clinton, former first lady laura bush, colin powell, condi rice, a host of people. want to find out are some of the things that really happened in the white house when it comes to raise or their thoughts on certain issues about race. i remember a story one of the most compassionate stories of my life, owing to the art galleries just a few feet away from the white house with then first lady laura bush. these dissenters of slaves from alabama made these quilts and ultimately, i'm giving a synopsis synopsis of a synopsis, ultimate the first lady toward all the rooms and at the end of the tour, about five black women, black women who i do not believe the republicans, just wanted a bit of recognition that were so happy to just embraced the first lady and started screaming thank you jesus and started crying. a descendent of a slave on my mother's side, a generation

removed from a slave, it brought tears to my eyes. there's a lot of human stories that so many people can relate to in this book. it's about you and me. it's not just about black. it's about white, all of us coming together. >> if people go to booktv and type in april ryan they will see this big panel that was held, and author panel. what was that? >> the author panel was a panel discussion on race. we have professor paul butler who talks about criminal justice. we enjoy read, and author as well, who wrote the book fractured. we have michael eric dyson, and author himself, various books. i was the moderator and we had a serious discussion, serious civil discussion on issues of race. from authors who have written about it and research. who are experts in the field. we had a panel discussion on

the. we have people from all walks of life who actually were in the audience and asked about it, ask questions. it was a grea a great discussion becomes like the beginning of discussion that needs to happen in this nation. booktv, thank you. i loved booktv and politics and prose. we are going to do this again i believe in february. so i hope booktv will be there, but it is a discussion that is needed. >> april ryan from the white house and "the presidency in black and white." >> former secretary of defense william cohen has written a novel where he explores the possibility of an asteroid hitting earth. next a booktv he talked about his book, his congressional career and his tenure as defense secretary.

>> you could see the friendly rapport today that we have no -- now. good evening. i bradley graham, co-owner of politics and prose along with my wifwife lissa muscatine. on behalf of the entire staff, you so much for coming out. a few quick administrative notes. now would be a good time to turn off your cell phones or anything that might be. we make it to the q&a part of the session, we would ask that if you have a question to ask, and you all that i have questions, please make your way to that microphone because we are building out for our youtube channel and c-span booktv he is also here and would like to pick up your question on microphone. at the end before you come up to get your books signed, our staff would appreciate it if you would fold up the chairs you're

sitting in and leaned them against the shelves or the pillars somewhere. for as long as i've been part of the washington scene, which dates back to the mid-1970s when i started reporting for the "washington post," william cohen have stood out in the city and on the national stage. back in the 1970s as a young congressman involved in the impeachment proceedings against richard nixon he became among the first republicans to break party ranks and vote in favor of removal. them in the 1980s as a member of the senate committee investigating the iran contra scandal he was one of only three republicans joined democrats signing a majority report holding ronald reagan responsible for wrongful actions. in the 1990s while making plans to retire from elected office and go into business, he

was pulled back into public service by bill clinton who asked him to be secretary of defense. the first time i think in modern history that a president chose a member of the opposing party to serve in the cabinet. and that's when our paths crossed and overlapped for a bit. i was a pentagon reporter for the "washington post" and covered his tenure running the defense department. while there certainly were more than a few times that i wished he and his staff had been somewhat more forthcoming, we journalists are never satisfied, i thought and still think today that he was a very, very fine secretary. on top of the issues, fair-minded, even far minded about some things. he showed it was actually possible for a republican to get along well in a democratic administration. and he faced his share of tough challenges.

among them, military actions in iraq and the balkans, the expansion of vedas, a series of sexual harassment and assault cases here at home. and efforts to refocus u.s. forces on post-cold war issues i met a shrinking defense budget. after leaving the pentagon 14 years ago, he finally left government service and set up the cohen group, a consulting firm which has put together quite a team of ex-military, former diplomatic and other retired government officials, he also has continued to write. in fact, looking back over his numerous works over the past nearly four decades, it's possible to get the impression that his main interest has really been in writing and all the rest have simply been to buy time between the books. just consider the sheer variety. case produced a couple volumes of poetry, a journal about his

first year in the senate, emanuel on cutting through government red tape, an account with george mitchell. george mitchell of the iran-contra scandal. and non-fiction book on fraud and the elderly. mmr of race, religion and romance written with his wife janet, and several thrillers. did i leave any out? no. so my favorites happen to be the novels because they show for one thing that even folks who end up holding senior positions in this town have vivid imaginations about all that could go wrong. come to think of it, being on the inside and into senior positions probably just feeds those imaginations. in his new book, "collision," the quickwitted sean falcone shows up again. he was the president special

security advisor in bills last novel, link of an eye. has since become a d.c. lawyer. and this time stops one gunman early on in the book, pursues another and discovers a joint russian american project involving an asteroid that for more than just national security. a reviewer called the book quote a good john sponge-like quote a former u.s. senator and defense secretary who clearly understands what he's writing about. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming william cohen. [applause] >> i was about to yield the balance of my time to branch. i wish i had written that. you capture just about everything i've done, but i thought it might begin since we have such a nice crowd here today on an incredible weekend, the fourth of july weekend, to say a little bit about how i came to write and why teachers

are so important and why i'd love to coming to bookstores. for me it's a cathedral. it's a cathedral knowledge would walk into any bookstore. but i was a young man at one point in my life and i had a goal of playing percussion basketball. and you can see there are certain limitations that have in achieving that goal, but that was it at the time. i saw myself, i was cocaptain of the basketball team in a small school, and so i thought i was a pretty big man on a small campus. that's how i saw myself, as a basketball player. into one teacher, professor leroy grayson, he said everybody in this room will write a sonnet. and i said, sonnet? i've never read a poem, let alone write a poem.

i said, you understand, professor, i'm on the team, cocaptain of the team, and we're traveling throughout new england the next couple of weeks and it just would have the time to do that. he said you will write a sonnet or you will fail this course. so that i started to shake all of it at that point and i said we'll men don't write sonnets. i tried every angle i could. he said no, you're going to write it. eventually i did. i won't bore you with the theme of the i quoted to this day but it was my first sonnet. what it did is it forced me to see myself in a different way. it forced me to open up the lens and look into another world. from that moment on i never stop. it tells you about the influence that a teacher can have and how they can shape your life and make a decision that you otherwise would not have made on your own. some out of lead you down a path of which you only understand looking backwards.

it was funny i used to make fun of this story because i would get in front of, my 50th reunion at bowdoin come in front of a very large crowd, tell the story of what he'd given to me as a great which was a seat. i though thought i deserved andt and everybody in the audience thought so, too. and professor grayson was so, he was embarrassed to the extent he wrote me a nice note and said my god, i gave you a c for that? that was worth a a. to which attention but that began my career in writing at the wrote more. then went on to law school and i became an editor of the on the law review and so i continued writing legal briefs and trying to bring my knowledge of literature into the briefs because writing legal briefs can be fairly dull when you're citing cases, citing dissent in various aspects of things. i tried to make it much more literary. and went off on the way back to

maine to practice law i used to write briefs not only for my own firm but also for other attorneys were filing cases on appeals because i loved to write something colorful. it always got the attention of the supreme court justices in maine. that's almost the whole career i was writing poetry and had an agent up in new york, and the agent said one day you should write a novel. and i said, i've always wanted to do that. he said let me know when you're ready. one night in the senate the was night filibuster going on. it was in the second day of the third day of filibuster. it was 3:00 in the morning and i was on the senate floor and there was only one other person on the floor. it was senator jerry hart who i knew only casually. i walked over to him and i said, what are we doing? everybody is sleeping outside the senate chambers. they had cots set a. so we had to be on-call to enter

votes and everybody was sleeping. senator john warner used to joke that he was married to elizabeth taylor and sleeping next to strom thurmond. that was an irony of sorts. so i said to gary hart, i am weary. i'm bone tired. let's go downstairs in the senate under and get some coffee. we did. there was no one there. we ordered a big pot of coffee, and i said, gary, what would you rather be doing if you were not here right now? he said i'd rather be in iowa and writing a novel. and i said, well hell, i'm half irish, i've always wanted to go to ireland, i've always wanted to write a novel, so why do we doing to get the? we start laughing like a couple of teenagers at the point. he had an envelope and he said, what to write about? it has to be something we know. so we started making notes. i just come back from a conference in bonn, germany, on terrorism. i was also heading up a

subcommittee dealing with the influx of drug money coming in and funding terrorist groups. he had been on the church committee investigating the assassination of president kennedy, and we started taking all of these elements on what we are doing and we wrote a story in about a 45 minute time for the he said look, i've got ago. see you later and left the thing with me. so when the hour was right, about eight or so that morning i call the agent and i always wanted me to write a novel. i think i have a novel in mind and i have a friend i would like to write with. he said who is the? i said i can tell you. you'll have to come down to meet with us today. he came down that they. with a restaurant, i think it was called two-and-a-half something of on pennsylvania avenue. pardon? 209 and a half exactly what it was.

the agency this bill adler, became a great friend. so bill adler came into i said this is senator hart. we have an idea. what's the idea? i laid out with id was. he said that's terrific. that's a great story. i said to his uncle to take it back and ago to try and see if i can get you a publisher. i said there's one hook. you can tell a publisher who we are. because i don't want to sell a book based on my title. i want to sell a book based upon the quality of the writing so you get to the. he said that's absurd. i can't sell this book without having the authors names in front of the publisher. i said that's the do. he said okay, don't count on a. the next day at 8:25 a.m. i got a phone call, i just sold a novel. we signed a contract as mr. x. and mr. y. they didn't know who we were until the book was submitted and approved and ready for publishing. so that was my first art in the novel writing.

it started with the carey hart. there's another man that came in the picture, tom allen. no, one is a great different upon. tom was the editor of the book, and he used a word i first heard in connection with our work. he said this book is really person multitude. and i said well, yeah. we writing about anything thomas just been a great counsel to me over the years. i call them my yoda. there's nothing he doesn't know and nothing i don't try to share with them. is that you. he thought fo were up to me as a benefactor he goes out there to ragged island every summer. there's no electricity so we disappears. long story. let me come back to watch i write what i write. when is at the pentagon reporters like brad used as a will keep you awake at night? and i would say a nuclear bomb destroying an american city. that keeps me awake at in terms

of what was that unleash globally. of us could not write about when a that the pentagon. when i got out i started thinking about those things that pose a threat to our security, but to our survival. so i decided to write a novel called blink of an eye. and in the blink of an eye there is a bomb that destroys this city of savannah, georgia. you ask me why savannah? yapped repo book. there's a reason for that. but in essence what then happens. as soon as that bomb kills tens of thousands of people and those who die from radiation poisoning, what does a person in a tiny few? he's had to find out who did this, how good they've done it, why did they do it, and what do we do about in response? all in a period of four, five days max. that's the challenge we face as

we would to see what's going on in the world. we are seeing still the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. nuclear weapons. that's what this whole deal is with iran. this effort to negotiate and agree with iran, is that something that is countering proliferation, or will it increase? we can talk about that in a little bit but just the notion if you think about the horrific damage caused by a nuclear bomb, doesn't have to be a big one, they are all big in terms of the damage they do, but what do you do in response? how do you know who set it off? how can you be sure the people who made the bomb are the ones who set the bomb off? and then what do you do in response? what if you make a mistake and you attack the wrong country? all of those issues are still very much involved everyday, and when brad was talking about building a missile defense system, hit to kill is what

brad's book was about, trying to build something that stops think some coming in because of the horrific consequences to any kind of an attack using kinetic energy as such. now i came to this particular subject matter in terms of asteroids. it sounds okay, this is science fiction. it is science. there's science in the book and is also fiction in the book. but it's not science fiction. it's real. it's real in the sense that the united states, including the obama administration, started before but the obama administration now has a plan to extract samples from an asteroid and return it to earth for analysis. other governments have this in mind as well because, in these asteroid from that are rich with marine minerals, palladium, titanium, other valuable minerals. the private sector that says he would've an asteroid into a

subliterate orbit so that we can put astronauts on the asteroid or robots on the asteroid and mine it for commercial purposes? so you say isn't that kind of like a gold rush i can? you have the outer space treaty regulates, prohibits introduction of weapons in space. that's the outer space treaty that goes back to the late 60s. but it says nothing about regulating for private activity. so now we know if you read the press in the last couple of years more and more private companies are thinking about if we can get to space, we can movies, bring them closer and then be able to mine them. so i decide to stay what happens if you happen to be moving an asteroid into a subliterate orbit but it gets caught in what we call gravitational keyhole added so that puts it on a collision course with earth this

is not something that is far-fetched. most if not all of the astrophysicists are convinced it's not a question of if we will ever get it with an asteroid. it is a question of when. so have efforts underway for some time now here in the united states to try to build a defense in which brought me back, brad, too early discussion this evening. what do you do if you have an asteroid on a collision course with earth? well, you have chuck bolton who is the administrator of nasa. i've talked to him. he's a friend. people get onto a couple of top nasa people who deal with near earth asteroids and bodies. what to do? if it's far enough out in advance that if we conceded in advance and we can move it. we have the technology. we can figure out a way to move

it, just nudge it off its collision after if you give me three weeks, he said, it's time to pray. so if you have three weeks, there's not much we can do in terms of hitting it or moving it. it's coming at you pretty fast at that point and i would say look what happened just two years ago over in russia. you had a 56-foot asteroid, very small, coming at for about 35,000 miles an hour. and it exploded over a portion of russia and injured 1400 people. we didn't see it coming, had no idea was coming. and even know what it was that quote it. san diego's in a asteroid. we did know that was coming. it was about 90 feet in diameter and again coming at us at about 35-or a thousand miles an hour. we have been tracking that, and became relatively close in terms of space distance. it was 47,000 miles i think, but

that's not a long distance when you're thinking of the possibility of what happens. so ms has been doing has been mandated by congress to start talking, identifying and tracking those opposed the greatest threat to earth in terms of their size. and nasa is doing there. they are, as i recall, about 1400 or so that these are the lights out types of asteroids, a kilometer or bigger. especially a three-kilometer asteroid. it's pretty much lights out for the earth so we have detected make sure we know where they are at all times, if we can. it's not always possible. we look at every the asteroid back at the 1939. we lost track of it into making 89. suddenly it popped up again, and those are the things you worry about. you loose track and then you don't know where they are and simply they are coming, what do

you do? that are those which are the lights out type of asteroids. there are others, about 20,000, that are roughly 450 feet. so imagine home plate to center field, and asteroid of that size will take out any city in the world. because again it's coming at you as much as 45,000 miles an hour. it's important ho that we work h other countries and track them, and then devised a means of defending earth against them. book separated about it. movies have been made about it. bruce willis wasn't armageddon. there have been others. we would just nuke it. the problem with just nuking it can if it's big enough and you hit it with a nuclear bomb you shatter it into many small pieces so multiple in nature and not without they would just go

all over the planet it doesn't matter whether it's water or the earth. iif you have one of these big ones hitting water it will cause such a tidal wave it will wipe out most of humanity as well. so these are the issues i tried to get involved with the same okay, now we know that governments are concerned about how to defend the planet. we know we are building the kind of rockets that can land on an asteroid or a comment. you saw that most recently come and taken of thrusters that can move them. also we are working, i know the chinese are also working on a solar sail so the could actually something that is powered by the sun's rays that could be out there for long periods of time and then attach, come closer to asteroid and move it off course. so there are options if we see them. we we were talking at the defense department when i was a better, we would talk about you've got to be able to defend and ultimately destroy.

number one, you have to deter. we had three things at the pentagon. you deter your enemy and attacking do. so we had a great deterrence. we had a very large nuclear arsenal of our own so know what is going to deliver late attack us because we've got a good deterrent. if you don't deter you got to be able to quote defend. and defend, what you defend with. that's what we are trying to work on still to this day. do you have a missile defense system? is it possible? how do you hit a bullet with a bold, et cetera? but that was little at the pentagon sink and deter, defend, and then defeat. now think about it in terms of asteroids. it's not deterring. you can't deter an asteroid. they are not thinking. they are just moving. so you can't deter it what you think is detected. if you can detect it far enough in advance, then you can deflect

a. so detection, deflection as opposed to deterrence and destruction. so that's what the novel is about. up with some additional characters in. characters tend to be the same in my novels because i have certain people in mind with certain characteristics. i tend to write what i know. i wish i had the discipline and the brilliance of a stephen king in terms of how they can think of so many different things and write so many pages. so that's the ongoing, or be as gifted as, i have so many writers that i favor. you've got richard north patterson is one of my favorites. nelson deville is another favorite. that are so many that i love reading, that i read a lot, too right a lot to write what i

know. i know the pentagon. i know that he'll. i know what happens in the white house fighting to think in those terms of things are really going on. i prefer to write fiction because i like this i get to more of the truth in fiction then again in -- there's reason for me. if you're writing nonfiction, and i'm always worried about i will say something about someone that will be harmful, hurtful. and that person doesn't have a chance to respond. so i don't like the notion of trying to be truthful about what actually happened or what someone said. at the same time not do damage to that even though i might disagree, even though it's a horrible thing he or she might have said. i don't find it to be fair that i could write something like that and people, nobody's on the other side. i find if i write fiction i can create many of the same scenarios i had in real life with some of the same people i

dealt with in real life, and tell the truth about an issue without harming anybody. that may be an easy way out to say you should been writing about what you did at the pentagon, but the things i did at the pentagon, they are in most of my books. so i've achieved my mission of having a little bit of fun, because i want to tell the truth always about an issue. i wanted make it come however, entertaining. so things like graham greene, it's an entertainment. and so i tried to take real issues and make them intelligent ways an entertaining. i think i may be exceeded by 20 minutes or, as you can see senators hav have a time limit. although they should. i like to point out i served in both the house and the senate. in the house you have a five minute rule. if you exceed the five minute rule, some against a point of order, and think it's incumbent upon you to say, mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that i be

allowed to proceed for one additional, two additional, three additional minutes, whatever. you might get away with five. if you see i ask unanimous consent to receive an additional hour, somebody will say wait a minute, i want to a chance to talk to if they object, you make a note of that, you will wait until a time that person -- last night you try to accommodate each other's needs a five minute rule is a good rule. you can say what you have to say in five minutes because when you get to the senate come it takes you maybe two hours to say the same thing you might otherwise set in five minutes. by to use more words. both bodies, they are each different and have different purpose and a good balance. anyway, let me cease-and-desist and answer any questions that you might have. [applause]

>> obviously nobody's getting as much money as they want, is early detection something that even shows up on the radar for nasa's budget, or is it pretty much ignored? >> no. as a matter of fact, one of the issues that congress has to confront is something called sequester. sequester it is an abdication of political responsibility. you did not elect members of congress to come to the conclusion that they can't reach a consensus. and what happened was sequester, it came into effect as follows. if you take 535 people, multiply this a couple times, the people there, right? you take five for 35 people and sacred you reach a consensus that we need to cut

$1.2 trillion out of the budget over the next 10 years? 535 people, do you think you could do that? harder, right? you have a full congress now. how about if we just take 12 people? we just take the first two rows here and would make it six republicans and six democrats. you think six people on each side could reach an agreement? the answer was no. that's spelled what to me is an abdication of political responsibility. because the six on each side of the 12 could reach an agreement, the ax came down across-the-board cuts. there's nothing more irresponsible than simply cutting across the board without regard to what you are trying to either protect or promote or demote. and i can do it, look at it from a national ticket a point of view, pentagon. when chuck hagel was just sworn in after a rough confirmation process, he had to go over to

the pentagon and look at $36 billion cut in seven months and no discretion. so how do you reconcile what your requirements are with what you resources are going to be? very hard. so what comes first? training. development, research. but the training is most critical because we had to stand down a number of a wind. they couldn't fly. pilots were not allowed to fly this aircraft because the budget wasn't there to permitted. so what happens under the circumstances if the president says i need you to go fight a war in iraq, afghanistan or yemen, or where ever it might be? these pilots are not ready to go. not ready for duty. people to see the sorts of things but they are happening. was a slight we breathe the last two years with the agree to bump up the budget for two years.

2016 is coming, and under 2016 you go back into the sequester. that's not just defense department. it's nasa, its nih. think about it. we've had an ebola scare the with all kinds of issues come in with food safety, air safety. do you would want to cut national health institute's budget across the board without regard to what they are doing? this is the kind of irresponsible at that is taking place, and so i think you will ever is going to be the next president one of the first things they got to tackle is eliminate the sequester and say let's have some rational budgeting now. because the pentagon is also doing something, i don't think is necessary but not dishonorable, they're having what is called add-ons, supplementals, overseas contingency fund. they are still getting well on contingency funds that are supposed to be for contingencies. they are kind of put it in the budget and buy things with the. that's not what it's for.

it's not a healthy system we have now, and it's embarrassing to me as i go around the world, and i spend most of my time now around the world, to tell other countries we want you to be like mike your we want you to be like us. we want you to have a free economy. we want you to promote capitalism. we want you to generate prosperity that attract foreign direct investment. we need to see transparency and the kind of rule of law that you don't have now. they will say, you want us to be like you but you can't make a decision. your congress is out loggerheads. nothing is getting done. come take a look at what we are doing. so they raised the issue same to try to transport your brand of democracy in soil where we don't have your institutions. so we like doing things the way we do that we don't understand human rights and we don't enter democratic checks and balances,

but in your country everyone is in check. nobody is in charge. so kindly let us be as we've been. it's a hard thing to promote now to look at the united states because we hold up the banner and say this is the greatest experiment of human democracy on the planet. and it is, but it also has reached points in which people are not willing to do something that is really central to democracy, and that is reach a compromise. no one can function by saying my view is the only do. my issue is the only right issue. it has to be some give and take. in politics would like to say that the game is played between the 40-yard lines. if you're in the end zone playing your game there, you are not going to be covering this country, either the right insulin or the left. summit between the 40-yard lines because this country is either slightly right of center at any given time or slightly left of

center. it's not weight in the extremes. president clinton i think found that out in his first term. he was too far to the left, but his second term he moved back to the center and became pretty effective. i like to think you begin effective because he asked a republican to help out. but it was great. he was great. because he understood that you need to have compromised. you need to have people who disagree with you also who are willing to work with you. when you start planting a flag same ideological cement, then you're going to get stagnation, paralysis, shut down. you're going to get people who engage more in ad hominem attacks than they do in terms of promoting a system that we can be proud of. so it's too much ad hominem in politics today, not enough respect and not enough decency. pat moynihan, one of the great all time great senators from new york, he wrote an article once

that was entitled defining deviancy down. in other words, behavior the ones the world thought was the behavior not in the norm, the bar keeps getting lower. i think you say today, defining decency down. they decency standard has been lowered. we now shout at each other. we now throw epithets at each other. we shout from the joint session of congress, you lied, to the president of united states. is that a sign of maturity or is it a sign of decline of decency and our politics? i think we've got to get back to the sense of responsible of decency and also a sense of responsible fiscal control. we can't continue to do what we are doing. i gave my swansong speech in 1996 i left the senate. if i change the date come if i gave you a copy of it and change

the date, you take your talking about today. what i was talking about at the time was we are engaged in fiscal child abuse. fiscal child abuse. we are beating our children and grandchildren with little rubber hoses so to speak that are not showing up as external routes is going to afflict them for generations to come. we have $18 trillion national debt. we are adding about, 200 million, half a billion a year. who pays that? who pays that? how much taxes can you squeeze out of the younger generation to pay that off? there's a way we can do it. it's pretty clear what we have to do in terms of slowing the growth of these mandatory programs in a way that doesn't affect those who are most in need. but everything is treated as a third rail. everything is a third rail, you

can't touch. you can't touch is also security. you can't touch the military. everything is a third rail. when i was at the pentagon the health budget, the pentagon, all programs with 19 billion. that's over 60 now. so you say everything is climate there is anyway to get control. because we are not paying enough taxes to battle we're spending. we are seeing this plan and other countries. we see playing out in greece, puerto rico. your same situation and other countries were you keep promising things you're not willing to play for another start piling up. if we don't pay it come it's not our problem. so fiscal responsibility is part of it and you decide its way what are our priorities. is defending against asteroids top priority? probably not the top priority but it's something we just have to be aware. that scientists can tell you what it will do it tomorrow or 1000 years from now.

we don't know. so what we have to do is be prepared, saying this is an issue we have to contend with. other countries also can cooperate, have a cooperative effort. if we have a planet buster, all of us are doomed. so let's see if we can't pool our resources, and a lot of that is being done. but i just tried to raise the issue any more entertaining way and i think you'll find a lot of the arguments in there are real a lot of issues are real. i just impose some dark characters. okay, next question. if there is. >> i know you're writing fiction but as somebody who is held in very high security glitches, are you required at all these a bit the manuscript before publication for any checks? >> no. >> how do you guard against

something inadvertently even coming out that you might -- >> that's a good question. in fact, when i was in the senate i wrote the book one night games and i trigger a couple of covert actions and decade did the dishes names. i submitted, i sent it out to the agency and said, just one best buy, these things. is any in these names? there was a couple the worker to generate them for computer algorithms that there were a couple of things that were the same so i just changed them. but i never write anything that isn't in the public domain. all of the research i do this was something that's already out there. if you were to look in collusion -- "collision," also that you can tune into nasa.gov are producing an annual see all of the stories about asteroid and it will get you into looking at the information concerning astros. the rest of it, the murder scene

that takes place in the opening of the book, i have one character as chechnya and, to actually, but one of them learn things by watching all the movies of joe pesci. the language is not pretty. the language is not pretty but, i may, i take things into public domain and never try to take advantage of what i learned over the years. i spent 10 years on the senate intelligence committee as well as at the pentagon. aikido separate and i never had a problem. >> my question is sort of related to what he just asked, a little different slant on the issue. how do you keep up? so you get a call today to be on "meet the press" sunday. how do you prepare for that? they want you to be there to talk about what john kerry is

doing overseas this week or next week, whether it's just happened or whatever. do you get briefed? how do you company, you're smart but you've been out of the pentagon for 14 years. you can't know all the minutia because you're not briefed every day by staff meetings so how did you prepare to go on "meet the press"? >> well, the wonderful thing about my firm is that we have so many brilliant people in the firm. for example, how do i know about this? if i get called and have to go on a program tomorrow morning, dealing with an issue, let's say in turkey, what's going on in turkey? what does this mean? are the turks going to have an accord whether to protect some of the refugees coming in? i can call come in my office i call ambassador marc grossman. marc grossman was the number three at the state department and also, when did coburn died,

marissa, they called him back from the office into government to be the special rep afghanistan and pakistan. he also was a former ambassador to trick you. i say, mark, what do you think? a system is what i think. i might agree or disagree but i have as resource. if it's a military issue after general joe ralston, joe is up in alaska where he lives by the commute. he's up every morning at 4:30 a.m. on the phone with all of us. we talk every morning. ..

"financial times," "wall street journal." >> your staff not to get you prepared like it was your staff -- >> these are experts in respective fields. i can stand on their shoulders. it makes me taller. that is what i do. good question. >> in your collaboration with senator hart, i was wondering how the process was. you reach right different chapters or did you brainstorm a couple hours and then go off and write kind of do the same chapter? >> i'm not laughing at the question. i'm smiling because senator hart and i did an interview with my

current wife, janet long hard whom i met years and years ago appeared we were on a book tour. this book came out in 84, 85 day we were at her show in naji turned to the two of us and said which one of you wrote the vaccine. but no, senator hart is a really gifted writer frankly. i didn't know he wrote and he did note that i did. what we tried to do, we spent a lot of time together during filibusters and other times we were doing our work and gary was more high q. in his writing, very sparse. i was much more collaborative, toxic and however out. so we would keep exchanging chat is until you would not be out of town who was writing was shot there. that is how close we became and kind of flaky tape to clock and

start than spinning at the hands, they will eventually come together and syncopation. that is how we came together in writing that we would know each other so well in terms of the care or he might create a great chat areas and he could do mine. it is a joy to work with him and it was an interesting book featured in the book of the month club, so it did really well. the whole notion of the double man, which is really taken from a poem called the double member i got the idea and the two of us giving -- again, writing what we know, terrorism, and drug money coming in through the gates plus we were and was this a retaliation that would put all

this together. we had a great friendship. i'm told he's coming here. hope i have a chance to see him. >> you made reference to pilots that were mission ready because of restriction and training. where do you see military aviation outlined with all the technology a changing, what will happen to our pilots? >> will never in them and make completely the need for pilot, but as you can see the drug technology more and more it's been called upon. pearce so going to look at replacing the long-range on and you still made pilots who can

fly the f-35, f. 22. technology is wonderful in one sense i'm very alarming and another. as good as we are, by generating new ideas, new technologies and to hack into them. the notion we have driverless cars if someone had comforting. on the other someone takes over control, that doesn't sound so pleasant. i think you want to retain human control over our military as much as possible and not turn it over -- certainly the decision-making to the technology. >> one last question. when you are in charge, did not overlap with the osprey? >> the osprey is something that

general jones was interested in. just to show it wasn't as dangerous as those complained that times with new technology. they will continue to be the technology of the future. >> thank you. >> anything else? [inaudible] [laughter] >> to use a sharpie to sign books. but i can actually do writing on my phone. i take my ipad. i use that from time to time, but basically a scratch out that to myself and i don't want to lose the idea. with 17, 18 hours of downtime or i'm not studying something.

i've seen every movie on the plane so it is easy. what i try and do is make sure that a thoughtful come to me and say yeah, that if it. i go back and get home and type it. i don't use the blue pen anymore. i used to do everything in bright blue pens and it used to leak on my shirts all of the time. >> i was wondering, what are thoughts on the other elements of the private sector likes a fact entering space and how do you think that will impact the decision? >> excellent question. space act that another explosion. the private sector is going to be even more important in the coming years. that is further research and development money is pouring in. you take companies that have the resource than they are putting it to r&d.

this is one of the problems the budget until they get control of our budget to set up priorities we are not going to be the ones who are inventing things. you can go back and look at the history of arpa and that is where we got the internet that was first created and developed. if you like it those monies that are being depleted. the private sector will play an increasingly big role and one of the things that touch upon in the book is that the private sector is involved because it will be financially rewarding and all the minerals. this is the capitalism that is. i have an asteroid now in its line. in china, russia, india. say wait a minute, that is not

yours here that buyers. we get into the issue of the private sector company putting the money into research developing and exporting technology for a commercial purpose, and not the free enterprise system is all about is supposed to sing we are going to share this now. this is something that belongs to the world and not to you. those are the issues implicit as well. it does raise the issue private sector because of the money they've been able to accumulate and the brilliant than innovation coming out of the private world and not the government world. that is what we are going to see. >> just wanted to stay thank you for coming tonight and congratulations on putting out a new book. my question is how do you come to the idea of wanting to start the cohen group. so many people go out and start their own firm.

i am curious as to how the process plays out. how do you start your own firm and may be a very interesting process and here's how it happened. >> the key to it -- liable to you another story. the first time i was in india was years ago. and you go into that point. i had to close my eyes. i said how do you do it, how do you function without colliding, killing, whatever. good horn, good rates, good luck. i used that. but you have to have? you have to have good people and you have to have good service and good product. so i had the idea is going to

form and i announced my retirement from the senate in 296. bob tyler had both been with me now three and a half decades. and bob came with me when he was the high schools didn't pay george washington. he gave up going to school and went to night school instead so you could volunteer for me for free at night add for two years. so he is someone, a physicist by training. we are going to form the group but i left the senate and along came president clinton who said i have another idea for you. would you be willing? the answer was yes. but simply deferred creating the cohen group. i have been interested in

international affairs. you can be a congressman or senator and keep traveling the world without showing whites of benefit to your constituents. one of the toughest things this for a congressman or senator to take a trip without looking like a boondoggle of sort and being characterized. it is actually the best investment you can make to have your representatives traveled the world. as mark twain said, it makes narrowmindedness impossible when you see other countries and cultures than the needs of other people, it gives you a much wider aperture of for the ones who are through. i couldn't use that to deliver something to my home state. how could i show up his travels were beneficial. but that contracts and taiwan. i was able to show a big contract in malaysia. i was able to do that to show this is beneficial to my state.

but i became so interested in the travels. i went to china in 1978 and senator hart, senator glenn and myself are picked to go to china in 1978 where we met the great hall, et cetera. i've been going back every cent that time and see what a country can do it even though it's a communist, politically communist country, it is semi-capitalist right now. capitalism the chinese are mistakes. but to see what they were able to do is nothing short of mind-boggling. it was called the peking hotel at the time.

they have the focus and they don't have a congress. that is the upside for them and if they build a middle class, the middle class is going to demand more from the government the right to breathe clean air. which the? right now. any country that is impoverished will do anything to get jobs, create jobs now matter how grimy they are, they will do it if they've got two feet people. and then prosperity sets in and they say i can't breathe. they've got to figure out a way to take the energy they converted to industrial development and make it to a much higher level in terms of technology. that is all part of the evolution in terms of how things go. it comes back to what i thought traveling the world. we have to have a better way of relating to people.

we've got to treat people with respect and this is something they failed to do. have you ever heard that name schenkel, a russian poet. i went out for one time to try and persuade the academy of sciences that i had a good idea. i wrote an article that was based on research about a way to modernize our nuclear weaponry by reducing the numbers and it was called guaranteed bill done. they had read the op-ed piece and said maybe he should talk to the russians about soviets. i've got a democrat to go with me. otherwise it to republican plot. i asked senator joe biden.

you go with me? he said absolutely. they didn't accept it. i thought it was a great idea, but they have a different view. i said i want to go see. during that time and went a long afternoon together. when i got ready to leave he says uni must stay in close touch with each other otherwise we will forget each other's. i thought it was a very poignant way of saving if you don't have a phase to associate with another country, and tough times you will demonize the contrary. you won't see people. you'll see an enemy. the more we can interact with each other, the more we can put

faces and the less likely we are to go to war. google form the core and group and especially 816,000 miles in those four years to 63 countries, most of them half a dozen times. so i was able to again have a global vision of what is going on in the world and that is important for a cohen point of view. we advise companies doing business globally. you're the problems, challenges, opportunities, get into the economy or exit from it. again, picking the right people and you pick the right people were really fired the world experience and who like each

other because we work together very closely. we meet every morning same time in one room. wherever you are in the world, alaska, china, doesn't matter. he will be on the phone talking. and so it's pretty unique and i like to think we did the same thing on capitol hill, was with me for years, my press spokesman and press person who kept me out of trouble most of the time. good people, good product and great service. >> of this curious how you're able to manage your time, how you're able to pursue your passion writing while doing your day job so to speak in the senate. >> what you see here is an

illusion. first of all, i give my parents, my father in particular great credit. my dad was able to work 18 hours a day six days a week and 33 and half hours and i and he lived to be 86 and he died exactly as he always wanted to, working. he made his last batch of dough and the bakery and died there. i don't like to think of myself as being that dedicated, but in the way i have the same work schedule. i don't sleep very much. at the pentagon, i arrange to get up at 4:30 every morning, go to the gym, work out until 5:30, shower, get to the pentagon, get the briefings. we would have the presidential briefing book and then start demanding to know then start

demanding to know it go all the way until 7:00 or 8:00 that night and usually if i entertain a foreign dignitary, we cut it off and i would be home by 9:30 and read until 11:00. at 11:30 for the first 10 minutes i would watch jay leno. i couldn't go to bed until i watched it 10. i had to have some relief. i would be a would be safe from midnight until 4:30. periodically you get those calls you don't want to gag and you have a secure phone and when you hear the secure phone go off come you know it's not good news. it's always bad news. you learn to live with that. the job is so demanding. it's so exhilarating, so rewarding big you are on a high of the time. even the bad days you can't wait to get there. so you are fueled by this adrenaline. i feel the same way now. it