tv Tucson Festival of Books CSPAN March 14, 2022 1:02am-4:06am EDT
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deborah in poor richard's women. find these titles is coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors to appear in the near future on book tv. you're watching book tv for a complete television schedule visit booktv.org. you can also follow along behind the scenes on social media at booktv on twitter instagram and facebook. it's a concrete before. and welcome to tucson, arizona and the 2022 tucson festival of books. after two years of virtual programs the tucson festival is back in person and book tv is on site. full day of author discussions ahead including author colin programs. the full schedule is available at booktv.org.
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good morning, everyone and welcome to this session on this wonderful sunday morning here in tucson. my name is christopher conover. i'm the news director and host of the buzz on arizona public media here on the ua campus. i want to thank all of you for coming. i am really is an important. i guess i don't think any of you are really here to see me or hear to hear from the gentleman sitting next to me who i think most of you recognize but i'm going to introduce him. anyway, lieutenant colonel retired alexander vindman. some of you who follow the news may recognize his name. thank you. thank you.
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now that we have those very kind applause out of the way. let's hold the rest of them until the end. this session will last an hour the panel here. and now as i said, we'll end in an hour. we'll have plenty of time for your questions. i know in hour is going to go very quickly. i do want to thank our festival organizers and of course our sponsors c-span book tv and my bosses at arizona public media for putting this event on and with that. let's kind of go ahead and get two things one last thing. we have a microphone up here which we will use for questions when we get to them. you might have to speak up a little especially with the masks and things like that, but we'll work through that as we get
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there. so i think the easiest place to start with this is people know the basic story. but just to refresh people. you and your family fled. what was then soviet ukraine what people called back then the ukraine the city of kiev which we now call kiev when you were about four years old. give us a little history about how your family ended up in, new york. sure. thanks chris. thanks to some books book festival. thank you for that very well warm. welcome. um, so that's that's kind of what the the book about is about. it's about the origin story. how you get to the call how you get to the impeachment hearings, but those earlier those early days were. probably typical for any kid.
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i mean we didn't know that we didn't had little means my twin brother and i were inseparable. we did everything together. we we didn't recognize that we were refugees. we didn't understand what that meant. we just knew that you know, our dad was taking us on a big adventure leaving. soviet ukraine to come to the united states and most of those early memories were quite happy and joyful. and for little kids that had all the basic necessities we didn't i don't think we were hungry very often. we had the affection of our father our grandmother our mother passed away from cancer when we were we were little when the reasons that we were coming over to the us besides fleeing as refugees and anti-semitism, you know seeking a better life and freedom those were high-minded concepts, but my dad also saw an opportunity to maybe save my mother's life and seek medical care.
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he had read an article about the shah of iran getting treatment in new york city for the same kind of disease. my mother was suffering from and after that he was locked in and he was prepared to give up his life and everything else to try to see if we could start a new life here. our transit was interesting. also it turns out we may have been on the last flight out of kiev before the ukrainian. a central committee halted the refugee flights in response to us sanctions for the invasion of afghanistan. my remaining family was able to leave for another 10 10 years. so my cousin we're supposed to be born in the us and ended up happening. she ended up, you know not coming until she was 10 years old. we transited through to to vienna and then from there. i vaguely recall a train ride to outside of rome where we were
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parked for several months while my father tried to determine where we should go. should we go to israel. should we go to stay somewhere in europe? we had some distant relatives that were settling in in germany, or should we come to the us and of course. everybody, you know either as immigrants or if there have have recent family that immigrated here kind of understands the draw of the american dream and that's where my dad made the very wise choice to bring us over here. so we left before we were four we arrived in the us about about four and a half years old on christmas day in 1979. so merry christmas. yeah, and then we grew up in the location was a brighton beach, but we didn't stay there for a very long that was the area that's sometimes referred to as little odessa large concentration of russian jewish refugees. my dad didn't want us to kind of
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get stuck in an immigrant community he wanted us to to thrive and wanted us to a culturally assimilate so we moved deeper into brooklyn, which doesn't seem like a yeah doesn't seem like a lot, you know a large trip, but those 10 train stops. is it different world? it's a melting pot of different communities and that's where we grew up until until we went off to university. so the origins were were maybe unique but most of the upbringing was just a kids in new york city and the other only other thing i'll mention is of course, you know, we were raised on the history of our family and origins from ukraine and family fleeing world war two bombings and kiev as the nazis were attacking both my grandfathers passed away. they were killed actually in combat out of outside the city
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of harkey where the ukrainians put attempted to mount a valiant defense. tens of thousands of died in an onslaught from a million. nazi troops the vermont so also understood that you know, there was some some history in that part of the world and gave us the interest to maintain language. so i we spoke russian to our parents amongst the kids. we spoke english and that was the foundation for becoming a us army foreign area officer down the road. when i was reading the book. one of the things that struck me not surprisingly for those of you who have read the book and it is a great read and it's a easy read. was talking about your grandparents specifically your grandmother. fleeing to get away from the nazis getting on a train to go
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to moscow which didn't end up working out. but the scene of her in my head with your father and you know fleeing on the train and i thought to myself wait, i just saw this video on monday the parallels all these years later were quite amazing. it is shocking at that time the us and the soviet union were allies fighting the nazis and fascism, you know a threat to the entire. world certainly to humanity and democracy and and american way of life, but we were at this at the same time a threat to the existence of the soviet union and communism fascism was kind of a and all consume all besides and nazism, but it is very strange that we've come around to a place where? the russians that constantly
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return to the chorus of a world war two and the heroic feats of their grandfather's are now the fascists attacking ukraine. it is. there is a really strange turn of events and i think most of the population doesn't realize it, you know, they're they're fed the lies that it's ukraine that's fascist and that they're fighting a fascist in ukraine when fact, they're the there they're belligerent. they're the aggressor. and some of that certainly is wishful thinking people are rationalizing people. that know better. but you could see some overlaps with the way parts of our population have been radicalized in a way. i would say the people that attacked the capital building on january six thought they were doing the right thing. these are even the veterans that participated in that some based. the estimates are somewhere between five and 10% we veterans
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make up of much much smaller swath of the population. it amounts to a fraction of that. but these were folks that were out there thinking that because they were fed propaganda and lies thinking that they that's what they needed to do to defend the country. so it's a it's something that is not just isolated to russia. it's not just in the us there are a lot of places where radicalizations unfolding and people are consuming. falsies and lies and prepared to take up arms and fight for their cause before we get into a lot of the events right now because you are an expert on ukraine and all the things that happen in the trump administration my high school english teachers would be proud that i noticed a theme in the book. and it was actually a quote from your father early on but it kept
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coming up and the idea of it kept coming up and your father said to you when you all arrive don't just start over keep starting over. what did he mean by that for those who haven't really read this? so was it wasn't just his words it was it was his example, i mean there were multiple times in his life where he was forced to to start over. certainly the end of a peaceful life when he was just a kid nine years old when the war started in world war two having to flee to the ural mountains thousands of miles away from the front as a kid with it with his mother and his sister and living there for about five years or so then coming back and being part of the effort to rebuild kiev. the study was starting over the city of kiev started over many dozens of times over its history
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of over thousands you thousand year history and it's going to come back from this also. and then finishing up university being sent off by the you know, it's almost it's almost like the military they tell you where to go you don't get to pick where you choose but you sent off to who's pakistan a serve as an engineer and at the time largest he was the ended up running the project after a couple of years. it was the largest hydroelectric dam in. in central asia, and then he they want him to stay there and he was like, no. i want to see i want to be close to my family so he had to start over from scratch move back to kiev started the very beginning after being a supervisor for 20,000 person project. he started from scratch and then of course. know at the age of 47 coming to the us and starting over first hauling furniture just to make ends meet for 20 bucks a day. and even in 1980 that wasn't a
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huge amount of money, you know, and then kind of being fleece by by the boss that was taking a cut to cash checks and stuff like that. just taking advantage of you know, immigrant new immigrant kind of shocking type of behavior that you wouldn't expect somebody that probably just experienced some similar type of behavior when when they arrive and then so that's that's the kind of the dna and we've never really been all that afraid of starting over. we're pretty adventurous all the boys in the family trying something new new experiences. so i i would that was not something that was going to kind of to turn me from doing i thought was right. right you started at american university and ended up a state university of new york changes in career directions within the military and then the elephant in the room what was referred to it's not nice phone call.
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changed lots of times sure in your own life. so let's talk about a comment you made early in the book about that phone call in july of 2019. you would said that president trump never gave policy guidance. so his comments on things weren't taken seriously by the diplomatic pros or the professionals like you and others in the government. how'd that work? well, so what many people don't realize is that? president trump was erratic in inconsistent. so would you know. i'm sorry, maybe the people in the room recognize it but there were plenty of other people that don't. i need to read the room better. got it. so he would you know drinking coca-cola staying up to all hours. he wouldn't necessarily have
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kind of rational thoughts on a lot of things and he'd you'd rent and rave and until those were converted into kind of policy direction. we basically took the things that he that were well considered and put in front of them that were approved for signature and operated on that basis. so this is not you know, this is not like a deep state type of apparatus. he signed something called a national security strategy in 2017. that was one of the reasons that i decided to join the trump administration because i didn't have to i you know, that's frankly you don't get a lot of choices in the military, but going to the white house is way outside of the normal channels and it's kind of like a special request type of thing. so the military would would have been happy for me to fill some sort of military billet overseas, but i went there because i thought i could do some good there was a document well considered document crafted about it was crafted, you know with my participation. i drafted the national military
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strategy for russia and it influenced the national defense strategy and influence national security strategy. so kind of was you know, i knew i had a hand in developing that document and made lots of sense on what we're supposed to do and the the professional class the national security apparatus the folks coming at departments and agencies. we're all kind of on the same page. they saw the looming threat of rising well belligerent, russia. so when the president would would just kind of spout off? um, he would often change his mind and i'll give you one public example that may or many many of you may or may not recall when jim mattis secretary of defense resigned it was because the president made an ill considered decision to withdraw troops from syria. that wasn't the issue was abandoning the occurred our kurdish allies that we were fighting with and literally in a phone call between president trump and and president of
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turkey. from president turkey convinced president trump to withdraw i mean without like it was a hundred and eighty degree change on what would been discussed even going into that room for the conversation? it was one what one decision and all the sudden in the conversation. was kind of i don't know corded and pandered to and he made 180 degree decision and then that became public and mattis resigned and then president trump reverse course, which is what he did on a regular basis people think he's consider, you know again, some people think he's consistently he's strong leader. he'll he's resolved. he's firm. that's really not the case. he'll blow one of the examples we'll see is he was pretty firm on supporting putin and you know and dogging ukraine until it was clear from the from the public that that's way out of step with where the american public was and it support for ukraine. so he pivoted and now supposedly
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he's a he's a tough guy on putin instead of the guy that kind of encouraged putin to take these actions that he's taken now, so that's really you know, that's that's kind of the the backstory that things just were not the way they seemed to the outside world now, it seems a little clearer. there's all sorts of revelations but at the time that was not the case and now we just try to do the best we can the professional class in particular. we there's a very thin layer of professional class in the white house. it's mainly political appointees, but the folks that coming at that come out of department of defense didn't tell agencies and state department. we were just doing the best we could to keep our policy on track protect us national security interests when you were writing about writing the policy on how to deal with russia, which wasn't that long ago that you were writing that and it certainly seems to be playing out today one of the things that struck me was you said that russia uses fear and
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intimidation to make the us second guess itself and then make mistakes. it seems like even with the current situation ukraine, we saw that well, that's absolutely correct. i mean there's a whole doctrine around. you around russia using a specific set of inputs to elicit a us response. it's called reflexive control. so they'll do things like civil defense drills where they make the population do duck and cover to signal that you know, this is serious essential situations as escalating or they'll do a nuclear alert like they did right just days before this this they launch this war or they'll elevate the alert a nuclear alert posture and the idea is to again signal the us to immediately withdraw to a very base fight or flight reaction. usually it's flight. they don't want to fight but they they calculated out to drive a flight reaction.
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so we self-deter. so in this case, you know, they the russians are not suicidal. they understand mutually assured destruction. i've been plenty of conversations with with senior russian leadership where that's one of the very first things on their mind is a nuclear war can never be one. that's must never be thought. i mean there's there there they understand that doctrine but we automatically when they do this, they recognize that we go to the consequence not the probability we think about you know, what's that? what could how could this play out in the worst case scenario and that's nuclear war mutually assured destruction, but the probability of something like this happening or is basically negligible. i mean again, the russians are not suicidal vladimir putin indicates his desire to save his own life pretty well when he sits a football field away from his closest advisors because he doesn't want to get you know, he doesn't want to catch a cold so, you know, the bottle line is we just need a be thought we we can't dismiss it.
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of course. it's it's something that we need to plan for. we need to be alert to but we need to also understand that we have plenty of leeway between launching a first strike, which is one of the major ways that a nuclear war starts is that it's in response to a first strike from the us which is not going to happen. or a existential threat to russia or the regime that's in their doctrine. also, the russians have a national security strategy their nuclear doctrine says in in case of existential threat that is not providing, you know, mig-29s to the ukrainians that is not providing some some weapons and some additional material. there is a huge gap between there and what triggers rushes desire to engage with nato, especially as a hard time as they're having i know we're jumping ahead. but especially it's hard to time as we're having as they're having a fighting the ukrainians right now. they have no interest in tangling with nato even more powerful capable. alliance you jumped ahead. so let's go ahead and and stay
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on that road for her for a couple of minutes. you also said baltic states's members of nato is also a vulnerability for nato since you brought up nato and russia really not wanting to fight nato. how are baltic state members of vulnerability? i don't recall that part, but i don't in chapter 6, i'd have to flip. yeah find it. i think i think it's a vulnerability in that the russians there is a so we have military. we do kind of war plans and contingencies and and that we plan for the russians attacking through the baltics to get to to secure there's a you have this xclave called kaliningrad. so it's it's not connected contiguous to russia and in order to kind of secure it there's a there's a theory that they might attack in secure a land bridge like they're trying to do right now in ukraine actually, so i think from that
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standpoint, it's it's i'll it's a it's not clearly a vulnerability, but it's something that we need to be concerned about that the russians would exercise that scenario and i think you know for me nato article 5 is is a is probably about the best shield as you could have the russians are not going to attempt to provoke a confrontation with nato. but if they do that's when the places that they might want to do that because those baltic states were once members of the soviet union there were three of the republics that can constituted the 15 republics of the soviet union. so it's it's just something it's a it's maybe less a vulnerability more of a contingency that we just need to account for and i guess on that. i mean there's the bigger point is that right now nato article 5 is something that is, you know again preventing. putin from casting his eyes further west but if he's
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successful in ukraine, then he pushes up right against the nato boundaries and i think at that point the calculations change a little bit does he start to try to nibble away a little portions of nato is a possibility. there are countries very powerful countries frankly in the big scheme of things like finland sweden. they're not, you know in terms of gdp and military might they're not small and they're not pushovers, but they're not part of nato. does he push in that direction? so these are the kinds of considerations. that's why you know this holding. blocking putin in ukraine is so critical because it's it's central to the stability of the region at minimum countries. that would be vulnerable are moldova small country. that's between ukraine and romania, georgia where vladimir putin's had a number of frustrations. so and then belarus which is almost now in pocket, so i think
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this is we should not think that this is the end of the road this would just be the beginning. and it really significantly undermine europe and potentially set the conditions for other authoritarian states to use their military might to achieve their ends so we could see a taiwanis scenario unfolding maybe or iran being more belligerent in the persian gulf. or north korea striking out at south korea. that's why this is we this is not a local conflict. this is this is the largest country in the world. russia attacking the largest country in europe and just the land masses involved kind of indicate that accounting for a large portion of the terrestrial map indicate how big this is let's go ahead and back up now to july 2019 the phone call that brought your name into our collective consciousness. you were as part of your job listening in on the phone call between president trump and
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president zelinski of ukraine we all know you are surprised by what you heard. did at any point you think to yourself? we need to rescue the policy. i shouldn't report this we might be able to using the president's personality steer back to the original policy, which was aid for ukraine and things like that. yeah, it's it's frankly worse than that. i orchestrated that phone column that was part of my job. so it wasn't the first phone call either so as the director for for any portfolio there you're responsible for everything. you're responsible for coordinating the entire interagency for some of the diplomatic engagement with the counterparts and it under all normal circumstances. this was a good idea. this was a brand new president that the president president
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trump formed president. trump had called the day that he'd one is his election on april 21st, and that conversation went pretty well that was before, you know other folks whispered into the presence here that ukraine might be a way to get dirt on joe biden. so that one well went well, of course in the intervening months between april and july a whole bunch of different things unfolded but the ukrainians. wanted this phone call. president zelinsky is a car was a charismatic leader that had the potential to maybe you know even keep the keep the present president trump like he could have he could flatter him and keep him kind of onsize or something of that nature and a very simply i you know without i didn't really want to make some decisions about whether to do this phone call or not based on. worst case scenario outcomes in the fact that there could be this this corruption scheme. i did it based on the i
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organized it based on the basis that this was an opportunity to normalize the relationship because at that time we were ready had the white house freezing security assistance to ukraine, and this was an opportunity to get not to help president trump realize the scheme but to get presence linsky to kind of convince him to release the aid and to get this meeting that so you had one of two outcomes you had kind of a worst case scenario, which is what hand ended up happening and you had a you had an alternative which is what i was trying to advance normalizing that relationship even after the call my actions were mainly geared towards getting the president to change his mind. there was no doing an enron around the administration talking to press or anything like that. i went to senior officials in in the white house because these are folks that had direct access to the president on a regular basis and in counseling the president that what he was doing is criminal wrong and that, you
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know, there were already people that were flagging it that were making, you know their concerns known that was an opportunity to actually get him to reverse course. so that was the whole basis of reporting that phone call to get them to it staying silent wouldn't have made it any difference you already had executed is a corrupt scheme. the only option was to report it and try to get them to reverse course convincing them that what he's doing is actually going to be perilous to him and there's that famous line. it's probably in your notes where i walk into my twin brothers office as soon as the the call is done even before i report it. he's the first door in that in that shop. so and his office was read across from mine and i closed the door and i make sure i catches attention so he knows i'm serious and we're not just joking around and i tell him you just what i'm about to tell you ever becomes public. the president would be will be impeached. it was it was not kind of you know, look appearing into the future. i didn't think that it would
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become public but it just was an assessment of the gravity of the moment that this is what was at stake. it was the president attempting to steal an election for the at that point for the first time. and you hadn't planned on it going public you thought after you know a lifetime career in the military that it would go up the chain and would be handled to lack of a better term internally. that's exactly right and frankly, you know, this is not the military chain in the white house. i was serving in a position. that was basically the equivalent of a three-star. so there's not really it was i spoke to the one next level up that was going to have direct access to president. so i didn't have to. it's one of the things about working in the white house. it's a pretty awesome experience. really important to have good people there to help shepherd our nation's interests and and national security and i things
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happen things could happen really quick. you could make some decisions that could change the course of history in no time. so i was operating on the under the basis of trying to get things back on track. were you surprised once it? became public by the reaction to you. i know you had to get more security for your your home for your wife and daughter it cost you your your military career where you were you and you got all kinds of nasty letters and yeah, social media. were you surprised by any of that? i mean i was surprised in that i didn't expect i guess. these things to unfold i had some more there were certain things that you could kind of appear into the future and recognize one of those was the fact i'd probably was going to my tenure at the white house wasn't going to be a very long although frankly. i in a certain ways. i was a little bit surprised. i stayed as long as i did.
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i committed to myself even though i may have burned some bridges with the political class and i was perceived as disloyal to the politicals that thought that that was that that's where my obligations lay instead of my obligations to the constitution, but i stayed in position as long as i could to kind of help. this very important region continue to you know. sustained a normal policy with record, and i didn't necessarily perceive that my military career was over. i thought that was some dangerous and my wife. has appointed points out to me constantly that she had you know, she knew that it was i was toast pretty much right away. but i was stubborn i didn't listen to her wives are good that way for knowing these things. yeah, i know. i i literally waited to live very very last day before i dropped my retirement like i i the very last day otherwise i would i would have been for sustained for another two three years, but no, that was that was
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very actually that was probably the most surprising thing is that you know, why while i was out in the white house? i was still an army officer. and i didn't think i would be out. without any support or without any kind of protection where i couldn't really defend myself because i'd just be bringing additional additional attention to my situation. so i couldn't say anything on my own behalf. and i wouldn't i that i also wouldn't enjoy the support or wouldn't couldn't expect that the loyalty that i showed the military to be reciprocated. so that was that was frustrating and difficult. but i don't know so i try not to have hard feelings about it because in part i understand that there's a need to protect the institution. this was the commander in chief. that was that was corrupt actor and the military did not not
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want to run a foul of the commander chief. so i understand i understood some of those about the same time. it's a values based in institution. we're supposed to act principles and i would have thought that there would be at least somebody saying on my behalf. well. you don't just end up in the white house. this is not. you know something something supportive but didn't get really get into that. and it continued after your testimony the you're on you were hoping to be on the list for promotion to kernel and they started offering you. we'll say hidden assignments. they were going to let you oversee a museum, i believe and some things like that. it was not even open though. so, you know that was that was another bit of surprise. i thought again i i left on
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february 7th. just a couple days before i i determined that i've done as much as i could. i basically finished up the planning that i needed to to kind of hand off to to the next next guy. we ended up being another army officer actually frankly with a very unusual but because everybody there's just not that many military officers that serve in those capacities. it's usually state department or intel folks. so i thought i'd finished everything i needed to i told him i was prepared to leave at the end of february, but they wanted to make an example out of me. so they made it public and then, you know marched me in my twin brother out at the same time. but in the preceding weeks and months frankly. i had kind of pulsed military leadership at very senior levels. and i knew i was going to have some some damage control to do because i heard things like except for my supportive officer. so very supportive officer that said it's time for you to look elsewhere. just you're not gonna be able to continue on in the military and i appreciated the frank response
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and then other folks that were less courageous and saying stuff like you know by doing the right thing by reporting corruption, i'd flown too close to the sun and i'd burned some bridges. i need to rehabilitate assignment. so i knew i was going to have some things to manage. but the clearest indications were as soon as i left, i was supposed to go to a good assignment kind of the military the national defense university so i could still kind of do the same kind of work just for an academic perch and that was canceled. and the first option was you could be a docent at a at a museum and i basically said no, i'm not gonna do that and then we found something slightly better than that, but not much and then at the same time in this in this this conversation, i was told and usually this doesn't happen. i mean the senior leadership doesn't isn't supposed to share this information, but the board to assess whether i'd be promoted kernel just met weeks before and this this two-star
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tells me that i've been selected. so i there was no doubt at that point. was selected for colonel. by normal processes it would just work its way through the system. large bureaucracy would play out over the course of a couple more months and then it would be announced and go go to senate for confirmation. and in this conversation, i was told well you made you made the list. congratulations. now we need to figure out what to do with it. do we put you on that list, do we hold your name back as this? you go forward on a separate list or something of that nature and the this promotionless is supposed to come out in april. it didn't come out until july and part of that reason. was that the white house was interfering with it. and so i mean that all my my plans are supposed to go to this this prestigious. institution army war college it's it's even more challenging to get selected firmary war college.
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so if about a third or a little more get selected for promotion to kernel only about seven and a half percent get selected for this army war college, so i i had i should have had a good career in front of me, but the white house didn't want to allow me to move forward. they wanted to send a they wanted to chill any other. you know whistleblowers or any other folks coming forward to challenge them on on their misdeeds, so they they try make an example at me. and two days after you put in your retirement started the paperwork the list came out. that's right. so i don't know. there's probably several folks in here in the military. i was out of the military in days, so i submit my retirement on it was i think the eighth of february i had my retirement orders on the 10th of february. and that is that is a six-month or more process, but i hadn't, you know, it's pretty pretty amazing how you could cut
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through the bureaucracy and and then that afternoon they actually prepositioned the promotion list so they wouldn't have to follow through it was easy to, you know, not burn any bridges but this is also when the reasons that mark esper the secretary of defense was fired was on the hit list of why mark esper was needed to go is the fact that he you know, he let my name go on this list, even though i wasn't gonna get promoted so let's before we get to audience questions. let's jump forward back to the current situation since you are an expert on russia and ukraine you had written in the book that russia's relationship to ukraine makes the latter a lynchpin to the region and any crisis in ukraine also risks a crisis in europe. i don't want to ask you to look in your crystal ball, but i'm going to ask you to look in your crystal ball. how how in the long-term or even in the short term does this end up and is europe changed? so i think the geopolitical
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landscape is changed. let's say i don't think everybody quite realizes that i know people in the administration still have some wishful thinking that we'll be able to return to you know businesses as usual that is definitely some wishful thinking as long as putin's in power were locked into a cold war and the potential for a hot wars is not remote. so that's the world we live in the reason that i guess besides my military. experience serving in embassies in ukraine and russia serving in the pentagon and basically designing these plans for meeting the challenge of russia and you know being the chairman of the joint chiefs at times translator advisor for his meetings with counterparts. we we had our own meetings with a russian counterparts in helsinki just a before the infamous. trump putin meeting there i also am working on my doctorate at
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johns hopkins. it's it's on really this topic. it's on how we got to this confrontation. it's us foreign policy towards russia and ukraine since 1991. so i've looked at this and i think you know to me he was clear that we were headed towards a confrontation for a long time because putin is is one to double down. he's one to look for opportunities, and we didn't we didn't really we gave ground when we shouldn't have and that's not just under trump. that was the same thing frankly under president obama and george w bush there. we just didn't hold the line on our principles. we looked the other way on the hopes that we would have a normal relationship with russia on the fears that things could devolve towards a confrontation and and putin was masterful praying on this the under trump though. we we went from this kind of you know, creep to a leap. we leaped forward towards this confrontation. and that's really what explains the why of why we're here with
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russia waging war on ukraine. it's the perception that the us was distracted or disinterested based on the hyperpolarization internally the damage done by president former president trump, you know. showing discord between us and our nato alliance. the fact that just in the days and weeks before you had president trump in large swaths, so the republican party cheerleading for for putin. those all explain the why why it occurred now why i didn't occur, you know? why may have occurred at some point the future, but the to me is you know, the the buildup of forces started weeks after january 6th. that timing is pretty telling. and i think at this point the question is whether this guidance on and that ukraine a country of 45 million people with many million that are fleeing as refugees just grinds down the russian army and it is doing that to the ground forces
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pretty effectively, but the russians russia's a country of 140 million and although a lot of their you know, best equipment is getting destroyed on the ground. they have deposed with thousands and thousands of pieces more of equipment. so does this grind down? there's russia continue to punish ukraine with ariel bombardments and cruise missile strikes for for the for the foreseeable future with a massive human toll with that that elicits a demand from the western population to do something do more and that elicits from vladimir putin a response to do do more to block the us. that's that's how the situation devolves or poland or the baltics that feel this situation very acutely. don't think that nato is doing enough and choose to go go it alone. they're sovereign independent states. they can do that. they could choose to push their i mean in the worst case scenario they could use to push
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their troops across but certainly unlimited and military material and that's how there's a fracture in the alliance and then you know, even if they act bilaterally the obligation of nato to defend a country under any but any member state under threat is still there. so if russia chooses to lash out at the baltics or poland we still get drawn in that way. or it could be the use of chemical agents or could be the attack on a nuclear facility in ukraine in the course of combat operations that start to affect the rest of your the longer this goes the more dangerous it gets it's incrementalism that potentially puts us puts us closer to the precipice. and that's why one of the things i've been very very vocal about is that this is the time to do more. this is the time to reformat putin's thinking right now. he's he's still in that in that mindset of well, i thought i could do this. i was operating on these under these assumptions. the military said that they this is a completely doable, but i'm not able to do it.
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and i'm not able to do it because i just don't have the air power or the ground combat power anymore. that's where we could actually bring this to a bring this to an end more closely more. in a shorter duration and then ultimately forces into a diplomatic negotiation because that's where this is how this is going to end. it's gonna be a diplomatic negotiation. it's not going to be the capitulation of ukraine. it's not going to be it probably is not going to be a unilateral withdrawal by russia. although frankly putin can do that. you can just recall the cities and ukraine and then say we do notified. we we demilitarized time to go home. thanks. we've got about 15 minutes left in this so if you have questions, please come down to the microphone. i won't even ask another question you jumped right up. so i'm just gonna go right to you our first question. well it just kind of continues with what you were saying, but i
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mean you were saying walking putin is is so critical and along with that that the likelihood of a nuclear war is and it's important. resolve this quickly. what do you think like the reluctance other than the reluctance of getting drawn? into just a war in general and like risk in american soldiers is there is is the reluctance to get involved in more military fashion. is it more than that or do you think it's just risk in american life? so i think i want to be clear. i don't think a nuclear war is inevitable. i think a nuclear war is exact. sorry. i said negligible. oh negligible cancer. thanks. yeah, but just i'll be emphasize that even though you said it right it is not i think the fact is that there are the longer this goes on and the more we're subject ourselves to incrementalism from both sides kind of ratcheting up the
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pressure. that's when that's when things can evolve but i think again the doctrine of nuclear mutually sure destruction is ironclad. it has to be something really weighty. i mean it has to be existential threat to to russia or the us that drives that um in terms of the i think that there are you know political scientists and kind of analysts think about things like escalatory ladders and once you start escalating, you know that somehow you're you're gonna get to the top of that ladder in the top of that ladder is nuclear war. so i think it's that the consideration is that you don't even want to hop on that escalatory ladder, but in fact, i think we have to also recognize that our options are becoming more limited as time where wears on before this war started. we had a lot more options frankly. we could have all those forced
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posture changes all those troops that are going in could have been there before the war started as a deterrent. saying we are serious. we're going to defend our interests all those all these weapons that are flowing into ukraine now. could have been flowing in before. without much risk, we could have even probably nato not the us i could as an analyst. i wouldn't necessarily prescribe us going into ukraine, but putting in nato forces may not have been as provocative to russia. but it also would have shown. you send a message that we're serious about our support to ukraine those options don't really exist as much anymore because again, they're escalatory so as time wears on, you know, the options that we thought were. irrational or unreasonable become rational and reasonable, you know the things that we're doing now, we hadn't even considered doing two weeks ago. so i think you know making these firm prescriptions about no troops or no, no fly zones. it doesn't make a lot of sense from a logical standpoint.
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we i'm not sure if we could hold to that and i think our actions speak louder than the words the fact that we're not putting troops in the ground doesn't necessarily say need we don't need a support that by saying we're not putting troops on the gun. they know we're not putting troops on the ground. so i think it's mainly this concern about escalatory ladders and escalations and then, you know, the president's legitimate concerns legitimate desires to not put troops on the ground to to engage in in a kind of endless war, but i think that's you know, so i served in the white house, so it's not it's kind of demystified for me. i don't have this these perceptions of oh like those guys know so much more or that yes, they're getting a lot of intelligence them that scene right now, but i understand how these processes work. i would say that they're in in this case. they're they're kind of missing the big picture. there's a lot more at stake here than just a war between russia and ukraine. it has to do with european security it has to do with kind
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of the broader 21st century struggle for a democracy and authoritarianism and recently it looks like the authoritarian was authoritarianism was making gains, but if if ukraine doesn't lose if ukraine ends this war it has a massive chilling effect, not just on russia and russia's use of military, but also makes ukrainian makes china second guess whether it wants to engage in using military force to achieve its objectives. if russia the second most powerful military in the world is having this hard time. how does that affect assumptions about chinese power and chinese military might or iran for that matter or any number of different places. so i think that's the where we tend to focus in too close on what's happening today and you know next 24 hours instead of looking deeper in what these things mean. it's the national security council is not large. there's only so much time. there's only so much bandwidth and they're completely bogged down i think in the next 24
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hours in the next several days not looking deep. thank you. thank you. first i wanted to just say thank you. i feel like i represent all of america saying that. we admire you we feel i feel like having been in in the process of retirement that i was able to see you and and all the experts during the impeachment and i thought oh my gosh, it's so obvious. there's so much evidence. of course, he's going to be impeached in of course, etc. etc. so i feel like probably many of you feel like we know you and we respect you and we're so honored to have you here my question is thank you, and i'm from california. my husband's from tucson. thank you for being here today. my question is i guess being a retired educator and feeling like we, you know america works on principles. what is what kind of influence do you have now?
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i mean, i feel like can't we just dial back we have experts here and to be able to ask you and the other experts. what kind of influence do you have now today i mean going forward is sure. so first i have to tell you that people tend to kind of focus in on the negative and you know the trolling or the public attacks. i look past all that stuff. actually, i feel you know, i look towards the support and appreciation and i very much appreciate the fact that you know, i guess i'm thought of fondly by part parts of the country and that's the part that you know matters to me. so i appreciate that in terms of influence. i guess, you know i from my perspective maybe my actions in the past several weeks or months. i've been writing extensively about this and i know that plenty of my my ideas kind of at least get discussed. if not can not, i adopted.
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so i think i think that this administration. tends to have some of the same issues that other administrations have. in that it becomes pretty insulated, especially under difficult situations and kind of the close close in trusted loyal folks that have been part of the president's inner circle have the kind of the most powerful voices. so there is not a lot of there's not a lot of kind of dissent. there's not a lot of people saying mr. president. i think that's a bad assumption. that's that's not what's likely to unfold. i don't think there's a lot of that going on. certainly. it's not on the scale of vladimir putin who doesn't get anybody telling him anything. he doesn't want to hear but you do have those types of things start to unfold especially when you're when you pick your your team based on competence but also heavily on loyalty people
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that you you can trust instead of, you know people that might be best suited for the job, but i think this administration has done a pretty good job of trying to at least pull. experts from outside the government. i mean there have been i've had many conversations with with folks in government about different things trying to at least provide an alternative voice and an alternative vision. amongst other people that are kind of sending the same message, but it's at odds to what the this administration might be thinking about. i don't know. i'm not sure if there's anything more i could say. thanks. thank you for having the courage to do the right thing. we've got about five minutes left. so do there's five questions. do you do you have any insight into why the why former
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president trump's coup attempt failed. he's incompetent. i'm he's so just on just to just a couple words after that. i that guy did not know anymore about. government or about being present on his last day than he did on his first day. he just didn't he was he was he was his own worst enemy. he was very effective at manipulating people and also kind of like vladimir putin praying on hopes hopes of advancement and fears of you know being attacked, but he was not competent. my my concern is frankly, you know somebody that's as nefarious but just more competent. given where we are right now with everything it's happened. is there one major thing or several things that you would like to see happen to resolve the situation with queen? what's going on in ukraine?
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thank you. so i think there's more to do with regards to sanctions. we've done quite a bit actually at times. we've been following the europeans example. it's been a long source of frustration that the europeans were not doing enough frankly for ukraine there. they're in their their leaning very heavy heavily forward. and we followed their lead in certain areas. they're very reluctant act on energy trade for instance. i think there are ways to do that. so i like to see more on sanctions, but most importantly this is going to get decided on the ground on the battlefields in in ukraine and what i think we need to do there is just give the ukrainians everything that they need to fight this war. we tend to have this still kind of like peace time mindset of well, do they have all of the training that they need? no, they don't but they might know how to press the right series of buttons to get some sort of effect out of that weapon system. and we should be less parochial and paternalistic about the
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things we provide if they ask for it. we give it to them. that's why i wrote an article on this idea of lend-lease. we just depot everything that could possibly want and it's right there on the spot to help them fight this and it's them fighting it. they're the ones that are going to win or lose this war. they're going to win it, but they're the ones that are gonna do it and all we're doing is is providing some additional material. that's all. in line with your father's mantra of continuously reinventing yourself. when will you be initiating your political career? i you know, this is a tough question for me. i can't look into the future and say that i'll never do it. but if i do ever do do something with this, it will be out of a sense of need or duty. as opposed to desire for kind of that. oh if it's because i would think that there's something some good to do and but right now my biggest hurdle is that my wife doesn't want to do that. whether you need it or not, we
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need it. thank you. we have about two minutes. so yeah. yes as a cold war up or veteran and retiree. i need some some help to answer this question. the the russian aggression why don't we call it what it is communist aggression? am i missing something? it's well, it's i wouldn't a communism is kind of an ideology in a kind of a market theory. i wouldn't say it's communist. say it's fascist. it is a fascist ideology that president putin's advocating and i think there are too many. you're right. there are too many political niceties. we we don't we need to call it a war. we need to call it fascism. we need to call putin of war criminal, but that's just not the way politics play. thank you. and unfortunately, that's the end of our time. please go out and get here right
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continues beginning now. it's an author discussion on the opioid epidemic. opioid epidemic your calls and we're talking with author evan hughes. who is the author of this book the hard sell crime and punishment at an opioid startup mr. hughes when it comes to opioids and the epidemic so much of the press has gone to purdue pharma and the sackler family white. why is that? yeah, so so purdue pharma really played a role in starting the epidemic with oxycontin the story that i'm telling you in this book is about a scrappy startup that comes along later called instance therapeutics and it it have lives in the world that purdue made it takes the playbook and extends it even farther in the aggressive marketing of these painkillers, and it's also what separates it
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from purdue is this is a story of true accountability where for the first time these are the first top executives at pharmaceutical company to be criminally charged in connection with the opioid epidemics. it was really groundbreaking case. and and it was a new model for how these things could be taken on. so what was -- and what was their product or is their product subsis sure. so instance was a startup based in arizona here in arizona. it launched its first and really only branded product in 2012 called substance. this is extremely potent pain killer it was designed for cancer patients in dire straits. the as you might experience an end-of-life drug a fentanyl is the drug and a lot of people know fentanyl as an illicit street drug. that's led to tons of overdose death.
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so it was meant to be confined to a very narrow patient profile, but that's not what happened. the company saw that where the market was was much bigger that they could market to these really dubious pain doctors who were very exercised that freehand with how they were prescribing opioids and it was pushed out to a much wider market through their illegal promotional schemes. so john kapoor, who is he john or was the founder of the company? he was a visionary born in india modest circumstances came to the us in many ways like a great american story an entrepreneur made his fortune in pharmaceuticals. before instance came along and then he's sort of later in his career when he starts this company and you know the origin story that he often told about this company was that he he saw
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his wife suffering from cancer terminal cancer, and she was in terrible pain, and he wanted to develop a product to treat that pain and substance was that product and he was a true believer in the drug, and i think he honestly did believe in it and wanted it and and wanted it to address. patients in that kind of pain but as a result of what the company did it was really going to people who had no need for such a powerful drug. so thus the heart cell heart cell. that's right. i mean the part of the effect i talked about how this this case went to trial. is it really like opened up a window onto how these drugs are sold in doctor's offices across the country. really see how the sausage gets made in this industry because you know what normally happens as we talked about is that they these these cases like this they end in a settlement or a dollar figure and that has the effect of also like suppressing the
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full truth of what happened with instance everything everything came open and there was some real colorful characters at this company. they recruited exotic dancers that work at the company to woo doctors. so you really see. yes the hard sell in action. well -- though was the top ipo in 2013, wasn't it? that's right. it was based on this drug substance. that's right. so this is like it's interesting because it's a corporate scandal where it's not like the theranos elizabeth home story where the product was a sham and didn't work. this is a product that work and this is a business idea that works. they were having tremendous success top ipo 2013. they rated on wall street, and you know until it emerged and quite slowly. you know how it was they were achieving their incredible success. we are talking with author evan
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hughes about his new book the hard sell. it's about the opioid epidemic specifically a story about insis and subsis. we want to take your calls and hear your voices as well. 202 is the area code 748-8200 for those in the east and central time zones, two zero two 7 4 8 8 2 0 1 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones, and if you want to send a text message with a question, you can do it to this number two zero two seven four eight eight nine zero three if you do send a text message, please include your first name and your city if you would substance is an opioid correct, but it's also a it's a turf drug t i r f which is an acronym for what and what kind of drugs are those right? so that's an acronym for transmucosal immediate release fentanyl so that gets across a little bit. how potent this drug was that it.
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small class of particularly potent opioids that are meant to be taken on top of a longer acting drugs such as an oxycontin or oxycodone you're supposed to take it for breakthrough pain severe pain that breaks through the protection of these other painkillers and it acts extremely fast on the body so you can see why would both have medical value value and be liable to be abused or to create dependency was there a need for this drug, you know, i think there was i think i think this is legitimately was a good product and actually it is still on the market through another company and for a very specific use it would be a very powerful product for pain relief for people really in a dire condition who needed it and people where you know addiction really wasn't the foremost concern if people are terminally
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did the company insist at the time know about how addictive this product was? oh absolutely. did they know that it was being prescribed off-brand? yes, they absolutely did the majority of the market was not cancer patients. it was and that actually, you know points to the fact that it wasn't just inces the market when they came along in this little niche of drugs had already escaped what its intended uses were and gone out into the market so they found the top doctors and they went right after them and those doctors had very few cancer patients. they were treating all kinds of pain and often the pain was moderated. it was back pain. it was chronic. it was totally inappropriate to be prescribing something this potent for that kind of condition. is there a need for these types of drugs though? and has the opioid endemic affected the ability to get pain medication if you need it.
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yes, that's true and actually through reporting this book, you know, i gained a lot of sympathy for pain patients. they i think that in the popular imagination. there's a little bit of demonization of the pain patients. there's this term pill seeker that kind of comes with some scoring to it. i think but you know this idea that there's like addicts we're going to these pill mills really what happens is a lot of people legitimately in pain go to a doctor that they trust they are prescribed an opioid and it leads them slowly into a chemical dependency and that's just like the body's natural response and it leads to them needing a higher dose and if they're taking it over a long time horizon, it adds up and risk that up and eventually, it's so much more risky than what what it needs to be. so it has created a difficulty that that like you have this problem of like because of the
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bad actors in the in the space. you have some pain patients have a harder time getting treated. what was the role of the fda in approving this drug and other turf tirf drugs? well, so the fda what they do is they're the regulatory agency that is primarily responsible for judging the product as it's being developed and and then assessing whether it's safe and effective in order to approve it for the market they did that but the way they looked at the drug was is it safe for the use that it's intended for and that's breakthrough cancer pain so the clinical trials here where people were many of them dying of cancer and they decided you know, it's safe enough for that use and that had a certain logic to it. what they don't do is they don't
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they don't police the practice of medicine. so once that drug is out there in the market, that's something that drug companies really take advantage of they get an indication approve. that's that's a word for the condition that the drug is designed to treat but then they kind of use that as a crowbar as one of the sales people put it to me to cry open like a wider market that they know that you know doctors can prescribe off label and that will give them a wider penetration and more money making opportunity. so what were the what was the role of doctors when it came to prescribing substance and getting it out into a wider market? yeah. so so that was i mean the doctors were very much co-conspirators and the scheme and you can see that in the book which really takes you inside these pain clinics and i interviewed a lot of patients and interviewed a couple of doctors. they were really co-conspirators in this because what insisted is they were able to find the
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people who are susceptible to their tactics, you know, all drug companies are trying to like get the attention of doctors. they they pushed sales reps on them who visit their offices who use their wives and powers of persuasion. and so you use flirtation you use money making opportunities and insist push that so much farther that essentially it amounted to bribery. and in what way so they they set up it wasn't a literal drive of like cash under the table what they did was they set up a so-called speaker program, which is a common thing in the industry, but it was a sham so they would enlist these doctors who they really were their top targets who they wanted to prescribe the drug and they would say hey well, hey you, you know $3,000 per talk once a week to go to a restaurant. give it talk to other doctors about the benefits of substance, but the talks were ashamed that they're often. there was no presentation. they just were to have dinner with the sales rep from instances that get paid $3,000
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and it was very explicit. it was a quid pro coil here. you know, we pay you you write more of the drug you prescribe more of the drug and you don't we're gonna take you off the speaker program. we're gonna stop making the money. here's a drug company able to track how many prescriptions one doctor writes for their product. yes, and i think this is eye-opening for a lot of people for a lot of patients that every time you get a prescription the drug companies gonna know about it and they're gonna be able to tie it to that individual doctor their companies that collect data at the pharmacy level and give it to the sell it to the drug companies and that way they know where to target their marketing efforts and they're you know that they flood the zone so to speak and send all their reps to those doctors offices. where they see the promise so to speak and when you say send their reps there, how often does a rep a drug rep visit a doctor's office. well, they come again and again and it depends how big their
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territory is, you know, and how large the company is, but you know the -- philosophy was really like you find instead of going to ten doctors offices a day find your one guy find your one woman and go to that office and like move in essentially live there and become, you know, almost the assistant of that doctor. oh, would you like i'll take you out to dinner, you know be everything find some hot button they would call it that you could fulfill some need in that doctor's light. so it's really like this powerful insinuation into their lives and i think as patience we we're really not aware of some of this intense tug of war that's going on between the drug companies for the loyalty of the doctors to products which really often has very little to do with patient care. well evan hughes when you started writing the hard sell were you do you have a medical
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journalist background at all? no, no. in fact, i i have covered criminal justice a lot in the past. and so that was kind of the angle that i came in on. is that that the some of the executives of the company had been arrested when i got interested in this and i thought that's unusual drug company. they're actually put in handcuffs by the fbi at six in the morning and their house and you know, these are very powerful and wealthy people and so so i was looking at as a case that i could track and then you know, of course in the process of writing a book like this. you've got to like get a quick education in the way farmer works and the way medicine works and you know, that's that's the job and did you find yourself going down a lot of rabbit holes we find. thing and that would lead to three other things sure absolutely and you know, that's a big a big part of the challenge of writing. the book was there's a ton of
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material that i didn't include, you know, i was pretty ruthless like this is a very tightly focused book that that is chronological. it's narrative. it's inside the eyes of the bad guys. so to speak in the hallways and the decisions that they were making and so, you know, i attended an entire trial of a doctor and new york that never gets mentioned in the book because i wanted to keep it moving and to keep sort of the rear's eye on the narrative. well, let's hear from carol who's calling in from greensburg, pennsylvania, carol, you're on with author evan hughes and we're talking about the opioid epidemic. thank you. i have a friend of a pastor who's very involved with the old scope problem. but my question is in a retirement home. and they said that there's i'm sorry. are you talking to me? carol we're listening to you you
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go ahead carol. you just go ahead and finish your statement. we're listening don't look at your tv or turn down the volume. i'm in a retirement home where there's far more suppose. we have taken over the meds for skilled nursing and personal care and there's a penalty if you don't go with them and people are a little upset because they want to stay with their same pharmacy, but i don't know whether it's the same far more because another pastor that i visited i said that far more is out of business, so i just need to know whether there's more than one far more and i didn't catch the a word that you use prior to far more and if anything about right so so maybe we can draw a little larger question out of that which is you talked a little bit about the relationships between doctors and patients or doctors and sales companies what she's
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referring to. is this another relationship type issue without knowing anything about it. yeah, it sounds that way that sometimes sometimes the facility will have a certain contract with the with the pharmacist pharmacy and they want to direct patients that way and yes, these are business relationships and pharmacies by the way are you know carry some culpability in the opioid epidemic as well? because they have a responsibility under the law to ensure that these prescriptions are written for legitimate medical purposes and you can imagine in a small town the pharmacist gets to the doctors there's not that many doctors and sees those names on the prescriptions and again and again with you know countless prescriptions for oxycodone. they should be reporting that to the dea and often they don't so back to the the drug substance.
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it's like an oxycontin. it i mean it's comparable or competitor to that. yes, it's it's a shorter acting opioid. but yes, it's a very potential fish. yeah faster acting opioid. but yes, like like oxycontin. it's an opioid. it's actually more potent by far than oxen julianne is in wallingford, connecticut. julienne, you're on with author evan hughes. well, thank you very much. my name is julian dr. i'm really really captivated by your by your subject matter. i want to make an observation. i am currently. about 70 years old when i was in my late twenties, there was a drug craze called the quaalude and it was considered to be a very clean middle class high class not a ghetto kind of a
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drug. so it it made something really horrible acceptable. now, i find that i kept track of one of the ladies that i knew back then that was really pretty much on a quaalude diet and i've seen her in the last i would say almost 50 years that she went from playludes to antidepressants. and when the oxycontin came around she thought she was in heaven. so is there a in your opinion? is there like a when they come up with these uses for these drugs? for example, if you look at just just as an example at botox when botox first came around it was for one thing and now they want to prescribe it for headaches and stuff like that and it in other words they have these drugs that the they want to find a way to market to the public.
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can you straighten me out on that or give me your opinion on these on the way that julian? thank you very much. let's hear from evan hughes. all right now, i think that's absolutely right that that a lot of what drug companies do is develop a product that they see it's a certain niche in the marketplace, but they always have in mind the idea that if we get this on the market as long as we get it approved for one thing. then we can apply for another use of the drug with the fda or we can simply convince doctors to prescrib. for those other uses it is actually illegal to promote drugs so called off label for these off-label uses but doctors are permitted to prescribe off label on their own judgment, so that kind of creates an opening that the dot that the drug companies can say nudge nudge wink wink. i hear it works for this other
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thing and they create a brand around the product the way you're talking about. evan hughes is subsist a granddaughter or grand drug of quaaludes. is there a relationship? that would be a stretch because i think that quaaludes, you know, i don't know a lot about cleavage, but do you know if they're still yes prescribed. yeah, but but you know substance is is really like the line that it falls under is is painkillers and opioids and you know, it goes back to fentan. synthesized and i think 1960 mike from hewitt, texas tech's in a question. do you know how many overdose deaths caused by prescriptions versus by street drugs? yeah. that's an interesting story is that i think many more deaths
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are have been caused by prescription opioids than people are aware of if you talk about the opioid crisis. i think the mental image that a lot of people have is the heroin being shot up or the the burning of the spoon and like a lot of death, especially in the 2000s and the 2010s were caused by oxycontin by pills that were at one point prescribed by a doctor in more recent years the illicit drugs have overtaken prescription drugs and partly that's a function. of you know a patient it starts on prescription drugs, then the tap is shut off so to speak but they need to fill that same need and they turn to the black market. mike is in detroit. you're on with author evan hughes. go ahead mike. oh, yeah, yeah.
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like that can be controlled but i live here in detroit and i'm not kidding you when i go out every day. i see a lot of people in this neighborhood addicted to heroin and addicted to fentanyl and actually the overdoses i've seen that have died and there's been a few over the past few months here. well from fentanyl now i lived in arizona for years and it is an absolute black hole when it comes to reporting although a hundred mexican journalists have been murdered. it's a black hole as far as you know, what's going on there now they refuse to secure the bord. of our nation and my neighborhood is flooded with heroin and with fentanyl and i see it every day, you know, and i think it's largely. let's get a response mike. thank you. thank you very much.
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evan hughes right as the caller points out fentanyl in particular, you know heroin was the kind of earlier way and now fentanyl has become a particularly prolific killer in the opioid epidemic. it's involved in something like 2/3 of overdose deaths and it is often traffic from china or mexico. it's so potent that it can be in a small package and and it's a real problem on the streets of american cities. well, let's take very quickly back a step who invented fentanyl was it a drug company and whose manufacturing it today? yeah. well, there's a scientist a really brilliant scientist who first synthesized it in a lab. so unlike some opioids are derived from the poppy flower originally, but but fentanyl is
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a synthetic opioid meaning it can be made in a lab, which is part of the problem in terms of cracking down on it, but a brilliant scientist the idea was for pain control and it was first used in hospital settings, and actually if you, you know women who've given birth in the hospital and have an epidural usually this fentanyl is part of the mix of what's being provided and it was only in more recent decades that it's become available as they take home prescription drug, and there are people who will say, you know, maybe that was in the state to begin with that, you know should a drug this potent given in a box to a patient to go home with you know, what's gonna happen. is it gonna be old, you know it takes a real trust between the doctor and patient for that to happen. and evan hughes reports that fentanyl is a hundred times more powerful than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. sandy in miami, please go ahead. yes, i a one four spinal cord
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surgeries at four sandy you need to turn down your tv and just go ahead and make your statement. okay, i've had four spinal cord surgeries. i need to replace mints on my knees. and i have also a shoulder out of that's broken that i need to have operating. i apologize about hard and running out of time. so sandy has trouble getting pain medications at this point legitimate use and that's i mean, it has been kind of a perverse story that as there's been a crackdown on on the really egregious prescribing of
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these drugs that it's become harder to access. doctors who people can really trust to treat pain like this and it's a real problem. david bloomington, indiana, please go ahead. david you with us. yeah, david is not with us. david you need to make a quick statement. i am 80, you know what and i i am 80 years old and i take oxycodone. all right, david. i apologize. we're going to have to leave it there. we're not going to be able to get through all of that. is john kapoor the founder of insis in prison he is he is in
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prison, and this was really like a landmark precedent in policing the opioid epidemic that this the prosecutors in this case went after the top executives of the company and not just some of them but all the way to the top and and put the founder of the company in prison. how much longer will he be there a couple more years? the book is called the hard sell crime and punishment at an opioid startup. the author is evan hughes. we appreciate your joining us here in tucson. thanks so much for having me. and book tv's live coverage of the tucson book festival continues up next you're going to hear from pulitzer prize winning, washington post reporter and author. lennig, she'll be talking about her book zero fail the rise and fall of the secret service. this is book tv's live coverage of the tucson book festival.
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about the other things hello, everyone. we're gonna get started now. thank you for coming today to the 2022 tucson festival of books. my name is david blumenthal. i'll be your moderator. please note that as guests of the university. we're following university protocols regarding masking and we asked that the audience remained masked for the entirety of the session. this panel the rise and fall of the secret service will end in one hour. please save your questions for our panelists until after she has finished speaking. have about 15 or 20 minutes for q&a. the festival organizers would like to thank c-span book tv for
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sponsoring this location and pepper provider homes for sponsoring the upcoming discussion. and please make sure to stop by the book sales area and author signing after the session. book sales at the festival help support the cost. and the local literacy programs that the festival funds you can also help keep this event free and open to everyone by becoming a friend of the festival or a sponsor of the 2022 festival. so please do stop by the friends both outside. and you can also go online to tucson festival of books dot org. as we begin a friendly reminder as well to please silence your phones. our panelist is carolynning of the washington post. we're thrilled to have her here today. and i wanted to read you a very brief, bio mislenic has worked
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at the washington post since 2000. and she previously reported at the philadelphia inquirer the charlotte observer and last but not least the bryn mawr haverford by college news. as a as a former college newspaper person myself. i wanted to pay tribute to that. but she won the 2015 pulitzer prize among many other accolades. for her work on misconduct inside the secret service, which will be discussing today. and in addition to this book zero fail the rise and fall of the secret service will be discussing. today she is also written to other books a very stable genius donald j. trump's testing of america with her colleague philip rucker. and also i alone can fix it. donald j. trump's catastrophic final year
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about the pandemic that we've been living through for the past two years. so, please give her a warm tucson welcome. thank you. so, thank you so much for being here today your book captures the systemic management issues inside the secret service as well as the individual heroism of agents when lives are on the line and it's such a rich topic for discussion. and i wanted to start by asking. you having been covering the secret service since 2012? did you? when did you think this would be such a rich topic of discussion for a book? oh, well first off i want to say i'm so delighted. i'm being questioned by a lawyer who used to be a journalist, i grew up in a family of lawyers,
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and i'm the only one that took this particularly at the time very on lucrative bath. it's turned out okay so far, but i i have a lot of respect for lawyers, and i'm so delighted dave's my interviewer and i very grateful to you for mentioning the bryn mawr have afford news because i wouldn't have been a journalist if the editor of that paper at the time hadn't sort of grabbed me by the scuff of the knack and enlisted me to write a story about something that i'll tell you more about later but really captivated me about journalism and what you can find when you start to dig and you have time to answer the question on the table. this is a funny story and i'm not normally viewed as very funny in my delivery. hey answer my question right now. so the funny story is that i was writing. like all rate reporting threads
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and especially investigative reporting threads this lifelong nearly lifelong obsession with the secret service began really by accident. i have a register of voice. that's kind of like either. a big sister or a friendly friend and i am trustworthy but i especially am ben the beneficiary of sounding trustworthy. and so when there was this insane and at the time considered the most humiliating episode in secret service history in 2012. dozen agents, we find out are being flown back on ceremoniously from cartagena in colombia and i always mispronounce cartagena even though it's the start of everything cartagena and my great investigative reporting
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partner david nakamura broke that story in 2012 and he he and his editor called me the next morning and said we got a lot of agents. we got a call. we got a lot of people we have to call we have to find out how this happened. what the heck these agents were flown back because they were caught with their guns and their security plans in their hotel rooms drunk off their -- and forgive me. my mom doesn't want me to use that word and with prostitutes during a time when they were supposed to be preparing and securing basically the entire city for president obama's arrival. so what the heck happened i get a call from david and the his editor saying can you help us out because what it's going to involve is getting on the phone and convincing a lot of people that don't talk to the press to tell me what happened. um you all may be old enough to remember. i'm just going to take a guess.
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the shampoo commercial, you know, you called you tell two friends. you tell two more friends blah. so these agents basically said this woman's calling around. she seems to know what happened. and each of these two friends would essentially tell another two friends answer her questions, you know, listen to her. she sounds like she really wants to get to the bottom of it. the thing is agents. this is a really long answer. i'm so sorry. um, the thing is agents can lose their jobs for talking to the press the secret service uses that whip in their employment contract to block agents from talking about things the service doesn't want to talk about talk about any flattering thing. you want to talk about talk about any lovely wonderful memory of a president. it's fine, but talk about the secret service in a way. that's unflattering.
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that's revelatory that comes back and embarrasses somebody and you can lose your job. so i was lucky that they spoke to me. in this happy accident more of them just told me unbelievable things that were so much worse than what had happened in gardena. so much worse and actually chilling because to a person every senior agent that i spoke to you know, who had had some years who had a little hide was convinced that the president was going to be killed on their watch. that it was going to happen. it was a matter of time because the agency was so bleakered so broken so dysfunctional so much using duct tape to keep it together in. when i knew i had a book. was when an agent called me and i don't mean a secret service agent but a book agent and she said you have a book. i don't know you but you have a book and her name was elise
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cheney cheney literary agency, and i'm forever indebted to her because she would not let go of me. i had no desire to write a book didn't know anything about writing books. i was 40 late 40s. i'll just say and i i always wanted to be journalists nothing else, but she would not let go and convinced me and i'm so glad that she was the you know, the tiger that she was. that's a great story and this book is such a service to us all to really get behind this image. of the secret service as just these agents and suits who are very trim and fit and very lead protection unit and in fact not only is that not entirely true the whole origin of the secret service is not what i would have thought he told me more about that sure. it also was a miss not mystery. it was a new piece of
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information to me. i had not i'd written a lot about the department of defense the department of justice the department forgive me the environmental protection agency, but i really never studied this tiny little protection unit that that began in 1865 in the department of treasury. it's initial assignment, and it was called the secret service because were trying to be undercover and secretive about how they did their work abraham lincoln and his secretary of treasury had been talking for weeks about the so damaging flood of forged currency that made up the entire or two-thirds of the economy at the time and this was really harmful to fledgling united states trying to get back. and recover after the civil war they had been talking about it at a meeting interestingly enough the day that lincoln.
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link hours later lincoln was shot and killed. they'd had a treasury meeting and a cabinet meeting to discuss. how can we control this flood of forgeries and fraudulent dollars bills? his secretary of treasury preceded with the idea after lincoln was killed and months later created this little unit of kind of rough and tumble dastardly agents almost like revenuers if you will for the bootleggers era and what they did was what they found people. gangs like mobster gangs who had these fake plates and they broke up these plate making operations. they tried to arrest the guys engaged and then they burned the currency that was their big job. wow, so it sounds like there was no formal presidential protection agency for a long time in our history and why do you think that was the case?
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love this question. this must be from a lawyer. so. you know, i didn't know this so i learned it in the research for the book, but there was intense resistance to the idea of a presidential security team. and it was part and parcel of the founding of america, which is it's the people's house. you know, we talked about the capital as the people's house. but the first name for the white house was the people's house. there were no fences if you can believe it around the white house people had picnics on the white house lawn and walked their dogs and and literally rode their horses across the front steps. so the idea of a palace guard was a nathama to american and to american presidents who wanted to feel as though they were at least projecting the image of a
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man of the people the people's representative and so security was considered just something from over with the royals in europe and not something we're going to do here. unfortunately three presidents would be killed before the country and the federal government really woke up and said, okay, we can't lose any more presidents this way. you know how lincoln was killed the third presidential assassination that triggered the formation of the secret service or rather. i should say the assignment of this role to the secret service was mckinley. he was at a world fair 1901 and was shot at close range by a socialist communist who was infuriated by mckinley's administration the feeling that little people were overlooked and mckinley, you know died of his injuries weirdly many many
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weeks after the actual event, but that was the beginning of secret service protecting presidents. right and then you write about how we finally had a formal agency protecting the president. from the mckinley assassination up until the kennedy assassination. and what was this iteration of the secret service like this period between mckinley and kennedy exactly. yeah. well, i would say that it was pretty. unrutinized let's say it that way it was essentially different patrols who want to three at a time who would be with the president when he traveled or when he was in public or in what is now so frequently called the rope line, you know, they keep a
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rope between people in the president the president. shakespeople's hands as they walk by this kind of formalized way of meeting the president and letting him touch the hands of voters and stay engaged with them it was a little bit unprofessional but still a form of security armed guards with the president and with his family especially around the time of eisenhower and the war there were they're forgive me. before eisenhower there around world war two there was a much larger interest in at least having one security guard along with the president's family. usually the first lady. and of course then president kennedy takes office. he's very resistant to having a detail around him full time. can you tell me more about how those created challenges for the secret service protecting him?
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kennedy put an incredible strain on the secret service and i begin the book describing what that was like for the agents who were traveling with him during his campaign before dallas months before dallas. they were exhausted and he was a jet setting high flying. let me touch every voter i can kind of president which was so different and such a culture shock for the secret service after his predecessor who often stayed in the white house didn't travel terribly much and wasn't that interested in standing at a rope line and shaking hands all day long. definitely wanted to be engaged but kennedy was a whole different animal he fed off as an extrovert fed off the people's energy and wanted to be
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with them. any famously said to his detail they call it a whip a very senior supervisor on the president's detail floyd boring. he said i wouldn't get elected dog catcher if i listen to you people and did what you wanted. he's like i need to be with the people. i'm paraphrasing that last part but the dog catcher quote is accurate. he feasted on being with people and he would. fully almost like a runaway he would flee his protectors to get out in front of them and get closer to a scrum or a throng of people and throw himself into it and it was infuriating to the secret service. so they're tired from the hours that he's traveling and being with people their hopscotching each other from city to city trying to keep up not catching enough sleep. they're exhausted by that travel that he's doing easily triple with the his predecessor had
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done and then they're kind of ticked off because he won't listen to the doctor essentially. then of course we all know now and and they knew better than than anyone. kennedy was also foiling his protectors because he was trying to be with women who were not his wife. and trying to be with them on a daily basis so that evasion that he was engaged in was also painful for them. and i know this isn't really your question, but i just feel like it's important to say this. the agents and i interviewed almost all of them. sadly many of them have died since my interview. interviews with them and since the book was published, but i interviewed almost every single agent on kennedy's detail. prior at the time of the assassination ones that we're still alive and they were so
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passionate about their duty to country. their patriotism was so invested in protecting the president and they were not judging as morality in large measures some of them were but many of them. were infuriated because it was their job to protect what was happening on the other side of that hotel room door and they couldn't screen these women that were coming in regularly at all hours of the night and and leaving it all hours of the night and they were infuriated because you were putting a barrier between them and their ability to serve their country and do their duty. that is what i felt and learned from them most poignantly. ride, and of course, we all know the tragic event that this recklessness led to on november 22nd.
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1963 and i loved in your book how you really walked through? the assassination through the perspective of the secret service agents how do you think having interviewed them and having talked to them? do you think there were ways in which the secret service failed to protect president kennedy adequately? i do sadly. i mean even though i think that their sense of duty and mission was so keen and palpable. there were ways as individuals they failed, but i think the larger answer to the question is there were ways in which the agency failed them? didn't give them the tools. to do the job in a way that would would save the president on that day. one is the director of the secret service jim rowley who weirdly used to live like a
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block from my where i live now went to the church at the corner of my block. you know. sorry, i was about to go that direction. i'm going to stop myself. the way the agency failed the secret service is the director had been begging begging kennedy and the administration to give him more money to hire more agents because he knew how exhausted and beat up they all were he asked for an additional i think 36 agents to try to keep their heads above water and i mean these guys and i interviewed a lot of their wives too. they were literally coming home from an assignment, you know on a nine city tour dropping their bags at their wife's. front doorstep and i say wife's because the wife would get their clothes wash them put them back out on the doorstep and they would come back from headquarters and go out that night. so they really they were really doing triple duty.
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rowley could not get the administration the kennedy administration to agree to give him those extra agents. there was a lack of routinized training none of them really knew. in a routine way, what should they do if someone shot at or came at at the president with a knife other than they're good law enforcement training. they didn't have a lot of rootinized training in the seconds that count when a gun shot goes off and the president is standing at a podium or near his car that training wasn't there neither was there ever a consideration? which you know shocks me after i looked at some of the internal records of the months and weeks before the assassination there. there was not an effort to try to protect the president from gunfire from a line of sight if you all line of sight is a big deal for the secret service. they try to make sure that they
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block with buses or walls or you know, they've built walls to to block a line of sight from the rifle. of a gun forgive me. little about god end of a gun and the president's head. and so you know lee harvey oswald had a clean shot. another hundred people could have had a clean shot that day because the secret service was not working very hard to focus on that. you ask the question. so well dave about their own responsibility and the only personal responsibility. i'll lay at the feet of some of those agents was that in order to sort of let off steam at the end of the night and this was a harder drinking time in our american history. they all went out in fort worth the night before the assassination and the trip to dallas to a funny coffee slash
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strip strip kind of club like a beatnik club where the waitresses were underwear. they the bar tenders illegally served, you know straight liquor, you know. and put it into juice cups, and these guys were there drinking until to four and five o'clock in the morning and as earl warren the head of the warren commission said in the hearings after the assassination looking into the causes, you know, i'm sorry direct rowley you cannot tell me that a man who's been up till two four five in the morning whether he was drunk or not is his able to react to protect the president the next morning and and that just is a fact and just true. right, very very unfortunate. i also know very little about guns. so to join hop onto that train as well the end of a gun.
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someone's gonna like go care all. no, we all understood. i i also have to ask because unfortunately the 1960s were very tragic decade with multiple assassinations of president of a president and some non-presidents as well. and you describe in the book how the assassination of robert kennedy changed the secret services mission in another way. how did that assassination? change their mission such a devastating time and such of like trial by error, you know. trial by fire like just such an awful time in the sense of okay. these are presidential candidates running for office. robert kennedy's brother forgive me john f. kennedy's brother is one of them. the secret service knows at this juncture before bobby.
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kennedy is killed and and shot fatally shot in los angeles. they know that the people who want to kill presidents are looking often for fame and they believe that the way to get fame. is to kill somebody famous or to have such an incredible being engaged in such a incredible violent event that it is enormous and it will make them famous. so when sirhan sirhan shoots robert f kennedy lyndon johnson is alerted instantly. two o'clock, i think in the morning because in los angeles, it's it's like nine nine or ten o'clock when the shooting happens and he's alerted and he immediately calls director rally and says i want you to put security details on every single presidential candidate tonight. dispatch them do whatever you need to do. send them and an agent i'm sorry
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to whine two stories into one, but an agent people have asked me many times. have you been to tucson before? and the answer is yes, but kindly like blow through for work. this is the first time i've gotten the chance to really enjoy it and really spend some, you know quality time experiencing the place but i one of the agents that i interviewed here retired agent. just an amazing icon a reagan detail leader for many years. he was the first agent who was called that night by director rowley. he was relatively young he was deeply trusted by the director as somebody with good instincts and he said okay pack a bag pack a lot. don't know how long you're going to be gone. don't know where you're going. don't know when you're coming home, but you're going to go see. this candidate in tony kalarama
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neighborhood of washington dc and good luck. and he bobby d was the agent's name by the way, bobby d. as his wife reminded me many times in our interviews at her house. didn't come home for nine months. again did drop off his laundry. but did not actually sleep in his own bed and forever after prominent candidates for president would always get secret service protection. well after that we should talk about a major success of the secret service and 1981 and other turning point the agency came. when they fulfilled their zero fail mission president reagan. shot outside the dc hotel, but survived due to their heroism. you tell me more about how that event unfolded.
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um ronald reagan have been president for all of about i want to say six weeks. jerry parr was the leader of his presidential detail, but actually hadn't. really spent any time with reagan shoulder to shoulder they often say that you're on the right hand shoulder of the president when you're the detail leader, but he hadn't been doing that. he'd been assigning that assignment to the deputy detail leader and he decided on this one particular morning in march that he needed to spend some time with the boss. he needed to get to know him and not just do the paperwork in the office and and get out on the road with him. it was not considered a very high profile event, you know, the president was speaking to a labor union at a local hotel. that was you know, less than a
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mile from the white house and one that i pass all the time on my way to work. presidents had been going there many many times in there in each of their 10 years and it was a standard routine visit. it was rainy foggyish and jerry parr. decided not to ask reagan to wear his bulletproof vest which they often made the president not made anywhere but asked him to wear on especially on foreign trips and sometimes on trips out of town, but it was kind of muggy icky muggies. not the right word. it was humid. and so he decided not to bring that up. a man who you all know. secretly wormed his way into an area of news photographers
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cameraman, really? cbs abc and it was an area that had not been screened normally the secret service sort of pats down and or checks everybody that's going to get within a hundred feet a hundred yards of the president and there was a failure to do that because there was this presumption. ah, it's a local job. we'd done this a million times the cameramen are over there. so what? as the president emerges from an underground driveway essentially like a walkway. walking towards the beast the name for the presidential limo. shots ring out and john hinckley is all of about 15 feet from the president. so he has the ability to kill him. what is wonderful about this episode if you can say anything is wonderful about something. so traumatic. gunfire on a dc street aimed at a president is that everybody on
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the president's detail immediately reacts? instantly with their root and eyes training that they didn't have when kennedy was shot. the routinized training is called attack on the principal and they drilled in this day in day out attack on the principal is i hear something. i see something it sounds like a bad psa and this is my job when that happens. the gunfire goes off. hinckley is able to get off six shots in. less than two seconds not all of them very well aimed but still. jerry parr hears. it doesn't look up doesn't turn to his right. does it turn to his left? he just starts shoving the president towards the open black door of the limousine and they are three yards away from it. so it's not easy to shove ronald reagan that far but that's what he does and he almost according to president reagan in his
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description of it later. he almost breaks reagan's reagan assumes that his is rib has been broken because that's how hard he shoved him into the wheel. well, essentially, you know the peace in between the two. it's not the wheel. well, i'm not really good at cars either. that transmission the transmission hump. reagan's chess goes down on that. he's convinced his rib, or ribs are broken. another amazing agent timmy who everybody considers sort of this hulking football player, but basically like a real rookie a youngster. he hears the shot also doesn't look left doesn't look right knows where the gunfires coming from points toward points his chest toward it and throws out his hands as as fast as he can and as wide as he can and that
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ultimately, those two men save reagan's life now a bullet does get through and it ricoches into is this boring by the way, have you guys all know this? okay, sometimes i really figure you guys know all this you can tell me about the cars and the guns later so so and by the way, most of this i learned with the same chill by reading the fbi's 302s which are the fbi agents interviewing the agents in real time. what happened? what did you do? of course, there's great camera footage of it as well and my wonderful colleague and competitor del wilbur wrote a book exclusively believe about this moment in time and i recommend it to you rawhide down rawhide being reagan's code name in the secret service. uh, but the the primary documents of are breathtaking because they're all all the
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agents are basically going. well my attack on the principal training told me do this. that's what i did. so mmm they get him in the car. oh, the bullet is ricocheting on the passenger rear passenger door and it goes slices in the side through a part of reagan's long and nobody knows that's happened. jerry part doesn't know that's happened behind him ray shattuck deputy agent shoves. i still can't believe that he didn't break his legs shoves pars legs backwards into the car so they can shut the door and drew unru. who's the driver also an agent. knows he's got a gun it and get out of there. they have to flee. they don't know what's gonna happening and in his head he's praying. please don't let me run over timmy. because tim he's fallen and they don't know where timmy is so he figures i've got to go, but i may have to run over timmy to get the president out of here.
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luckily, he doesn't and timmy survives and became a a police chief in a great town outside, chicago so, i'm sorry. that's so long an answer. i remember reading how initially they didn't think they necessarily had to go to the hospital. but then it turned in fact they had to make a detour. totally more about that. i'll try to be brief for this time. so so jerry parr has also in his attack on the principal training has had basic like war combat military hospital, you know. sorry, it's something else. it's it's like a mash training. it's a mass training like if i have to do a trach i could do it if i have to do, you know an amputation i could do it that so he notices that reagan who's
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complaining you broke my rib, dude, he notices that the froth coming out of reagan's mouth and there's just a trickle of it is pink. it's not bloody. it's pink. it's oxygenated and from his training. he's saying wait a second. that's a symptom or at least that's a clue that his long. is damaged in some way something is happening and he feels all around him and reagan's like get off me and he's like, he's feeling up and down his body trying to find blood and nothing so he says to drew reroute reroute stagecoach to george washington university. and if he had not done that reagan would have died. he didn't have a lot of time. for a surgeon to see him and determine that he had a perforation in his lung that up that a exp potentially exploding
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bullet was lodged there and later. we you know, i didn't i wasn't watching this as a reporter. i was a little young for this moment, but people watching this in real time had no idea the american public and most of the people in the white house had no idea that the president had to have more than half of his blood replaced. that's how much he lost in the emergency room while they were trying to get the bullet and find it. so another way jerry parr saved democracy as well as the life of an important politician. incredible story of heroism of course and another another very very tragic day for our country. it's september 11th the secret service also showed incredible heroism. but there were some key vulnerabilities including for vice president cheney. he told me more about that.
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yeah, so as you know, i tried to write this book. the way my agent proposed it to me. i wanted to write about the current secret service, right, but she was like this this agency has had such an arc. from rebuilding itself in the wake of a national tragedy proving itself. when reagan's life was was saved and many other times gerald ford and others. and then it begins a slow slide a slow gradual demise in the wake of 9/11. which is is so tragic because every other federal agency got a ton of money and a ton of help and got all the star wars toys and tools to rebuild for a new century and new national security threats the secret service didn't that day
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obviously. is is incredibly poignant and a pivot point for our country in so many ways but for the secret service. it revealed how little they had imagined. the ways foreign terrorists would like to behead our government. destabilize our country and and basically knock off the head of that country by killing the president now, we all know that the plane that crashed and shanksville was intended either for the white house or the capital based on interviews that the fbi is conducted. they believe it was it was very very likely like a toss-up, but very very likely to have been the white house. that day there was a failure to communicate as well as a failure
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of imagination a failure to communicate in the white house. -- cheney of forgive me the president as you know was in florida at an education event. just trying to you know, press the flesh and remind voters how much he cared about education reform and holding schools accountable. the i won't go into some of the mistakes the secret service made that day regarding president bush, but with regard to vice president cheney who would have been the president if bush had been killed that day cheney was in his office for a meeting. he didn't usually go to his oval office meeting, but that day he did he was meeting with a close ally who also was a top budget official in the omb and he was watching the television when the second jet. hit the second tower. the secret service the person in charge of making sure to liaison with the faa about any threats
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to the white house because keep in mind the white house had been attacked by air twice before not by a huge commercial jet but it had been attacked twice before twice planes had either almost crashed there or crashed into the lawn, so it's not like that impossible to envision that a plane could be used as a weapon. the agent in charge of liaisoning with the faa gets a very urgent message with the second plane hitting the second tower and that is at about 9:03 am that morning and it is we are still missing two jets not communicating with us and heading towards you. they're 20 minutes out 20 30 minutes out. for some reason that of this agent whose liaisoning with the faa? sends a courier up to the tower of the old executive office
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building which is where the secret service has its emergency operations center. this runner goes up there to communicate that message so that on a very classified screen that i'm no one's supposed to know about and we won't talk about very much more on this screen where the white house is tracking planes coming close. they only have this much of the picture the faa has this picture so they run up to look and see how close how many minutes out how many seconds out but nobody communicates. to that the headquarters of the secret service. hey, we got two incoming planes because you have a protectee a vice president at the white house where the planes are coming too and it is literally a minute before the incoming plane that ends up crashing into the pentagon. buzz is the white house before
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the detail leader breaks into chaney's office and says we got to go grabs his belt and literally hoists him out the doorway down the stairwell into the underground bunker another failure of imagination. that day was nobody thought we're gonna have to rush the vice president to the underground bunker in seconds to prepare for a plane incoming to hit the white house. and the agents who are with him do not have this classified s key to instantly get him inside the protected bunker and they have to wait in the underground tunnel, which is protected but not the same kind of protection. to get him inside again, ridiculously long answer i am going to have to work on my decision. this is all. fascinating i can see everyone in the crowd is on the edge of their seat and really appreciate it. of course.
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and i'm gonna ask one more question before we turn it over to the audience for questions. so start thinking now about your questions. president bush of course leaves office is replaced by president obama. and as you've said there was not the same level of funding being provided to the services other agencies post 9/11 and the same time. president obama as the first black president enormous threats unprecedented threats how did that stretch the agency even further? i'm so glad you asked because you know in a way it's a bit of a perfect storm after 9/11. all sorts of big behemoth agencies are stood up from from scratch transportation security
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administration, you know all the sudden tens of millions of dollars. a hundreds of thousands of recruits and employees all added to this huge department of homeland security and what congress and what the president are the most worried about? is the last thing that just happened and it's how do we stop playing from being used as weapons of mass destruction? how do we make the skies safe? again? it's really the only thing they're worried about and secondarily. how do we keep terrorists from getting into the country? hence customs and border patrol, you know incredible operation that is amped up to cure our ports secure our borders some people would argue terrorists aren't coming in through tijuana, but we spent you know jillions of dollars to secure
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those borders again in the wake of 9/11. that was the primary reason. secret service is not on the president's radar at this time. and i mean president bush before obama takes over. it's true for president obama as well. but this is a weakening of this agency. why all the money is going to the big sister agencies that are supposed to keep us safe. the only problem is they're forgetting the president is is target number one for isis target number one still for mass shooters who want to be famous? and so the secret service just gets comparatively shrunk littler and littler and littler trying to keep up its mission is expanding. the larger number of people to protect and it's just eating away at its ability to do the job the perfect storm the other thread of that the other incoming front. is that president obama
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represents an existential threat to a portion of americans who believe a black president is a danger to them and and just and disgusting to them and the threats against president obama. quadruple compared to the previous president now i have to counter i'm not counteract to put some context there. internet threats the use of the internet as a way to threaten and make threats is on the rise. so it's possible that the increase is partially attributable to that, but i have read some of these the chatter that the secret service collected and investigated and it is like spine tinglingly terrifying it's talking about how we can hang michelle obama where we could hang her how this could be done ways in which you know president obama could be drawn in quartered. i mean, there's some pretty visceral threat material here. it's not a guy in a bar mouthing
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off about a black president, although that happened, too. so it is a very worrisome time for the obamas the director at the time mark sullivan who's been criticized pretty badly for not being more forceful. just like just like director rowley is begging for additional money, but when he doesn't get it, he kind of stops begging and the services is depleted. well, thank you so much for telling us more about that and now we'd like to let the audience ask a few questions. we have some microphones up here and we look forward to hearing from you. the end of a rifle is often referred to as a muzzle. really? you just touched on.
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protecting obama and some of the things that have happened to him. do you know is the secret service at all concerned about a gay transportation secretary? and do they have a responsibility there? was one other guy i was worried about but you'll know. um i don't know what the threat matrix is for pete buttigieg, but i would imagine because of his prominence and also, you know his very public position. i would imagine that it's higher than normal for a cabinet secretary, but i don't know a well enough to speak intelligently about the the threat matrix and what that would trigger for him. many cabinet secretaries have protection provided for them by their own agency. for example, the epa administrator at his own secret security administrator.
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forgive me security detail. it provided within is a is agency and her agency at times. that's true as well for the state department. hillary clinton was protected by the diplomatic security corps. it happened that she was also because she was the first lady and given lifetime protection had secret service protection at night at her home. so don't know the answer on pete. i will tell you that it's interesting the people you don't expect to have a threat matrix while i was here yesterday. i reported a story about deputy national security advisor who the secret service is now investigating what appears to be a strange man who came on to his lawn and may have tried to break into his home days and/or hours after this deputy national security advisor became the public face for sanctions against russia in the white house briefing room.
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if you may remember david axelrod obama's senior advisor, he got a secret service detail after a man. began shooting in the lobby of the holocaust museum and when they the man died he was killed the shooter was killed but when they went through his pockets, they found all these drawings and and the address and phone number for david axelrod and commentary about his jewishness. so the secret service began protecting him after that long answer. carol could you talk about today what's happening with the secret service now relative to biden and i know of course you're very well versed on the last years with trump, but perhaps some context on the trump time and exactly where we're at now. um, i hope that someone hears
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what i'm about to say beyond this room. i'm very disappointed that after. basically diagramming what's wrong and broken with the secret service and how under-served the agents are. by the federal government in the federal and the white house in providing them with funding. that the biden administration has done almost nothing to rectify that now the biden administration has a lot of problems on its plate and i acknowledge that but one of the agents who came to me and risked their careers to say. a president's going to get killed. it's a matter of time. do something what of them i i am only channeling their very passionate fear. passionate fear. and nothing that is really other than the margins has been fixed
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and there. is there any initiative in congress to do anything about that nothing? when did the secret service protection for life start with the presidency and a second question related to that is is that when the former president pleased to saudi arabia because he does not want to face any of the various lawsuits. he has going against him what measures if any can be done to remove his secret service or does he have it for life? i think i understood your first question and the answer. we talked a little bit about before but it's it's the secret service began protecting presidents are a little bit after 1901 and mckinley's
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assassination just embarrassed that you know, we can't keep letting presidents die because a voter comes up to them with a gun. as for the former president, it's really hard to lose your lifetime promise of protection. it is written into the statute and a president can try to decline it but the us government does not have the option to decline protecting. former presidents and former first ladies. it is a guarantee if you were in prison. there would be another provision for how that happened. predicting i just know that that question has come up before. carol it's really a riveting book you spoke a bit about the patriotism that these agents
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feel in the sense of duty to country then later in the book you talk about how many of them voted for trump and i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how any democratic president can feel safe. with that sort of mentality i'm really glad you asked the question because the kicker for my book is essentially you know me. me learning in the wake of january 6 because i was reporting on january 6th. i had to come out a book leave because of of january 6th and and keep reporting for the post which i'm glad for that duty and that mission i'm not complaining. but what i learned is that secret service agents were were rooting in some instances for the insurrectionists to attack fellow police officers. you know, how can you be blue and root for someone to take a flagpole into the chest of someone blue? i don't mean party. i mean, i mean police officers. that's that really frightened me
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about our society and about that mission that patriotism i'd seen so many times. but you know the secret service like all law enforcement agencies liens conservative. that's okay. the fbi leans conservative the i'm sure the tucson police department leans conservative in their personal lives, but the secret service the fbi all of these agencies also had always had a duty to check your politics at the door to leave that outside put it in the locker. and as an i think it's illustrative of the rest of the country as as our country has become more and more divided. the secret service became as did the fbi as did other law enforcement agents seized become. more open about their political viewpoints more angry more
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vituperative and increasingly uncomfortable checking their politics at the door. which should worry us all i want democratic. liberal-leaning cops to check their politics at the door. it's about blind justice. it's about the mission. but that that changed and donald trump. again, i give them credit for his genius. he convinced many many americans and many secret service agents that he was. their defender their their protector their savior. thank you so much for being here carol. i have a question. i read in the paper today that we are spending millions of dollars protecting michael. pompeo where does that money come from? and why is he so important? why isn't there be there people
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who are actually in charge now being protected? you know this raises a really important question. i'll try to be quick because i saw two minute warning over there. rather infamously donald trump extended protection for his children adult children for six months after he left office and for three top aids is national security advisor his chief of staff and i'm blanking on the third. i wrote the story, but i can't remember what i wrote and pompeo is not in that group. but he's getting protection now from this the state department and i have to believe that the biden state department again, not political just happens to be the next president has found a very justifiable and reasonable reason to protect him that threats against him rise to that level that he needs that security you ask the question. where's the money come from
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comes out of the state department's budget and ultimately comes out of our our pocketbooks and i can't help but think that it also diminishes our ability to provide the kind of protection the secret service wants to provide. stuff like you answer this very much one last question. well, i am very glad to be up at this stage. i had quite the urge to deliver some coffee to deliver some grand commentary on this event on this year's speech because i try and i try to remain invested in a lot of these types of things. i i want iron maintain a strong interest to to the audience into the speaker but here so here's my question anyway, right on the right off the bat. so what are some of the key what so what are some of the key duties in involving social media and for the for thy protective services? i hope i understand your
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question, right you mean monitoring social media? yes, correct. so the secret service has a huge huge extra responsibility and duty because social media is where people make threats social media is where stuart rhodes forgive me. the proud boys and the oath keepers at times communicated their plans for january 6 so you can get some good clues as reporters do from monitoring this about what bad guys are up to and what they're threatening. it's important and it's a good question. thank you. you're welcome. and do you think and who do you think that the power boys were probably the most noteworthy example of the groups that we're trying to of insurrectionist groups. was there a specific group that you find the most noteworthy could possibly could have possibly been involved. i'm could have possibly started from before the from before the insurrection itself. there are three main groups, although we don't know i'm not i'm not a prosecutor fbi agent they may have tons of evidence
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that i haven't seen oath keepers proud boys and three percenters. oh, thank very great to know very much. thank you very much. thank you. love the speed. everyone. thank you, david. and i asked that if you want your book signed or to purchase these books, please proceed to the sales and signing area the u of a bookstore 10. thank you very much. you bet. and book tv's live coverage of the tucson festival of books continues. we have several more hours of coverage coming up. you can find all the information and book tv.org.
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well joining us now is carol anderson. she's a professor at emory university the author of five books. the most recent is this one the second race and guns in a fatally unequal america. professor anderson you've written about voter suppression. this book is very specific. where did it come from? it really emerged out of the killing of philando castile. because here you had a black man in minnesota who was pulled over by the police and the police officer asked to see his id. following nra guidelines philando castile alerted the officer that he had a license to carry weapon with him, but he was reaching for his id as the officer. ask the police officer immediately then put five bullets into philando castile not for brandishing a weapon not for threatening him. but for merely having a weapon and then the nra went silent.
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now the nra the defender of the second amendment goes silent when a licensed gun owner is gunned down for no other reason than having a gun the nra that called federal officers jack booted government thugs after ruby ridge and after waco go silent and so the question was do black people have second amendment rights. that's where this book came from. and what's the answer to that question? no. sounds no, the it's to understand the history of the second amendment that it was really born out of anti-blackness. it was born out of a fear of black people. it was born out of a description of african americans as being dangerous a threat to white society. it came out of a fear of slave insurrections. it came out of a fear that free blacks would help those who were enslaved and so it was how do we
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protect the white community from the black threat and in fact you write in the second that the second amendment was designed and implemented to abrogate and deny the rights of black people. at what point in our history where african americans allowed to own guns? technically it was after the civil war and after the 14th amendment gets ratified that brings the the second amendment into states into the states. technically, but what you had happening you had the black codes coming in after the civil war that was about disarming african americans who had been armed during the civil war getting their guns away from them and having massive domestic terrorism raining down on them to force that compliance it and what you also see happening are are basically massacres when african americans try to defend
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themselves when they they're fighting for democracy like at colfax, louisiana or in hamburg, south carolina, and they are slaughtered it is sending the signal welcome to book tv and our coverage of the tucson book festival our guest carol. anderson is a professor at emory university. she chairs the african-american studies department at that university in atlanta, and we're talking about her most recent book the second racing guns in a fatally unequal america. this is a call-in program. we'd like to hear your voices as well. 202 is the area code 748 8200 for those of you in the east and central time zones 202 748-8201 for those of you in the mountain in pacific time zones, and if you'd like to send a text to professor anderson you can do so at this number for text messages only 202. 748-8903. please include your first name
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and your if you would. do you have any idea what percentage of african-americans today own guns? i don't have that that percentage off the top of my head. no. are you a supporter of the second amendment? i'm a supporter of rights. i think that the second amendment really needs to go the way of the three-fifths clause. that it was born. it was born out of anti-blackness born out of racism and that the anti-blackness makes the implementation of the second amendment so difficult because it's like black people are the designated threat the default threat in american society and so bearing arms then exponentially increases that threat but when they are unarmed they are vulnerable there is so much work to be done about the second amendment that is beyond
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the second amendment after the murder of philando castile. did you have any knowledge when you begin your research about this topic? no, i didn't. i mean i went hunting going do african-americans have second amendment rights and that sent me back into the 17th century and i started looking at the slave codes and started seeing the language around the slave codes about you know, they cannot have weapons. they cannot have guns. they cannot have ammunition and and saying that even free blacks cannot have guns cannot have ammunition and saying as well that if somebody white strikes somebody black that enslaved or free that they did not have the black person did not have the right to self-defense. i mean, so you're seeing these mechanisms being put in place. no arms. no right to self-defense and you're also seeing the creation of this militia that is designed
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to put down slavery votes has the nra ever spoken about philando castile. basically what they said was they said two things. eventually, they came out and said well after being pressured by their black membership. well, we believe that everybody regardless of race creed religion should have the right to bear arms. and then eventually they said well, we really can't make a statement until the investigation is over. i mean so the nra the defender of the second amendment went really milk a toast really bland really blah, really. what was the discussion during the civil war especially in the south about arming slaves with guns to help fight? so during the second world war i mean, so one of the i mean sorry
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during the civil war wrong century during the civil war you had initially the north and and lincoln were reluctant to arm black people even free blacks in the north because he was afraid that what that would do is that it would push the border states into joining the the confederacy because the border states had held back like kentucky like oh, yeah, we know we're a slave statement. we don't know if we're going to be doing this this fighting against the us thing and so held back, but you have this pressure incredible pressure coming in from black folks and frederick douglass who were demanding the right for african americans to be able to join this war and fight for freedom. in the south you had absolute reluctance total reluctance as you can imagine of arming the enslaved for this war to to
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maintain slavery. so although you have the myth of black confederate soldiers. it's a myth what you really have? is that when you see those pictures, those are the enslaved who were brought with the officers with the white officers. those were the enslaved who were supporting the officers in terms of of their boots and of their equipment and things like that those weren't soldiers and it was only like in march of 1865 when the confederacy is on its last leg gasping for air that they said, okay. finally we can arm the enslaved but by that time it was too late. carol anderson those of us have a certain age. you spoke about photos remember photos of the black panthers in the 60s with arms? what was their role in helping further this or hurting the cause yes, so what we see here with the black panthers. is that the black panthers were
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really came out of the concern about the police violence that was raining down on the black community. you had police killings you had police beatings you had false arrests you had the planting of evidence and you saw no accountability in the system for that police violence. and so the panther said we are going to police the police and and they knew what the laws were california was an open carry state and there were certain guns that you could carry they knew what kinds of guns they could carry they knew how to carry them. they knew where to point them. we're not to point them and they also knew how far away from the police they had to stand. the police were making an arrest. so these panthers come out the cars when there's an arrest going on and they're carrying their weapons. they're not pointing them as a police, but they're carrying their weapons. the police did not like this and so they ran to don mulford who was a conservative assemblyman and the california legislature.
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and said, we need your help because every time we pull the panthers over we can't arrest them because what they're doing is not illegal. we need to make what they're doing illegal. and mulford was like cool cool, and he had help from the nra. he had an nra representative helping him draft the mulford act which was a way to ban the kind of open carrying that the panthers were doing and you had republican governor ronald reagan saying i'm eager to sign this legislation the moment it hits my desk. and so this kind of twist the way that we often think about who supports gun rights because you have the nra working with a conservative assemblyman working with a republican governor. to limit access to guns but the trigger of course, no pun intended was the black panthers. it was black folks carrying those guns that then leads to
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gun control laws before we go to calls i have to ask you about your previous book because it's another topic that we're all talking about in the news today, which is on voter suppression one person. no vote. it is and i'm going to link one person no vote with my previous book white rage because white rage argues that when african americans make a significant advancement toward their citizenship rights. there is a massive policy backlash to undermine and undercut those rights what we saw in the 2020 election is we had a 66% voter turnout rate in georgia in the runoff. we had almost a 92% black voter turnout rate that flipped the senate and that flipped george of blue. the response was not to welcome and embrace this incredible outpouring of support for american democracy. the response was the big lie the
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lie of the stolen election and then a wave of voter suppression laws designed to undermine and undercut that access to the ballot box. that's what we're seeing. we're seeing white rage operationalize through these voter suppress. lost. well you live in georgia it the situation in georgia? it's georgia. it is what we're seeing it. was that massive turnout that flipped, georgia blue. and in the response has been a current law sb202 that looks at stopping the access to the ballot box the ways that african americans and latinos and asian americans and poor folk access the ballot box during that pandemic year where they're like democracy hangs and the balance and so if i have to stand in line 11 hours, i'm going to do it and and if i have to, you know figure out my absentee ballot and get to one of those dropboxes. i'm going to do it. and what you also saw with sv
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202 was lowering the guardrails that protected democracy from being overturned by trump's attempt. remember when trump called in to brad raffensberger? all i need you to do is find me 11,790 votes, right? and so it's lowering those guardrails that prevented that from happening. i mean, that's what we're seeing in georgia as the response to this incredible engagement of george and citizens. so in your view professor anderson your most recent book the second race and guns in a fatally unequal america. it ties into this abrogation of rights, correct? absolutely, i mean and and i'm going to link it again with the voting rights piece because part of what you're all so seeing the political violence that emerged out of that 2020 election the threats to election workers the then the demand that you have these poll watchers who can get up close and personal and you're having these states also at this current moment in like in,
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georgia. removing the requirements for gun ownership. so lessening lessening the laws for access to guns liberalizing that in ways that where you also have the the head of the republican national committee saying, you know, january 6th, that was just legitimate political discourse. so it's making political violence. palatable legitimate important necessary and casting it in that way. and so when you have this this language of political violence you have this loosening of gun laws, and then you have this burgeoning demographic that is determined to vote. yeah, yeah. well, let's take some calls for carol anderson. ronald's in hollywood, florida. ronald, please go ahead we're
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listening. yes, my question is about the critical race theory. i'm from the state of florida and there's a proposal that people don't even need to have concealed weapons anymore. and as you know trayvon martin. our case triggered a lot of these things and the other part of my question is i don't believe that the constitution. include people of color if you look at the supreme court and you look at other things where where laws that were passed they were exclusionary of black folk. and so i just wanted to get your opinion. on that. thank you. thank you, ronald. thank. so sent to me there were several components in that question one with trayvon martin. is that what you saw was the
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operationalizing that black folks do not have the right to self-defense when you look at that case. you have a black teenager walking through his neighborhood with skittles and iced tea and you have a white hispanic man, george zimmerman who sees this black child. it says, oh he there's something suspicious about him and he's calling it into 911 and he's saying they always get away and so he takes out his loaded weapon and he stalks this child through the neighborhood. there is a confrontation between the two and the unarmed child ends up with a bullet in his chest. the story becomes poor george poor george. he was only trying to defend himself as if trayvon martin didn't have the right to defend himself. and you see george zimmerman
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walks is found not guilty stand your ground, which is the florida law it emerged out of, florida. it says that if you perceive a threat. you have the right to use lethal force where if and it's like wherever you have a right to be. when black is the default threat in american society that perception of threat then basically puts the crosshairs on black folks. so that's what the trayvon martin peace does in terms of critical race theory here. you have the kind of erasure of teaching real american history so we can understand who we are and how we got here. it is dangerous. it is absolutely dangerous to be able to do that. and the role of the constitution in black folk, one of the things is that you see black folks being pulled into the
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constitution particularly after the civil war where you get the 13th amendment that banishes slavery you get the 14th amendment that deals with birthright citizenship saying if you are born here, you are an american citizen and that is to overturn the dred scott decision and it's also say equal protection under the law and then the 15th amendment saying that the state shall not a bridge the right to vote on account of race color or previous condition of servitude. next call for carol anderson comes from jim and darlington, south carolina jim. you're on book tv. we're listening. thanks for taking my call. i was just gonna ask the author of the recent law that was passed down in georgia. that didn't require conceal carry permit to carry a concealed weapon. usually the permits are issued now multiple states have gone to that scenario and permits are
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issued to people that want them so they can have reciprocity if they're traveling. but you know the presumption of law enforcement is you know, that everyone is armed and sadly we have gotten back to the skin standard instead of the character standard and you know it the separate society and racism etc in the previous amount of the united states. we thought we'd gotten past that and a lot of us had gotten passed it and still have gotten past it but then now that we have the maturity of the marxist ed. didn't populists as taking over the government and etc. it's you know, instead of having a proletariat bourgeoisie. they're replacing race, and i was also curious if the author had a driver's license. because if you have a driver's license.
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i would should be able to have to show id to vote in the united states because even if you don't have a driver's license, and you have many opportunities to go down to the clerk's office with certain documents or even have a family member file an affidavit to get an id. so what is the problem with have an id's to vote? i don't think it's very suppression. that's need jim will. we'll hear from professor anderson in just a minute, but i wanted to ask you are you a gun owner jim? yes, sir. and and i haven't them in a gun safe. and i hunt once a year or twice a year. and they don't hurt anybody. it's just like having multiple cars in your garage. the human has to be an agent of action to hurt someone whether it's with a gun or with a knife or a hammer or a stick. so, you know, the disarming of
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america is just in strategy of the radical left like we've seen past history to pacify the populace and unfortunately, we'll leave it there and will hear from professor anderson now, thank you. so there were several components in there one. i have to say that a hammer has another function a car has another function a knife has another function a gun has one function and the the sense of it's the way that dylan roof is basically. who has gone down nine nine folk in bible study? and he is captured alive. he has demonstrated that he is willing to commit mass murder and he is captured alive, but tamir rice who was a 12 year old boy in cleveland playing in the park in an open carry state
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playing in a park with a toy gun and granted it didn't have the red tip on it that said i'm a toy, but he's playing in the park by himself. he's not pointing the gun at anybody. he's not threatening anybody and when the police rolled up on him, they shot him within two seconds saying he's dangerous. he was a threat we felt threatened that is part of the reality that we have to deal with with the ways. that guns are used and and the way that threat is is depicted and seen in this society in terms of the voter id laws. we have to understand that they are predicated on a lie. the lie is massive rampant voter fraud. justin leavitt did a study he's a law. ceraba, california. he found that from 2000 to 2014 out of one billion votes cast. there were only 31 cases of voter impersonation fraud. so in 15 years 1 billion votes
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31 cases, but it is that that becomes the the president the preface for for saying we've got to have this voter id. it is the way that the states have crafted voter id where they have made it really clear that they're going to have disparate disparate access to voter id. it's alabama alabama said you've got to have government issued photo id and then alabama said but your public housing id doesn't count now that's solely government issued but 71% of those in public housing in alabama where african-american and then what governor bentley did after saying your your government your public nothing id doesn't count was to shut down the department of motor vehicles in the black belt counties, which required folks to go 50 miles to the to the next county over to get a driver's license, but if you don't drive because you don't
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have a driver's license and you don't have public transportation alabama's rank 48th in the nation in public transportation. how are you supposed to get to the driver's license bureau the way that voter id works is it sounds so reasonable except the way that it is done. it is absolutely discriminatory and absolutely unreasonable. jasmine gloucester, virginia, please. go ahead with your question or comment. jasmine you with us please yasmine, you got to turn down the tv and completely make your family life and property and by license gun owners in the brianna in louisville and most recently sleeping young man and in minnesota as it relates to no knock warrants. to get enough information there. i think it was a question about
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no knock warrants. yes, jasmine. can you just very quickly repeat that legally? protect life and property the legal right to protect life and property and no knock warrants any comments for that. yes. i do. so one of the things that i lay out in the book is that we've got these things that we think are these kind of standard bears of protection like stand your ground like open carry and like the castle doctrine. so what you're talking about is the castle doctrine where you have the right to protect your home from an intruder. and it's in and but what we saw with brianna taylor for instance is that it was a no-knock warrant where the police are able to just enter your home without an identifying themselves. and that's what there was the banging on the door. they're saying who is it? who is it and and the police aren't identifying themselves and then they burst through the
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door her fiancee shoots and and a hell of bullets rained down into the apartment brianna taylor's apartment. they ruled that it was just the fireable because the police did identify themselves although all of their body cams were off and only one witness after the third interview says, yeah. i heard them identify themselves. we saw the same thing with catherine johnston who was a 92 year old grandmother in atlanta early in the morning. she hears her burglar bars being removed from her house. she picks up her rusty revolver to protect herself. and and as as the folks into her house, she shoots to defend herself a neighbor had been raped she was afraid. instead a hell of bullets rained down in the catherine johnson and this 92 year old grandmother is shot dead. we see this over and over and over.
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it's basically saying that black folks don't have the right to defend themselves to protect their property. they don't have the right to self-defense. they don't have the right to the castle doctrine. and we'll close with this comment from bev and middleburg heights ohio read her most recent book the second. excellent. i used it in a course. i taught to adults about the founding fathers. thank you. thank you. thank you. one of the things that i think we really have to be able to to get to is to see the complexity of the founding fathers when we teach a really flattened history. it doesn't it doesn't do us justice as a nation. it doesn't do justice to history when we understand the complexity that we have slave owners who are trying to write a constitution of freedom. we have those some of those in the north are really bucking up against the demands that some of
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the slave owners are at the constitutional convention are demanding. and the compromises that are made and the consequences of those compromises how you had some of these folks who were willing to to basically barter away the lifeblood of the united states of america if they weren't able to defend and enforce slavery. so why we get the three-fifths clause why we get the 20-year extension of the atlantic slave trade why we get the fugitive slave clause and frankly why we get the second amendment if we understand that then we're having a very different kind of conversation about our history and where we need to go and what we need to do and the book is called the second race and guns in a fatally unequal america. it's the latest book by emory university professor carol anderson. thank you. thank you so much. bookkivy's live coverage of the
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tucson book festival continues now. it's an author discussion on immigration and border issues. thanks for being with us. welcome everyone to the 2022 tucson festival of books. i'm celeste gonzalez de bustamante and i will be moderating this panel. please note that as guests of the university of arizona. we are following university protocols regarding masking. we ask that you remain masked for the entire idea of the session, of course. we don't have our masks on where. taking them off just for the ease of the panelists here. this panel is titled immigration in america and it'll end in about an hour. please save your questions for the panelists until after all of them have spoken. we'll have about 15 or 20 minutes for q&a. the festival organizers. thank c-span book tv for sponsoring this location and
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joan and adrienne. vanlusinord. c-span book tv, lindy mullinax and ray maldau for sponsoring this session and discussion. please make sure to stop by the book sales area and author signing after the session book sales at the festival helped to support the cost of the festival and the location and the local literacy programs that it funds. you can also help to keep this event free and open to everyone by becoming a friend of the festival or a sponsor of the 2022 festival. please stop by the friend's booth or by going online to tucson festival of books.org and as we begin please silence your phones and i've asked also for those folks who might be wearing hats. we are in tucson to please remove your hat so that folks behind you can see our great panelists that i'm about to introduce.
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