[inaudible conversations] hello, everyone.

on behalf of our staff and lisa muscatine i would like to welcome you all to politics and prose. if you have not already, please silence your cell phones. and another writer by that pillar. please hold your chairs and leaned them against something solid. thank you i'm pleased to welcome you to politics and prose. as the criminal organizations

[inaudible] the finest houses in the united states all with money from the empire. systematic and narration that the criminal underworld and the intensity of the race with life on both sides of the border and the irresistible family ties. i am delighted to have joe here to tell us about this fascinating story. in addition, his work also appeared at the "washington post" please help me welcome.

[applause] hello. thank you everyone for coming. now you can hear me. we are here to talk about the exciting and gripping and terrific new book that has everything it ever asked for. they were tidying up altogetherr if three fourths of the way through the book and as the

president would say there's a lot of bad -open-brac. it's the difference process that he went through reporting a book that isn't that difficult anyone can tell you being able to verify facts, not getting yourself killed, all these things are not easy to do when you are reporting on people like this but i want to talk about how you came to hear about the story and how it all started. every morning i would get up and look for stories i was getting up really early at the time i would go through the newspaper and always look for things i

could tear out and share with my reporters. i came across this one on the cover of the times. he was there with a big smile and hats and trophy and i started to read the story to figure out what it was about and he was about 20 minutes from where i live that had risen to prominence in this world of horse racing but i didn't know much about it because i'm from california. so i was immediately like this is something. we are always looking for a way to turn something into a fully realized story is so i was going to give it to one of the reporters and then i kept it for myself.

but then three years went by. >> it wasn't that much to do with it in that moment. the fbi had raided a ranch in oklahoma so there wasn't much to go on in terms of court records. i would essentially gather on it slowly. they started walking by with full records. he was based not far from where i was at dallas and the government agencies that work counternarcotics generally don't talk about what they do fo but r all the dust is settled.

that sort of got the ball rolling. >> you obviously want to find out about these brothers one is going to be living in a different of law on any side of the border. what first drew you to this was if the shakespearean nature of the contrast and what was it that you saw that makes you realize there was something more threatening about it? >> i thought about it before and i thought just the notion that they lived as a naturalized american citizen in dallas texas, laying bricks while not only miguel but another brother and other brothers in various places have all risen to

prominence in the drug trafficking business and eventually became the leader of the cartel which is notorious for being hellacious levi went but how do you live that life and continue to make the choice to be a bricklayer everyday while your brothers have amassed riches and power when you add the fact that to get involved in some way in this world of quarter horse racing was a no-brainer. when you see about quarter horse racing what was it do you think for a man like josé was it about

horse racing that made him want to finally get involved with if not the most common definitely the most murderous in mexico? >> they had grown up in mexico across the border in laredo and earlier on they were on the outskirts and their father had worked on a ranch with cattle and horses. it's mostly a sort of informal setting where they say we are going to have some beers and we are going to race, so that is the passion of a lot of people in northern mexico by texas oklahoma and mexico, so that was the draw for him it was something that he knew.

i essentially saw it as he built it it's what his death might have been able to do if his dad had been afforded more opportunities. >> how does he change as he gets deeper into this world that he didn't know until this point? >> he kind of gets his toes in the water and he starts to enjoy the success of a little bit and becomes more of a public face about it. if they win some races and have some success. first he wore a ball cap and then when he got into quarter horse racing and started showing up, he wore a white hat and

later on in the story, i don't know why but around the time his brother was becoming a huge problem in mexico, kidnapping and killing indiscriminately outside of the already horrible bounds of the drug war, he changed briefly. i think it was a coincidence. >> so, he gets deeper into this and he starts wearing his hat he sort of takes on more of a flamboyance to this and the cartel despite the fact they were laundering money through horse racing is something you try to be more subtle about. >> that's one of the things that's interesting about the story. under the leadership they

started this band in the war and we know them also from the mob war something is interfering in your business. thathat would show too much attention. you keep a low profile. and miguel started to flaunt those rules started with the others of northern mexico that have been interested in horses and they would bu abide than ine united states increased them there. he obviously entered them into some of the races which drew attention into his brother's family.

he ordered his guys to basically go to the american quarter horse association in texas and have them change all the names of their horses from these traditional names that honor the fires and the games of their breeding into names like number one cartel. the nickname was 40, and names like that. the industry knew and the industry has known that there is drug money involved and that's one of the interesting things about the story for many years they welcomed it because they liked the money. but they didn't ever really know exactly who it was and he helped make it clear. >> the book does a good job of the micro and macro being the sort of page turning narrative of what happens to his brother when he gets into acting and with the drug cartel and horse

racing but there is a much bigger picture to this and the fact is you know, this is the result of times policies and the result of it and how this affects families on other sites of the borders. what were the big ideas into the biand bigpicture that you drew m reporting and writing on this book lacks >> the quarter horse racing industry into this in particular were a great window into it. it's nothing that was particularly surprising. we had a system of drug laws that was more or less designed to ensnare people of color and in many ways to protect or at least give a pass to wealthy white people. the story was great in that a couple of different ways the quarter horse racing industry which i just mentioned drug money for years and probably to this day touches every aspect of that industry is a multicultural industry.

you have wealthy white ranchers and busines businessmen that owe race tracks and some of the best horses. you have the white trainers, all throughout the industry insurance brokers and then you have people of color and jockeys and trainers in the departments. drug money, everybody in that industry is just like our country it is sort of part of the prope proper life and he's n particular are making a choice all the time of whether or not to do business with that money. they generally all make the same choice but the result in this case shows it is different depending on who they are. 18 indictments come everybody was mexican-american so i think that sort of shows you what we are dealing with. and his story is interesting

there is a story of the character in the book named tyler graham a white rancher in central texas and he is just trying to bring back his father's farm. if you want a good farm you have to start it, so he gets an opportunity to possibly believe this horse that is owned by the duchess and it's the same horse that galls him into the business, so here you have a middle-aged bricklayer from mexico and a wealthy white rancher and they both want the same thing they want to create wealth for their family at a sort of make a go of it in the family business and do everything that we all want to do and they both have the same horse write them for there to do it. in mexico he was very skinny and they raced him under the name with the title of the book comes from, so they both make the same choice like yeah it is drug

money that this is my chance to ride. at the moment they are sort of both public facing in the business to government shows up, the fbi gets a tip and the government says that's interesting so what do they do? they let him keep going in this business and build his business and eventually they shoindividus doorstep. for tyler graham, they basically show up with a form that shows they want his cooperation so they show up literally with paperwork that shows you can keep doing this as long as you help us out and that is how it works. they literally show up with a form that looks upon the industry and in particular as one person is a sort of partner in helping to take down the bad

old days and the other person is the bad ombre and in that particular case obviously his family ties were a big part of that havin is having looked at e broad industry they didn't need to family ties, all they needed was the country of origin and also shows this was an investigation it wasn't victimless. someone ended up dead for the cooperation. can you tell us what happened? >> couple people ended up dead because of the cooperation and the story but there is a particular young man who was a horse broker essential that he would travel around the united states and by forces for the cartel and eventually various government agencies found out about that and started hearing about hamon wiretaps. they catch up with him and want to talk to him and he doesn't have much of a choice, so he starts cooperating with the government.

it isn't clear what happened, but at some point he found out that he was cooperating or suspected that he was cooperating and, you know, people know if you read about this world there is nothing worse you can do so they eventually came for him. >> writing stories about crime and the killing of drugs are great for a lot of reasons. it's great material to be writing about this stuff that keeps the readers interested and its importance to write about but it's also difficult when you are a reporter because people don't want to talk. lawyers sometimes can be were greatest friend or enemy as per is getting access to the sources and people wer were indicted ana lot of times don't want to talk because they are worried about what may come of this. so we would talk about that right before we came out about the pluses and minuses of writing a story like this and it can be a difficult thing sometimes and they also had some

issues can you tell us about that? >> i mentioned my first break was getting to the government come into this great if i was telling terry that sometimes the agencies don't want to talk that once one of them do and the dominoes start to fall. you can go to the fbi like the irs told all about the work on the case in theater like a cake, no, we will talk with you. it really did seem to work this way. the irs and fbi telling us about this importanforthis important y did in the area of horse racing and they all sort of felt so that's great. then of course you have to start to try to get to the other people involved.

the people i hinged my entire story on thursday and tyler graham. he never got to the point that he felt comfortable telling this story and he never even want to tell me. and a lot of other reporters and editors would say someone is not giving access. it's the point people just say i've got to move on and write something else. but you soldiered on. what made you want to keep going? >> fear of failure mostly. my editor and i., book editors are different and newspaper editors which we can talk about later, but they never really ask. essentially i have promised a book that would deliver this story and i was going to have to show up with it one way or another. i honestly hoped to get to one or both of those two guys were some of the other people that i didn't get to but i didn't. the flipside is that on this

case which was a multi-year investigation there were two separate trials because of some of the deals that happened. there were mounds and mounds of records including testimony from a lot of the people involved. if the case ever goes to trial, there isn't the testimony. over the course of the trials, we got long testimony from key players. so you could hear their voice and see it from their perspective. i would always stay talking to somebody but there is something to be said. the records don't lie and there are definitely people in this story who i would have loved to talk to but i don't know that they would have told me the truth and so it would have been great because it would have helped me understand where they were coming from a little bit and just to hear them talk that i may have ended up relying on the records anyway. >> so you are able to stitch together from the voluminous

records and lots of different sources what can be very cinematic and vividly. can you talk about that's what was your process as far as taking what can be thousands of records and distilling it into a 340 page book? >> it starts with just the reporting of amassing all of that and not stopping. it can be frustrating because you can go on for long journeys for the reporting that end up being sentenced or to the book. but, then you have to sort of have faith that it is all going to add up to a book. but that is obviously a first step is just going to stop amassing it and don't undervalue something that you might have to drive to san antonio to get four pieces of paper. there was a document that i put into the last draft of the book

that was the result of a year and a half of developing a source that was kind of a pain in the bath for a year and a half to give me that much always talked about getting him off. they never came through long conversations on the phone, but at the very end, he calls me and says i have this document i don't know i if you are interesd comyou're interested,it was king about this childhood so you just stay with it and then you write way too much and then once you write it, it kind of tells you what else you need to fill it in and then you keep reporting and it's just a matter of cutting it back and making it move. >> every moment during a big project and story there comes that moment whethe moment when s just like what am i doing with my life right now. when did that happen to you? [laughter] >> pretty early on actually.

i was about three months and until that ended up being a process. we ha had dailies, weeklies, nof you are on the weekly you still publish every day. i was the editor so if i wanted to take credit for these things i could. but you have that feeling every day of putting stuff out into the world and the audience is responding to it and it makes you feel important. it's for your ego mostly entirely probably. but, three months in not only was i not putting anything out there but i didn't have anything on paper. i was just reporting in people ask me every day how is your book and i would say fine but i was thinking like wha woodstock. i don't have a book.

i basically just started writing and that really helped. first i realize i do have a loss and second of all, i realized i enjoyed this and it doesn't matter if anyone is seeing it, it doesn't matter if anybody ever reads it all a kind of matters takin pricking trivialin whether i get three comments in the afternoon and then once i realized that it hoped me breakthrough. >> your voice is a work and there's a lot of ways to write the story dispassionately. joe injected a love of waste into these pages and i want to talk to you about that. what was when you were thinking

about how you were going to write this story and what voice you are going to go after because on one hand you are writing about people who died on the other antiwar writing aboutt horse racing and it can also be very light and funny like maybe this one is the number one cartel. so how did you strike that balance? >> i think i started with just the character i was writing about and one of the things that makes the book easy is that it does tend to jump from character to character. and each sort of little condensed steam zeroes in on one particular person or tries to tell it from their perspective to the extent i can't often with people that i've never met. and so, that was kind of the starting point of trying to figure out whose story is this little bit of it and how do they talk because there are some really colorful people in this story and both of these rules so

that was kind of the first thing. and then what you mentioned is important to understand what is the scene about and what is the tenor of the scene and can i capture some of the irony that exists in this horseracing world or is it more somber about knowing sort of where i am in the story. then later on there were places where i worked hard with my editor was great about injecting some sort of more attitude into it and trying to make sure there was an argument, trying to sort of hide in plain sight in the buck. >> i would like to open up to any questions people might have. and there are some microphones. there's one here. there's just one microphone.

did you ever feel threatened physically at any time during this? >> no i didn't. i get asked that question quite a bit in different ways. sometimes i get asked this anyone gets scared and i said yes because i scare super easily. but, no. i never felt threatened, nor did i have a reason to feel threatened. i think there is a theme in the book that helps explain that, which are taught early on about the rules of engagement of the drug war and one of the rules is it'its great interest to reportn the drug cartels in mexico, and to an extent along the border. mexican journalists are threatened, kidnapped and killed at alarming rates and it's getting worse kind of fast. so, honestly every time somebody would ask me that or i would start to think like do i need to

come i would remember that and think like though, and it is almost disrespectful for me to feel scared because what i was doing, reporting after the fact about what for the cartel was a sort of minor part of their business over, you know, it was a big investigation but in terms of the amount of money they longer, it wasn't that big of a deal. and it was all in the united states. i'm a white guy in dallas. there was really no reason for me to feel threatened, i think. >> do you speak spanish? >> i don't speak spanish. >> 95% of the people in the valley do. >> yes, and i don't. it was a challenge. [inaudible] >> did you change names? >> there was one of the fbi that asked for earning to be changed. everyone else is the same. >> and where are the running tracks, i assume that the horses are going to the tracks.

>> they were actually raced up the thoroughbred tracks. it is a track in brownsville. i think thes these these have be tracks in major cities that take place in the book. .. >> actually around the time of the advent of the dea the dea close that down. when florida was shut down the colombians essentially started looking for a way to move their

cocaine into the united states. at the same time you had the crack epidemic in cocaine and crack on the rise. the mexican drug cartels which traditionally dealt in heroin and marijuana wanted a way to get into the cocaine business. so the colombians and mexicans team.. the the colombians would take the cooking to mexico in mexico cartel would smuggle it in for them. it became a partnership for them. it's called the mexican trampoline. >> how many years are you talking about? >> discovered 2008 or nine until 2012 and 13.

>> when you say you are reporting, you actually researching and using it synonymous in every day you are writing about what you're finding out? >> i was not writing about it every day. but when i say reporting i mean the traditional tools of journalism of interviewing people on the phone and in person, going to the courthouse and getting documents. >> gathering information. >> yes. a more traditional research in terms of reading books. >> if you're reading it for the first time, what would be the favorite part of the book? >> that's a good question. it's also good. i'll tell you, there are three or four chapters in the book there 34 chapters in the book that jump out of the narrative and are bit more contextual or

history, one about the history of quarter horse racing in the way that drug money move back to mexico. when we think about smuggling we think about how the drugs come in a more interesting is the way goes back to mexico and what happens wallace there. doesn't have anything to do with the characters were talking about. they're all my editors idea. do not exist my first draft. they said you're trying to cram this context into your book and to this narrative but it slowed it down. what if you just stop told the story and i thought it was a horrible idea. i wrote it in protest. the second i wrote the first half said that's really cool because it just feels different. and i love those chapters now. >> are you going to read any to us? >> i was not going to read any to you.

>> could you? >> i could if we have time. i have not read any from the see it but mention the help of my wife, she help me flake apart that she thought would be good. i'll read from that. i know where it is. josé trevino all of a sudden the cartel had this first i mentioned who is ready to run in the united states and had run while in mexico and run well at some qualifiers. he shows up at this track and allison is going to run in a big race at olson josé nobody knows who he is is the owner of this

source and this takes place the night of the race. he walked in his first public pack he were blue jeans over tan boots, although coat over blue button-down and a cat that made him look less of a winning horse owner and he worked his final day as a brick owner a week before. his last weekly check came to more than $500. in this source he would make 445 grand. after 15 years of steering clear of the fence writer was packed with owners and trainers and horses from serious pedigree. the planned on keeping josé from seeing the cash. if they won they tried to leverage his naïveté to take advantage of them. he may have grown up around horses but this is the first time into the business of horse racing.

as a grow more influential in the settlement training it was still managed by -- >> he's not for sale. josé's trainer let them out of the stall and josé followed. >> i think that's long enough. [applause] >> there's been amazing literature written about the borderland and i'm two thirds the way through the book and i think it stand shoulder to shoulder with some other books. we have this amazing narrative of rich literature about the borderland which doesn't seem to be having influence on

developing rational public policy. so notwithstanding the richness of this literature, how do we take the stories and use them to inform public policy that's rational, if that's possible? >> it's hard to do that when you have a president who doesn't read books. >> that's a great question. get the first thing is that you have to keep writing them. people do read them. and it has this trick trickle down effect in who we vote for in the way we direct our policymakers. i think it would help is possibly ironic think it would

help if we continue to support news organizations and they continue to hire diverse staff and diverse storytellers that can help because frankly there are people who know that world better than i do and might even speak spanish. i do think that would help. i think this book said independent bookstores to keep writing and reading and supporting the institution, both the media institution and bookstores in those things that keep the conversation going. i think that's what we have to do. >> a lot of the candidates know what to do, we just need to get them in power. the switch of the attorney general was a great example of that. he had one under obama who said there wasn't a lot they could do

it at least said to his prosecutors find a way to prosecute people on the struck charges but they don't serve the statutory maximum. i know you have a new attorney general who says the opposite. >> what do you see as the futu future? in a book that's filled with death, killing common drugs what you see as a way to be able to find our way out of this? >> it's pretty bleak. i think it goes to just being smart, active voters and continuing to push progressive candidates who are going to support decriminalization

spending much more money on treatment to prosecute. one of things we get in to a little bit, i wrote it in the book is the nature of bias in policing. there is a move under the previous justice department to devise training for agents throughout the justice department. i don't believe that is happening, hopefully it will one day. but just getting our police agencies and federal agencies to eliminate their own biases as a prosecute these cases would be crucial. when any of that will happen i don't know.

>> i have a smaller question when he first described the two men who are on either side of the investigation you mention that both had gone after -- where was that in relation to an auction versus of joint purchase? josé had a really gone after him as much as he had an opportunity and it's unclear to this day how active that was or if your brother was a drug lord and say you on the source know whether not you just say yes there's no evidence that he was compelled to do. also no evidence that he stood up and volunteer. that was tyler owned a breeding farm. so he needed to recruit stallions for his farm.

they're wanting the stallions are very aggressively recruited by according josé. they're hanging out together and provide services to josé they would eventually stand. >> i want to wish that perhaps tyler would've been indicted for? >> that's an interesting question. i don't think tyler broke the law. people when i make that case about josé and tyler are the inequities i think people often think i've had that question like who are the white people who should've gone to prison, that's not quite how i feel about it. tyler didn't break the law but when he first stepped into the

business and the fbi doesn't think. basically people came along and asked him to do things. then the fbi identified him and offered him a lifeline. there's no way to know what tyler would have done if three months down the line became very obvious he was being use to launder money. we don't know what choice he would me. some idea as it relates to that is there people like tyler throughout the industry who were indicted and you are making basically the same choice but were not offered that lifeline. honestly don't know and there are examples of some of them who were either equated or convicted by a jury and their appeal was thrown out by an appeals court. it wasn't laundering money he was training horses. he didn't know where the money comes from necessarily. and a lot actually require you

to do if you do know doesn't mean that your laundering the money. >> what did agent larson think of the book? >> he's the lead fbi agent in the case. he texted and was very cooperative. we had conversations that were not tense, they just never were but where we disagree. particularly around ideas of bias in policing it was there bias in the investigation and he came to me and said he really liked the book, he didn't agree with everything that i wrote for my take on everything but felt like i got it right to the extent that i told the story correctly which i don't know that's about as good as you can ask for if we set i love it i'd

be like god okay. >> we got along well. just one of those people i could sit and talk to for a long time. that is not true necessarily at me. i think it is true of him. one thing that i think makes him a successful koppen agent is that he can talk to everybody. >> that was a key break in the whole arc of this. that one day and i think you have been rebuffed by the fbi but then you get a message and he does want to talk. so describe how that happened were you surprised and how rare that is. does this happen often? >> it feels pretty rare to me to get an fbi agent with the cases

that fresh, was an ongoing you never get an fbi who wants to talk to about a case is ongoing. there may be a role within the agency they have to wait 18 months until the case is resolved. that can be read different ways depending on appeals. so there was that barrier. i still think it's rare to get the agency to say okay and then an agent who's interested in doing it and then to have him have a personality and emotional availability to tell you the story and away they think of him as a character in the story rather than just an agent reciting facts. it was a huge break. the moment we first set down is when they started to think this could be a book because it offers me away into the story.

and nobody else had that perspective. he knows big picture of the story and then his own nitty-gritty in a way that nobody else has or can talk about it. i talked other agents involved but he sort of understood and would also live more than interesting moments because he was surveilling horse races and doing all the stuff that i knew was going to propel the story. >> on a scale of one to ten, how much did you know about horse racing before you started? >> i guess maybe a three i guess. i've never been to a horse race. just like everybody else if it happens or from invited to a party i would never bet on it,

knew very little about it. turns out i have family who are expert show horses but i was never curious enough to ask them about it. not quite a one, but almost. >> it was at the most enjoyable part of the research? what was the part where it was like this is great what information blew you way? >> i did not become a horseracing fan, that piece of it was not my favorite kind of reporting. it's like going to a place where you not especially welcome and it's a crowd and you're expected to go up to random people, that's not my back. for me it was more there were

some former, hopefully former drug traffickers i was able to connect with and i can think of a few meetings with those guys that is direct access to a world that's really hard to access. you can read testimony, you can read books but to hear guy explain how it works is interesting. >> one of the cool things is that it's predicated on people making choices and where they go with their life. on one side you have miguel made his choice. what is it that makes someone, who are they? what is their psychology and what makes him do it they do? what makes them think that this is something they can go after? >> i can't speak for all of

them. highly talk to a handful. i think everybody is different. a lot of times they didn't have a choice. they grow up in poverty and in this case i can think of one particular guy who had been in the business, got out of business this is across from taxes and it's like they just rolled into town to pick people up and they knew he had experience in a and said you work for us now. there really wasn't much of a choice. there are handful of characters throughout the book for whom that is true. oftentimes that's what it is, their towns were there from there waiting for other meaningful opportunity and this doesn't really have a negative impact on their community of

course now it does with violence but there's a time when smugglers in town were looked upon as people bringing money into the community to fix things up and stuff like that. the impact was on the american side. >> what was it about horse racing you think that made them think this is a great way to launder money? >> i don't know if they thought it was a great way to launder money. the best way through large global banks. drug cartels and other criminal organizations have wandered hundreds of millions of dollars and banks have systems in place to stop it but they don't work or don't want them to work because they can do without fear of prosecution. so i don't know if they thought

it was gonna be a great money-laundering device as much as they wanted to win horse races. once they started making money they thought if they're gonna make the money here less slide it over to my american brother so i have some clean cash going to my american family. >> to think miguel cared about josé? >> yes. when i don't know if journalists ever talk to miguel but it's a very close knit family. i think they all love each other. >> what he think josé's feelings were toward his family? >> every indication was that he was a loyal family man. loved his family. he would this about his brother when he could passionately in terms of sand like that's not me

but he stayed in touch with large number of people in his family and crossed over the border to see him including his brothers there in the drug business, he would say that he did not like that choice that he was always a family me. >> what was going on in his life and world? that moment he makes the decision to do this and he goes from making not a lot of money bricklaying to being able to make a lot of money. it's good money but it comes with risks, was happening in his life? what led them to that choice. >> one of the bigger things as he had kids getting older including one going into college. he late bricks were 30 years i was living in the same small house in a poor working-class neighborhood outside of dallas. nose kid is going to college. there's probably places where if

you do that in the union you make more more money but he would get a job, lose his job, get a different job and toward the end i think it was like 500 bucks a week. so it's easy to see it be in a matter of i have done this for all this time and i haven't gotten anywhere. time is running short to solidify my family financially and now he's got kids that are making something of themselves as a first-generation american some will go to college and how i provide for them. >> you have a lot of stories about crazy things, what was it that made you decide that this was going to be her first book? >> i was looking for a book, just made that choice. that was part of it. i don't know, just smack me in

my face when it sought and never let go of me. even at times there is nothing going on for the reporting standpoint i didn't have sources, there wasn't documents, i would always go back to it. that's me was a sign there's something more to it. in working with my book agent something he likes to do is to write a story about it on that story was for 6000 or 7000 words for the newspaper. to go right that story and finish it and see how you feel. to keep doing this for another two years? for whatever reason, i did. >> more books for sure. i don't know when or what about. but for sure.

iso when a minor been in newspapers forever i would not mind getting back into that fight it feels like it would be fun. >> to have any jobs? >> there's a great story in sunday's washington post about the rise the white nationalists, that's been that's very good but books, more reporting or trying to make a movie of this one so, we will see. one more question. >> obviously you have thoughts about the movie potential causes an exciting story but one option

would be a documentary. documentaries are getting more exciting. another would be something that's not entirely factual, which where you going? >> i option the book to a company called anonymous content which is a great production company. they're heavily involved in spotlight and the reverence and did other great stuff. they're smart thoughtful people. there's a screenwriter working on the script for a feature film. they worked on the bridge for fx has written the few excellent spanish-language films. were talking about it, his vision for his incredible. you hear authors talk about this process been a nightmare makeup

to be, but so far it's been cool and it's important. there are real people, the appeal of doing a documentary is you have that faithfulness to the real people in story which is a journalist is very attractive. the appeal of a future film is that people will watch it. although your point is well taken but that is the route were going and who knows what will happen. >> it sounds like. >> of the ideas to try to stay as true to the real characters in the real story is possible thank you so much. [applause] [applause]

[inaudible] >> c-span, for history unfolds daily. 1979 c-span was created as a public service by is cable television companies. prior to today via cable or satellite provider. >> next, book tvs after progressive policy institute senior fellow examines the charter school movement and the outlook on the future public education and reinventing americans was interviewed by just senior fellow president emeritus. >> this book is such a treat.