other benefits, many of which sean highlighted. one of the benefits of the contracted workforce particularly in the training mission issue typically get greater continuity than you do with the uniformed military. uniform military will generally subscribe to whatever the

service rotation policies are which could be as short as 60 days, in most cases longer than the year. some of the security contractors that i encountered a bouncing around in africa, some of the individual trainers had been there for a number of years and and build relationships that are very important, the trust, the continuity, the deeper understanding of culture. so again i think it's finding the right balance. i would say, frankly, that the actions of some contractors particularly in iraq and afghanistan, affected relationship. there was a sense in some countries, in african countries we read about our we heard stories about how the security contractors have operated in iraq and afghanistan and we don't want the. that's not what we want in our

country. so sometimes it was making sure that there was enough oversight and enough control that the contractors could perform their mission and do so in a responsible way. >> i will come back to you in a second, general. trying to come you raised sort of a somewhat utopian future the breakdown of the state, and a future where you could have the exxonmobil army take on the bp army for control of oilfields. i wonder if you and your book and in your presentation you sort of set that all of these trends are in motion now. i'm wondering do you think this is the inevitability that there's going to be this breakdown, that you would move moving to this private army, or are there any checks along the

way that could prevent that from happening? >> that's a great question. so left unchecked that could be a possibility. and i end the book there because i want there to be some sort of attention paid to this that doesn't go on autopilot. it's not inevitable and it's not that states are going to go away and not that the sky is falling. states will matter less and we will have a disorder. but already we're starting to see the industry use elements of this in a defensive capability. and what we can't forget that for most of world's history there was no states monopoly on force. that's just the last 300 years. if we are to unravel that maybe in three decades it's a possibility. i don't think it's going, i don't see exxonmobil in fading england to take over oil wells. that's not what i'm suggesting.

i think this goes beyond what we think of like blackwater in baghdad, for example, trying to get us beyond 2007. >> what we've seen in the last year, year and a half has been certainly proliferation of more armed conflict around the world, isis russia and ukraine. it seems what people thought a couple years ago that the tides were receding and things are getting calm her, certainly hasn't happened. and yet if you look at the united states there is no great appetite among québec and public to go deploy large american troops to do with conflicts. do you think it's inevitable that given this recipe, the threat and yet the feeling that we don't want to get back into another iraq, another afghanistan is inevitable that we will be relying on armed contractors to do this kind of

work that normally the army would you? >> i fear to some degree that is true. if the u.s. wants to the global presence everywhere in the world that americans don't want to the proverbial skin in the game, contractors are a way to do that. that or draft. i find it disheartening for example, and minority of congress our veterans. unless we see a good fight like the nazis in germany i don't see the use of contractors as aiding giving us national interest and activities abroad. >> general annan. >> i don't see that as a likely possibility -- general ham. -- where the traditional military role will be a lease in terms of combat operations will be contracted out. i think there will be increased reliance on contractor for support functions which could

certainly include logistics, maintenance. certainly there's a large contractor force that helps in the intelligence analysis and dissemination process as well. it's hard for me to conceive the american people being supported of supporting a contracted force to conduct again combat operations which i think have been rightfully so the purview of u.s. military. i'm more concerned at the other end of the spectrum. again, not to be terribly alarmist about this but there are individuals and art organizations that are less reputable that do perform these functions almost exclusively for the monetary incentive. and so what's to hinder an

international criminal organization or terrorist organization hiring their own private military force? that to me is much more concerning than i think they might get a pretty far-fetched idea that the united states is going to contract out its war fighting functions. >> or selling their forces. >> let's talk about these other possible clients, whether they be organizations or states. as you said the united states is going to be spending less on its own defense than it has certainly over the past decade and as sean said in his opening statement that this industry has grown and has momentum of its own. is going to look for other places. if you're looking into the future, or even the present who is filling the market for these services? what countries are they? >> i think there is a global

market for the services that defense contractors provide, whether it is military hardware or whether it is training function or in some cases institution building. certainly i think in the mid-east, in the gulf where there are enduring security challenges for the nations of the gulf and have the national wealth to commit to some significant defense contract, i think that's one place where i think the u.s. defense companies as they look to say how do we in an era of declining u.s. government spending for the products and services where else do they go. and certainly the gulf is one region that would rise to the top. >> i think we are seeing a diversity of demand. so we are seeing oil gas mining look to this industry.

we are seeing ngos who are offering places like somalia to protect their people and their property. we are seeing also gadhafi since you asked, hired hired hired mercenaries to defend it in his last days. there's some controversy about that. we are seeing states again like nigeria, allegedly hiring private military contractors out of south africa to deal with boko haram. so these are small, gradual, but my concern is what happens if they grow. >> i don't dominate things here. if you -- >> before you open it up let me pick up on sean a little bit take back to an earlier stage when you were doing liberia. it was a bit of controversy at the time about whether clearly the armed forces of liberia need to be stood down and demobilized

and hopefully reintegrated but there was some controversy, back and forth over whether liberia should have a military. we ended up with a 2000 person military for a variety of reasons, but in a different fiscal climate than today may be the funding would not have come. do you see a future where, two points, and maybe general ham i want to jump in as well in the future were state-building we take, we don't have resources to help you do security sector reform. if you have trouble in the future, hire someone but let's not go through this ssr process. and if that's the case and the other one and corollary to that, something both you and general ham brought up this issue, nigeria being an example but others, were peacekeeping, especially international peace keeping is become the line for many of these militaries. but if your trend is correct that perhaps peacekeeping

operations move more efficiently if you will the contractor or an enterprise or basis, what do you do with these militaries which already don't have war fighting skills, we've seen in nigeria if they don't in that peacekeeping skills? >> to really good questions. i think that for security sector reform it would be hard for me to imagine the u.s. saying to a country, we can't help you build your military, feel free to buy on the open market. if they did that i would only imagine that would be done if there were certain sort of regulation, licensing and registration scheme in existence where we said these are the contractors you have to work with. but i can see countries doing that of their own volition or augmenting their forces. contractors can provide specialty skill sets. think about the u.s. phenomenon but if you're a fragile state, and even if your head of the

state you don't trust your politicized military, contractors can be very attracted to you for better or for worse. i do think regarding the united nations, i do think certainly if the u.n. peacekeeping operations, it would certainly have, affected the countries that are participants of that. but if you look around the world most peace operations are thin as it is. it seems the demand rises every year. i don't see companies taking over peacekeeping but augmenting what as a military enterprise. i don't think that's a bad idea if the right regulatory framework was set up. >> i do worry about the first phenomenon you describe, the budgetary pressures will cause us to make some short-term decisions which will be harmful in the long run. i do worry about the decision that says we're not going to invest in security assistance

which is can't afford that right now. and typically what happens is a crisis develops and then we do intervene at much greater cost over the long term. so i do worry about the near-term negative budgetary pressures. >> let's open it up. please wait for the microphone to, to you. >> -- microphone to come to you. >> first thank you very much. i have an observation and then a question for carter ham. i think other side of the contract issue is far more dangerous. that is to say the vulnerability, the dependency not from the military contractors who are being mercenaries but from the dependence that we are now placing a contractors. for example, there are about 800,000 contractors many

filling military jobs because the military was deployed but you run the risk of edward snowden, for example or losing the capability as you have people working in carter's old shop who are contractors who worked eight to four. but more importantly from a logistics and support side if you deploy a brigade combat team or a marine expeditionary brigade for an extended time you're completely dependent upon support for logistics, food et cetera, et cetera. my question is how much do you regard that as a potential handicap, not just in africa because that was a limited military expedition area but if you had to deploy a large force and you really have to have perhaps another 50% increment of contractors as we've seen in iraq and kinston just to sustain the logistics as well as the support of the force. how much do you think there will be a problem in the future of? >> i do think the reliance on

contractors support for military activities is a worrisome trend. we made policy decisions over successive years that we would outsource military functions whether it was maintenance or feeding, or any number of other support activities, principally cost driven. a guess as sean crocker pointed out almost always the contractor is less expensive, in the long run than uniformed military person. but i do worry. as a command i worried about that capability being frankly outside of my control. i think the large-scale operations such as an iraq and afghanistan is were talking before the session are probably some with anomalies. it's unlikely we'll see

something of that scale in our lifetimes. but even the small scale operations, you correctly point out, have a degree of contractor dependence upon them. i think what we have to work through the various service contracting mechanisms is to make sure that in those cases where there's a policy decision that says we are not going to include this capability in the uniformed force structure, we're going to by design, that the mechanisms are there for that contracted capability to be just as responsive as the uniformed military, and it has implications for how you train, how you develop leaders. as we've done over and over again, the first time you meet someone you going to fight with us on the battlefield, that's a recipe for failure. >> i concur with your concerns about u.s. over dependence on the private sector to sustain a

war. >> but it's a question for the nation, right? how much do you want to spend. >> i'm on the atlantic council board of directors. first i want to thank you for the discussion and presentation, and i concur with the mark mazzetti's statement about the excellence of the outstanding occupation it takes to to policy discussion not just in washington but globally. one major omission in the discussion today is in civilian police. has become a major aspect of the contractor business on the part of the training government. at least for the last 20 years than it has played a major role in international civilian policing and it's all done through contracting. we don't have a national police force that is community-based policing the way other nations

do. this, general plays directly into the question you raised that international peacekeeping roles where the united states government convinced the u.n. undp ko of the need to accept u.s. police, former retired police are after the police who are on loan but who are not at the same situation as those supplied by other nations. i wonder if if you have any comments about this phenomenon and about how you see this moving forward. >> i will start by agreeing with you, that a shortfall in our national capacity, there's tremendous demand for the training and development of police forces globally. i certainly saw that in africa. it was one of the dilemmas that we wrestled with is not having a

national police force. and also in recognizing that in many african countries the military have a domestic policing role which is of course not a role that the u.s. military performs. so we found ourselves in this gray area where we had a desire to help sell a need of a particular country but we didn't have the right capacity to meet that need. in many cases other nations were able to step in and i will single out the italians who have that capability and they were quite effective in a number of different roles. i think you've identified a gap that we need to get how do we fill it either with the specific authorized and designed u.s. government capability or whether we place it into the demand on the contractor side. >> i totally agree that it's

funny that policing remains this huge gap going back to the balkans that gets contracted out as a platoon like a capacitor code this is not a contracting problem. i think it's a u.s. systemic problem. as the genocide we don't have an mi5 in this country to draw from. we contracted and there are pros and cons to the. we end up rely on allies but a wish we could confronted because law enforcement is so critical for stability operations. >> thank you. [inaudible] >> i would be very interested in you taking the economics

analysis a step further, and i think it might've actually helped a bit and that is the investors, the investor community. there is a tremendous governing break on this kind of security companies looking for markets when you look at the way publicly traded corporations consider whether or not to get into these kinds of sorts of things. and also -- there are a number of companies that are simply not in the security market because of -- public reaction. related to the is the quibble with, i think in the minds of a lot of the investor community there is a difference between killing and training to kill, or

protection. and building up foreign entities capabilities, whether it's counterterrorism police or military or peacekeepers to be able to perform those functions. >> the first comment i agree with you. i think that especially a publicly traded company on the new york stock exchange is very vulnerable to critique, and that does act as sort of not regulation, but governance of sorts. but really what i look over the horizon i'm not worried about those companies. i'm worried about some warlord in somalia sank in jill, let me protect you. i visited the government's there is much less so. so i agree with you that when we think of the types of companies that have been used for the u.s.

government, the last 10 years that is not my concern but it's not my concern that one of those companies is going to go invade a country and take over its oil barracks and so to sum houston wildcat. it's because usually we don't think about or involved that's my concern. on the issue of taxonomy, there are those who think that race in a military is different somehow than killing people and, of course, that's true. but in the military world only infantry units can create another infantry unit. so it's the same universe for me. if you're a military enterprise or you have the skill set to become a mercenary. i am not suggesting they will do thethat are want to do that. but you do have the same it's a slippery slope if you want. it's not even a different

category. i would disagree with i understand the difference of opinion but i respectfully disagree with it. >> i now work for the nine corp., -- dyncorp, but in 2001 kofi annan had a study and the conclusion was there's a range of services go someone and where you have a single god with a rusty rifle stand in front of a shed some place, at the other end where you have a capable armed military force working on peacekeeping missions. and the conclusion the u.n. would use arms security up to this point, and he said the other point is not where the u.n. is ready to go. could you talk about where you think that line should be for

u.s. government to hire armed security people what they can and should be used for? in what is a bridge too far? >> within the u.s. context and i would probably suggest the u.n. context, these companies are used in exclusively defensive ways. mostly to defend people and property. they don't engage in offense. in a regular war which is what most war is today, often the defense is a false dichotomy by the user as an incentive. they're not used to go after him 23 in the congo but i agree with general ham that i can't sit u.s. ever contracting a company for offensive autonomous campaigning as a mercenary would. to me the simplest way to say it is defensive operations only and then obviously a large of concern about creating licensing and registration scheme within

u.n. for how they deploy this. there are many benefits the industry could bring the u.n. but they would have to be controlled. >> i would agree with the. i think certainly on the u.s.-led. on the human side i would be a little cautious again because of the budgetary pressure. i don't know. i haven't done a study but my guess is like sean pointed out the u.n. contracting out of forces is probably cheaper than finding a true attribute nation for its deployment. so i would worry a little bit about the budgetary pressures drive the u.n. to unemployment of contracted security forces beyond the line that you described, some point in the future if the budget causes them to do that. >> can i question so i am clear on what the law is?

isn't against the law to a company or contract for services to do offense of operations, to do combat operations? >> me or general? >> either or both. >> i believe in the u.s. context that that is contrary to u.s. law. >> i think you'd have to have some very strange export license to you that. i think the bigger question is like what happens when you have a side of doing this? i'm looking, i'm trying to look beyond the years experience to lose red pill as general ham would say actors doing this. >> take one from the back. doug brooks. a great presentation and for anybody who has not read it, it's an excellent book. well worth purchasing and

getting signed by the author. my question is on the international code of conduct for private security provided to your critical of in the book. the swiss government, the international community, the ngo community and industry came together to great code of conduct for private street providers, and your critical of the. of like you to itemize sort of what problems you have with this document and this association that is been created? >> that's great. the international code of conduct is something i was involved in an early -- with the document. i think it's a great start. i don't think it's regulation. basically the way it works it's a club of him and if you're a company and you want to be seen as of grade a company, best-of-breed. you sign-up and you have to be vetted and to get a certificate, hopefully they would issue or

did you clients. but at the end of the day there's no coercion. the worse the international code could do is kick you out of the club and that to me that is not regulation, that's not coercive in the. i think it's a magnificent beginning and it could be a future framework but it's not like the laws of armed conflict. >> i'm dan whitten with american university. you mentioned multilateral organizations and countries like nigeria. i don't think i've heard conversation about the african union as potential clients for these services. they have had a lot of success in doing tko in this region. what is the present and future

of the use of this type of service by those entities? >> my sense is that both for the african union and its regional economic communities that they are more interested, my personal opinion, a programmer so, more interested in seeking collaboration between the member states of each region and the larger african union. there is as you rightly point out, there is a fiscal reality here that's is probably the au without external funding from the international community such as the african union mission in somalia would not come simply would not have the wherewithal to undertake a significant private contracting military effort. i think the same would probably be true for the regional economic communities. i think there is a role though as the african union and the regional economic communities

grapple with african standby forces and greater collaboration. there may well be a role for private security companies military enterprise errs to help the various nations build a degree of standardization and interoperability so that the regional economic communities subsequent african union have a force that is more interoperable and is more effective and deployable around the continent. and so i can see a role again for them in a training, train and equip a role much more so than in an active participation role. >> i 100% agree with that. >> can i add are really raise a question follow-up with general ham because i think it's an important point of the

discussion. that's this issue of accountability chain of command. you had a lot of contractors under your purview, and having been raised in the army culture, and the military culture, the chain of command, did you ever encounter issues with these people who are sort of under your command but they're answering to a company? they're not in the chain of command, their outside, to the ever-present problems for u.s. head of africom? >> it did not. i think two distinct groups. they were contractors who were contracted through africa command, it's there is service components, and so dod contractors if you will. and certainly not a chain of command to do was a pretty clear line of authority, a site manager for each company that was providing contract support and those relationships were pretty sound.

werther acacia instances of misconduct or the likes? sure. just as there are with uniformed members but no gross violations. and i think, i don't know this but i would say that probably the ambassadors in the african bureau who oversaw the state department contracted force would say the same, that while there may be instances of individual misconduct or other situations that caused some problems the word institutional challenges between the state department and the contracting force -- there weren't. >> its business, right? last thing a business wants to do is alienate, whether it's state or beauty or whoever, who ever is writing the check, they want to keep that business. they don't want to lose it. >> i want to ask with the

influence of china on the african continent where do you see america like having support the way they intervene on african affair with military intervention, where do you see that? i was just curious. >> i will take the first shot at the. china is omnipresent in almost every african country but they are present in a different way than the u.s. is. there wasn't a sizable active chinese military presence in most places in africa. their investment their interest lie in other areas. but there certainly were in some instances where there compounds or large projects that were being conducted or perform by chinese businesses. unitas an issue that mark and

sean have talked about, about a private they could afford that was contracted to keep their workers said to keep the compound, their equipment safe. but there certainly was, i never encountered any conflict with any chinese entity anywhere on the african continent. certainly, you know, i think there's a pretty significant economic competition between the united states and others and china on the african continent, but it never struck me as anything other than competition certainly nothing adversarial. >> the interesting part if i can follow up, what's interesting is that chinese incentives and policies is almost the opposite or the reflection of our own. whereas sean has mentioned how

the u.s. has been reluctant put boots on the ground in some cases. china has in u.n. peacekeeping the largest contribution among the p5 and african -- if bobby but 1800 chinese peacekeepers operating in africa on the continent in various missions, plus sense the end of 2008 there's been a three vessel squadron, at least task force of the chinese navy off the coast of somalia continuously since the 2008 operating in anti-piracy operations. >> but even in that maritime engagement, as part of an international coalition. it wasn't the chinese navy out operating independently. they were part of a broad coalition. >> with some good effect.

>> general ham good to see again. you talked about the capabilities, verification. going back to what happened in gaza and i suffer all the testimony, but in terms of a decision of the contractor security capability, where was the tremendous shortfall if you look at the difference between the british ambassador, the group that was supporting him very professional. i think if you had blackwater supporting ambassador stevens, he would probably still be alive today. so exactly where do you see the fault of a validation of the units that were supposed to be private security speak with your asking the wrong guy. you're asking a soldier to comment on an old former soldier to come in on a state department security effort. but i think the principle is right. again, a tough decision of what's the right degree of

security. many of us who serve in iraq and afghanistan, we had to wrestle sometimes with an overbearing presence in some cases running people off the road roadblocks and those kinds of things. you had to do some repair work and that was probably, taking things too far and extreme. but certainly you can go to extreme the other way and have two small of the presence and less capability than is required for the given situation. that's i think this whole notion of understanding in five and which we are operating the intelligence and then the support in this case from state and defense, making the resources necessary, resources available necessary to meet the mission. >> is there concern about

military groups who don't have a website, who don't have a corporate office? i would point to the example of a phantom man and his intervention in equatorial guinea. if they hadn't been stopped in zimbabwe, they would have probably been able to easily depots the government. do you see this as a problem? >> is not a rhetorical question? yes, of course it's a problem. we're very concerned when we have organizations that have no above the ground signature. but i also will say something as well how to work around this industry for a bit is that there's a lot of charlatans in this space a lot of charlatans in this space who could all sorts of weird things.

and sometimes it's really hard to figure out the real threats from a bar story. but i think like if we look at them i don't know, arthur contractors in north iraq to work for oil companies, who are they, where did they come from? they are not american. this is a concern as well. >> i just want to say that any companies, companies with a website or corporate addresses are particularly interesting people like me. >> i'm a member of the atlantic else. following up on your comments about code of conduct and recognizing your feelings that is industry is here to stay, can you think of other industries and examples that might be transferable in a true meaningful, regulatory scope licensing, transparency that could somehow sort of verify and

establish more credit for this industry? >> i'm sure there are i can't think of a good one only because when it comes to security they can create its own demand. so that's the tricky thing. i'm not worried about the u.s. regulating the i'm worried about this industry operate in unregulated areas like eastern congo. that's the concern i have. i do think that we don't always have to look at strict regulation because to strict regulation will drive the industry offshore but can big clients like the u.s. and the united nations use their market power? in some ways the international code of conduct try is to do this. use their market shower -- power to shape their behavior but it's not like the end of the world. it's just not can we do this anymore savvy manner. >> our time is drawing to a close i invite mark or general

ham or return to shot if he has any closing comments. >> this is your show so you start. >> thank you for being a bit i wrote this book to let us hear beyond iraq and afghanistan and i very much appreciate your attendance today. >> well, thank you, everyone for joining us. join me in thanking sean general ham denmark rights outside. please join for a few moments out words until -- afterwards. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> every weekend booktv offers programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. keep watching for more here on c-span2. watch any of our past programs online apple tv.org. >> karen paget recounts the cia's surreptitious involvement in the u.s. national student association in the 1960s. agrippa she was a member of in 1965. the author reports that the agency used the left-leaning student organization as a conduit in their efforts against communism. this is about one hour 10 minutes. >> kerry has had a long career. is a member of the boulder city council in boulder colorado, then deputy mayor of boulder and these experiences led to her co-authored the book, running as a woman and analysis of women's

campaign from 1920-1892. during the carter administration she was appointed a regional director of the federal agency that supervised the peace corps and other volunteer programs. she has worked for foundations she's worked for the office of the president, at the university of california, just written a great deal for the magazine the american prospect. but mostly wishes been doing for the last 10 or 15 years is writing what i think is quite a remarkable book, "patriotic betrayal." it's what we're going to be talking with her about this evening. it's a subject i think of enormous importance, even though it's about things that happened 50 or 60 years ago, i think you will very quickly see that there is an echo in the book for many things that are going on today.

so karen i would like to begin just by beginning at the point in your life when you got involved with this story. you're a student an undergraduate at the university of colorado in the early 1960s 1960s. and then in 1964 you attended a conference of the national student association. what was that and what was the conference like? >> nsa was a membership organization of about 300 universities and colleges in the united states. it claimed to speak for all american students. it had huge annual conference is called congresses that mimicked political parties and they were attended by delegates and alternates from the 300 member schools. about 1000. i went not as a delegate from

university of colorado. i would as a wife and so my first encounter as a minnesota and at the state congress was as a volunteer in the secretary that produced mounds of paper, resolution reports et cetera but i should say that i made the student body president at the university of colorado, as also the second is student government that it was a paid position because i wanted to be a secretary and hadn't quite figured out that's not why i was in colleague. so that was my initial engagement with nsa. >> but in your book to describe how when he went to this first national convention ism to open up a whole new world to you. >> it was. as i try to describe and try to capture in this age, i was from a town in rural iowa never heard of "the new york times." i had never been east of

chicago. i didn't watch network news. i was a cheerleader. i was a baton toward her. and -- twirler. and it opened up all the world at a thing to do for so many people because there was no other way to have contact. they were distinct. the accents were different jersey texas, boston. it was a time when people who participate in student government were phi beta kappa smart, many of them were brilliant orators. barney frank and you would've heard in the early 60s. jeff greenfield, a journalist that is done cnn, abc cbs. he was the editor then of the cargo at the university of wisconsin. so i had never heard political debate. i was from a family that was very engaged in the community but it was a civic duty. i had no sense of partisanship.

i didn't know the difference between republicans and democrats, and almost failed a sophomore english exam on dickens because i didn't know the difference between republicans and democrats. that's changed. >> so here you were at this national convention 1000 people, student body president newspaper editors it seemed tremendously exciting. and then her husband got an invitation. what was about? >> the following spring one of the officers from nsa visited us and talked to him and invited him to apply for something called the international student relations seminar. it was going to be held the coming summer in 65 in pennsylvania. the innocent office at that point, headquarters, was in philadelphia. this was just outside. he applied and was accepted, and

we had a tiny baby by then and it gave us an extra dorm room. i just want to say that that nsa baby, my oldest son is in the audience tonight. i would like to recognize him. so we trundled off to have our first small family. and again i was the second to the i was in a paid position to produce the material that about 12 editors, student body president studied international student politics. many of them came expecting a course in international politics but it was all about student politics. >> so a dozen students, student body presidents and newspaper editors and so forth who was leading the similar? >> there were two people who work for nsa, a director and an associate director. and at this point, i mean there's no inkling other than

this is, this is the international part of the national student association. and i got to sit in on sessions whenever my typing was finished and the baby was asleep. and it was fascinating. >> and during the sessions certainly the leaders had a chance to see what the political opinions were of the people in the room. they got to see the papers that they wrote. certainly would have had an ample sense of what the feelings of the participants were about american foreign policy. >> and i learned much, much later that we all lived together for six weeks in the storm, but that was also the time period in which sector to background investigations were conducted on any student that they wanted to hire at the end of the summer. >> so then what was the next

step? and your husband was contacted, you were contracted -- contacted? >> he was offered the position at the end of the summer. he had zero preparation. we went off to another congress. we moved the office moved to washington. we moved to washington. it was thrilling. i went back to school, and then in october, one evening we had dinner with two people who identify themselves as former nsa officials. and after dinner we were driven somewhere northwest washington. it was pitch black, to a house. and as we approached the house, and as soon as the door opened, the phone rang. one of the two men picked up the phone and then turned to my husband and said, i have an errand to run. will you come with me? leaving me behind with the

second person. we went into the sunroom, and he said to me your husband is doing work of great importance to the united states government. we would like, i would like to to you more about the nature of that work but before i do, i need you to sign this document. i was recovering from pneumonia but we did not to cancel the appointment so i was still a fresh, but i'm the daughter of several lawyers and i know that i'm supposed to read fine print only it was so fine and i just jumped off the page. but at that point important point is i had no reason to distrust the united states government, as quite as that may sound in the year -- >> 1965. >> 1965. nor denied any idea what he was going to say. so i signed. and then i kind of i remember words of this.

he said, the united states government has to support friends in its war against the algerian revolutionaries, but it behooves us to get to know the algerian revolutionaries future leaders. and this is part of what he is doing. well, i didn't have a clue why the united states had to support friends. i didn't know there were algerian revolutionaries, at the most important thing at that moment i retained is the word behooves. every time i hear the word the who, they are on the back of my head withstand the. so he explained that he was the deputy director of cia, covert action using students. the menu and taken my husband out on a phony errand was robert kiley who was director of covert action five. i don't have words to describe how stunning a revelation this

was. and i didn't have, i didn't work for nsa so i didn't have any responsibilities. but my husband suddenly had a case officer a codename, and reporting requirements. >> what was his codename? >> his codename was his case officer's codename, who is a male, was and alice. -- aunt alice. his codename was i believe sinclair, from sinclair lewis it can't happen here. >> and he had to sign one of these also? >> he had undergone the same ritual a week or so before i was, but they always did this. they took the wives out to undergo the same ritual because they worried about all talk. they didn't want to leave the wives covered, as it were.

>> and then what were you told about this oath and the penalties for violating its? >> you know, i knew fairly quickly that this was a security of under the espionage act, and that if i told anybody anything that i had learned, i was subject to a 20 year prison term. ..

they decide decide they could say everybody has pro-democratic tendencies including 50-year-old stalinists. that was a tiny rebellion but an important point probably is that many people didn't know who else on the international side knew or had been made wilting. some people were on staff and they hadn't been made wits. that was usually because there was something in the security background. that was a red flag. often wasn't a red flag for person or student who was hired. it had to do with his parents. >> so here you had a national student association. how many people, half a dozen people or whatever? >> since i wasn't in the office, there were two floors, two townhouses in washington, d.c. that housed the international

staff and two floors that housed the national staff. so i would guess 40 50, by that time. but only some of them signed these oaths? >> correct. >> knew virtually all of the money came from the central intelligence agency? >> not only that the money came from the agency, anybody signed security oath and was willing and a case offer and reporting requirements. i should add got extra salary money wired directly intohich was fairly unusual in those days. >> nobody, to my knowledge nobody heard of wiring money into a bank. >> yeah. so you stayed, you and your husband stayed there for a year? >> a year. >> then you left. then your connection with the organization terminated then at that point? >> with one exception and that is in the fall of 1966, early

october, aunt alice showed up on our doorstep and, i thought we would never see these men. >> you were back in colorado? >> back in colorado boulder. my husband started law school. i nearly fainted dead away and i opened the door and took my husband down in our unfinished business basement and was in pursuit of a leak. that leads to to what happened in 1966 and 1967. >> right. well maybe i can tell this part of the story. >> right, right. >> i had some connection with it. this is 1966? >> early october 19666. >> well two or three months after that, i at the time was a very, very young and naive reporter and editor at a

magazine called "ramparts," which i'm sure some of you here are old enough to remember. and, a very frightened, bushily-haired young man named michael wood came into the ramparts office one day with this extraordinary unbelievable story having to do with the fact that the national student association, which was an organization we all knew about was secretly funded by the cia and had been for many years. at first the ramparts editors didn't believe him. then the editors put people on checking out different parts of the story and it immediately checked out. a researcher in boston, for example, began looking into the various foundations which were allegedly supporting the national student association. there is a long list of foundations which nobody ever

heard of in connection with anything else. and it turned out all of these foundations were housed in law firms. all of the law firms said we can't discuss our clients business. then this researcher did some further investigating, looked up these law firms in martindale hubbell, the big legal directory, discovered everyone of the law firms had something in common. at least one senior partner during world war ii had worked for the oss, predecessor of the cia. and at that point we knew the story was true. and then in, early 1967, ramparts went public with it. it created a enormous ruckus, this was a well-known organization which had been presenting itself to the world as a democratic voice of

american students. and then something happened which none of us at ramparts anticipated, which reporters began looking into what other organizations had been funded by this mysterious array of foundations and several hundred more private organizations were revealed to have been secretly funded by the cia for some years. i have to say as a journalist, it was probably the most exciting story that i ever in anyway was associated with, even though i worked on it only in a very small way. how was that ramparts expose' experienced by nsa veterans at that point both those who were in the know and those who weren't? >> all of those in law school, and there were a good many by that point got very good grades, because they all went to the law library and left the wives in charge of answering the telephone. and, you know, but we still told no one.

only there was some wilting to wilting conversation don't say anything you could be in prison for 20 years. it was years before we talked about it. >> with anybody. >> but i did think i remember at the time thinking, because the controversy was an enormous eruption but then it was shut down fairly quickly. i remember thinking at the time there is so much more to this story. and sort of walk it through my head, somebody some day will probably tell it. >> you turned out to be that person. >> but little did i know at that time. >> so you thought about it for years in 1990s you wanted to get to the bottom of it, how this

relationship -- >> one ante see dent. when i was running a foundation in the 1980s two pro bono attorneys came to me, they filed a suit on behalf of the nsa which was the united students association. it was government wide. i think at that point the fbi had acknowledged that they had a lost files but they were going to charge 10 cents a page. now the two lawyers had been sent by somebody, no one knew i knew anything about the story. and, to their shock, i said, how many pages? they told me. i, only grant i ever awarded on the spot. and the purpose sew that someone could use these documents to write a history of what happened. i tried for several years talking to people about writing this history one who was hendrick hertsber-f of the

"new yorker," was in the international relations seminar with us in the summer of 1965. and the time wasn't right for him but he was instrumental to my decision because a few years later, we talked about it again as we often did. he said, karen why don't you do it? you know more than all of us put together? i think that was the seed that sprouted. and i finally committed myself in the late '90s when i saw an ad for an open society institute fellowship that was the largest fellowship monetarily i had ever seen in my life. and, i applied. >> well this brings me to another question, which is, you know certainly of interest to students here. how did you support yourself when you were writing this book? >> not an easy question. >> yeah. >> of course i never realized it would take this long. i thought in terms of three to five years. and i was extremely fortunate. i was not only blessed by the

fellowship but my former foundation colleagues gave me discretionary grants, other grants individual donors gave me grants. i had family support including may say the nsa baby who grew up to be an high-tech entrepreneur, was among my donors. that family support was crucial to the long distance run. >> so then you started looking into how did this relationship originated? how did this organization that had, you know, operated on a big world stage for some 20 years as democratic voice of american students, funded almost from the start by the central intelligence agency how did that happen? >> it is really interesting i thought logically the story had to start in 1947. why? because the cia was founded in '47. nsa was founded in '47.

for three years i tried to fit square pegs into round holes. i could not make there were all subtle hidden hands in the story. so i had to make the decision to put the clock back until i identified and found all those hidden hands. i will say that sheer number will stagger you because it ranges from intelligence veterans to liberals, to the state department, to intelligence agencies plural, to the american catholic church to the vatican and so forth. raul played a role -- all played a role. it was a very complicated story. i don't have time to go into now. when nsa was found half of all students were returned veterans. that was one key. far more important were number dedicated to forming nsa who

were intelligence veterans. they were all not no the same agency. nor did they all see eye-to-eye. it wasn't, what i have can say is that nsa was not founded as an operation. it became tied to the cia and most importantly the covert action unit wasn't formed until 1948 a year after both organizations were up. and other thing why were they so interested? why did they connect nsa to the cia? the short answer why were they interested in students? the soviets were interested in students. the soviets had backed a large international organization of students founded in '46 in prague and the united states at that point had no national, nationwide body that could claim to speak on behalf of all american students. regardless of the many different political tendencies that were

on campus, they all agreed that they should form a national student association. it was characteristic that it was liberal. it was the same conundrum that the editor of ramparts faced. what did the cia want, as i think he memmably said, with a bunch a long-haired hippies? it was always liberal. that is important to distinguish between liberal anticommunism and joe mccarthy or right-wing or conservative anticommunism. these were liberals who had been very much affected by the ''30s shattering of coalitions that included communists. at the time the communist party was perfectly legal. when it turned out party members had an allegiance to the soviet union and to stalin, they had hidden allegiances and shattered coalition, shattered organization shattered roots

svelte voting coalition. liberals concluded they weren't reliable partners because they had hidden allegiances. that was very key. they didn't want a replay of the 1930s. there were so many behind the scenes institutions focused rivetted to make sure that there wasn't a replay of the american student union, that the communists were out of nsa from the very get-go. >> you know one thing which reading your book made me realize, which i had not originally i thought i knew something about all this because i had been working at ramparts at the time and so on. i always thought the big scandal was that this organization that was supposedly private, supposedly democratic, was in fact being run and manipulated and funded by the cia. after i read your book, i came to feel that a far darker and more disturbing part of the

story was that not just that this organization had been run that way but that that organization had fathered a -- gathered a vast amount of intelligence about american students but perhaps more important about students from other countries and some of this almost certainly was passed on to foreign governments and particularly repressive ones. tell us a little bit about that part of the story. >> there was massive amounts of intelligence reporting mainly foreign students. i mean they really didn't pay much attention to domestic. >> because this seminar that you went to, that was replicated throughout the world. >> the seminar was a tactic or technique was, but this seminar had a different purpose t was really to recruit staff. >> yes. >> using seminars and tours and friendship exchanges throughout the rest of the world was a technique.

>> weren't there 30 plus seminars in africa alone. >> 33 in the early '60s. robert kiley the who was a former nsa president said students were important actors on most continents but in actors they were the actors. that was a way into 33 countries. but what the best way maybe to explain what you're raising and is in the book that is disturbing, not only to me and you, but many of the participants, where did these massive number of reports go once they were inside of the cia? what was the pipeline? >> and these were reports not just from people who had conducted seminars but american student leaders making so-called fact-finding trips to other countries? >> every, a report was filed on every foreign student contact. every foreign student thaw came

into contact with. and the way you came into contact with them, you know, differed. but this is why you had a case officer. i mean this is to whom you sent the report was the case officer and, probably in the mid '50s, the way i guess i would frame it is that, u.s. foreign policy, and covert actions followed different tracks. in the early part of the cold war, everybody knew what the overt policy was. it was containment. well you know, the kind of the junior diplomatic thrust was also containment. counter the soviets with our own international organization. by the mid '50s, what became extremely important was to win friends for the united states and the west by showing that you stood in solidarity with the revolutionaries, with the anti-impearlist, with the anti-cologne y'allists.

that meant demonstrations with algerian revolutionaries anti-batista revolutionary anti-shah dissidents. >> these were the contacts. >> these were the not just individual contacts. money went to the algerian students. the algerian students, there was argument how much autonomy they had. they were part of the fln. they were students but not students the way americans think about students as football or fraternity. and so they nsa international staff was intent on showing that american students stood in solidarity -- >> colonial -- >> at the same time the u.s. was still backing batista in cuba the dictator. was still allied with france against the algerian quest for independence.

so you have overt foreign policy. you have covert foreign policy. and, it becomes also, a question of access. and it becomes then a question of working all sides of the street from the agency's point of view. now, they will justify it, say well, we were just intelligence gathering. it behooves us to know what they're thinking what kind of people they are. but it was so much more than that because cia researchers were going into the mechanisms that the dictators were using to repress the students that nsa was standing in solidarity with. so, you know, these are complicated stories but i think as i mentioned one of the things that happened is that nsa was succeeding in standing in solidarity with the anti-batista cuban students and had an operation friendship after the revolution many, many american

students went to havana. the leaders of nsa could be found around the hilton pool talking to che and fidel. and of course, students came back impressed with the revolution. so they were creating a constituency for the revolution, until, of course, eisenhower decided that the cia mouse counter fidel's influence in south america. so, that is one of the more complicated stories that is laid out in the book over time. and, there is a whole world, i mean not just students. students youth jurists women. so you have this big disjunction between overt foreign policy and what was going on at the covert level. >> but what about what happened with these thousands of reports? you found some of these reports. >> oh oh, yeah. >> you quote them in the book where somebody is identifying i

remember one where this is the conservative french-speaking african we've been long looking for or something like that. >> right. socialist but not too militant. >> right. but the cia was having all kinds of dealings with very repressive governments, iran, iraq. >> one of the nsa presidents at a reunion meeting said, my god, did we finger people for the shah. and why this is really important, with united states supporting the shah, the state department kept trying to deport the very iranian students that nsa was supporting. had they succeeded had they been deported they would have been executed by the shah. they were saved only because robert kennedy was the attorney general because he stepped in to stop deportations. so the geometry of this is really amazing.

and no one but no one can answer even career cia people who were part of the nsa operation, can answer, did these reports on the dissidents go back to the shah and sabat, the secret police? some say i assume they did. the shah was our ally. the head of the iranian student association in the united states, who i interviewed when he was the dean of business at american university in paris, still in exile said, my god, he said, they betrayed our secrets everyone of us could have been killed. i know campus after campus story where iranian students in the early '60s that opposed the shah lived in absolute terror. i know one story where they kind of war paper bags over their head slipped a letter to the

editor on their plight. >> i think we have to assume trading information is what intelligence agencies do. >> right. >> i want to ask one more question. i want to open it up to the floor to give these other folk as chance. >> okay. >> you worked on the book for what 10, 15 years? >> i had what i call now unabridged edition after 10 or so years and the last four or five were cutting and crafting, cutting and crafting and cutting and crafting. >> you got a lot of repentant cia people to talk to you or semirepent tant. -- repentant. >> many justify the relationship but what they are critics are almost all of them, assessing what they did and whether or not it worked. whether their strategies were successful. and the harshest crits are the

witting participate pants. -- participants. the special gearian scholarship program in the united states. carly, said none of those people amounted to a hill of beans. another one quoted, if you want to make a kid a democrat, send him to russia. if you want to make him a communist, send him to the united states. >> these sound like very cynical people, and maybe not so repentant after all? >> some of them are repentant. i would say the early ones would simpler. >> yeah. >> i should say in their defense they were passionate anticommunists. they described themselves as believing in the fight against communism every much as our

generation believed for fighting for civil rights and against desegregation. one of the word reasons for the word patriotic in the title. i'm more the modern tendency to impune motive. they did believe passionately. that doesn't let them off the hook. you have to look what they did and make judgments about what they did and consequences of the entire operation but i see no reason to impune their motive, even some of them have become quite cynical. >> okay. so, i would like to give some of these folks here a chance to ask questions. and i think one or two of you at least had some experience with this world that karen wrote about, starting over here. >> want to -- >> wait for the microphone because this is all being recorded for booktv. >> i want to clarify, your husband and the other agents that were recruited were all voluntarily serving as agents correct? >> no.

let me try to explain it, they all, there were two routes to working for nsa on the international program. one route is as i described. you're hired! you're elected. somebody from past years takes you out. asks you to sign a document. you do. then you learn what your, who you're really working for. now, was it voluntary? in the sense that yes they believed in the objectives that were being described to them. and i, i often i want to say this sort of forcefully, because i think the puppet argument is irrelevant. it misses the point of a good recruitment program. you are looking for people who will share your, what alan dulles called the community of

interests at that point. you agree. did some of them feel trapped? yes. did some of them feel great? yes. it changes over time and it depends. so, but it wasn't as if they were asked would you like to. and they could say yes or no. once you signed that security oath, whether you think it's a good idea or a bad idea, you're mummed. >> right but you could quit? >> you could. >> no one was forcing to you to stay in that job? i mean you couldn't tell anybody, what you did. >> right. >> you could quit say i'm not writing any reports anymore? >> i believe i'm correct in saying many only stayed one year. most did five years in different positions. then spent a year inside of headquarters. in effect the people who felt the need to exit ited after one year. you're right nobody did quit.

>> okay. >> what is the -- >> wait are to the mic. wait for the mic so it will get recorded. >> whats watt relationship between the cia and this, and the fbi? >> tense. hoover opened an investigation into the formation of nsa. had agents at all the first meetings. investigated every single delegate and alternate. and continued to do so until the fall of 1950 either one or two. then in 1960, not long after the anti-house un-american activities committee demonstrations here in san francisco, and because nsa voted to abolish huac, i have a

declassified memo from hoover, inconceivable this group taking a party line isn't communist. so he reopened his investigation. but he had to do it carefully. >> i have a second point. what you described is the exact mirror of what the kgb did in terms of case study case handlers names and also having writing the about their daily life. >> there are many parallels. >> yeah, many parallels. >> many parallels. and i think somebody who was defending what they did early on would say we had to fight fire with fire. i mean that would be their defense. but there were many parallels. >> question over on that side. >> i was wondering if you came

across, 1965 when the new immigration act was changed. so a lot of students that maybe met your contraries in 1963 or 1964 at international meetings they have may have applied a few years later and applied for visas. my parents came here after the 1965 immigration act but had parents from france or england. they decided to come here. found it was good for them. do you think any of these files were influential who got their immigration approved or not approved. >> i'm not sure -- i couldn't hear the question because of the echo. >> the question was whether the work of nsa and cia was doing have anything to do with of a affecting whether visas were granted for people -- >> [inaudible] >> visas were granted for people trying to immigrate. >> who was trying to get professional visas?

>> they could arrange for a visa. they could also arrange to deny visas and did both but i don't think it had in general for specific people, i don't think in general it had to do with immigration. very targeted person they wanted, or a lot of the big meetings, there were people they did not want. so they often if it was in their power to do so, chose a country, cooperative ally, that would deny visas to anybody they didn't want to get to the meeting. >> yeah. >> it sound like we're hearing still the tip of the iceberg and there is a lot more that you edited out as well as remains in the book but if i'm understanding the central, kind of feature from the perspective of the young person who was

recruited, there is sort of an assertion and a question, which is whether many of them would feel now that they were suffering moral injury? which is to say that they ended up behaving in ways had they understood potential consequences they would have changed their actions. so they ended up doing things in fact they now feel are morally repugnant and are injured by it? >> that's a really tough question to, you know, to answer because, in my mind i would have to go almost individual by individual. i mean there are certainly annecdotes that individuals have said, told me. said, i'm really not very proud of that. you know but many of them still feel that they did nothing

wrong. and, many of them will say, they didn't understand that the cia was working all sides of the street because in throughout the '50s, i mean we didn't really know anything about the cia until the bay of pigs, the attempt to overthrow the castro regime in 1961. the first book on the cia was called "the invisible government." that was written in 1964. the leak to ramparts knew nothing about the cia. went in hot pursuit of the one book that existed. so you know, you can charge them, you know, with kind of willful blindness but i think i don't because they genuinely felt this was their many of them felt this was their country's intelligence service. many of them, i mean they speak in terms of, doing the lord's work true believers.

and believed that it was justified. >> when you started writing the book, they put a lot of obstacles in your way right? they didn't they reclassified documents previously that had been reclassified? >> i'm not sure that was personal, but i was stunned to find stunned to find many documents from 1949 reclassified in 2001. i had a lovely young woman who was as stunned as i was at the national archives, and she said, i don't understand this. she said, let me run it up to declass. and she came back crestfallen. she had a slip of paper. she came back crestfallen and said, i'm sorry this has to go through other agencies. when they have to go through other agencies it will take a

while. i said, right. the cia. and she said, we're not allowed to give out that information. [laughter] there were three reports from '49 that i wanted. i just don't understand. i said, i finally got to them. took nine years. >> nine years. >> i got two that told what we were doing to the bad guys. the one i didn't get was no, excuse me, i got the two that said what the bad guys were doing to us. i didn't get the one that said what we were doing to the bad guys. and -- >> wasn't there sort of a hint of a threat against you when you started writing the book? >> well, one of the things, people always used to say, to me aren't you frightened? i mean my flip answer was, i'm always much more afraid of writing a bad sentence than i am of the cia. and when they put obstacles in your path, that is a good way to

frame it, they're quite subtle. so you're never quite sure you've just received a threat or not. and, but one person who had been a career agent, who then posed as an nsa representative, who then went back into the agency, who has long since retired, all of sudden said to me, what are you going to do about clearing your book with the agency? and i said, what do you mean? you signed a security oath. i said, i never work for them. everything i'm doing is in the public domain. it is not a problem. they take that security oath very seriously he said. so that unnerved me a bit. >> can you talk a little bit the

intelligence community's response to the ramparts article and people who wrote on it and worked on it? >> by all accounts, hysterical. i mean that is by all accounts. that is not my words. that is all the accounts of the cia reaction. by the time ramparts started working on the nsa story the deputy director asked for a run-down on the known ramparts people, and i i think these were freelance and occasional writers. and the cia already had dossiers on at least half of the known people that worked for ramparts. and, one response was to set up a top secret operation in the vaults of cia headquarters, run by a named richard ober to go after "ramparts." we still don't know all the things that they did but evan

thomas, who wrote a great book called "the very best men," interviewed a man who is no longer living, eddie applewhite, who returned to headquarters and told the story to evan. he was reporting to his boss, desmond fitzgerald, i think the third ranking cia official at that point and when he described what they had done to "ramparts," fitzgerald said, oh, eddie, you have a spot of blood on your pinafor. and, he would he, eddie would not tell evan thomas more about what they did but he did say to thomas, they had terrible things in mind to do to "ramparts." >> i would be very curious as someone who worked at "ramparts "at that time. i could add a little bit to this. many years later i applied for my cia files under the freedom of information act.

i got, many, many pages of them, heavily rebeing todayed sometimes a few words on a page. it was amazing because i was a very very, very low person on the totem pole at "ram parts." i was only peripherally part of it. but i came out without much respect what we journalists talk about the fact-checking process. give you one little example. they had a lot of personal details about me, my parents my wife's parents, so forth and one of the things they had discovered, well, one of the things that happened, here is how it got reported, my wife and i had briefly been civil rights workers in mississippi in 1964. we got married the following year. we asked people in lieu of wedding presents, make a contribution to a civil rights organization such as the student non-violent coordinating committee we worked for. this got translated by cia agent

into the words gave his wedding presents to goodwill. [laughter] if everything in their files was as wildly inaccurate as that who knows intelligence-gathering by the united states meant. >> right right. >> you but never got a clue as to just exactly what they were planning to do to ramparts? >> no. i know they had a plant in ramparts. i don't know who that was. >> we never figured it out either. >> what they also did, they felt, this i was at a point which in general they could not belief emerging dissent in the united states was homegrown. they were convinced it was funded by foreign sources. >> this was '67 and huge opposition to the vietnam war yeah. >> so they immediately i'm sorry, i forgot to say this before, one of their strategies

was they immediately got the irs involved to audit ramparts because they were so confident that if they could find foreign contributions, foreign money they could shut the whole thing down. and, on the day that ramparts, is way i put it, by the time the ramparts published everybody had moles in each other's camp. so nsa held a preemptive press conference. ramparts found out about it, and took out a full-page ad in "the new york times" on the very day of that ad, "the new york times," the irs granted the said that they would do it, they would audit ramparts but by that time it was too late. >> they never found the moscow gold. >> they never found the moscow gold. i'll tell you this is a very important thread because people forget what were the watergate burglars looking for?

lists, foreign funders. foreign funders of mcgovern and the antiwar movement. this notion that the soviets were behind it cord meyer head of covert operations and responsible for youth and students, he wrote a memoir in about '84, '85 he likened the ramparts exposures to unilateral disarmament. apocalyptic, really, vision of that exposure. >> patrick. >> yeah i have a question on that point actually. i don't know if this is in the scope of your book but meyer writes in his autobiography about dismantling of these networks that were so carefully constructed over 15, 20 years of operation, because of the ramparts flap, now have to be taken apart with much regret on

his part. but it seems to me that, maybe with some gap of time they are sort of reconstructed through the national endowment for democracy beginning in the 1980s. but i wonder if the u.s. government finds any way to continue to do the operations that it feels like are important even after they're supposed to be shut down by order of committee and johnson administration. >> absolutely. absolutely. that is one of the places i'd look. >> andy. >> i -- >> wait for the mic. >> i was a young reporter producer, in in the mid '60s in washington and i had already worked for a show on abc where my colleague had been president of the national student association.

we talked about it, mark furstenberg. anyway, later i was doing a broadcast for early pbs, and it was about views of intellectuals around the world about the united states 25 years after the end of the war. and i was in india. i didn't know anybody in india. i had a researcher who is a friend of this guy who said, well, i will get you a bunch of journalists. one guy was billed to me as the editor of a magazine, pretty liberal in india. india in those days was very neutral, beginning with the vietnam war, '65. and i was told he was an editor. he was like "the new republic.," his publication. so i interviewed him. i tinner viewed a -- interviewed a couple of other people in india. this guy was very, very pro the american position in vietnam.

so the broadcast airs. i get a call from a magazine called, problems of communism. did you ever run into that? cia operation in washington. they had a lost intellectuals running it. >> problems with communism? >> it is a journal. i don't know more about it. >> nothing is coming to my mind right now. >> guy says, to me, that was a great broadcast, that guy you had from india. he is one of ours. what do you mean? well, he was cia. then i discovered encounter magazine, which was a british intellectual magazine, also funded by the cia. >> i mean the estimates of cia funding all international foreign policy books for about a 20-year period is very high, 80% of all. you know, this, the lbj appoint ad three-person commission and

gave them about four weeks to report after the ramparts flap, which is, cia's word for catastrophe. and it consisted helms cia director the undersecretary of state, and john gardener who was at that point secretary of health, education and welfare but the real work fell to jack rosenthal, from "the new york times" foundation. and he to make a long story short, he was escorted to langley and he is one of the few people who have ever seen the number of operations that were being run through private domestic organizations. and he said there were hundreds. he was staggered. >> what about foreign operations? >> pardon me? >> what about for return operations like this journal in

india? >> this is outside the scope of the book and i don't think i can answer your question. somebody in the -- >> you mentioned robert kennedy briefly at one point. it made me think back to the trip he took to south africa which was at the invitation of the south african national students union i think. and i'm wondering you know, the complexities of his relationship to the cia and so forth is very intriguing and i wonder if you came across interesting aspects of that in researching this. >> what will surprise people because he was so furious about being, his brother being sucked into the bay of pigs started under the eisenhower regime, is that he actually became quite an advocate of covert operations and many of the nsa people who launched anti-world festival,

counter festivals met with him and were praised for their work. and, for example, one of the nsa presidents, edgar very, when he was being reassured that all past presidents cooperated cooperated with the cia he adored the kennedy pham he said, what bob kiley said would you like to have your picture taken with robert kennedy, he felt like he had died and gone to heaven. so he was very supportive of these kinds arthur schlesinger write as little bit about that. i have a footnote in the book about what his rationale was. one of them he said foreign policy was shifting t wasn't just diplomat to diplomat. it was involving much broader constituencies whether they were youth or students or journalists or lawyers.

>> in the fall of 1967, a number of us entering graduate programs here at uc berkeley were five-year fellowships from the ford foundation. and the idea being to find out whether, if you didn't have to be a ta you would get your phd faster. the rumor went around a couple years later that that money was actually coming from the cia. i have no idea whether this is true or not. people thought i mean it turned out a fairly high proportion of the people who got those fellowships were very involved in the antiwar movement and actually took longer to get phds than other people because of their movement activity. we all thought people were quite pleased with the idea that the cia was funding us.

but i have no idea if this was true or not, do you have any idea whether the cia was funding money through the ford foundation? and if so, why? >> well, there is one instance in my book, i can't speak to in general, and attitudes vary. i was able to reed some of the oral histories of ford foundation people but there is one program in, that i have written about for return student leadership project, in which was a joint venture by ford and cia. and, i think the reason for that, in that instance, is that foreign students were being brought to american campuses under this nsa program and the cia is forbidden by law to operate domestically. and i think it felt it really need ad, a kind of mature partner of stature and so it was, but it was handled by a special committee at ford.

i've actually read those archives. they have been involved but whether they are involved in that program i have no idea. the only one i know is the one i've written about. but it, the one i've written about, did produce some illustrious student leaders future leaders including kofi annan. so. >> given all your research into, into the cia and students, do you look at the events of the arab spring differently than the average american, and if you do, how do you look at them differently? >> i shuddered when i saw the microphone going to this young man, my son. he always asks me the hard questions. that it is a great question. and i'm not even sure i can

answer it sat factually but i would -- satisfactorily. one thing i learned is what you see is not what you get. there are all kinds of forces being stirred up. and i will give you a parallel quick example. and that is, that we backed all of the nationalities in the soviet union because we saw that they could maybe help to break up the soviet union. well, i would say in certain instances the chickens are really coming home to roost. you have to, you stir up nationalism, for a short-term interest, but you may have long-term, serious problems. and i think that is one of the, the lessons that comes throughout the book. i guess the other one, that quickly, occurs to me, is that, one of the strategies, even among the revolutionaries was to pick the moderates to identify

moderates. well in revolutionary situations moderates almost always lose out to militants almost always. and we really don't do a good job of hand-picking revolutionary leaders or moderate revolutionary leaders or leaders. the, even in patriotic betrayal, it is littered with people who san diego saddam hussein used to work for the cia we used him to try to kill the iraqi leader. he missed. the cia overthrew kassim in '63. this is why the cynical cia agents talk about renting people, because there can be a short-term collusion of interests but you, you know, they say you can't buy rent. there are many, so many instances of this where someone

who served our interests today either turns against us, or doesn't serve our interests you know, down the road. apart from that, i haven't really had time to follow the current revolution. >> how about one or two more questions. i see one right here. >> the revolution -- revelations from ramparts were disasterous for nsa but you had referred to the fact that there were, many many institutions that were being funded by the cia. i wonder what the effect on those institutions with? was? >> nsa took the public brunt. most of the other organizations or institutions denied, tried to tough it out.

you know to this day some of the george meanie arc curves are classified. there is a limited amount of research on the labor operation which was massive and huge. because of the exposure, most organizations and institutions lost their funding. so there are often institutions or organizations have absolutely nothing to do with this. all you see stopped in '67 stopped in '67 and stopped in six sy 8:00 and you take a closer look. so the big consequence for nsa was in the short term it grew very radical. and, students rallied around it. to try to end. but, they could not do any international work. they were absolutely suspect. and that was true decades later. to this day, i don't believe

that they do international work. and if they do it is very limited. >> was the type -- >> wait, wait. wait for the microphone. >> thank thank you for asking that question. >> was the title of your book your doing? >> yes. the title is my doing. and it took me almost the whole 15 years to get the title. i was searching for something that would capture the twin themes of idealism, and duplicity. and i i very much know that these two terms patriotic and betrayal are intentioned and, where you come out, as a reader, is very very much up to the reader, to decide where where you fall in that tension. and i think, if there is an

objection by some of the witting participants to the book, it's the title because they do not feel that betrayal is warranted. and again, that is the distinction between the aspirations, their intention, their altruism, their commitment to fighting communism and judging the consequences and i don't see any way around, either whether it's a dictionary definition or because of all the things you read in the book, you can not have a secret government operation run through a private organization who's reason for being is an exercise in democratic self-government. and, but there, you know, it allows for people to say, this was a patriotic operation. thank you. >> i have one final question. then i'm going to let you sign some books. >> okay. >> is there a copy of your book on its way to edward snowden?

on its way to edward snowden? >> i have no idea. i hope there is, because i see a connection between these two revelations, yours and his, of what happens when a country loses control of its intelligence apparatus. so, i want to thank you very much karen for being with us tonight. >> thank you. [applause] >> and there are books in the back aye i'm sure you will be happy to sign. >> i will be happy to sign. thank you so much for coming. [inaudible conversations].

>> booktv is on twitter follow us to get publishing news, scheduling update author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. twitter.com/booktv. >> each month representative tom cole of oklahoma release as reading list on his website. here is the congressman's recommended books which focus on the life of dwight d. eisenhower. representative cole is currently reading, those angry days by lynne olson which looks at internal debates over u.s. involvement in world war ii. andy finished paul johnson's book eisenhower, a life. he recommends steven ambrose's two volume biography of eisenhower which taste traces his path from solder to

president. a memoir by his grandson david eisenhower and david's wife, julie nix so eisenhower. on his list, eisen house the white house years. next eisenhower's personal account of strategies, battles and outcome of world war ii in, crusade in europe. and completing the list, representative tom cole recommends gene edward smith's portrait of the 34th president in, eisenhower in "war and peace." to see what other books congressman cole recommended visit cole.house.gov. . .