good afternoon. welcome to what will be a fascinating discussion about three gripping and important books. richard nixon the life, william hitchcock at the age of eisenhower america, the world and the 1950s, and the imagine ears of the war of the untold story of the pentagon agency that changed the world. i am the moderator and i want to welcome everyone on behalf of the virginia humanities producer of the festival of the book. before we start i have some announcements to make. first, please silence your cell phones. you may message about the event. we want to thank the sponsors and community partners without

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festival free and open to the public. you can fill out an evaluation before you leave or contemplate one online at va book survey. finally, please support the festival authors and local booksellers by purchasing a book today. they will be available for book signings after the program ends. today we are going to discuss two presidential biographies and the history of a fascinating agency created on the watch of one of those presidents. the authors will give us a brief synopsis of the book and we will then have a discussion of this year and finally open up for questions from you the audience. first is william hitchcock professor of history at the university of virginia and the professor at the miller center. he received his undergraduate degree and phd from yale.

before coming here he taught at yale wellesley college at temple university where he was the chair of the history department. his 2008 book the better road to freedom the history of the liberation of europe was a finalist for the pulitzer prize. tell us about the age of eisenhower. your book was just published this week. >> thank you and thanks all of you for being here and to my panelists it's great to be here. here's the question. why should any of us care about dwight eisenhower? [laughter] the book makes the argument quite eisenhower was seen as a figure from a different era is one of the most consequential president of the postwar era ended with scholars and academics would howl with

laughter. i have a book to show a eisenhor had a significant impact on the shaping of modern america since world war ii and i argue in the book in many ways we are still in a funny way living in the age of eisenhower in certain respects and that's what i try to make the case in the book he shapes the evolution and the development of the united states. i will give you three big themes in the ways in which he did that. the first which he shaped modern america as he helped to build and legitimate the warfare sta state. that in the fact the military-industrial complex he warned us about on his way out of office but he did a great deal to build it and expanded the pentagon and the defense department.

he invested an enormous amount of money and prestige in the cold war and the tools required to win the cold war so whether you like it or not, he really built up the ability to wage a global cold war against the soviet union so in that one aspect he was enormously consequential and invested his prestige and money into building the strength that would go on to win the cold war. the second thing that he is significant for days that he shaped the republican party and american politics because what did he do on the domestic side? he created a political space on the side of the spectrum neither right or left. he ran to the center and popularized the idea you could be a centrist and so successful in america. hard to believe that is in the world we live in now though i

believe many americans still wish and hope they could return to a somewhat more centrist set of debates that is not where the politicians live, they are on the margins. eisenhower told the republican party out of its isolationist camp and brought it into an internationalist camp so he shaped the republican party in his own time and also worked across the aisle to create a vital center in the 1950s so in that sense he also had an impact on the domestic politics and public life. the last thing i will say in the themes to discuss if w if you'le back to them in the q-and-a that last thing he offers us, he gave a model for the presidential leadership might look like and this is something that still designates across the country and i know this because i've talked to a lot of people about eisenhower the term i use in the

book is he gave a model for the disciplined presidency. discipline in the whit and the e is a huge advantage and of course he was a military officer said he knew something about discipline but i don't just mean he could do a one armed push-ups which i don't think he could. what i mean is he used the tools of government effectively because he understood how the bureaucracy worked and he was disciplined in pursuing a limited number of important objectives. balanced budgetfor defense spending and infrastructure. he said he would do that when he got into office and he did it for eight years. meeting with the cabinet and national security council and the congress and the press he did that every single week so he was focused and got results and gives an interesting model about how presidents could be more effective even in a time like ours said he is a man for the times and like it or not we

still live in the age of eisenhower. [applause] >> we are going t to bleed intot but we introduced you first. sharon weinberger is the executive editor of foreign policy magazine. previously national security editor of the intercept where she directed the publication's defense and intelligence coverage. she's a graduate of johns hopkins university and holds a masters degree from the university of pittsburgh school of public and international affairs and from yale and russian and east european studies she's helped numerous reporting fellowships in her writing has appeared in "the new york times" and "washington post" among many politicians debate the publications. >> i was happy about being invited on the panel because usually when i've spoken about the book i start with what i

think are the more amusing stories of the defense of the research projects agency so that it was the time that they directed the vietnam war sent a psychologist to get a shock test of a vietcong fighter or the time they had a top-secret program to zap monkeys with microwaves to see if it could be a mind control weapon that illustrates the cold war and science because i talk about the book i have not talked about the relationship between eisenhower and the research project agency so i will start by talking about what the agency is. for some people that holds a name and for other people to send. it was created in february 1958 and personally authorized as a response to the launch in october 1957 of sputnik first artificial satellite launched by the soviet union. there is a little mythology it

was a big deal at the time but the idea that creativity collective panic is overplayed and it was a politically engineered crisis and in part that's the way eisenhower responded which was not very sensational. for the american public are presented to things first symbolically they had to be the united states into space and second the ability to launch a satellite into space was linking the intercontinental ballistic missiles with the idea of the invincibility of the united states had been breached. bombers might take hours to reach the united states. so it's really created a political crisis. eisenhower tried to downplay it in ways the public didn't have eisenhower knew that the intelligence community was working on the first gross imaging spy satellites and it

wasn't something revealed to the public if we were not as far behind as. they tried to put things in the space but nonetheless there is a lot of pressure to do something is what he did is authorized to creatiocreation in 1958 of whats then known as the advanced research projects agency and this was in effect the nation's first space agency before the creation of nasa there was what became known as all of the space programs into one agency so that included the german rocket scientist as well as the air force navy programs and this agency was going to get the united states into space as

quickly as possible but 1958. the projects begin performed in the department as the secretary of defense may designate. was it a national security agency the dead science and that has been a tension that has existed for decades and has gone back and forth and in its first year of existence along with the first rockets it proceed on the science side somehow planned this project seemed t projects y

favorite one was operation august which was going to launch nuclear weapons and to set them off in the atmosphere to create a force field that would protect the planet from intercontinental ballistic missiles if you're laughing about this but it's going to be a force field so they went off with the air force and launched weapons into space in a top-secret mission that was leaked to "the new york times." >> the advisor called it the greatest experiment ever done and it was. it was also not successful and it turned out it was going to be killer electrons from the nuclear weapons but it turned out the way that the atmosphere is jdk bit too quickly to offer a force field and the first chief scientist said there could be however another with opposing superpowers with such that it might be possible.

the second project was emblematic of what it was as an agency in those early days was a project called o'briant which was a conceptual space ship that would travel to the stars covered by thermonuclear weapons and it is rather unbelievable therwas rather unbelievablethert president kennedy was appalled by it with 500 nuclear weapons attached to the back of it and one of the scientists said we estimated for every launch of ten people would die statistically on average on earth from the fallout. on the upside, even in its early days they did some amazing things. i paithey paid for early work oe saturn rocket by the german rocket scientists and became the concept and the model would eventually launch astronauts on the first moon mission years later. another thing that is authorized by eisenhower personally was the

communications satellite from space to broadcast this president eisenhower's voice. so you have a mix of projects in an agency that was at war with itself and the administration and eventually what happened was eisenhower authorized the creation of nasa and they lost the civilian space programs into this space agency and the military satellites went back to the services and you were left with this agency that went on to find new missions whether it was in vietnam or the war or the nuclear test detection and that's what my book is about is what happened to this agency after the creation to find its place in the world. >> thank you. [applause] the nixon biography reached "the new york times" bestseller list and one that penn america price

witprizefor the best biography 7 and the word from the new york historical society as the best work in the field of american history or biography. the earlier books were about the lives of the famed attorney clarence barrow and house speaker tip o'neill. he's a graduate of the university of virginia and worked the white house correspondent reported from the famous spotlight team and editor for the "boston globe." tell us about mixing. >> thursday to resist the temptation to lean forward and push one of these buttons. [laughter] i sort of had the same question that we faced with eisenhower which is why mixing now. mine i think it's is a bit of n easier sell and it's not because eight years ago i was lying in

bed and i said to myself donald trump is going to become president and to develop a special counsel and again at the dnc and the saturday night massacre. it's because i thought that it was an interesting character whose life encompassed a lot to do with my generation in particular but i do have a feeling somewhere in his well-deserved place in the afterlife richard x dickson is looking up at us. [laughter] saying they miss me while i'm gone with what they have now. [laughter] one of the things i wanted to do in the book is try to reach the man. one of the first things i was struck by is this the most protectivalmostprotective tendee people who knew him were the

members of his family and that there wasn't a lovable human being past the shelf and i thought if i could portray that human being that would be a story worth telling. he is a joke on the simpsons and the only president to resign. one of the funniest stories in washington is the day that the ex- presidents gathered at the white house to go to a funeral and business gerald ford and jimmy carter and richard nixon bob dole walked in this e-mail evil speak no evil and evil. [laughter] and yet with every bad story

that you tell there is a flipside to talk and in those cases it was he went to war in 1944 and was horribly wounded by a mortar shell to the point where the medic wrote on his forehead in his own blood don't worry about than we've given him all the morphine he's going to get he's not going to make it but he did make it and if you remember he'd lost the use of his right arm and shoulder and with that he lost the ability to perform the most basic political function and in all the chambers of commerce and state legislatures and all the politicians that he ever ran across he always knew and said d said that there was one who always remembered to extend his left hand and it was richard nixon. if you go on youtube and look at bob dole giving the eulogy at

his funeral the same man who came up with a wonderful story about hear no evil and see no evil breaks down and his reckless agony as he gives the eulogy at nixon's funeral so there was something more i thought. ones working title for the richard nixon an american tragedy because he was almost a shakespearean or figure of great tragedy. he did awful things in waterga watergate. he undermined lyndon johnson's effort in the war in 1968 and yet as he told us when he was encouraging captain kirk to negotiate is an old prover thisb may nixon can go to china. [laughter] and he did.

he created with a stroke of the environmental protection agency and assigned a position that created an online increasing tumbled to number of young women that were able to get scholarships. social security cost-of-living increase some of us rely upon that. it came into being in the nixon administration and he was the single most two supervised the segregation of southern schools so what is the lesson about richard nixon i think he would say if he were here he would be dismayed at the way that we've become a polarized nation, tearing at each other's throats and i say this because that last great scene before he got on the helicopter to go back when he summed up what happened in his

own tragic story and said those who hate you don't win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself and i think that is the main reason it's a cautionary tale about what can happen to good souls who destroy themselves because they gave into the passions of things like hate. [applause] two presidents who had a relationship and nixon started as the vice president and i could barely make it because of an incipient scandal but they saved the relationship and continued through tw to the ters of the eisenhower presidency but my sense from reading the books is that it was a very fraught relationship, not a close and

warm one. talk about that each of you. >> eisenhower is responsible for darfur and mixing. [laughter] >> the nixon and eisenhower relationship is fascinating and it's what about in a very illuminating way. eisenhower didn't know nixon before a nixon had been nominated by the proverbial smoke-filled room of the republican insiders who picked him to run on the ticket because for a lot of reasons he was young, he was from california and most importantly he was a ferocious anti-communist which was a huge advantage on the eisenhower ticket because he was thought to be a political

unknown. it was known the democratic party was interested in running eisenhower for president in 1948 or 52 so the republican establishment wasn't sure about whether or not he was reliable enough so what a better way to get a young and dynamic senator with impeccable credentials of going after communists remember nixon had unmasked soviet spy alger hiss and made his career on it. mccarthy was inspired by his political success and nixon had already been there in 48 so this was a public figure known for being tough and eisenhower made the decision so off they went into the relationship never warmed up on a personal level. you know their families within that being tied together by

marriage between eisenhower's grandson and nixon's daughter but the two men were a generation apart and have different experiences. nixon was done on the ticke notd eisenhower was the world's most famous americans of the century and he never pulled nixon into his personal -open-brace our friendship he never took them to gettysburg, never brought him into the white house family quarters he was just another guy on the cabinet and by no means the most important person in the cabinet. >> he was born in the outback of california and it's always important to remember that the major reason why he picked the republican party looking towards the west and southwest but he had this awful father who was emotionally abusive to his sons and he had a very reserved cold mother who has nixon once said

my mother never said she loved me and he had two brothers who died the youngest curlyheaded together and then the sort of favorite son of the family died within forms of tuberculosis ruining the family finances and making mixing better and insecure and that fed the tragic flaw. he was constantly whispering in his own ear you are no good, the press hates you, over and over again and then he gets picked within six years of coming home as a commander in the south pacific he goes from a nobody to vice president of the united

states and he's a very happy guy and all he wants to be as admired and a working man on the team and you can't really call them other than he'd just been five years liberating europe, working with churchill and these major historical figures and he saw nixon as staff useful to bring in a bunch of papers and put them on the desk and go somewhere else so i wasn't an activit wasn't anactive disdaint of ignoring this guy and he was kind of quirky said he just sort of put him off and then he has a heart attack and richard nixon rises to the occasion and shows a healthy handles everything perfectly not either too proud or modest come he's not too strong or weak, handles it perfectly but in the meantime of

eisenhower's been lying in a bed staring at this giving a and realizes his mortality is upon him and wonders whether or not he wants to turn the united states of america over to this young richard nixon and despite his excellent performance, he comes back and resumed his duties and calls nixon in and says i don't want you on the ticket next year. for somebody as fragile and insecure, but shattered them. he had almost a physical breakdown. so the relationship probably got better especially after a there was always that feeling of nixon wanting to get into the inner circle and never getting the chance to do so. >> there was a share of fascinating characters, not household names like eisenhower

and nixon but in reading your book i was struck we talked a bit undisciplined president there were a number of people especially early in the days were not exactly disciplinewhowt they were fascinating characte characters. you opened up with a fellow named william got out. tell us about him. i was riveted as i read about this%. >> he had sort of been buried in history that was very close to eisenhower as a sort of seminal figure in the intelligence world and i hope someday someone will write a book about him because he has his own history. when i was created in 58 there were three figures that were key which says a lot about who he was in the administrations of the first director was the vice president of general electric

and followed as the industrialist into th did the ig it's about managing signs up necessarily science itself said he was chosethathe was chosen at director and thought he was going to bring men and uniforms into space in the military would control space. ththat part wasn't crazy about listening to science advisors who wanted to build the agency said there was the industrialist and then from california very brash, arrogant, smart brought in asmartstartanesthetists finar entities are the two seminal figures. in the background was this guy i interviewed said they have no idea where he came from he just showed up on the initial day and no one said what he was doing. he first headed the office of foreign development over to the

pentagon and basically lobbied to keep the space propensity to have this agency that now has no mission and the senior person rose to be the deputy director. this can be good for me in terms of what he saw. he solve the conflicts in the world but if the nuclear apocalypse against the soviet union would be bad but the

likely way we would face off against the soviet union would be through proxy war, insurgency centered in southeast asia and he began to transform into this agency that he thought it was more important at the time that included jungle warfare and vietnam and that is the direction he went. it was written out of darpa's history becaus because it fell f favor with the secretary and there was an investigation and he went to jail for fraud for four or five years so that became another whole history that he was seminal in the agency. you have to read the book for the story of how he wound up in jail. that is quite fascinating. it's striking when you read the three books eisenhower and clearly the agency founded in his time he had great interest it's a black hole there's nothing there that i can find with nixon.

it's taught to over emphasize the impact that has on the american population. a lot of the subsequent we must move further, fasteand faster at had bigger came from the shock that they were beating us into space and that's the main reason they ended up at the moon program and nixon was a vocal lobbyist in the administration for more defense spending and money for rockets and the robust american space program and particularly when john kennedy and the democrats convinced a

lot of people in the united states that they were regaining a superiority they were very much willing to spend that kind of money and that this resistance from eisenhower because eisenhower was getting the reports from the flight saying that this stuff was not as major as it was. when you get to the actual nixon administration, he had a way of writing off huge amounts of the government has operated below him and he wanted to focus on his peace initiatives, china, ussr treaties and of course he was consumed by vietnam.

so a lot of the stuff like title ix and others came up from his desk as defense spending on the space shuttle program and he would sign off on them on some political considerations at the time that he didn't have this great nomadic field for what he wanted to do with american technology. >> most of the presidential libraries and doin in doing resr the book there was really not much of any substance but it's like you said i think it just wasn't on his radar screen and there were also things going on the way in which the administration to do wit don't t was twofold. first, it was very involved in the vietnam war which was written out of its history. it was financially third-largest program for ten years. they don't talk about it today and it was in terms of personnel of the biggest program for ten o years they were responsible for producing agent orange and doing

good work as well, but it's winding down if they are trying to get out of the conflicts of business an and reinvest itselfd been something else happens that causes problems in the administration which is the week of the pentagon papers that intercepts twofold. they had beehe had been a big fr years and have introductions to give up its social science work in vietnam but the second thing is they wanted to basically retaliate against the defense department so they started cutting and didn't trust the defense department or the secretary of defense fo so what they do when under attack committe, theytry to protect the of the great myths is that it was added onto the name because nixon wanted to focus more and that is absolutely untrue. basically what the pentagon did to protect the soul being cut to

the numbers wouldn't be counted you have the advanced research projects agency which defended it from the cuts and that's why it was added, not any great redirection of the agency but that was about it. i think darpa was under the radar of things he wanted to deal with. i don't think science and technology occupied a lot of his time or not at a granular level. >> i'm going to shift gears a little bit if i may. many who lived through the eisenhower years i think tended to see him as a great general and assorted grandfather figure painted distant and removed perhaps and maybe even a bit of

a gambler in the syntax disconnected from what was going on around him and he certainly got a bad press in his day. talk a little bit about that and what happened to change the perception of him so that he is grown in history as time has gone by. >> guest:guest >> it is a fascinating political story. he was so intelligent and this is one of the things that supposed to be going through the papers i don't know what his iq was but it was very high. he had the ability to digest huge amounts of information and make decisions quickly. science can one are, one area td and invested time on he loved having scientists around and he funded them and passed legislation and is the one he was a smart man and sometimes he

would get tongue-tied in press conferences. not the first president for the last two separate from that suft particular affliction. [laughter] but during his presidency at times the press was very but thy praiseworthy and why can because he was available. he gave a weekly press conference, weekly 30 minute live televised press conference. he was so available so they liked him for that obviously he did a lot of things and they didn't like that. the damage that was done to the reputation was done principally by camelot. john kennedy ran against my eisenhower not really against richard nixon. he ran against an older generation who he felt had their turn. they saved us from the imperialism but now it's time

for a new generation of his being passed on to that was kennedy that he used eisenhower as a foil to say they are out of ideas. it would hurt a lot seven and an and a half years and so kennedy did a great deal to promote the idea as an old frail figure who should no longer be in office and the reputation never recovered until we started getting into the documents and realizing he was fully engaged in running this country and he was and legend and a broad base in his interests and capabilities. look a at because of this the ck eisenhower and color was a magnetic figure.

almost went pro as a baseball player and was known to be a very physical man whenever he walked in the room every head with the fanfare he was. he had charisma, piercing blue eyes, complexion that doesn't come across in the black-and-white pictures of the era so it's on his reputation waned as they did this come back in large part because of his style and dignity and patriotism and political partisanship that is common in our politics now. >> i've asked the presidential biographers there's been quite a bit in the news about rankings of the president's hand -- >> i've got this one. >> i'm not going to ask this at the bottom that is not my

question. my question is how do you think each of the presidents that you have written about is risen where are they headed? >> he's gone up in part because the way the polls are done. the most recent was somebody c-span pulled. but that's the highest p7 afterf it after washington, lincoln and teddy roosevelt and because the polling is done so there are ten questions and they deal with how do they handle the economy of the cold war, what kind of a model figured if they see and there is one of the categories when you ask it in that way he always has a higher mark. if you ask as the fifth best president in your mind maybe he would be in the top ten but not five but if you do it in a topical weight he always comes out highly ranked and that's why

i like these because it asks you to evaluate how did he do on these particular areas and he gets high marks when it goes that way. >> it's a little tough for you because as you know it's the only president to resign in disgrace. [laughter] >> i'm sure there were people at the presidential library that would like to get him into that but i don't see that happening. he has crept up from the 40s into the 30s and into the high 20s right now. when he's receiving from the american memory being put up on the shelf with korea as something that happened a long time ago and china was of such importance in the world and the domestic accomplishments of the years have become much more valued in time so he certainly

has a ceiling over him and it is a deserted ceiling but i wouldn't be at all surprised to see him in the high 20s for a while. one thing that is fascinating when you look at the polls of the historians is that they really do rate the presidents based on the prism of the burning issues of today so that right now it is a burning issue in the united states and to see people like eisenhower handle the race issue and lyndon johnson for everything bad up into the top 15 and you see andrew jackson plummeting on the 20-dollar bill and even mr. jefferson slipping from third to fourth and you go back to the 1930s when the new deal was such an influence on the

scholars and that's when andrew jackson went soaring because he was thought to be the populace forerunner of franklin roosevelt's of any part of the polling that you don't like just wait 20 years. [laughter] where do you think -- you mentioned his domestic accomplishments in the environmental protection agency created under nixon, when there was inflation fo the price conts came into effect which would be a vigorous use of the central government. where would he fit in today's republican party? >> he wouldn't. one of the things i was wary about in writing the book is whether there would be an audience in today's polarized politics because nixon was that breed of northeast moderate republicanism that he came from

california. any president is elected they get to take portraits to hang in thtaken thecabinet room of theid the one that nixon picked was dwight eisenhower, teddy roosevelt and a democrat, woodrow wilson. so he was definitely of the progressive stream and there really is no place for him in the republican party today as far as i can see. ..

>> and now to say politics is tough. others are moderate. and so on the one hand he doesn't fit and then to have

the range of the parties. >> so to have a parallel question about darpa this is an agency at various times has been searching for a mission for itself how does it fit? what is it supposed to be doing what is the future of darpa? in the age of the asymmetrical warfare controlling hearts and minds? where do you see the agency asked. >> the question is where does the white house or secretary of defense to the? unfortunately not at all. darpa was at its best when it had a mission under eisenhower immediately get the u.s. into

space and then technological superiority and then counterinsurgency for the first nuclear test detection these are all presidential level mission to brief president went down for a while then went up in with the reagan administration they hit the '90s and were lost during the feast of it and in what was but now after 911 they were shot down try to get into data mining and pattern analysis before the edward snowden revelation so to talk about asymmetric warfare and creating a technological surprise but they do very good

work with the pushback is it from the previous darpa director but they want to believe what they do is important they find good science and technology that it is relevant to the white house or senior pentagon leaders in the problem in it becomes very easy with one major screwup which all agencies do for people to swoop in to take her budget. they are very much a solution in search of a problem and that is the challenge going forward. >> now we will turn to questions from the audience. please raise your hand and we will get a microphone to you. right here. >> i don't need one. >> you do for television.

>> thank you for a fascinating discussion. my question is my father spent the year of 59 then we were sent for three years were lsd tests were done for the test and evaluation command so to know what darpa is to what extent would it have been in the chemical testing in the early 60s? i am just curious i have a lot of research to do and i am just curious what darpa's mission was in that period of time. >> this is a fascinating history i would be careful to say responsible for all work

and what talking about chemicals has its own history so what darpa was very involved with what they desperately try to forget about is they like to joke about their failures but this is what they don't talk about they pioneered the first experience with chemicals in vietnam they call them the rainbow agents we now associate agent orange that was the most widely known in vietnam but there was agent purple and i forget which colors there are four or five different agents with chemical configurations they said we did that but they had a chemical office through 68 that was heavily staffed and went to the archives they equipped the aircraft the air force took over the operational program but through enter radar for operation.

and to humiliate the agency's record but talk about it then the failures are not free yes arpanet became the internet also for chemical pollution introduced in vietnam so yes it is chemical defoliation also those others in the national archives at college park. >> thank you im enjoying your discussion but this is a lighter question. what is the impact did the opera with nixon in china have on his reputation?

>> i think it probably helped it. it was one of the first counter arguments that it got beyond the turkey persona that he had ideals and amazing dances with kissinger and air force one and actually i am surprised we have not seen that revive more consistently as a music critic but as far as americana i think it is a spectacular production. >> other questions? >> the microphone is making its way. >> i have a question for professor hitchcock i remember

saluting ike with a glass of milk at my school in boston but i also grew up under the reign of fear not unlike what came after 9/11 that was inculcated in us that any moment sylvia bombs could be raining down on us and we were handed out cards explaining what the different sirens would mean three long blast that meant the attack was probable get home three short blast and it was imminent and take cover immediately. so to what extent was eisenhower part of promoting or promulgating this sense of fear of imminent communist

attack so vividly? be making was central to it. i say that not necessarily to criticize but he embraced the problem and refer to the fact we live in an age of payroll. he used that term publicly all the time. he was terrified there was a prospect of a nuclear exchange in the 50s. when he came into office before he was inaugurated he was briefed on the hydrogen bomb. he gets a visit from the atomic energy commission secretary to say we had another explosion and that h-bomb we just tested in the specific -- pacific here is the size and the dimensions and throughout his eight years in office this would continue

to develop so as a military man eisenhower felt these were weapons he wanted but he wanted to have them available to use of necessary. and by developing them he thought it would become likely he would never have to use them because they would be so overwhelming to deter the soviets from ever striking the united states but the amount of money spent was enormous and also the power was terrifying. he often spoke with his advisors how do we tell the public of dangerous this is without scaring them into a panic? he debated a lot and gave a number of speeches designed to answer the question things are really bad but don't panic. they were not very effective because of course as the capabilities grew as people began to fear that living in

that state of constant panics of the was a sense like duck and cover that you have seen with a little girl walking down the street they turn into a caricature so they made it seem accessible and manageable. we have the reality of the fear but also a way to make it seem comic and almost charming and those are elements of this paradoxical time in the 50s. >> i'm not the only person in this room who remembers getting under my desk in school. >> another question. >> this is a follow-up, to what extent do you think darpa has become increasingly irrelevant because with any

successor from silicon valley has proven the private sector can do this more effectively to the government. >> that's a great point and it is one that darpa talks about today. so for perspective when they basically pioneered the computer networking and the funding of the first computer science department in the 1960s, they were the game in town nobody else was funding it to create the direction of computer science in this country and they did and with that street -- strategic initiative which is an effort to build artificial intelligence but low and behold the generation of graduate students that were funded are in silicon valley. darpa takes some credit like to take over steve jobs prior company the venture before so

yes absolutely you are right that now what it spends on computer science still trying to make an impact is minuscule. but i don't think that's the biggest problem that darpa faces in terms of relevance is not darpa's fault in general there has been a transformation of the relationship between the pay or just pentagon and the science relationship community going beyond darpa it used to be that technologists the director of defendant was the number three position in the pentagon now it is well below that they are trying to redo that now. eisenhower really relied on his scientific advisors to create darpa in which direction to go. scientists don't have the influence on the administration this predates the current administration i still think science advisors have not been as important so to be important again someone

in the white house or at the top of the pentagon leadership has to decide we have a problem and we need darpa to solve it with the iraq war in afghanistan with those improvised explosive devices was a problem they created a new agency and spent millions of dollars. but they do future science and technology they were that agency darpa could have taken on the roadside bomb mission but instead it re-created itself as a futuristic scientific version of itself so nobody has to decide that that has to come from above them. >> to more questions then we have to wind down. >> i read your book and i love it. and i will continue reading

but my question is about the president when you are talking about dole losing the important function i can only think about viagra. [laughter] but eisenhower had a famous driver? would of course the revelations about kennedy and lbj and the other presidents and now the current situation with the payoffs i am curious was nixon astrid is his reputation leads us to believe? >> there are some indications in an awkward way he would reach out to other women when things got tense at home. the look of suffering would be pat nixon picture. [laughter]

she was the biggest surprises of how much i came to like her a wonderful sarcastic sense of humor. there was a piece in woodward's latest book about dixon in a helicopter ride coming back reaching out and putting his hand on her knee or the thigh of the secretary it isn't like the harvey weinstein attempt but more than somebody wanting to have human contact in his life but there was a mistress that he had that it was serious enough for the cia investigated it because she was a hong kong hostess and they were worried maybe she was an agent for the red chinese. so there was actually a cia investigation he was not a president at the time and then a link -- a leak to the new york times in the story saying

he was clearly having an affair with a red chinese spy. the bottom line is he did have a basic awkwardness with all human contact and his sexual relations with women throughout his life reflected that to some extent. >> i've encountered darpa in my day job in time to time they are the opinion me of the military-industrial complex so i can make the speech beware of the military industrial complex at the same time i have heard you argue that he had a lot to do it eight years to build up the defense department. can you talk about the context of that speech and did he have a change of heart? >> great question. i read the speech a little differently than a prophetic speech like oh my goodness if

we keep going this direction that would be terrible. what he says is we had to create a military industrial complex. done. check we did that we live in a need -- in an age and we need to build up our capabilities. but then he goes on to say we got this now it is incumbent upon u.s. citizens but political leaders to control its to keep it tightly monitored and guard against the unwarranted influence of the military industrial complex and politics and press in congress and the way we spend money and who can do that? what kind of leaders can do that? like dwight d eisenhower that was the point that i know how to contain the in military-industrial complex

they are crazy i can say no to the generals but the guy we just elected john kennedy 43 years old might not be the kind of guy who can control the military-industrial complex i think it is a warning he is very angry of the results of the election and maybe kennedy's generation escort eisenhower's generation would not be strong enough to contain the military-industrial complex so in that sense i think it is a political message that if you want to be safe and secure and controlled this piece we created it is fascinating and complex message from what he gave a few days before leaving office. >> if you will forgive me but the darpa that i profiled in your book is hardly the military-industrial complex that comes to mind when we use that phrase.

my favorite factoid out of the book is a man from mcdonald's that hamburger company calls the pentagon with an idea because he figures out how to wrap food more sanitary he is passed around until somebody at darpa takes the call and he only takes it because he misunderstood and thought it was mcdonnell douglas. [laughter] and darpa hired him back he became a director. [laughter] so two points about that but first they created darpa 1958 so all these cases were saying i know how to stop the attack so finally they have a place to send the not one -- the nuts. [laughter] but literally today there are

these people that will call around to different offices in the pentagon when i came away from the research very impressed with eisenhower and how much he thought about the issues of science and technology of the psychological aspects of the race with the soviet union as well as the scientific aspect in this debate between the science advisors in the people on the pentagon he didn't always go one way or the other and impressed with his mastery not just the science but the psychological aspect. >> i had to fight to keep more eisenhower out of my book.

>> an amazing american hero. >> ever feeling this discussion could go on quite a while but we do need to wrap it up to allow time for you to buy books and for the authors to sign them for you. thanks to everyone for coming today it has been a fascinating discussion from three terrific authors. please complete the evaluation forms either online or on paper and we have books up front that are for sale and available for signing. thank you very much the 1735. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

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