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[background sounds]. [background sounds]. host: hello and welcome to the 24th annual book festival. my name is katie and i'm an executive editor. here today to talk to amaryllis fox author of the book "life undercover" coming-of-age in the cia. it is a wonderful book and i encourage everyone to pick up one down here at the stand. she is going to be signing copies. i will give a quick introduction then i will ask a few questions and leave the last ten to 15 minutes for audience questions. will have a microphone set up right here in the front and another one in the back. please silence your cell phones

before weplpl start. we don't want any surprises. so even before she finished, studying at oxford, before 911. and before her writing mentor daniel was captured and killed. amaryllis fox was already invested in the international affairs. she took great risks, a message out of burma when she was just one year out of high school. she eventually got a masters in conflict and terrorism and georgetown school. she developed an algorithm that can predict terrorist attacks nissan 200 years of data. at age 21, she was recruited to the cia where she analyzed classified things from foreign government. and soon afterwards she was elected to advanced training for terrorist networks. she was working under cover especially and tribalism. it's a t huge surprise to hear r book called the novel come to

life. in shanghai, she and her husband who was also spy, surrendered surveillance by the chinese. they had to talk in code all the time. the housekeeper was flying. the people in the streets were tracking her movements. and then, we find out that the cia was spying on the chinese who was already spying on them. since she left the cia in 2010, she also joint cnn, the national geographic channel and has spoken around the world on peacekeeping. apples currently developing this book as a tv series. and fox is an executive producer and she's also working on a young adult novel in an upcoming netflix documentary series of the business of drugs pretty ladies and gentlemen, amaryllis fox. [applause].

amaryllis: thank you so much. .host: can you talk about how your life began with this. amaryllis: i think he was a blessing and curse they moved every year in my childhood. my birthday is in september and every september i started a brand-new school. at times i was challenging but it also gave me a sense of time again of being home in the world. in this idea, the differences in wardrobe or accent or cultural habits were really just window dressings and you can drop a soccer ball in the park committing world and you can have the same humans are everywhere. and i think that was kind of

hyphilosophy that drove me as a young person to be really drawn to journalism and to being able to share those stories from these different places with friends who i would see periodically when we came back home who had not had a chance to run around and those soccer fields. and that's what led me there as a teenager. katy: how did you know to go there and then, it sounds like when not really knowing where you're going to live, right. amaryllis: my poor mother. luckily it was okay for her she was able to go to the local coffee shop an e-mail. back in washington dc, i really

had fallen in love with the philosopher andly theologian, ad he was speaking and smithsonian. i heard he was battling cancer. so i skipped a day of high school to go and experience and talking in case it was my last opportunity. the day itself actually i don't regret doing the visas very powerfully talked about the fact that he had studied every one of the world religions and nonreligious philosophies and found that the notion that we are all part of one whole, was at the core of all of them. that really stuck with me which is good that was worth it because when i had school next day, when he was on the daily list. i had to go to see the dean. i was given w a brunch of detention. i also showed up in class and found out that the final

assignments or papers had been handed out. i get the one nobody chose which was on the political situation in burma. i grown up moving around a lot. but i didn't know anything about this clinical situation and the more that i learned about it, the more that one unarmed woman peaceful fight, at the time against the authoritarian regime, is really similar to north korea at the time. it began to fascinate and inspire me ride and thinking about taking a job here before university, actually before even deciding to take a year itself, i took my prom dress money that my mom gave me and instead of buying a prom dress, went to a travel agent, when there wasn't really such a thing and about a ticket to thailand.

the idea was to do a couple of weeks of volunteering and infirmities refugee camp. at the end of this two weeks, we went back to the airport and this volunteer group night, and upset the gate and everyone was getting ready to board and i just had this really strong instinct that my work there was not done. then i said to the team later, i think i'm going to state. he was not approval of because i was 17 but you know, and other teenagers to usher onto the plane and ultimately, let me go i walked back out the doors and headed back up to the camp. and why was there continuing this volunteer work, i met more more of the burmese people that were publishing a democratic

newspaper in a position from the jungle. they were preparing for protest and planned for 9999. september 9th 1999 to try to topple the regime and they want to be sure that if there is any violence, it was documented. with the kind of immortality that we fill his teenagers, i said i will go. at the time, they stopped issuing tourist visas, so you can only get in if you had a business visa. as a backpacker in an teenager and had no access to that. so i called collect a guy that i had met 15 years my senior and investment banker i had met him out of free burma rallying while he's researching my final paper.

this is a long shot but he said how would you feel about taking a couple of weeks off work and coming to thailand so we can pretend to be married and going to burma on your business visa. [laughter]. that seems reasonable at the time. [laughter]. he did exactly that to his credit. and we went to bangkok where you can pretty much go everything and we got a forged marriage certificate and we knew that if we got there, we would have to getia out so we had the idea tht we would wrap the film around them in order to conceal them and get them out anyway we went inside and protest never happened because the security was so tight at the time. but we did have the opportunity through these to interview who is under duress at the time and get her work out . we were warned that if we did that we

would probably be detained by the military. we did itou anyway. we spent two hours with her short fascinating and extraordinary at the time. and then we were detained. and eventually we werewh depart. and for me, that really was the beginning of understanding how powerful an hour or two of truth telling from a single human being can be even in the face of all of the military in the world. katy: because you are able to get that and smuggle that message out. amaryllis: that's right. here she was with that woman and a mother and no arms available to her. and was so threatening to the regime for they were detaining people just from talking to her and that was really electrifying i did to me that the truth and the pen in the word, could be that powerful. it really made me start out doing my undergrad committed to

the idea of continuing in network and becoming a journalist. spietkaty: so september 11th happen when you are finishing that. i was just wondering, can you talk about how that change you. so like you guys were very close. amaryllis: i was in dc. this was in october and going into my last year. i was home. i was watching my mom walk her dog in the park across the street and our neighbor pulled up in aup multiple bull's-eye gn rabbit incident turn on the tv. and turning on just before the second plane hit. my little sisters were in the cathedral school in dc at the time they weren't sure whether the cathedral was a target so they were evacuated. i remember being with my mom and

dog energy trying to get theseth two little girls in their school uniforms evacuated. and about that for me, the first loss of my life which was a dear friend of mine, laura in third grade was on the flight that went down in scotland. and she was with her sister and hther parents and her whole family. my mom waited until three days later until after christmas to tell me. she told me that it was better that they had open on the plane together pretty there was no one left to grieve. it was the first person that i knew who died and he loved her very much. all of that really came back to me. after 911 especially. and then four months after that, this journalist danny who i had only met once briefly when he had done an evening for aspiring student journalists at a bar in dupont circle when i was stilla

student. but i admired him immensely. he was a journalist who wrote with such dignity and curiosity about the islamic world. and really was a hero of dialogue. so after the overwhelming scale of 911, the incredible intimacy in a way, the loss of danny to thee world really struck me as terrifying. this is a new and different kind of war. nunnally threatened lives but threatened the truth in dialogue and the sharing of experiences around the world that danny represented. i went back to my dad's advice after dad my dad said to me eventually, if you don't understand the fortunes that took her, you're going to be overwhelmed by the fear.

we fear the things that we don't understand. and he introduced me to the newspaper. as a third grader, that was completely transformative thing for me. i read itre with real care. i think possibly it was not super healthy but i felt,. [applause]. i felt as though these characters whose names i really couldn't pronounce at the time seemed remote that in any moment though that they could kind of jump off of the page and take another one of my friends from the air. learning to understand what their relationships were with one another and the relationship to violence was really important to me. i felt that laura's loss, and after 911 and the violence that came after it including daniel's murder, i returned to that idea that if i was not going to be overwhelmed by this, i had to

understand it. that was why he embarked on that thesis project. and you mentioned the algorithm. katy: and the cia approaches you need to get job. and start kind of, looking at cables and one in particular, and before you were overseas, when he realized that a had been taken and beaten and starved was the wrong man. i am wondering if you can talk about that moment and how you reacted and the people around you reacted. amaryllis: i won't get in to the operational details on that anymore than there are in the t book just because they have been kind of reviewed and elements that have been admitted. that particular case was covered very thoroughly and happily in the press but ias think that its

indicative of one of the right challenges that we all face after 911 and will americans and allies but also the subset that we are serving in government and military intelligence. ororganizations also which was this terrible tension between having side of to serve on behalf of the american ideal and sitting on the help and moral leadership there were so important to m maintaining americans position and credibility. and then this thing that happens after an attack the significance of this 911, it is for you and velocity versus reaction were as things happen really quickly,

communication is not always clear and i think it is no surprise. i think what is critical now is that as a country and as a community that we are mature enough to learn from them and them and analyze them. i think we've done that in some areas better than others. we have been quite thorough in our examination of whether or not torture is something that americans, we want or can tolerate. and whether it is even useful in practical side. i'm not sure that we have been what is thorough about things like extrajudicial killings of journal programs. it is a workin in progress but i think on all of us, to have those conversations as adults and americans.

katy: wanted to discuss two things in the book. one is on cia insider trading which is raised some questions about the standards of approval and did you hear anything back before publication. in singapore that is there are people who criticized some things that were possible. i wanted toic give you an opportunity to address that. amaryllis: one of the difficult things of going through the review process necessarily is there operational details i have to be changed and amended. with very good reason. as you set out to share the interaction that gives you over the course of a career, it is about figuring out which

interactions even make sense given those changes and omissions m to include an ordero leave it out entirely. for me, it was important to put upth front on the front page tht changes had to be made. but i don't think it was a significant challenge. this book is really about personal journey. the stone operational beat by beat, how this goes. finally particular operation happened. we heard a very detailed account this morning on an operation. [laughter]. there are important omissions. but for me this was about not just coming-of-age his wife and mom in my 20s against the back drop of the war and terror but also the evolution of the perspective. because when i started given the background, velocity, 911, the

killing this journalist that i respected so much, danny, honestly, to really peacemaking are finding common ground. i was young and we were at war. we were afraid and was pretty much about wiping adversary off of the map. over the course of a career, and interaction after interaction, i realizeaf that just as a fictio. this does not work. so very good way to live but also, wrist creating more emissaries than you destroyed and adding. i think there is a more long-term and holistic way to bring an end to this conflict. we have proven time and again the cannot prevent violence through violence alone.

over 17000 years of human history. [applause]. katy: brings me to my next question. i didn't think this book would be so deeply spiritual. all human beings want the same thing. you point out graffiti in pakistan, and says remember the other person is you. is that the core of most religions. i found that deep down bus targets, in the art of saving lives in bringing liberty to the lands.nt can you talk about your own misgivings and times about that being practical and how that evolved over the years. amaryllis: spirituality was a huge part of my journey. and i studied international law and theology which is a very

interesting,g, nation. that theological study of each of the worlds religions, the indigenous traditions and an even non- spiritual philosophy. it really did reinforce that i had heard from notion is the other person is you. or we are all connected and part of one collective organism that cannot exist in isolation. we know that from a scientific point of view. we'll share this island in space. our activities are never in a vacuum. that was something that i learned academically as a young

person but i think the kind of school of hard knocks in my 20s were often times we asof humans on all sides of this conflict will take a short-term solution because of the illusion that we are isolated and the ramifications will come back to haunt us. we find in the long-term, is potentially ending his more people by not doing anything with it. we have seen that in terms of our alliances with our enemy of our enemies. an expedient in the short term and tolerance on all sides of the complex for civilian casualties which is such a feeling of the future extremists because of the world neat alienation and grief, these very personal feelings place.

in planting the seed of violence and extremism. for me, the simplicity of treating people with dignity, even when you disagree with them, emerged as a very powerful lesson. sometimes i think we can discount that is, your grandmother's advice, not pregnant pragmatic in the real world. but it's actually the most pragmatic thing in the world world that i discovered entire time i was out there. i took the stories who is the founder of the network that is responsible for spreading nuclear precursors materials and technologies, not just actors. his of any has probably done moree in danger global security than almost anybodyer else.

we talked about where he took the turn off of life's normal path, he tells the story being a teenager on a train crossing the new water to pakistan after separation and he seized up for and he loved it. he filled out the customs card and when the indians part of the party said, i'll also take the pan. and he said no i love it, you can't take it any supporting going to do to stop me. and in his teenage brain at that moment, felt so humiliated and aware of this unfairness and he had an inability to do anything about it. he said i will never be powerless again. pakistan will never be our powerless again. i walked him into a program that put so much of the globe in

danger. taking uranium from olivia and exchanging nuclear components with olympians in order to do so. on and on. is not a national or rational leap from to having your pen stolen but i think that sometimes we underestimate the power of one moment of humiliation to fuel violence and likewise the power of one moment of treating somebody with dignity to quell them. katy: sounds like somebody, did you feel like at least in the book, i'm sure there's a lot, that you have seen person but does it in another moment always to kind of hit people with that idea and say, we know the same things. i know you well enough that we know the same things and believe the same t things. did you find that usually by the time you brought that up with a

they know you well enough that they were like yes, that's right. amaryllis: well yeah it takes time. it is a slow process in the field. it starts with your first communications with anyone. i think we are more sensitive to authenticity than we realize. and where somebody manufacturers reason to connect, we feel it. this need even faced with somebody who's involved with sometimes horrific spasms of violence to search for some glimmer of humanity in order to build a relationship for months and years to cope this person they actually move to prevent the attack other than

participating. it's soulful. often lost in our culture depictions of intelligence. works better on the screens. but all of that is just really kind of safeguard, oversaw, it doesn't have it all because he would get out of the country immediately employer government even the things do happen, is not the point. just there to safeguard the actual core work which is relationship building with those whose heart is in the world to listen to. the most important if we want to bring into this conflict. katy: , and ask you one more question then we will get to the q&a. can you help me to spoke. his main audience for it.

amaryllis: i'm particularly happy when i talk young women who are reading it. i think there's a lot in there for all different walks of life young woman i think she different kind of national security picture from the reality and don't realize how important their contributions are and can be. we see in screen is either no women involved depictions. so dismissive of the substance important that women bring to this world and are actually uniquely well-suited for. and then alternative to an often necessary solution to military. it is based on emotional intelligence and relationship building and intuition and multitasking and these are

things that feminine problem-solving often has great strength and. i really do hope that young women and people of color and young people from diverse backgrounds, do not see themselves in the spring and this work. that they realize that actually they are the ones that we most need it doing it. not just in the intelligence world but in government and military across-the-board. katy: i want to open it up to the floor. you've already got somebody up. [laughter]. that was quick. two ahead. guest: as an art dealer, and part of your career. amaryllis: i'm not going to go into the cover and operational details. the same reason that i said earlier, anything around those details should go through review so i will leave it to the press.

guest: i have wondered, that a business like that might actually produce revenues. so when you wrap up an operation like that, focusing funding. [laughter]. amaryllis: [laughter]. if that were to be the case, it certainly would not be the officer-involved. [laughter]. that is one this kind of a granular and operational hold. i don't know predict i don't think i can go into it. i will say that one of the real challenges in this shift from the kind of traditional wherefore of the earlier part of the last century is an asymmetrical type that has morphed into care groups and nonstate actors challenging states is that it is necessary

to be really creative about how to be t in places that you needo be in order to do the work that needs to get done. two great example, around the creation of a similar film organization company, the going to location scouts inn iran. and they work pretty well produced. but in those cases, they are definitely would not be any profit. [laughter]. guest: i appreciate your presentation very much. people most valuable in carrying on this kind of work. a quick question for you. just a reflection.

seeing the way that things have gone since you left the agency, and what are in the world today, i'm sure you must make in your own mind, how we would get to a place where wege would deal betr than the kind of issues there where you are. if you have any kind of prescription or direction to go other than the type of people that you would like to see get involved in it. are there some things that we could do more universally as human beings to such an environment to foster it. amaryllis: at the state level and the individual level. at state level, one of the things that is mosthe importants looking at the precursors of instability and terrorism and conflict and investing in the infrastructure and support than is necessary and much more d ficient and much cheaper in terms of life and treasure. do that early on before the

conditions for conflict reached the fever pitch thatr requiresa military response. those are things that we talked a little bit about. the academic work that i did as a young person look at predicting terrorism. that was quite clumsy graduate school of the work of a kid. but one of the things that came up time and again in this data was heavily b correlated was the percentage beneath venom wage order that the guard gets paid therefore the potential of corruption. there are many data points that we know are correlated with instability and not easy to fix but significantly cheaper in both lives and cash. so i think studying those is very important. doubling down on our investment

and power overseas in general. i think it's important. china, initiative is very important. i think for us as important for us as americans to note just about to come up to a trillion dollars in a million chinese people on the ground and two thirds of the world's countries, to invest in the building of infrastructure. that is charity but a shrewd to political mood. and we take our resources and commit them and military ventures, one of our geopolitical rivals is doubling down on that power in that way, i really worry. i worry for the continued moral leadership of our country because the flag on a brand-new train is a very different feeling locally that of leg on rubble even if it was a legitimate target.

so would like to see us do more of that and then in terms of her own responsibility individually. how come i really think that the division that i is to see played out on the international stage are starting to crack around from inside. they are disagreements are very important part democracy that our inability to have them or to listen to the one of th one another. it's undermining ourn own internal ability. every school kid, you know the quote of house divided cannot stand. and to learn how to disagree with one another without exasperating the cracks in our

democracies and our adversaries would most like to see that print. [applause]. boom boom. [applause]. katy: i have other questions as well. we'll keep waiting to her for people to come up. in the meantime, i am interesting in your work after the cia. it sounds like you are able to transfer your purpose. can you talk about some of the projects that you have been working on. speedo is an interesting realization especially after i had my daughter that so many of the tools that human intelligence officers were given, as part of training are around learning to create relationship or commonality with those we most fear or wish us

ill. in fact the same tools, are applicable outside of geopolitics. all different types of aspects of our community. ige work now especially with yog people. but with several different communities, prisoners there are looking to make amends for me the victims or the survivors of the crimes. and with gang members are interested in dropping their gang affiliations. before i had my nine -month-old, before i have a a nine month ol, i was going back and forth to the middle east in working with young people in the camps there that had been affected by violence. and giving themm these tools because they really are at an age that can reject the words of the parents. i think this is an exciting generation because unlike every

previous generation that is had to organize itself vertically by geography, this is really the first one when the internet has been so involved in our life right from the get-go and teenagers, young adults now are the first generation they can organize themselves horizontally by age globally. i have seen that with greta's moment and with various others. i think we'll see more of it. it's an army and people with the ability to communicate with one another in the moment where they are so disproportionately affected by the conflict ofit their parents. as they were just not going to be another link in the chain. there is a different way to do it. i think that's a really rewarding and exciting path. guest: [inaudible].

[laughter]. amaryllis: yes, i think as hard as it is to oversee theiror little ones anywhere other than kind of in a safe room, leave model what we hope that her kids will be in the world. i think it is so important to empower young people especially young women to pull up their sleeves and engage can be the version of this country that they want to see in the world. the diversion of the communities that they want to see in the world. i think often is that people are least likely to find personal happiness in government service and intelligence service, the lowlands most need to be doing it. people who aren't necessarily there because they are feeling the really heavy weight and responsibility and moral complexity and loneliness that

comes with the work. even though that's not necessarily a prescription for ouhappiness, i would wish happiness to my little ones. it is certainly a prescription for purpose and meaning and service. we can help the life is long enough to hope to be able to do that. step back and enjoy time with family. and with community. guest: [inaudible]. amaryllis: doit see speechmaking or climate change and peacemaking. it's an enormous challenge to stability and peacemaking around the world. the pentagon actually listed in is a security concern. i think over a decade now.

we are saying in an and norma's conflict. resources have also driven conflict and actually looked at as viable land in many parts of the world isn decreasing. we saw links to climate change in the early days of the syrian conflict which is now been so brittle i think it's important tofo consider it even though slw moving long-term duress. one of the great challenges of the human mind and democracy, is the tendency to have part-time taking the long-term of the

short-term and climate change is one of those issues. every policymaker understands the security ramifications. they can sometimes feel like they will land under a different president are policymaker down the road. it is really important as a country, we prioritize that. of the policy makers that we know even if it will take some time to pay off. guest: given the grisly granule information about the killings print do you think they were people in the cia and other security agencies or alarmed by the level of detail made public was just me. speedo certainly unusual to have that much granular detail disclosed.

but to the extent that it was a grade were smeared with the intelligence community first, there was some method to that madness i think. think the objective was to attempt to prevent reporters that ideology to see these final moments as heroic. an incredibly somber across the board. no death isio cause for celebration. this one particular that the leadership under which thousands of families lost people to terrorist attacks. into the actual recruitment have sonsns and daughters. certainly not a momentor of salvation. but i think the objective there

was probably to remind people to whatever extent and in these final moments that the character of this person was reiterated by the fact that not only did he take his life but he took these three innocent lives with him. i think it's an incredibly somber day for everybody to follow this. i would like to see him have taken him to stand trial for what he put somebody through. but the suicide path make that impossible. katy:ti that is all we have time for today. thank you so much amaryllis. thank you to cspan2 and but to be. this reminder that she will be

done at the signing of books. thank you everybody. [applause]. [background sounds]. >> coming up here on "c-span2", nikki haley recounts her time as u.s. ambassador to the united nations and the trump administration. in supreme court associate justice nate neill, author of a republic if you can keep it. he talks about his 30 year career as thoughts on the judiciary and u.s. constitution. an followed boy a former advisory, and author of the dragons and the snakes. and hostile forces have adapted to the ways that u.s. by force. you're watching a special addition a book tv, airing during the week while members of congress are under districts due

to the coronavirus pandemic. tonight memoirs, first holocaust survivor, reflect on his life and his impressment during world war two. then since oil brown wong discusses her journey from prisoner to advocate working to perform june the no sentencing guidelines. in nikki relates her time in the trump administration. book tv, now and over the weekend on "c-span2". this weekend on book tv, saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern, richard former director of the consumer financial protection bureau. >> is about consumers and finance and how it has changed and it is about consumer protection bureau the role in the importance of the work to protect people across america. >> sunday at 12:30 p.m., hr mcmaster, former trump administration national security

advisor. >> united states is a free and open society will do everything to do to protect ourselves against the efforts, our free market economic systems and democratic form of governance . >> and at 6:20 p.m., ruth gilmore, author and city university of new york professor on mass incarceration in the u.s. >> the fact that most people leave prison. they do a little bit of analysis to see that we could be closing prisons already and jails already if we just cut by two - three - four weeks much less years the current sentences that people are serving. >> watch book tv is weekend on "c-span2". [applause]. host: