tv [untitled] April 7, 2012 2:30pm-3:00pm EDT
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would spend days battering away at something. if you are looking at a book for long, it covers an enormous span of years. and i would spend days -- excuse me, i would spend a day and not finish what i had started to do. i would not write those pages i had wanted to write that day because i hadn't solved the problem. the historic telescoping. and i wouldn't be able to sleep then. i might not solve the organizational problem of putting those pages together until the end of the day, and then i would go out and take a walk, come back, write down an outline and then i'd be able to sleep, but some nights i wouldn't be able to sleep. can you apply any feeling you had back then to this book? >> i was able to sleep this time. but i got thoroughly exhausted
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through the process, because it was the same problem. taking a vast amount of material and telescoping it into a narrative which told the truth but which was moved fast, which an ordinary reader, not a specialist, this book is not a hardware book, it's not a specialist, it's written for the general public, which the ordinary reader would want to read and i found that -- for instance, the amount of reading i had to do was enormous on the cold war, on figures like stalin, who was he. and then you pick out the nugget of -- it's like panning for gold. you pan an awful lot of gravel just to get a fleck of gold. and the same thing is true, i wrote, for instance, a profile of general lamay who was the great opponent of this program. and the profile was much too
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long. spent a long time researching it. a long time writing it and then my editor and i agreed it was far too long. i had to tell the story -- it was about 35 or 40 pages, so i had to tell the same thing in nine pages, but you don't just cut. telescoping isn't cutting. you have to say the same thing in nine pages that you said before in 36 pages, and all of this took enormous amounts of time. >> todd loomis your editor for this book and the last book? >> yes. he's tremendous. he helps you shape the book. he has a great sense of pace and of narrative, when you've gone off the track and a wonderful way of pulling you back on it. he's not a line editor. he'll suggest a word here or a word there. and he'll suggest changes in tone. but he makes you do it yourself. >> i'm going to go to page 287 of your book and i don't how much of this we can do, but i'll
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read back to you and stop periodically to ask you questions about what i'm reading so people can get a sense of your narrative. this is chapter 46, dazzling the monarch is the title of it. let me just briefly tell you why did you call this dazzling the monarch? >> because eisenhower, they had to go to the president to get this program going. they started it in '54. but the bureaucracy had built up so great in the post-war period that it was impossible to get the thing moving. schreiver had to go to 42 different people, 42 different offices, to get clearances for what he wanted. it was a hassle just to buy an air-conditioning unit to protect the computers for this company that they hired for scientific
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expertise, wooldridge. they hired simon ramos as their scientific expert. and so they had to get clearance of the type the manhattan project had had. clearance from bureaucratic interference, streamlining in other words the decision making plus funding which was their own, no one else could interfere with and only the president can give you that. only the monarch can give you that. >> let me read you this, back to you, you know these words but i'll stop here and ask you questions. he arrived at the white house at 9:30 a.m. on july 28th 1955, half an hour before the scheduled briefing before the president. trevor gardner and johnny van newman was in the back seat in one of the pentagon long black limousines as the car made its way to the white house ground. schreiver had been informed the briefing would take place on the
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28th and had been readying themselves ever since most intensely after bennie flew in from california on the 22nd. it was decided that schreiver would wrap up the briefing at the end. trevor gardner, who was he? >> he was the assistant secretary of the air force for science and technology and was in his own way a visionary and schreiver recruited him, when he first got on to the idea was just a colonel, on the list for brigadier, that's pretty low in the. pecking order in the pentagon. he needed somebody higher to get the thing going and trevor gardner had come on and he was a -- he was another immigrant like schreiver. he'd gone to caltech. he was an electrical engineer by training but really a technological visionary in his own right. he could see possibilities of technology in other fields and
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schreiv schreiver. >> bennie schreiever was a grge immigrant. >> two months before we declared war on germany they went down to texas where he grew up. trevor gardner was a welshman. his father was a boilermaker in south america, boiler engineer, he came here when he was a young man, went to caltech and got educated here. the mind second only to einstein, who developed the first electronic computer, and developed programs for the computer among other things. he came here as a refugee and he was hungarian born and, again -- and he was terribly important to
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the project but he had enormous prestige from world war ii. he had developed the plutonium -- the explosive wrapper around the plutonium bomb, the nagasaki bomb, he played a critical part in building the atomic bomb in the manhattan project and he had great prestige, and schreiver recruited him. >> they had been told by the national security staff that they were restricted to a half an hour for the three presentations. tyler who was he? >> he was the head of the air force research and development command. he'd been lamay's deputy at strategic air command. he'd been lamay's deputy since world war ii. he flew over tokyo during the famous firebombing and had been made head of the air force or the technical command, the air
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force research and development command. but he was -- although he was lamay's protege, he was not locked in and schreiver recruited him to the idea of building these. >> but you also mention in here charlie wilson. >> he was the secretary of defense who was opposed to the program but they overcame him. they had enormous obstacles to overcome. they had to intrigue their way into this briefing. because they knew they had to get to see the president and get the president to give his impra m imprimatur to this thing and get the thing done. but you don't just ring up the president. they went through an elaborate amount of intrigue. they leaked classified report to
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a senator henry "scoop" jackson, the big hawk in washington. and he held a hearing in the atomic energy committee. and they fed him information for these hearings. and gardner appeared, they were closed hearings, secret hearings. and then jackson and another prominent senator wrote president eisenhower and said you've got to look in to this thing, this is important and you're not looking at it and you've got to do something about it. you've got to the be briefed on it. and eisenhower told the head of the nfc to schedule a briefing not knowing that the men who were going to brief him were the men that drafted the letter that jackson had signed and who had instigated the whole thing. the head of the national security council before the briefing when he's giving them instructions on how they've got to keep this thing to half an hour, told him, they were not under any circumstances to refer to this letter which had been
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sent to the president by scoop jackson. not knowing that they were the guys that drafted the leer. >> this guy still lives on today. >> it was very shrewdly done and very necessary. the briefing was on july 28th. eisenhower -- then you had some bure ro bureaucratic fal folderol to go through. >> but on the business of leaking you have one of the biggest leaks of all-time, pentagon papers. >> that's true. >> i remember when robert mcnamara was here years ago i asked him whether or not he'd ever read the pentagon papers and first of all i said they were in his garage and he said he never read the papers. >> i'm not sure that's true. >> because? >> because i think his conscience may have drawn him to
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reading parts. he knew we were going to publish it. >> and you've admitted who leaked you those papers? let me go back to this narrative for this book, it's a long complicated story but dan elsburg copied the paper. >> you wrote that they were preceded to the white house much earlier. the staff car pulls up to the guard cubicle inside the northwest gate to the white house off of pennsylvania avenue at precisely 7:30 a.m. as i'm reading this i'm saying to myself, how did he get this stuff. who told you this stuff? >> now, this another important thing. vince ford had put together a memoir. vince ford was a colonel who worked first for schreiver and then for gardner as his assistant. and ford had been using
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schreiver's paper. >> never published? >> never published. it's sitting in the eisenhower library now. it never will be. it's well over 1,000 pages. >> and he let you have it. >> he let me have it. >> did you read the whole thing? >> i read the whole thing. and also i read all of schreiver's papers which were vast as well. >> on the same page there's a quote i wanted to ask you about this because you say he wrote this in his diary that night the night before, termite in the woodworks. >> yes, that was his term because he sensed the hostility and they got this briefing from the head of the nfc who told him now you were restricted to half an hour, you're not to refer to this letter from jackson to the president in order to pressuring him in to do anything you want him to do. schreiver realized this man was not in favor of the program. and his term for that was
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termites in the woodwork. he had wonderful phrases. >> how much of the diary did he keep? >> he kept -- his diary was very sporadic. he kept it -- it was a daily diary. but it was a working diary. he'd write down appointments and remarks. they tended to be very terse except when something big occurred. and then he'd write a memorandum as he did for this briefing. which he gave me. his memorandum is the -- and what vince ford added to it in his memoir is the only record of the briefing that exists. >> is vince ford alive? >> no, he's dead. he was bennie schreiver's age and he preceded. >> his job was? >> he was assistant to gardner but his job was intriguing he was a behind-the-scenes man for schreiver and gardner.
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>> how much were you able to interview him? >> i was able to interview him at length. >> is it all on tape? >> all on tape. i'm not online, i don't have e-mail because i've been warned by computer gurus that if i did get it, sooner or later somebody would -- i would get a bug on that computer and loose the book. >> as long as we're talking about this because i assume you'll have the reaction and all of this, i have my hands on papers of collection for the library of congress and we've got video of your collection, you can see this on the screen. where is this over from the john paul rand story? >> i will eventually give these papers to the library as well. the papers i gathered in the course of writing this book. my personal papers went over to the library to be put with van's papers because when i wrote the vietnam book, i had all of john
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rand's papers. his family gave them to me. in exchange for a share of the film rights. >> can the public see this? >> oh, yes. all you have to do is go to the library of con >> esand the manuscript room and the reading room and it's all available. >> are the audiotapes from this collection and interviews? >> yes. 285 from the vietnam book. >> and how many from this book? >> well, i did 120 interviews, maybe 150. >> can people record them? >> well, i don't know if they could record them. you'd have to ask the library that, but they'll be able to listen to just as my vietnam tapes are available to listen to. i believe in preserving things and the library of congress does a wonderful job of preserving. they have a system set up where there's wonderful security in the manuscript reading room. you have to be agree to be
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searched and they lock up everything and they bring the papers for you to look at. >> back to the narrative on this meeting in the white house in 1955. you say here that it was often -- the room is a broadcast room. is that still there? >> i don't know. it's been very hard. i don't think it is. >> in the west wing of the white house. >> in the west wing of the white house. the white house keeps changing constantly. and as far as i can figure out that room is gone. >> did you try to go in and see it? >> i did. i was told, well, nobody really understood -- knew whether it still existed or not. probably is another room -- if it's still there it's another room. >> you say here it was often used for briefings and on this humid washington morning in july it was filled with rows of straightback wooden chairs the one exception to this austere seating watt capacious plumply stuffed red leather armchair in the center of the first row for the comfort of the president. why did you put that in there? >> well, because it's a nice detail. and because he was the monarch.
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now, you have to remember that after world war ii when we had a president named roosevelt who was such a great, towering figure, the president -- the american presidency acquired enormous prestige and until the war in vietnam changed matters and tipped things the other way. the president was -- presidency was far outweighed in influence the legislative or the judicial branches of the government. and the president was treated as a monarch. i mean, to the point of john kennedy adding six or eight trum put trumpets to the three or four they had already. it had a regal atmosphere. and eisenhower was every bit the commander in chief from world war ii. it really was a monarch. >> you point out the meeting got started a little late. some presidents arrive on time.
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at 10:00. then i read they had not waited long when suddenly the door swung open and eisenhower appeared striding at a fast pace down the corridor. he seemed angry about something, his face flushed. whatever it was, it apparently concerned defense secretary wilson who was working beside him. he used to run general motors? >> he was called engine charlie wilson for that reason. >> they swept into the briefing room. the briefing. then what happened? >> well, president sat down. he nodded to the head of the nfc who was already up in the podium, and he gave a very brief introduction. and the first guy to get up was gardner. and the tactic was very clever. gardner scared the bejesus out of everybody in the room. you're talking about the whole of the american establishment, governmental establishment here, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, other members of the joint chief, the cabinet
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secretaries. he proceeded to tell them just how dangerous the situation was. the soviets are in the process of building these things. we were not doing it seriously because of the impediments to it and it was 15 minutes to doomsday because that's how much -- that's the only warning you got. and he passed it on, and they scared the living bejesus out of these people. he gave them an analysis of the size of the warhead, the explosive force, et cetera. and then they set it up so that schreiver could wrap it up and tell what was needed to get this thing done, correct this very dangerous situation. >> you have one line i want to read, he had no intimation -- on this, you are talking about --
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on one of the most eventful days of his life he had 19 months to live in which the thing. he is not well remembered now, but he died at age 53. he had testticular cancer and they had not discovered it before the briefing. they discovered it a month later and died then 19 months later in walter reed. >> there is a lot more that we are not going to be getting to, because it is a long narrative, but what did the president say after this briefing and ohow long did the briefing go? >> the briefing lasted and ran an hour and after ha, because van noiman ran over the time, but he never lost the intent. they could see they had the attention of the president and the audience.
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then shriever got up with an eight-minute rocket testing film from out in california where they were testing the first engines of the fiery things that they were lashing down for concrete stands and test them, fire them, and they had an eight minute film of this to show the president at the end of it for the president if he wanted to see it. so shriever knew he was running over the time, and he was one of the most handsome men. and he was one of the most handsome men i had ever met, and in those i das with the uniform and the striking good looks. this tall man at 6'3", slim. he started his briefing and then he stopped, and he said, mr. president, we also have an eight-minute film that we would like to show at the end of this,
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if you wish to see it. and eisenhower nodded to him. in other words, you have all of the time you want, general. just go right ahead and brief me and tell me what is going on. and ford noticed that eisenhower had moved forward and he was sitting on the edge of the chair. he was no longer sitting back in the, back in the easy chair, but he was on the edge of it, sitting like this as shriever was briefing him on what to do to get it started. >> and he says, most impressive. most impressive and no question that this weapon will have an impact on all mew man life, and not onpolitical and social. was that true?
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>> yes, but what it did was to keep the peace. >> and the next page you bring in the vice president of the united states then, richard nixon, and what you have quoted here is that he is him saying, why haven't we started this sooner after eisenhower started the room, what has been the hold up, the vice president said, tapping the palm of the right hand and the gesture of the emphasis that was peculiar to nixon. >> yes, nixon would do that. >> and the reason i bring it up is that five years later in 1960, missile gap was a charge from the kennedy administration or the kennedy candidate to the eisenhower administration, and it turned out that after it was over, perhaps there was no missile gap, so fill us in on than one. >> there was a missile gap, but the gap was on the soviet side. by that time shriever and is the gang had built a ibcm, and to build a nuclear stalemate, but
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politics being what it was and you remember we just still had the u2 then, and not the spy satellites. and the u2 showed that the soviets did not have, and there was no missile gap. they did not have a usable force of icbms and yiz en hoeisenhowe want to admit what he was getting from the u2 and he held it close to his chestment and nixon had been briefed on it. and kennedy was briefed on it. and he stopped using the missile gap business. this country has been filled are the are the beginning of the cold war with fearmongers. beginning with the long erroneous telegram, and then the national security action and the
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memoranda 68 which said that the russians are coming. stalin has the plan for world conquest. they are stronger than we are. they'll be in paris in the morning kind of business. so kennedy was taking advantage of this to charge that there was a missile gap, and the russians were ahead of us. he was briefed on it, and given the secret briefing as presidential candidates do, and he stopped talking about it himself, but he did not tell the campaign supporters to stop talking about it. >> again, let me come forward to the time, and back then you talked about thomas and woolridge who people would know as the trw corporation. >> yes. >> they were involved in all of the talk. >> yes. >> did they end up benefiting from the building of the missile? >> yes. ramo, who was the scientific --
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shriever realized and so did gardner that we didn't have a o aerospace in this country, and we had no aerospace. the aircraft companies were not capable of providing the expertise of providing the technology involved in creating this. they had to create it. they had to get the expertise to get it. and ramo who was a product of cal-tech again and who had been up to general election and then started his own company after dean woolridge after building the first air to air aircraft, and they spotted him and realized that he not only had the sense or the expertise to overcome these technological obstacles himself, but he would gather the talent necessary to
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do it. he and woolridge broke away from hughes and formed a company which was designed to get high class talent to get recruited, high technology talent. so shriever and gardner put him to work, ramo, to work, and technically both ramo and the partner woolridge, and turned out that the reputation that they built was the basis for the trw. >> as i said 21 years ago you sent us on the mission of over 21,000 interviews in the time slot and mostly about books, but i want to show the audience what you said 21 years ago about the impact of the book you wrote "bright shining light" on your family, and give us an update on the family. let's watch this. >> the book was a difficult time for the family all of those years, although actually, it made us closer as a family.
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i was able to be around to raise the kids. >> two kids? >> yes, a boy and a girl. daddy's book is finally done. >> how old are they now? >> our youngest is 19 and throughout most of her life, it was daddy's book. and the family word is when daddy's book is done, and well, daddy's book is finally done, and they are happy. >> those daughters are how old now? >> well, one is 42 and the other one is 39. >> where are they? >> the younger one is the special assistant to the general consulate to the fbi here in washington. she is married and given us one grandson and pregnant with another boy. and the older daughter has been unfortunately disabled through failed cervical surgery on the neck. she is active in the sense that she is abe to drive and move around, but she can't work anymore. but she still has -- we have a
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close relationship with both of them. >> and the wife susan? >> susan writes now mainly for "architectural digest" because the "new yorker" has changed, and they have all been patient with the book as they were with the first one. >> daddy's book is slow. >> and we are out of time and this is looking like a lot of the last book that you wrote. neil sheehan "a fierily peace and cold war." we thank you for joining us. for a dvd copy of the program call 1
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