walker and return home after their long-duration stay aboard the station. there are currently targeted on wednesday april 28. be sure to tune his nasa and spacex when you live coverage of every step of their journey. be sure to follow nasa and spacex and social media for real-time updates. and thanks again for watching our coverage, go nasa, go spacex go crew to, we will see you again real soon. soon i can confide all of our coverage of the spacex crew dragon online@c-span.org. including the launch, welcome ceremony and news conferences. now it is book tv on cspan2. some of the author shall see this week in a "washington post" staff writer john boudreau cox. on the effects of gun violence on children former republican speaker of the house john weiner of ohio investigative journalist amanda ripley. find schedule information about tv.org. or consult your program guide.

we now join book tv in progress. >> and it is the greater fear of failure. it's the greater fear that something is going to cause them to look bad. that is really what it is about. >> i think that's a great answer first of all. and because you brought him into a love-hate pulled him into that program how that made the program work. i would love it if you told that story that's a great one. >> is doing a program edward teller who is the creator of the age but. in fact he used to be stationed at the hoover institute where you are. he wrote a book at the time and he only wanted us to ask questions from the book. told my boss this is going to go bad. he wants to start as i said on page 33 he recited the title of his book it said no no no it will be fine it will be

fine. to try to make it seem a little bit better, he had a great admiration as you know. the hbo t4 the russians. this tote shows you an open expense account. i was really a remarkable moments because it won the nobel peace prize. and the russians were leaving him alone. he had a gathering of dissidents in his home and alayna bought her was his wife. and i remember going there, it's like the world's greatest coffee klatch. [laughter] people who want to change society and have been through extraordinary hardships and telling great stories. we pick the doctor up and alayna put her finger at me and said you make sure you

bring him back by 3:00 o'clock. and that is all mike wallace had you here because mike is a contrarian. bring them back it three connectors going to bring them back at four. and enough that is kind of what happened. but we didn't interview where he said that the way the russians figured out how to build the h bomb was go into the snows of siberia and after the u.s. nuclear tests and gather the follow-up from the u.s. test. there kind of go in the snow and then deconstruct what they found. then they could figure out the components of the bomb which i thought was fascinating. it was so fascinated fact that translator did not want to translate it at the time because he thought he was revealing some state secrets. sweet deliver that answer in a broken english.

anyway, it would bring him back and mike and are having a good time. we bring him back at 3:30 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. and sure enough alana had locked him out of the house. he is sitting out on his stoop in a very cold wintry day in moscow. i sit mike we cannot leave the doctor and he said no he's fine, he's fine. that was the last we ever saw him. [laughter] but it is remarkable to spend a little time with him. he diminished the rosenbergs in the sense he said they really did not contribute very much to the bombs. >> is so fascinating how they can come in fast and by scientist to conduce in many different ways but to skim the fall out off the top of the snow and figure how the h-bomb was constructed, reverse engineering it. it's pretty impressive skill. i love that story.

let's go back a little bit to your start. one of the things you got started at cornell as a writer for the paper. you did an expose on coaches that those a great way to get started. >> yes thanks for telling me the sequel on the road. when you talk but we go to mcdonald's. i want to the schools office and got the accounting of what they did. it was a sheet of paper each one of these players receive $55 in cash for meals. and so i showed it to the players they said $55 we received $12. i then attracted to each one of the players turns out they were using the money to pay for incoming recruits that

became the first kind of big story to help me get a job with jack anderson is kind of a muck raking columnist at the time. actually met with his deputy person, les had me sit there and he is like opening up a letter. he sang old man i get these psycho my got it's a letter bomb he took it and he threw it right at me. and i did not know what to do. turned out it was a gag with jack. he picked up and said the kids fell for the old letter bomb trick i think he just wet his pants. [laughter] think of this period of time of people would wander in off the street is the cia had planted a bug in their body. les did as he bent a metal was

a long strand that touched the back of the guys pants. and is it here this short-circuits them and really messes them up bad. kind of wandered off down the street. extraordinary times been investigative reporter. i was inspired by these guys. cy hirsch and jack anderson, he would leave be waiting outside their homes when they got back in the evening. talk about a dogged reporter, he was consul and be chasing these people down. and i loved it.

i love that kind of zest. >> the first thing he said we started talking about why people do this in failure that's what people are willing to tell their stories to the media. if a very interesting story it you could go to almost any and get their time because they wanted that time they wanted that media time. >> but your one 100% right because what it was his people thought they could outsmart you. people thought they could outsmart you, out charm you, or out finesse you. when i learned from mike wallace as he built confidentiality with the person. he would say between you and me. and 12 million viewers.

[laughter] kinda left that part of it out. he let this confidentiality with the person and they kinda got sucked into it. mike, your financed and then of course you come back at it somewhere in the middle or end again. i know you said this earlier, that kind of bothered me that you said that. people feel that they could rehabilitate if they've been accused of something. they feel that they can do this on air. the people come off best on camera the people where the most interesting people. people want to drink with her talk with the correspond on our drive casper i was so proud of myself i got the director of intelligence spoke

this heaviest railing accents and nobody cares if it's a general or curly just want to know we could talk well. you know bob is so right he always got the best talkers in israel one point was the israeli bureau chief for cbs. found some tenant who is great. when you talk to people can talk there was out of her immediate reminded me of prince andrew's last injury were he dug himself deeper into the hole. mike prince and gets a little media training. before doing such a significant interview like that he would've been prepping

for days and you're right i just don't get that. >> interesting you would say that to submit like nixon or some other big politicians who also said i don't need any practice before i go on, but really getting destroyed by what they do on screen. if you had to advise all of these people there so many politicians so many people in the entertainment industry" should work with guys in the media who were famous. would you advise to believe what to make a correct but is doing stuff online now and not in their own homes. what is the crucial part of it? >> the carnegie hall practice, practice, practice they need to try out their lines in their responses with people who they trust. whether it is a boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, who ever it is. and they need to see how that sounds. you want somebody who gives

you honest feedback, the main thing is the viewer has a great eye. there is a book dan rather written the camera never blinks. the viewer understand what a person is lying and not lying. it's kind of why i got fascinated by all of these gangsters. when they decide to tell their story, they often tell the truth. now it is a journey to get them to go on camera. but once they sit down and talk about some of their crimes. they talk about the commission. they talk about amazing stuff. and politicians are thinking which constituency do i not want to get angry? or which constituency in my trying to cater to? you can see this. i do not want to start calling out this one or that one

because frankly it's universal. exactly universal. but you can actually see, and good relations with a lot of these. tell him that you are thinking just tell me, they can't. they're constantly trying to spin you. whenever you your politics are one of the things donald trump at 70 million people to vote for. a lot of people felt feel he was a genuine person is a genuineness to it. this is my opinion about why he kept holding on to a lot of people.

the election was going on i went to a few of these rallies. people were lined up for hours to get in like he was some rock star. the note to hillary clinton's rallies i try to pull people off the streets to get to. not single one versus the other don't want to be political here. people saw that. that is what he did so well on camera. can be scare me get that person out of here, you would never see hillary clinton or anyone welcome to verse opinions on things. >> that's when my questions for it later on but we can do it right now per you are and a position to watch the interaction between media and politics over the years progress were both young at

the time. we were six, seven, eight years old for that was the start of the media back and forth between the media and the politicians. but what you're saying is very interesting it's still the genuineness of somebody to come across and again the training may be of someone like breggin to come across. that makes all the difference. i assume you assume the future's going to be more and more of the same. you're exactly right how you teach authenticity how do you teach honesty? you are obviously a student of socrates. how do you teach truthfulness? how do you teach honesty? >> once you learn to fake sincerity got it made here.

but you know what question work it's also getting harder and harder to do that. i think the people who come off as genuine somebody buying a pizza thing i like this pizza the enormous number of followers. the reason some of these platforms are hitting tik tok for example people say there's a new realness to it. the woman who went and bought a chewbacca mask and put it on she was just laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing and became the hottest video. all it was was a woman who went in, but a chewbacca mask put on her face and had an authentic reaction to it. seeing her with the silly mask on. it went viral and viral and viral. she ended up getting invited

to talk shows because people were so fascinated by her. it's the search for authenticity is the search for realness that i think people are craving and once. that is what they see. that is what punches through on tv. >> that is what punches thrown to the exactly without thinking. what i find fascinating about this as people have all been lying to each other for such a long period of time. and why are we interested in the show you put on for 40 years? where we interested in those people? it's mostly people saying we all have to live life. were alternate figure how other people did it because we really don't have a blueprint. right? you really watch how other people do it. so the more authenticity it is the more interest you have. as you sit a summit like trump despite the fact the genuineness come he's like a throwback to an old king or something like that from a thousand years ago. i know what i'm doing everyone follow me.

have that confidence and did not really try to polish himself in the way the elite he was talking against have always been trained to polish themselves. >> has succeeded his father has the biggest gangster next history he did not want to. he quit the mob. in order to be with his family. it took me four years to get him into the chair to do the interview. at one point he sat down to the interview for the most memorable 60 minutes of all times. it started off as two parts then grew to an hour. and it repeated, you can watch on youtube if you're interested. there is just something real and sincere about when he was talking about he would follow his father no matter what the

business was. he said if my was a butcher just get me a spot. one of my favorite things is after the peace aired, i got a call from early former new york city police commissioners said oh, i really liked it put them in jail for ten years. [laughter] know he came off well. mike i just shook my head. people talk about how rich people can get out of their crimes and so on and so forth. but people who have to be genuine in front of the court and in front of the jury also can walk away because people again arson well, if not for the grace of god some people say if not for this i would be luscious too. i would be in that situation. so they feel for them. they always say the cover up is much worse than the crime

you committed, right? >> that is exactly right. >> you talk about him and his father became the mafia leader because he took out in front of a sports bakehouse. he followed through and one of our connections which as i was working as a lawyer at that time in eric's city. one of our clients was going to buy sparks steakhouse. we were negotiating for sparks steakhouse on the day the guy got shot. that put an end to the dealer said the mafia goes there and i had no idea. it was really weird to have a deal destroyed by the fact there's a mafia hit right outside. >> that will do it. so now you worked on, i forget to some of the celebrities you worked on some really important investigations that change things. one was the insider-trading.

and also the epilogue is very disappointing about politicians but it's part of the story. thanks for asking. i was working with peter schweitzer who is off there who'd written a few books. i think he's another hoover institute person. he seemed to like the hoover institute. there is a chapter in his book that kind of caught my eye about instinct it's legal for congressmen and senators to trade stocks based on inside information they gotten from congressional hearings, close hearings in many cases. so they are trading stocks based on who may get a contractor who won't. one saturday who we focused on shorted stocks after getting a briefing from hank paulson that the u.s. economy was about to crater. though it kind of that little

bit of business out was i looked at hank poulsen's book. he basically wrote it in diary form. he said i brief to senator on the center of u.s. economy was going to crater. and the senator hosted his stock trades. but he hosted the brokerage accounts. see you have time stamped when the stock trade was. it matched when the meeting was at when the stock trade was, and it was within 30 minutes. and that senator cleared 30,000 or something in a short period of time. 30,000 was a lot of money 25% of what they make in a year or something at that time. they had given themselves some raises sense. so at the time there was a corrective legislation to make this illegal call the stock

act. and it only had 13 sponsors. so after we did the story got 185 sponsors like within a week. senators were fighting over who is going to sponsor in the senate. president obama talked about in the state of the union. and within three or four months and ended up passing. i was invited to the white house to watch the signing. that was enormously satisfying. however. [laughter] within a few months after 60 minutes leaves town the stock act is passive and glad hands himself it quietly they rescinded through a voice vote. which means there's no registered vote by any congressman or senators. so they rescinded it. and then in the last go around

of the pandemic a few senators got called out on the carpet for doing inside trading on the pandemic. so was business as usual. i found over the years the corruption in washington is breathtaking. in many ways much worse and with far larger impact to people than anything like the mafia in brooklyn. these guys do not want to blame the mail race, but they are extraordinary. another story we did which i'm incredibly proud was on the opioid epidemic. what congress did is they passed legislation that neutered the powers of the dea at the height of the epi would

epidemic the took away all of their powers of enforcement abilities. then after they cast this legislation, scores of than went to work for the drug industries as lobbyists, as vice president's, so one person in particular he actually helped craft the legislation that neuter the agency he used to work for. then they went to work for the drug industry. and so one of the congressmen who did this he did not work for the drug industry but congressman the reno, his people did. he was the architect of this legislation. and then two days after he was named to be donald trump's new drug czar. we do the story and within two days of us during the story trump rescinds the offer if you will and takes it away.

we did that is a great collaboration with the "washington post". that really affected shapes. those of the stores of theirs have got the most satisfaction from. >> not to mention quite a few rewards. >> i done well. we met very well. think it's a good time to go back and tell the story of your father's childhood because they clearly must have affected your desire to have an effect on the community which people live you came from such a difficult situation. but there's really not a day or week that goes by when i don't think about what he went there in poland. he was in a small town on the border of poland and russia when the nasis came in. they basically told his mother , secured a place for him to

be hidden, basically wildly nuts is not these were there and through the war. a righteous family took him in, hit him in a haystack and protected him for three years. not even telling their kids except for their oldest daughter that they had my father hiding upstairs he was 16 years old at the time. but, he can only hide one. so my father's mother and his twin sisters went back to the town. basically with the knobs he said was for the next 48 hour she could do anything to the jews. the jews were slaughtered off of the town. they were flogged and all sorts of things. i often thought about that, when one had given permission for a crime without consequence could do that or give him the opportunity to

save another life. but it would risk putting your family at risk. so my father faced in that little town in poland who is the best of humanity and the worst of humanity coming out to play. as i wrote in my book, the end of the first chapter you know it was like i always keep one eye open looking out for the neighbors if you will. it's the old reagan line of trust the verified. i think about that a lot. about what decision, we have the courage to take in somebody who is about to get murdered? that would be putting my family at risk. in the story of the righteousness of those people has been told not told enough.

certainly spielberg did a version of that and schindler's. but i think about that quite a bit. >> it brings us right back to the big issues of the politicians and what they have done and how they speak and what they do. i thought it was a very good line you had in that 60 minute show at the carters during reagan's administration when rosalynn carter said this thing about reagan. reagan was himself personally one of those charming people especially after he got shot using a sense of humor. that kind of thing that really worked on tv whether you liked his policies or not he was popular different times. he did do something all cancer politicians do. she puts the needle on when she made her comment. >> i was doing one of the

first of the first things after the white house, mike wallace was the correspondent. mike was friendly with the reagan's. i knew this was not going to go very well. we're doing the the interview and i'm trying to prod him trying to prod mike to ask the president about reagan. and they said believe asking about human rights under ronald reagan. and mike said to me i'm not good ask him about human rights under ronald reagan i said mike need to ask about human rights he said no i said mr. president we told to ask you this? this is also a little bit of what producing is about. president carter said to me do not get me involved in your silly little questions. [laughter] know you are embarrassing me. ask about human rights. you might ask them okay alaskan paste goes like this he swipes the camera and he says this i asked the question meant rights under ronald

reagan, the court is almost set up. he took it and ran with it. so the first thing this president did was send jeanne kirkpatrick down to snuggle up to o'shea in that sense a message at human rights is no longer operative in the ronald reagan administration. and mike looks pretty good jimmy says like that, my calls me a name, front page near times the day after it appears. so later in the day i got to rosalynn carter and i say listen he is really friendly with nancy reagan. want you to come out with your guns blazing she's in a rental do my best. she sits down and says a line which will be referred to that stayed with me which is this president makes us comfortable with our prejudices. and whoa it kind of blew me away.

mike almost did not know how to react. he basically set aside a very nice thing to say. and it was a fantastic line. it was one of her most quoted line she's ever spoken. and in the car ride back to atlanta when we're flying back home mike was all worried about nancy reagan and ron reagan because a good relations with them. to mike's credit, all of it stayed in it was a very tough peace. and we all move forward from there. it was a line that always stuck with me. >> very interesting how they're both media savvy. especially the way carter played the game between you and mike wallace. but that was a great part of the story, he played both sides to get his point in. it reminded me a little bit of a story i heard out here of how get their way in things.

one of the political reporters for abc san francisco affiliate. and he said when people come to town during elections they all line up in a hotel there's five rooms, abc, nbc, everybody's got their own room. they go from one to the others to nobody knows anything nobody knows anybody. but in order to get on the air the politicians are always using your name. so every time they answer you and say bob this bob this bob this. and the guys have but the smartest of them all was bill clinton because he only said your name once i was the soundbite he wanted to go on because he knew that increase the sound bite he wanted on because your name wasn't it. >> grunwald actually told him that these on-air people have such a vanity if you use their name they will use the bite. so he then did an interview

with 60 minutes during that time and it kept mentioning steve's name whenever he won the answer to be. but he didn't want he left his name out. >> very clever. that's the thing that put him up above the other politicians. >> but his mistake wasn't revealing mezzo as a producer he started doing he said that is the one answer i'm not going to use. [laughter] he told a lot of stories but how he got things done he so proud of it. and that's when he thought shifted over the presidency operated. because most presidents before that had done the same things but never told anybody. >> exactly. >> that gave away his night activities about being a politician. i thought it was very funny he gave it away but still had the same time figured out ways to make it work better for him.

so, as those investigations as a couple other really big ones medicare fraud is another one. it reminded me because i just read something the other day with all of this money being spread around by the government right now the unemployment fraud they said is like $11 billion in california alone and unemployment fraud under the new money going out. so tell a little bit about the medicare fraud situation. >> it's remarkable how easy it was. we focus on southern florida we focus on a clinic and they would order all of this material through medicare. and medicare would ship it. there is no checks and balances on a lot of these things. and so amount of money they could make was extraordinary. what they did was get a hole

of people's medicare numbers for example. on one was a former federal judge. they ordered two prosthetic arms for him. not one but two. and he said you can see my arms are fine. medicare paid for it. and the cut out made a lot of money on it. i love doing stories we just kind of say the end of it that cannot be real. another one like that was tax refund fraud which was sort of along the same line. scam artists get a hole of your refund checks and then have it sent to a mailbox. i said i felt ten -- 20 forms and i can make 10,000 dollars, $20000 in the course of day or two. and were not working very hard. and the irs just paid it. this an extraordinary amount of money that just goes out

the door without checks and balances. so everybody's trend to scrimp on something. they need much more of an enforcement effort. think that's why came out on it. medicare at the time before we do the story did not really have a strong enforcement effort to go after these people. and after we did the story i think they gave an extra 100 million to stop from going out the door. >> having demos investigations into the government what is your take on the system for national healthcare and letting the government take over different things. have you developed a philosophy of political philosophy about those kind of things? >> again this is my opinion i am not speaking for anyone else. my opinion is the more that government involves themselves in our personal lives, the worse it is. they do not make things better

through the systems that they set up. they make things worse. i would love to debate somebody on that in terms of what they've actually done that has been great. now having said that the great society programs under johnson have obviously been an enormously successful. they have saved lives and done incredible stuff. journalists in the future going to be examining the way the pandemic and the vaccine will happen. and friends of mine on the medical community are telling me horror story after horror story about this. it's a story the still playing itself out. and i don't think they do it well. i think private industry and private companies have more incentives to do it right in a more cost-efficient way. here's the thing you're just getting a salary.

you get paid with a something works or not. psyche are incentivized to save the government $100 million. still getting the same paycheck. but that's not the way it works in private industry. privacy industry people are incentivized to improve mechanisms and i was them speaking broadly, but generally you are credited. people get bonuses or whatever. that is not really happening government. think that's on the big faults and problems in that regard. there is a point in time when i know under the trump administration their talk about privatizing the army for example in sending private armies to iraq or afghanistan. that has its own set of issues and problems. we don't really want to do that.

>> to divide with the government doesn't doesn't tween what can be monetized and what can be monetized. it's hard to put a monetary on education with absolute crucial. but we will not go into that discussion there's too many fun stories to do. so it's back up again, you are a young man and you come out of cornell with this one story and so and so forth. you are good tennis player that really helps. so won't you tell a story about playing tennis with peter maas in the hamptons i think it's great. >> thank you for asking me. i got an e-mail from the person i'm not going to mentions wife. so i'm playing tennis, peter maas was a writer with the valachi papers and circuit circuit code. talking about -- i just admired him so much. i learned so much from him. so he let me hang out with him in the hamptons. the price was i had to play

tennis with him on weekends and doubles. one day i get to the court it's kurt and morley schaefer. the way i described in the book it's the old man tennis the way old man tennis is supposed to be played with lots of banter and fun. his wife actually sent me an e-mail she love the story so much. pass it around, she called morley's wife and read it to her. they smoked cigarettes constantly. so between games and smoke a cigarette and then play little bit and smoke another cigarette. then they just got tired of putting the cigarette out. they go onto the court and both of them were smoking cigarettes. i did not want to hit the ball is afraid they're going to choke. i'm playing in peter maas' words soft. but it was so delightful in

talking and relaxed, the tennis was just sort of a different place than a bar. it was a place to banter and talk. it was really one of the most memorable matches i've ever played. i love donovan. to cornell as you know. [laughter] >> anyway that is just such a beautiful image. you have so many of them if you read the book there's hundreds of these kind of things. we i do not want to miss them of marlon brando. you get marlon brando on. i love how you missed a date which i think everyone would have skipped that date tell that story think that's just wonderful. >> it's appropriate i'm doing this from a bookstore. because i had just finished a story on job and nano. i wanted to use a little bit of godfathers usually a simple

request for the studio. one day brando himself called said his job and anakin using this all this yeah he's fine. we began a long, long conversation over weeks and months. i would call him up and wish him happy birthday, so animals don't celebrate birthdays, trees don't celebrate birthdays are you celebrating? >> i'm just going up to issue happy birthday. and then another time he called me up i don't know if it's a generational thing, they don't say hello how are you come. they just talk. sunday brando calls up and says you ever know people who have these great reputations and have real said hate marvin a stogdill meeting with somebody the bar. he ignores it, charlie chaplin great reputation.

and william great reputation. and so then, starts in on. all my god marlon brando's reading me no one else. and it's really magical. this is a time before cell phones or text you can't text on running a little late, you can't do that. and so had the choice wasn't to brando or meet the person at the bar. of course i picked brando. [laughter] and then 20 minutes after he began the conversation he hangs up. and just stops stops. but we doing on camera interview. so i was pursuing him. finally i got a time to meet him in l.a. with mike wallace. he picks us up in a white rolls-royce. he is wearing a white suit. mike gets in the front i'm sitting in the back. mike says i'm alone nervous, brenda says he is alone

nervous i said yes this is going so well. [laughter] we drive down marlon's running everything the red light. like what you doing you're going to get us killed pasted you're going to lead machine thing what to do? be a man. we finally get to this restaurant sit down and marlon starts by saying you know mike ivan manager acting abilities for a long time. document? of the raised eyebrow the look of astonishment you are gina's actor. i'm a journalist on actor of stop your incredible actor. left the timing for that. brando says well i go to baskin-robbins i can't decide what flavor i want site order court of everything i've got a ticket home and end up eating at all. at which point mike says you know i'm 66 years old do not need to make my reputation by showing america who you are less just be friends. i'm going crazy because i

really wanted the interview. anyway brandon at that point the calls became very, very infrequent pretty got one final call from him and he says to me you play the market customer guy said a little but i don't have much money. he said what you should. let me give you a stock tip pretty said what is that is if the company called apple i said you haven't heard of it he said you will, trust me put all your money into it. i said okay fine until mike about this. and mike's is he going to invest in the company? i said you crazy loaded take us stock tip from someone who cannot decide what flavor ice cream he wants? [laughter] >> as he got the tip direct from steve jobs right? >> yes. at the time the company gone public a year or two before. but jobs wanted brando in commercials or something i think. and i wasn't really, i'm stupid just call me stupid. i was not sensitized to the

whole computer revolution that was about to take place. i was a year late on that one. rebecca still very hard to look back and see is gonna make it anyway. mark twain did not invest in the telephone he invested in the typesetter failed in the telephone office and went crazy. we all have questions and going to ask a couple of them first and then go back to a couple things i want to cover. just for the audience if you like some of those stories about marlon brando in everything there so many so many stories about famous people. especially the media people who you all know that did 60 minute tours. before we get to these questions i do to ask you seem to be a little nostalgic for the old fashion office kind of chaos that was going on. i was wondering if you think the inhibiting rules that have come into that whole play have

cut down on creativity, hurt things, i know you think it's partially good thing, it's a partially a bad thing to for the offices the creativity is limited. so i can think the most important thing inside an office framework is to feel safe, respected and to feel safe. where the are a man or a woman harassment sometimes goes both ways as you know. i think that's the most important thing. i think the crazy chaos that had existed back then was something that should have been corrected back then. they should have addressed it back then. the creativeness really had to do, i read about some of this in my book, really had to do the fact these people were larger-than-life characters. what mike wallace, what he tried to do was try to get

people angry. he tried to get a reaction out of people. and of course he went too far in a lot of cases. but, there was this rivalry that existed more at schaefer and mike wallace's office with us far apart. yet mike would steal a story and they would not talk for a year. by the way, it's not just men who were fighting. i went to abc with diane sawyer and barbara walters. they were to extraordinary talents. the two top best people in the business. but they had an enormous rivalry. the way we did primetime live at the very beginning and our debut show diane had booked a major figure eight major character and literally hours before the broadcast is trained to steal the interview. they had these rivalries and

this energy and stuff. so, i think that is what i was really referring to. it is the competition that existed. with the chaos and the fighting that existed. the fighting in some ways again i am not excusing the reprehensible behavior which a lot of it was, but some of that vitamin was creative fighting. they were sparking each other to make the best peace. and they did not treat each other so nice during those periods in time. make it's interesting that part of being older is true of every generation as it goes by. people often say oh, we would not do that now. but the humor in the 2005 silica in the office or something like that was very popular. we would never do something like that now but back then. think back then nobody knew

about the geneva back to the 70s and of course it was a very big issue with feminists revolt. and everybody knew it was bad boy behavior was not acceptable in the office and sewn and so forth. it is been known for a long, long time. find it very humorous some people go back ten or 15 years and say we can excuse their behavior then because nobody knew a thing about this stuff. >> they knew about it they just turned their backs on some. they did not address it. and you know, when you are talking about some of it was when i talk about sometimes as there were no grown-ups in the room. if barbara was stealing a story i was involved in one situation where barbara was stealing some from diane. as president of abc news at the time. in his responsive then when she outsmarted you read she

outsmarted it wasn't outsmarting it was thievery. so you know, the rules have changed. people really understand pretty think it's made for much better work environment for men and for women. for women and for men. it is a two-way street. you need to feel safe in the work environment. think that's a very important thing. >> absolutely. let's go to a question here in a perfect position you're in this book you're in a perfect position to make that comment. we have several questions come in. one came in from mark shaw and author he said you mention in your book quotes from that gangster joe regarding the jfk assassination. do you want to tell that story? in two places one place to say it may be mafia talk.

spector exley two things joe said he finish the interview with michael while he's on his way to the airport. joe and i are having a cognac in the back porch. and i said to joe, i first started by saying joe, who killed kennedy? he said well when the kennedy assassination, what happened he called down too. [inaudible] who is the head of the mafia in miami and said what's going on customer he said listen this is what joe says, said to him, miami and new orleans run by carlos will take the heat for it, new york is absolved new york had five crime families. joe sent down there and found out they tried to kill kennedy in miami with cuban exiles but failed. and then they took care of the deed in dallas. in the next thing joe told me was i said joe growing up in

new york i was fascinated the jewish gangster. i said was he that good with investing your money? he said investing my money? he had the picture pretty joe said he had a picture of j edgar hoover fbi director and his number two having with each other. we need that picture to blackmail them to basically say there's no such thing as a mafia. and for a long time as you know, hoover said there's no such thing think it was even after appalachian 57 that he kept denying there is anything like organized crime. so they said that's because he had the picture. so the problem as you pointed out with the sort of thing issue can't just just run to the press and say kennedy assassination solved here it goes. because a lot of these guys like to talk. they like to tell stories.

what another gangster i know said it was johnny rosselli who was shooting from a sewer and shot kennedy. now when i meant this to junior he said johnny had bad eyesight he could never make the shot. [laughter] so this is the kind of banter you kind of get when you're dealing with some of these guys. it is delicious stuff it is great. it's not something i would call a congressional hearing on. steam at we don't take it is the only reason why jed hoover did not get along when his attorney general? >> exactly sound like that could be the basis he did not the information out he did not want the mafia attack. probably not the only basis i am sure. >> again i cover a lot of this in my book i urge everyone to take a look at it. i'm giving a very short

version of some of the stories. >> absolutely pert here is a another question having watched 60 minutes in the beginning of the exposé on the auto dealer who rolled back odometers in the tobacco story. what is your favorite exposé on 60 minutes your favorite profile? spin xmi my favorite profile, oh boy. [laughter] you are going to be surprised by what i'm about to say. : : :

customer out of it. it was a delightful fun story in the hills of italy, having an italian chef, leslie stall and i did that story and we regard it as one of our favorites. >> you wrote that story nicely in the book. as an aside, you say the most expensive show ever done was not put on about tibetan monks.

a funny side story. >> i will clean it up a little bit. his producer, bill mcclure, they went to tibet and the producer is a former camara man, one of the most expensive stories 60 minutes ever did. they bring it back, they edit it together and show it to don you, creator of 60 minutes, the monks walked to the right, to the left, what kind of story is that? needless to say it never made the air but it was extraordinarily expensive but gave you a sense what the attitude was at the time.

we would do stories about the orient express where he traveled on the last train ride and harry reasoner did the most expensive meal you could buy on planet earth. at a time we are going through pandemics, the divisive nest of the last election i miss some of those stories that you take a breath and just to be entertained at the genius of the writing. harry did a story about the end of casablanca, on the movie set, they were selling it off as spare parts and he said everybody remembers who they saw the movie with. looking at it now, here's looking at you, kid, brilliant writing and as a fan of the show as much as a participant i

miss it. >> one more question, just a joke actually. you know you are going to have a bad day when you see dan rather walking up your driveway. >> and when you see mike wallace walking up your driveway. i don't think if you see charlie doing an interview with the nation, but doing these shows which are great, i love them, that was the way people regarded it. you tell a story about dan rather after he has the difficult thing, and walking by

and ask one of the secretaries what is the soup of the day. he had enough self-awareness to realize, and asking what the soup of the day was. one of the things in my book that i point out is the end of days for mike wallace which a lot of people talk to me about and it is amazing with his extraordinary career that mike had he didn't have a memory of having worked on the show. >> you tell such personal, moving details, the stuff that is irritating and the stuff that made it worthwhile to work with for so many years, the difficult stuff, we won't talk about that but as a big

overarching theme, who you know when to retire, the same thing people discuss about tom brady or top sports stars who have to quit much earlier if they are going to go out but we should talk about that because that is interesting for everybody whatever the situation is. it is not just financial. it is more than that. >> they had more money than they will ever spend in their lifetime. what they inevitably did was stayed on stage too long and in his last conversations he would tell his people spend more time with your family, leave the scene, morley would end up retiring within a week or month of, dying a week and a month of

the time that he retired, and bradley died of cancer where in the last stories he did he could barely voice over the stories he doing and you realize people stay on stage a little too long and when -- i know we are running out of time but when i started, covering the new age movement, one of the people at great admiration for was head -- he said to me, he said change your career every 7 years. when you become the rule of your career and the career doesn't become the ruler of you. i disregarded that spiritual directive but you still have a chance if you want to have your

full career, just leave in my case, i am left when i felt i was at the top of my game, just won of peabody and 1 million other things for the opiate series and it was a perfect time to move on and do different things and try different things. it is something that i didn't see a lot of the people i worked with do. >> very clear that you watched and learned and i was going to go back to your new age journal because i thought it was a very interesting, the first thing you did after cornell, what was it you had done that made you go to work for the new age journal? people from the late 60s and early 70s think everybody did that. it is still unusual. >> i was into yoga for a period

of time. i was vegetarian. i got to know the yogi who was running the movement at the time and that was the direction i was pursuing at that time and it was part of the journey of self-discovery and that got me into that and i did that for a short time. >> must've been happy with a higher level of writing ability from those journals when topics are interesting but don't get the top writers that often. at the time that was a really big push in time in the early 70s for alternative attitude towards what is going on in life.

may be finish up with one last thing, you did an interview, the three things everybody wants to hear about all the time, jfk, ufos and drugs. i thought it was such a weird conclusion but i run into other people in the magazine industry who have also had a very, the way life works is very very simple, just take people's normal desires, dress them up every month in a different way and had the same things over and over again. >> the context of it, bouncing around, trying to divulge freelance work and in a short time, created a magazine called ohio magazine, hiring

legitimate newspaper people and wanted me to be the washington bureau chief so paying me more than i ever thought i would make, 20,$000 and he said i got a story for you, they are making human beings in massachusetts without belly buttons and without souls, i said who? he said the cia. i looked at him and said i will get right on it. it was a strange -- i write about a lot of that in the book. this is so much fun, thank you so much for doing this. >> eyewash -- wants to finish with something more substantive. you did something on that. i had an associate work for me, all he did was pro bono work. this saves people's lives. you did a 60 minutes thing on it. >> i have known darius a very long time, he really has done

such extraordinary noble work and he is a friend and i'm a huge fan of his and over the decades at abc i did one of the first dna stories with barry and we've done other stories. there's nothing more noble to do as a journalist than to get somebody wrongfully convicted out of jail. that is the work we have done over the years. we did it, one story i work with his partner, peter newcells, innocence in chicago where kids were wrongfully convicted in chicago and something on 30 years on death row where somebody was railroaded by a prosecutor who went on camera with us to talk about how he railroaded -- to this day it is bill whitaker's and my favorite story he ever

did and you got to read it. i write about a lot of it. >> very moving and unfortunately an unending job so next generation take it over keep working on this because in spite of the fact that it is not very many people who do those things there's always some pressure like you said, the fear of failure that makes people want to close the case and not play by the rules and somebody totally innocent sitting jail and often a powerless person and it really is a shame that we keep doing that but we keep getting better at it and everybody should keep it in mind, we have to work on that and get it back out there because that is one of the things that can make us a little better like bringing

that information that has been very useful, very fun book. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> 100 nineteenth year of enlightened discussion, thanks for coming and joining us. thanks for joining us, goodbye. goodbye. ♪♪ >> here is a look at some

publishing industry news. simon & schuster will not distribute a forthcoming book by jonathan mattingly, louisville police officer involved in the breonna taylor shooting. it is scheduled to be released by post hill press. in a letter sent to simon & schuster's employees ceo jonathan caldwell, quote, although all of us involved in this decision shared an immediate and strong consensus about not wanting any role whatsoever in distribution of this particular book the online poll, the unsustainable president of rendering our judgment on titles from independent publishers whose books we distribute to our accounts but whose acquisition we do not control. politico reports william barr and supreme court justice amy cody barrett have signed book deals. it is reported william barr's book will discuss his time in the justice department and justice barrett is writing about how judges rule. this week governor andrew cuomo

may be investigated for using new york state resources and the publication of his covid response book. in other news, print book sales were up 6% for the week ending april 10th in the 40 first annual los angeles times book prizes were awarded virtually last week. this year's winners include isabel wilkerson, martha jones's vanguard and williams outer's biography of john steinbeck, mad at the world. booktv will bring news programs and publishing news, you can watch all of our past programs anytime, booktv.org. >> thank you for joining us. i am john sanchez with blue bicycle books, really excited about this book. we heard about it coming out a year ago, reached out to a publisher to do an event on this. we are a couple blocks away from calvin street and there is