bensinger -- this took place in los angeles. it is just over an hour. >> this book, which i read half of cannot be put down. one of the things that has been interesting to me is people calling saying you know i'm not really interested in soccer. should i read the book? soccer is of passing significance in this book. this is a true crime kind of story. a story about corruption, power and you'll see names that you are familiar with if you are reading newspapers today about what is going on in american

politics. it is a remarkable, amazing book. i encourage you to buy it. the other thing i encourage you to do is to sign up to be on our mailing list because we have events like this a couple or three times a week and you'll find a few start to come, that it will add something to your life. thank you for being here. without further ado, alan rothenberg, ken bensinger, thank you both for being here. [applause] >> i don't know where we start. most of what he said about politics was alive. that was a lot more than i could ever teach. it is a pleasure to be here. before i start talking again,

who here is unfamiliar with the whole structure of international soccer? just a quick primer. every country in the world to play soccer, there's 211 of them, has the national association that runs their soccer program. then, they all belong to fifa, the international umbrella over all of soccer. and fifa for organizational purposes devised the world into regions. so the catch out with all the scandals going on is the fifa scandal. in one sense it is because it's under the umbrella, but most of the horrendous corruption occurred mostly in south america and north america. obviously, they get their

organizational bona fides by being part of fifa. basically all these local entities in all these regional entities have their own competition, marketing and sponsorship rights is where the money comes from. i want to make sure you all have that background. as bert said, this is really, soccer is the gathering story if you will. what fascinated me in reading it if they knew a lot of the players. i was in, but thankfully not in. a lot of the episodes that went on. how you pieced it all together is just amazing to me. multinational, many years what was the process of piecing it

all together, doing the investigation and running a really compelling book. >> thank you. i want to say that alan knows what he's talking about. he feels the awareness and things come of it was the chief executive of the 1994 world cup in the united states. he was in charge of running the most successful workup in history, certainly the best attended world cup in history in terms of number of people who went through it and one that turned a very tidy profit compared to some of the others. alan also was president of the united states soccer federation, one of those associations he mentioned the country's operations and reports directly to fifa. allen also is a cofounder of major league soccer which is the professional league that has two teams here in los angeles and played all over the country.

he's been on numerous fifa committees and has been involved in the sport i really the highest level for decades. >> you might mention that one of the fifa committees i was on was the fifa ethics committee. i said nobody laugh. >> military intelligence. another fun fact is that alan makes a cameo inside of the book because unbeknownst to him he went to dinner with one of the secret cooperators at the doj had enlisted him that i was wearing a wire. [laughter] was an fbi agent, ira station in the same restaurant waiting for alan to put his foot in his mouth. they never did and they never did anything with them but they sure tried. >> the first thing i did was look at the index. i was hoping my name wasn't even in it.

and when it was in it, i was delighted there is only one page. couldn't have been too much. that's when i found out this dinner that i had not only was the person i was having dinner with who is the real whistleblower if you will on everything had a wire. the wire was a chip inside of a key ring. that was bad enough, but only later when i read your book that i found out the fbi, irs with the next thing. >> the story i heard was it was very keen in a beverly hills steakhouse and very trendy at the time because a whole gaggle of hollywood stars and walked into the restaurant. fbi agents and irs agents aren't necessarily used to that sort of thing, so i think they had trouble paying attention to conversations. [laughter] so in answer to your question, how did i put it all together.

the first draft was about 60% or 70% longer than the final draft. even before that come a moment where i was in the basement of the national library in argentina going through newspapers from 1978 trying to learn as much as i could about a world cup the list in the of being very problematic. i thought to myself, how the heck am i ever going to tell the story? there's so many characters in so many moving parts. ultimately, the answer was a lot of cutting and a lot of just removing material that seemed extraneous. i had an editor who is of the old school. so old-school that he edits with pencil and ups views the manuscript printed out and makes he tell you what pencil to use when you make your changes and mail it back to him. that happened multiple times. i spent a lot of money just on

postage to make this book. his comments meant to be things like why you have so many care yours. there's too many. cut them, cut them, cut them. what it came down to was tearing it down, looking for what was the central most important story that kept it going forward. unfortunately, some blood had to be shed. character is incredibly important to the investigation, but we alternately made gains in the smaller role the story because they didn't get indicted or arrested. >> i guess there was only one page. yeah, exactly. >> a guy named roberto teixeira come easily one of the most corrupt soccer officials in history and he is in the book. there is a version in which he was chapter after chapter of the argument with the editor was he did get indicted, but it's in brazil which doesn't extradite to defend in the maverick anemones never going to leave and why don't we focus on a

happy ending where they could get these guys. i'm glad to hear it held together coherently. >> i think it was great. byrd alluded to some of the things that are going on in washington. reading the book, that struck me a lot, including that the original source was an irs agent and it was less about the glamorous stuff that she read about in trials or in mystery books. tell everybody about how that went down. i am just curious, was he somebody that did you spend a lot of time at them or is this just piecing it up afterwards? >> i will start by saying i'm a

journalist and there certain kinds of sourcing i can't talk about. i can name the source. in this book, there are characters that it probably looks like a talk to them. i in fact did. i'm going to have to be like a magician inserted not tell you all the secrets unfortunately. nonetheless, this is a guy named steve berryman and he was a fun character because he was very likely for this story. this is an investigation done out of a federal district in brooklyn, new york and at the time he comes along it was stymied because they are having a lot of trouble making the case move forward. steve berryman, an irs agent in orange county, in southern orange county by the internal revenue service would seem to have nothing to do at this.

turns out he's a diehard soccer fan. he's an air force brat and his father was stationed in england, said he grew up in england and was a liverpool fan. he's also a great athlete. he had a division i scholarship as a placekicker to kick field goals for think i want to say either southern or northern illinois university. when he wasn't quick enough to to be an nfl kicker, he chose the next obvious path, which would be irs agent and went down there and in cut his teeth in originally riverside county and then in orange county doing narco cases, being drugrunners and that sort of thing. the thing he said when the fbi would do them, they are always chasing the tracks. what i do drugs, but the guy with the drugs you decide you

can't complete the investigation until you figure over the money is. they don't sell the drugs were not being enough money is dirty, too. that's part of the transaction until you find that come you don't fully close the loop. that was the way he took cases that have one cases that have one or two counts and turn them into cases of 22 counts and put these people away forever. so that was what he brought to the case was an interest in soccer and also what he talked about. he convinced the prosecutors in this case, the money-laundering case and that was the way to prove that and by doing the really hard, grueling work of looking at excel spreadsheets all day long, you can make this case. there was finally a trial in the case last november, he spent three days in the stand which was a lot and there was a screen and they were predicting six red sheets and he said flip the line 15,452 and you will see on row x x be there

is the number you are looking for. when he wasn't testifying during the trial he was sitting at the prosecution table with the computer looking at other spreadsheets because he was continuing to do what he does best. >> what is going on currently in washington dc, it is my theory that underlying everything going on, is financial transactions. and if you see what can see on the outside from what mueller is doing, the russians, they can't get to sheriff, but this past

really struck me and i want to prove they read the book. it is on page 2. and working those cases, and full accounting of crimes can only be told once all the money was traced. wild dea agents, drugs barely spent his time facing the dealer's money around the world, having additional charges and defendant of the indictment. and they succumb to temptations and contradict documents never lied. what i can tell from the outside, all the hard work is similar to that.

>> you have attempting segue. and there are people who have a small hand in this investigation, and the supervisor in this case, sort of trained him. and running this case, she was an interesting prosecutor, a couple years ago, doing anti-terrorism cases. she was on the case as well and they were trained in the same tradition of that police work. with boxes of the paperwork, it is so much more compelling when

it comes to a jury but also sitting in a room and saying you can do it the hard way, those are used to getting most people when confronted with this evidence it rolled over because it is so completely overwhelming, i found it astounding, and what they have on him, like suicide. >> you have giuliani representing you. >> only a fool has giuliani for a client or something like that. it was about the connection between this and mother in general. mueller was ahead of the fbi, after september 11th created a new vision for the fbi, sort of

forgetting traditional crime and focusing on what he considered, counterterrorism and the money movement that support it. this takes a lot of money from traditional squads and the organized crime squad focused on busting russian and ukrainian and other mobs in brooklyn and the 5 barroso in new york, if you can imagine a sturgeon importer or something, there's no appetite for what they are doing. they want new things the team can do. they are being bled of agents, a different way to bite the apple. if i can do transnational russian organized crime, bob mueller will like it. he starts traveling around talking to people, chasing a

case to trump tower involving an illegal poker room and online sports bar. a piece of that case, molly's game, there was a piece of that. and russian cameos in the movie, the head of this thing, like a mafia done. and looking for other cases and he has introduced a guy who becomes really famous years later, christopher steele. raise your hand if you have heard of christopher steele. christopher steele wasn't famous then. he meets the fbi agent, tells what he can about this russian

mafia boss, and you got the phone number, here is the car. i had a client at the time, didn't talk about soccer but the client, in the 2018 world cup. and there is a huge deal for that, the world cup again to cover their basis. and to gather information, and he is gathering information.

people getting involved, he disdains the sport of soccer. they call an fbi agent up again. and and they had not heard of it. he finds this prosecutor, and that is how that opened. not just a star name in steel but that is essential first step

building the relationship between the fbi and christopher steele that plays a more important role. christopher steele developed a dossier about trump and russia, christopher steele -- the fbi gets crazy tips from people all the time that are ignored but because he had a track record with them because he had a relationship with them he was a proven, vetted person. he called the same fbi agent who was no longer in new york but rome working at the embassy in rome and came to london again to give him a dossier. a safe bet that they did not taken seriously. it could be viable and credible. that is one of the other parallels. jim comey was a director in 2015 when the press conference happened, jim comey towering over loretta lynch who is quite

small, and -- >> just a provocateur. one of the things i am talking about is the timing of this. and i should back up and say england was super qualified -- the perfect place for a workout probably. >> it was different. the next story. >> that is another ball of wax. they didn't have airports or freeways or a great soccer tuition, maybe even the soviet days. there were not a lot of good reasons to do that.

when obama was president of the russian reset, russia and the us were buddies and obama was hugging vladimir putin and making deals, when christopher steele is finding this stuff, and taking russia off its own sanctions list, a wonderful warm fuzzy time. it is easy to forget that, and you think of russia in stark terms but this is a warm and cuddly russia as far as we knew in 2010 and what we see now is this is the first sign of what we are dealing with now. this is the first incursion of russia into international affairs, we get what we want no matter what. russia needs to wake up because the most important putting event with the biggest audience in the world they want all their

eyeballs on them. vladimir putin was premature at the time, had been -- he won -- he wanted to win the world cup and could speak to russian voters, i got the most procedures in the world in winning an election in 2012, he was elected in the last election in march, got 75 plus% of the vote. the second thing is to get the work up now to project the power out, he had proven domestically, his motivation in 2010, and interventionist, a russia that would do secretive things and no one is noticing it. >> the central figure in this whole thing, the initial tax

issue, a gentleman named chuck blazer. i wish you would give a terrific description of him physically, psychologically, every which way. >> i talked to chuck a couple times. chuck is no longer with us, he is as larger than life figuratively and literally, and in the later part of his life, 450 pounds, fairly tall, 6 foot 2, pretty big guy, type ii diabetes and other health problems and ride around central park on a personal mobility scooter with a parent perched on his shoulder, a big giant beard and a mop of tangled hair on his

head, looked like santa claus. it is a long way to come from a jewish kid from queens which is what he was, and the same high school as the ramons and simon and garfunkel and peter parker, they all went to forest hills. if you know anything about the sport he was in his late 30s when they played soccer in westchester county and the way i could tell it, you have kids who play soccer, always some guys, if i was the president of soccer i would do this, if i were in charge of this, chuck blazer actually said that it became a guy running for congress, rose up instead of cutting orange slices on the sidelines to being the 24 most powerful men in

soccer, the first american on his executive committee in 50 years, the head of one of the regional considerations, he was the number 2 regional confederation wielding enormous power. there were a lot of things that he helped with, the significant television contract, he played a big role in creating the women's national team, he was a supporter of women's soccer and that helps them understand how important that was and people knew him well, a great storyteller, loves the life of the party, and it was a classic new york nightspot, and at the corner of the table with doctor

ruth and dick wolf, chuck glaser, the kind of guy he was, a big personality, and putting things in his pocket that didn't belong to him. one of the guys who convicted it, the soccer team, they were filming it and putting on the next bat, and putting the metal at the pocket like that. he is in brooklyn metropolitan detention center waiting for his sentence. he was convicted on 5 of 6 counts looking at a maximum of 80 years old, he will probably die in prison. chuck was working out deals, he

didn't invent although he claimed he invented the:-)button that was big in the early 70s. a couple guys from philadelphia, a snopes type situation, he owned a button company, they produced more and he made a quick fortune he later lost, he saw an opportunity for himself. the famous thing he did was this regional confederation, had an opportunity to write his own contract. who wouldn't like that? you write your own contract, i won't take a salary, i will set up a company and i will be an employee of the company and get

10% of all revenue, 10% of every dollar will go to my company. in the beginning there wasn't much revenue. the last year he worked there there was $16 million of revenue. he did pretty well. on top of that he used a corporate credit card to pay for almost everything he did in life, didn't put anything on his personal expense because he got the confederation to buy things only he could use for the vehicle, a hummer, condominium in the bahamas. it is a long list. he built a custom film studio, a $3 million film studio in his office and guess where his offices were? trump tower. where was his apartment? trump tower. where was his high school reunion hosted thanks to donald trump to q the lobby of trump tower. he built a film studio using a

grant from after i have a, $3 million development grants to build a film studio and that didn't stop him from creaming $3 million from his own. amazing to consider that revenue. no book he ever caught, he didn't file the confederation taxes for so long the internal revenue service revoked his 5013 c3 c status which they are still fighting over trying to get that back and his own personal income taxes either. and even longer court filings from a civil suit, to the early 1980s. back to steve barryman his downfall.

one of the reasons you understand why he didn't buy the condo himself, he -- the story i heard, he left the day trade, get the players card, a lot of money, and a free room. and the irs or elsewhere would know he had income for spending, the guilty man and steve barryman has magic power only irs agents could have, fbi agents can't do that. it is a huge obstacle, they need someone from the irs without order of a judge, they explain 5

times that i don't understand it but if they get a judge's order to look at tax return without an irs, it is impossible to charge them with tax crimes, he sees this and goes bingo, never paid taxes. it is another to never file. and jack warner, him -- they are best friends who ended up at odds with each other. and the british investigative journalist doesn't know what it means and puts it out there. the irs agencies it and notices looking at the magnifying glass but back in the check he photocopied and scanned on the internet, the cancellation

market was merrill lynch. usually sent the text to the caribbean with secret accounts but he sent it to his broker at merrill lynch and this -- he could subpoena merrill lynch and get all the guys that interact to build a case with that income. because it was merrill lynch in the cayman islands, and if you start asking as you know banks and other countries for their financial information it is more noisy. he sees the income and they confront him and the trump tower, there have been stories

about this, they meet with you. they sit down and fbi agents through another story, they already knew him, he says he would like to talk to you. he said football, you haven't paid taxes in 7 years. here is a subpoena, a very specific subpoena, you can't get out of it, you have to give the name and account number of every convention in the world, it would be helpful if you consider helping us with the investigation. and to get somebody flip, some people, it is really hard,

sometimes you have to handcuff it, dragon downtown and you do things in the case of paul manafort won't do it. and then took 17 seconds to decide to flip. within a couple weeks he was sitting down with prosecutors telling his life story and explaining what they didn't understand about soccer which was a lot. he had an agreed accountancy, had been in the thick of it for decades, he knew it all, enough to tell him what to do and where to go and you mentioned whistleblowers, don't think of them as whistleblowers, you feel immoral umbrage, outrage, saving your ass doesn't feel like moral outrage.

it feels like game theory. you better wear a wire. and consensual recordings. the other person doesn't know and he did that because you better do that because i'm telling you too, sorry. and chuck blazer, that did not work out, the ones did. that is the next major piece, unlike blazer who was a broad taker. countless millions or maybe north of $200 million in prizes over his career and north and south corruption, a much more helpful cooperator.

when they got him and chained him to a wall, he brought them -- he delivered them to south america, quivering still, bleeding on a tray. >> most of the bribery and payoffs related to tv and marketing rights in the americas. if somebody wanted to get south american tv rates, they would pay whatever the executives were coming to give them money to inquire the rights, that was the value of the package. not just the part they got, most

revolved around that. most of talks about fifa scandals. the one specific fifa scandal, i was having lunch or dinner with chuck blazer, representing the government of morocco, trying to acquire world cup rights for 2010 which were designated -- going to south africa. what happened when i went to bed the night before the vote, at the ends of all that and i woke up, we lost. we knew exactly who flipped. it was jack warner and one of his cohorts. i assumed there was a payoff, i

had no idea but apparently what they were thinking when blazer volunteered to meet with me. we must have paid him, south africa paid him more. i didn't know any part of it. >> one thing was the south africa bribe, him and jack warner negotiated a $10 million bribe to change a third member of the confederation to vote for south africa rather than morocco. and so many installments led to programs with chuck warner but the point is that was a high

level piece of corruption we think of when we think of corruption which clearly exists when blazer admitted to it, strong hint there's more where that comes from but as far as what they indicted in this case, not really representative of the majority of what they found and that is where blazer was incredibly important. when you talk about sponsorship and television bribery, when you think of the money in soccer, most of the money is not at the highest level but all determined everywhere and sponsorship, coca-cola and all these the brands involved in it and there were some questionable things. when i talk to people in the room and 92 or 93, they went to

meet with phil knight and get him to sponsor the us national team and he was not interested. he wasn't interested, the world cup happened with huge success and brazil wins the world cup in the rose bowl, 100,000 people there and maybe soccer is something kind of important and agreed to sponsor the us national team with the world cup. the number one team in the world, and in the fifa a case, more complicated than that, a huge contract included kickbacks.

if we didn't know about it there was a middleman, $2 million a year from that dealer kicked up. all the tv deals, it was here in the us a couple years ago, the guy who had taken over the confederation was demanding $15 million to negotiate down to a $10 million bribe for the one turn them and. looking at economics, we have the right to something. but because i want alan to not only give me the contract but

promise not to negotiate with anyone else and when the contract expires in four years or however long to give the first negotiation so no one else can get in you don't need more to know what it is, no real competition for the product, easy to imagine the actual market price, it might have been worth $200 million, a fantasy opportunity, was never realized from the game. >> you mentioned before no extradition, the prosecution team, a huge number of the really core defendants hidden behind extradition, with 13 russian defendants --

>> it resonates in the open. and the most significant dates in soccer history. and this goes into the fanciest hotels, incredibly luxurious and swift. unlike your fancy american hotels, giant chandeliers with 8000 pieces of crystal, surprisingly small lobbying. they have a talent for making nothing look nice. empty rooms look fabulous. and at 6:00 in the morning they say we are here to arrest you and you have to come with us and drive them out.

it is not the craziest thing that ever happened to the sport but they busted the guy with the metal pocket or and they busted him, she is completely terrified and doesn't know what is happening. he is gone or packing his bag to go. than this other guy, who had just taken over the brazilian soccer confederation from the other one and he says marco polo, you got to help me, my husband is in horrible trouble. you have to help. marco polo. it is terrible, awful, i will come right now and help you out and we will figure it out so he hangs up the phone and goes over and packs his suitcase and goes to the lobby of the hotel and get in his limousine and goes to the airport and never went to her room. he was fortunate that i missed

above the doj was not inviting him in the first round, they didn't invite him until december and they are not able to touch him. he never left. brazil had to fly in someone from brazil so he could vote in the vote because he was a voting delegate and he will never leave because he is safe so he is living in brazil safe but during the trial all this evidence was being put out against the other guy and starts showing it is against him too. almost as if convicted in that sense, all the evidence against the guy who was convicted, one thing after another, he is making press statements that at the end he stopped making comments because it was all laid out. >> it broke after the us lost

its bid to host the world cup. it was just a revenge move. what was your take on that? >> i heard it from seth blatter. for those who don't know, he is not exactly like he is portrayed but he is portrayed like the ultimate bond villain, scheming international man with a funny accent who will stop at nothing for world domination. in reality he is like your charming uncle you can't quite get a read on. i interviewed him twice in first on i interviewed him in his kitchen, another place with nothing in it and that feeling of wealth all over the place and

he said this is about sour grapes because the us didn't get its world cup and obama went home after he called bill clinton who happened to be in the room in the auditorium, bill clinton was the chairman of the us honorary chairman or something like that. he ordered an investigation was obama call they're colder and very cold in colorado lynch, lorena lynch puts the best gag on it and that is what it is all about. not true at all because the investigation was open and running five months earlier so it was an open investigation and doesn't make sense, if it were from the top it would run out of the dc field office because it was an attorney in dc. that is where those were occupied but this is in the eastern district which is a great story district but not the most important district in new york city for crying out loud. that is not the case. people don't want to believe it

but in fact no one, these guys weren't even thinking about the us and there's a moment the fbi case agent reports on december 3, 2010, which is the day after the vote, the new york times sports section. to show how in important the news was, the news we didn't get was inside on page 5 and he opens it up and says cutter got the world cup and that is great but what does it have to do with our investigation. it is a cute theory but not true. >> in my travels and i'm not by any means justifying this but there is a lot of outrage around the world. how can the united states invite

people from other countries? they don't have a free collage in most of the world are practices in most other countries so they don't understand and in many cases they barely set foot in the united states, some of them never but if they wire transferred money through the said system it would have the united states bank in all likelihood, that is enough to get jurisdiction which in the rest of the world, in the other part that is be will during 2 a lot of us if you pick it up, the fact that bribery is commonplace, the way they do business. when this was taking place, did not make commercial bribery a crime. at one point you could take that cost as a deduction of your tax

return. around the world, i'm not adopting it but that is how business is done and they will call us hypocrites. if we want to come to the united states we have a perfectly lawful business with business, we are told you got to hire this lawyer and he will tell you -- i know. he will tell you this is the lobbyist you should hire and support this elected official and you will get your deal. they said we are more straightforward about it. that justifies it, but some of the anger and perplexity, i do not understand the laws and the way we do business. >> a lot of people, foreign cooperators took a lot of explaining to make them

understand what they had done. the way prosecutors worked it out mentally is they used a wire fraud statute with a legal hawk and they figured out the wire fraud. then services fraud used on politicians but a theory that if you are an officer elected official, some code of standards, you are beholden on a fiduciary level and ethics code and if you violate the ethics code you are defrauding the institution you work for, that is the way they do business but they also, you can tell deep down they knew it wasn't clean because we are sneaky about it

but you do business in the open, they go to incredible lengths to hide the money in an overseas account, take it in cash and one guy got convicted, in when a series, he sent a personal driver 15 hour dr. each way to the back of the truck and drive 15 hours back, and a couple hundred thousand dollars of cash in back of the truck. that doesn't smell like a legitimate way to take a commission and people came around on it. >> absolutely. >> anybody -- has anybody come up with a close estimate how much russia paid in bribes to get the world cup as going on right now? >> know but a fun story about that.

there were questions about russia in the world cup and after i have a hired a former us attorney who is the new york state of appeals, new york state with their funny naming conditions, very prestigious, at great expense to investigate russia and what they did was what i find amusing about that story is he couldn't get russia to conduct the investigation because he was on a ban list, they banned him from setting foot in russia. there were all kinds of fun entries. they had to send their back up, a swiss prosecutor, the swiss don't have as much vigor.

give us your books so -- we use other computers, they borrow computers but when we go back to the person who lent them to us the prosecution said unfortunately they destroyed all the computers. there are no computers, no records at all of what happened and in a very at ifa way -- >> one of the consequences of scandals was banned for anything in soccer. you might put the tv set on and see who vladimir putin has as

his personal guest? >> a classic, one of the great troll moves of the year. his world cup, in that position because of the criminal investigation, sitting in a different booth or bladder who is the disgraced former guy who they said you are so bad you're not allowed back, you are banned from the sport entirely and vladimir putin says this is my country, you are band. to me it is a power move.

>> bringing vladimir putin out of it -- [inaudible] >> he did get caught first. the reason he got that job, and in salt lake city in the 1990s, they build a case that is the history of one of the most disastrous prosecutions, no convictions to ruin careers as

prosecutors, they gave money left and right, to get them to vote in the us. it lends itself to the fact without a lot of oversight, no one wants to touch it. >> the olympics, only one thing to bribe, can we host the olympics, beneath that, the tv rights, your local gymnastics team or archery team have no value, relatively less value is a passion in every country in

the world, money at all these levels below the fifa, to get that. the brazilian national team, their tv rights are worth a fortune. it is so different. >> the whole world isn't tuning in to watch the world swimming championships. that is not a thing. soccer is different. the champions league, always are important. >> we are so fixated particularly on los angeles. i was trying to get interested in the world cup in the 90s. i would tell people there are 209 members of fifa and the

united nations and if you give them a choice to belong to only one all but five or six would say fifa, that is what they live or die for, billions of people this month are watching games at 5:00 in the morning. where you are going tomorrow. >> a question? [inaudible] >> made them susceptible to bribery but they changed that, all 20710 have a vote on their location of the world cup.

you think that will stem the tide from bribery for their votes because it is a small group of people. >> after this disaster us vote where they changed the voting policy. at the end of the border, with this investigation instead of the us, canada and mexico. and the wagging tongues would say more people to bribe. it is lower-cost. it didn't cost that much, you have to see over time fifa is making it harder, the next world cup but the one in canada and mexico will be 48 teams.

and more stadiums and hotels needed and prayers on the number of companies, and that is a very optimistic way, a huge money grab to get more teams for the national hockey league playoffs that never end. >> there is a history. bladder and his predecessor, the father in law, it was all-powerful. to get vo-tech congress you need a majority of people of congress, and pays money for various programs and the first congress i ever went to, as voters walk to the ballot box,

they are handed an envelope allegedly for their federation. there is a lot of history to overcome. >> it is fit for the conversation. they busted all these guys. it is not because they cut three generations deep. one president and his successor in the next successor in a row. that is not cutting enough. the metaphor i have been using, it is a cancer, cut out cancerous tissue but more to that. it is a clean bill of health.

anything else? >> do you cover what pelé called them to task. >> is that the directors cut for this book. it was too long. and it is a crazy story and peée was the most famous soccer player of all time, had a big tif. and because of the power, his father in law, pushed out of the sport and made persona non grata for a while. pelé was supposed to do that.

they yank your name at the last minute and don't do the draw. >> we actually bypassed that and had it come down and make a dramatic entrance to be the guy -- >> several books written in portuguese, had to force myself through them. i speak spanish, not portuguese, took a while to read those books but they are really good, they told in great detail, make sure i lived in florida for a while and a letter to a highway accident in miami, that might have led to his falling out. the fact he had a lever, that cause other problems.

>> it is a great, great book with you like soccer or not, how it takes place and gets detected is phenomenal. an airplane ride to new york. it was fabulous. >> thank you for saying that and thank you, everyone, for coming. [applause] >> booktv in primetime features recent books on america at war. booktv in primetime all this

week on c-span2. coming up live tuesday the senate foreign relations committee will get an update on the us relationship with russia. at 10:00 eastern on c-span. officials will testify on cyberthreat that 2:30. on c-span2 the senate will continue work on federal spending bills and the treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes will take questions on us sanctions against russia from members of the senate banking committee starting at 10:00 eastern and on american history tv a look at the presidency and legacy of andrew jackson. >> sunday night on-q and a national constitution center president and ceo jeffrey rosen talks about his biography of william howard taft. >