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like no other. since 1979 we've been your primary source for capitol hill. providing balanced unfiltered coverage of government, taking you where to the policies is debated. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. . hi, everyone. please turn your cell phones off. thank you so much for coming to tonight's program with ben mac intire. i want to thank the ebelle for their graciousness to me, membership organization built for women by women.

they built this place over a hundred years ago, they provide a rich array of cultural, its value is obviously terrific. before we get to tonight's discussion which i can't wait to hear, writers block is committed to free speech. this is a nice crowd including some well-behaved english people so i don't anticipate disruption. i need to point out that tonight the floor belongs to ben macintyre and david kippin. if there's any behavior that make our participants feel threatened or uncomfortable we reserve to ask you to leave in the nicest way possible. now for tonight, when ben releases a new book it's a cause for great personal celebration.

i think two of ben's books make the cut and stay there. i'm prone to reading fiction. ben's new book "the siege," contains every element of any great thriller, terrorists driven by ideology taking over the iranian embassy in london and hold 26 people hostage, ordinary run of the mill people at the wrong place at the wrong time. ben gives us context to their demands, sketching some background into iranian conflict over the centuries. but it's at that that part that tethers me to this book, it's the characters involved in. what a cast it is, too.

the bbc guys who happen to be there on visa. anyway, arab journalist who sympathizes with the plo. the terrorists themselves are so out of their element, i cringed reading about them. as this crisis played out it was covered in real time and it was as ben argues sort of the development of 24-hour news coverage. i'm not giving away anymore. except i can't help myself. i love this book. think about it. hostages. iran.

rescue operations. all the stuff of our painful headlines every day. speaking of heroes david is a hero to many in l.a. the former book critic and director, he runs a store front lending library. he's the author of some terrific books including "dear california," david and ben will chat for a while and when they're through, feel free to ask some questions. i can pass around a mic and we'd appreciate you waiting for me to do that, because we want the audio covered for c-span. when they're through, they'll

sign copies of the siege and my pleasure to introduce ben macintyre and david kippin. >> thank you. >> wonderful. zblrjts thank you all for coming. it's lovely to see you here. thank you, andrea -- where did andrea do? thank you for inviting me to do this. because i'm incredibly honored to be up here with ben macintyre. you get to listen to him. it's been a thrill reading this book on which i compliment you, and you're every interviewer's dream because of not only having met you 20 minutes ago but you

also brought a slide show for show and tell. >> show and tell. holiday. >> how long did you work on this book. >> i've been working on this for quite a long time. i started in earnest in about 2 1/2 years ago. >> it's long holiday. >> my little holiday snaps. >> show us what you did on your 2 1/2-year summer vacation. >> okay, thank you very much. it's great to be back at writers bloc. let me paint a picture. so on may the 5th, 1980, i was 17 years old, and i was watching the -- final in the uk. 17 in 1980 it was incredibly exciting. there were 14 million people

tuned into watch the snooker final. the embassy snooker final. it was sponsored by embassy cigarettes. >> it's a table and lots of balls, a colored television, it's almost impossible to watch, you can't tell which balls are which. it was the embassy world championship finals, sponsored by embassy cigarettes. those were the days. everyone smoked. if you listened to the sound track all you could hear was coughing. suddenly they cut away to this --

>> this was in real time, the first time that live news and so you see, this is the elite special forces team going in to try to liberate the hostages, 22 of them still in the building, that had been held for six days, the building almost immediately burst into flames, you can see it here, and in a second -- these are the first hostages being brought out of the back. it's still on fire, in a second you'll see a moment coming up. you can see the crouching bloody snipers. beckoning to one of the hostages harris abbc sound recordist, that's what he very self-deprecating calls his balcony scene. at that point his jacket was on fire, you can't quite see it

from the footage. i had never seen anything like this before. one of the reasons i became a news journalist later in life because this -- there had been exciting footage of news events before, the moon landing, the killing of jfk, never before had live television arrived in sitting rooms across the world. and all three channels there were three channels then in the uk, all three of them moved from this, moved from there was john wayne on bbc 1. coronation street on itv, they all moved to this live footage and it had a permanent effect on british cultural life. >> how would you characterize that effect, what do you mean? >> i think anybody who watched it remembered it forever. it's quite interesting.

in britain if you're over 50, this event was kind of seared on national consciousness. margaret thatcher was in power for a year, first serious test of her resolve, of what kind of premier she was going to be, if it had gone the other way, if as many predicted, she was told before this happened, if this embassy has to be cleared out by force you can expect 40% casualties. 4 out of the 10 of those people will be killed or injured as a result. if that happened, had that happened, margaret thatcher's premiership would have come to a premature end. >> do you think deserves much of the credit? >> it was a very bold gamble that she took, that was characteristic. it also empowered her in a way

to think that the military could do magical things. one of the reasons why subsequently i think over the falklands war she was gung-ho about that. it convinced her that the british army was an all-powerful force. it had an impact on terrorism. the ira in ireland were watching this, too. everybody was watching this. and i had an impact. it had a deterrent effect on ira hostage-taking. it didn't end the troubles in any way, but it was a moment for what thatcher was going to be like. >> may we have the next slide, please. >> to put this into context the year before, in 1979, the shah

of iran, the west's favorite oil-rich dictator was overthrown by the islamic fundamentalist government of the ayatollah. bitterly opposed to the west and one of the first events that many of you will remember was the taking over of the -- i'm pressing the wrong one here -- thstudent militants who over the american embassy in tehran. they weren't students but they were actually militia. the standoff would last a long time. there were 55 hostages, american diplomats and soldiers held inside that building. and six days before the attack on the iranian embassy in london, american special forces had attempted to free the

hostages in iran, the ill-fated and ultimately disastrous operation eagle claw in which a large number of american servicemen died, it was a complete failure and it marked carter's administration from then on, arguably his reputation never recovered from this failure. in some ways it was a ciprocal operation. the six men that attacked the embassy in1980 weren't islamic fundamentalists they were arabs, part of the oppressed arab minority in iran who had been repressed first of all by the shah and then brutally by the eye toll la security service. this is forecast never published before taken just a few hours before they attacked the

embassy. >> how do you get a photograph that has never been published before. >> the arabs of iran referred to themselves, they have for decades have fought for autonomy within the arab part of iran the oil-rich part of iran which they call -- this photograph was given to me by the relative of one of the people involved, i mean how it was smuggled out it's not clear to me, it must have come from the person organizing the whole operation who was in in fact saddam hussein. an iraqi plot to destabilize the iranian government. saddam hussein worked out that he could use this arab protest movement in kazakzstan as a way

to get to the ayatollah. the story is the first battle the iran/iraq war. which would erupt five days after this. saddam hussein bankrolled, equipped and encouraged this entire operation, we did it through two people. the man in the middle who would go on to become the world's most wanted. he was living in baghdad and working for saddam as a kind of a freelance terrorist consultant. he was the mastermind who organized the whole thing. the man on the right is an iraqi intelligence officer. i say is, because i'm sure he is still around. >> didn't answer his phone for interviews? >> i think i know where he is. oddly enough, didn't want to talk to me.

he accompanied this group of men to london. he arranged for them to get explosives and submachine guns and pistols via the iraqi embassy. the weapons came through the iraqi diplomatic bag. 15 minutes before the assault took place on the embassy, he climbed on a plane to paris and was never seen again. >> that's the line where you say most terrorist operations are planned by intelligent men and executed by -- >> morons. it's not quite true of this. the two leaders of the group, of the six gunmen were rather intelligent men. they were university educated. they spoke multiple languages. they were being manipulated. they had been promised what would happen is simple. they would take hostages. take iranian hostages.

the diplomats hostage. use these as bartering tools to exchange for arab prisoners in iran. they were told the british government would provide them with an airplane and they would fly home. it sounds incredibly naive now. actually, in the context of 1970s terrorist spectaculars, there were precedents for this. other terrorist groups had persuaded governments to exchange prisoners for freedom. that is what they thought was going to happen. they had not calculated with one extremely important factor, and that was margaret thatcher. >> has this book been translated into -- i don't know if it's -- >> it will be. there's already an arabic translation underway. it will be fascinating to see

how it's received in that part of the world. the protest movement by arabs in iran continues today. it's brutally put down. but it's still going on. it's still very much part of -- it's one of the many opposition groups that exist towards the fundamentalist government there. >> maybe you want to book an event in tehran? >> let's do it. >> paris. >> okay. fair enough. >> who is this? >> this is one of my favorite characters in the book. this is pc trevor lock who was the british policeman guarding the front door of the embassy when the iran ran gunmen attacked. guarding is an energetic word for what he was doing. he was having a cup of coffee inside. he is a wonderful character. straight out of central casting. he joined the diplomatic protection group, the part of

the metropolitan police that guards embassies, he joined it because it was boring. he was one of those policemen that really -- standing around on the front step, that's what he wanted to do. he once said, i only joined because i wanted to be a local bobby. i wanted to be the person who helped old ladies across the road. he was the last person to be a hero in a situation like this. and yet, he plays an absolutely critical role in what happened. for many reasons, really. the main is perhaps that he became a symbol of solidity. the other reason is that he had a gun. most british policemen in 1980 were unarmed. diplomatic protection officers did carry weapons. he had a pistol on his holster. which he kept hidden under his tunic for the next six days. that gun plays a very, very

important part in the final scene of this story. trevor is still around, i'm delighted to say. without him, i think the whole thing would have ended probably in a bloodbath. >> without him as an interview, the book would have been infinitely poorer. what sort of interview was he? >> he was wonderful interview. amazingly, had never been interviewed before. i think because he is in his 80s. he never wanted to talk about it. like many of the interviews for this book, these are men and women in older age for whom i think the catharsis of being able to talk about this in many cases for the first time was extremely beneficial. i don't want to give away too much of the book. he is a wonderfully modest man. he was awarded the george cross, the highest award for civilian

gallantry, the queen could bestow. he immediately lost it. he put it in his wife's sewing box and forgot where it was for 15 years. that gives an idea of how sort of -- how modest and humble he is about the whole thing. yet, without him, it would have been a different story, i think. >> i guess he had 50 years with holes in his socks. >> i suppose. >> i was saving this question and now i can't resist because we're talking about him. plays a wonderful role in the book. all of us reading the book have to ask ourselves how we would react in a situation like this under tremendous stress at risk of death at any moment. some of them you would have expected to be heroic turn out cowardly. some you expect cowering in the corner were heroes. how do you think you would behave under similar

circumstances? >> thank you. in a way, that's the core question of this book. growing up as a teenager, i thought this book was a simple story in some ways. it was a story of brave british soldiers busting into this building and liberating the hostages and taking out the wicked terrorists. actually, it's a more complicated story than that. it's really about what ordinary people do in appalling circumstances of which they have no control. that's not just trevor. there were british hostages inside. we will move on to some of them. how would i have responded? i don't know. i don't know. i think i would have kept my head down. i really do. i don't think i was the sort of person that would have been particularly brave. i certainly wouldn't have taken on the gunmen. i might have tried to help in negotiations. that is what quite a lot of the hostages ended up doing, particularly the british ones.

there were four british people in there. in a way, they began to develop -- this was one of the elements, fascinating to me, of stockholm syndrome that began to take place. they began to find common cause with the gunmen. they began to see the police and authorities outside as the enemy. so particularly the british hostages and this man on the top left -- is it left for you? yes, top left. began to speak on behalf of the gunmen to the authorities. i think i might have been one of those. i might have tried to help in that way. the one on the top left is one of the people who just wandered into the embassy by accident. he was interviewing one of the press attaches. he was a frequent visitor. he got caught up in it. he plays a crucial part. he is the only person who could speak arabic, his native

language. he was syrian. perfect english. and farsi. he was able to inter-communicate between the three key elements. without him, it would have been a different story. another one for whom that can be said is the woman in this picture. there were six women inside the embassy. their stories have never been told before. they were never asked to tell them. no one ever interviewed them. no one -- they were never invested to testify at trials that took place. >> where was fleet street? >> it was 1980s. this was a male story. it sounds mad now. she was the senior secretary in the embassy. anyone who has been inside an embassy knows the senior secretary is frankly the most important person in the building. she knew exactly how everything ran. she was wonderful at keeping everybody calm, finding food,

trying to explain one side to the other. there was a terrible cleavage going on in the embassy, because the two men on the right were iranian diplomats. the one on top was the most senior. the one on the bottom who was a press attache but was secretly an iranian revolutionary guard. he was there to enforce eye -- ideological conformive. he was a feared figure. he had taken part in the storming of the american embassy in tehran the previous year. in his own way, he was just as if a nat cal

fanatical as the gunmen. >> one of the things that i really marvel at in this book -- you would think, what an exciting story, it would tell itself. we know better. the way you individual -- there's 26 characters. some of -- >> some you never hear about. >> exactly. you have chosen -- how did you choose which ones to focus on? how do you juggle the stories? >> that was one of the difficult things. i ended up with an embarrassment of riches. there were so many people. there was so much evidence. much hidden and unused. for example, this was 1980, so everybody was writing everything down. with pencil and paper or typewriters in a way that meant it lasted. we think we are keeping our history today writing it down if our computers and on our phone. we're not. that's all going to disappear. i don't know how anyone will write the history of our time. at this time, people were very literate and keen to leave some

sort of record. i found no fewer than four unpublished manuscripts written by different participants. one policeman, one sas officer and two of the hostages. the guy you saw leaping across the balcony, he brought out with him inside that jacket a diary that he had been keeping almost minute by minute of what was going on inside. he gave it to me. to answer your question, i kind of privileged those whose voices i felt i could hear. of course, that's not everybody. the gunmen left no record. they didn't write it all down. but yet, again, they were faceless figures. i think no one had tried to find out who they were and why they had done this thing. i have no -- i'm not defending them in any way. these were men of violence who

were prepared to kill and prepared to die. but they have their story. they have a reason, as they see it, for doing what they were doing. if you don't explain that, if they don't become characters in the story, then they become symbols of something else. that doesn't work. >> for an event that seems to have traumatized the country and stayed with them so long, i assume that this book is tremendously successful in britain. it's exposing a story they thought they knew and didn't know the first thing about. >> it is doing quite well. it's number two on the best seller list at the moment. i think that's because it really was for many british people and others around the world -- actually, hundreds of press people gathered when this started. it was a where were you when it happened moment. no fewer -- by the end, there were 450 journalists had

gathered and were into a metal pen in hyde park to stop them from breaking out and get inside. it didn't work. they broke out the whole time. one tv camera was set up at the back of the building filming what was happening. the police didn't know it was there. in fact, if the gunmen had been watching television, they would have seen what was happening as the place was assaulted. i mean, it's -- for british people, it went incredibly deep, partly because it also catapulted the sas, which had been a shadow of the organization. most people in britain had never heard of the sas. overnight, it became a sensation. as we say, solidified margaret thatcher's hold on power. they became a cultic group. >> you say at one point -- you quote somebody else as saying, it was the worst thing that happened to the sas because they operated in the shadows.

all of a sudden, they became supermen. i guess you have been complicit in that. how many books have you written about the sas? >> this is my second. i probably am complicit. i think they're all -- like everybody in the story, the sas are complicated people. they operate from a variety of motives. they are not butch heroes that go in and solve everything. this is -- i added to it, i guess. i think the sas has -- the person who made that remark was the person who commanded the sas on this casion, michael rose. he does feel the sas never recovered from it. he is right in some ways. that gr as special forces around the world, struggle with the tension between their own celebrity and the need for secrecy. you can't run special operations in the limelight. it doesn't work.

they have never really worked it out. >> i should mention, ben is the author of a book which became a documentary and a series i think going into its second season about the sas. you want to talk about that? that's wonderful. >> that's the second season of sas rogue heroes is about to hit your screens. i don't know which of your screens it's going to hit. on ours, the bbc. >> they call it rogue heroes here. people think sas is an airline. >> that's been hugely successful. that's de by steve knight. >> a great movie called "lock." a great screenwriter. >> some people refer to sas rogue heroes as cocky blinders. that incredible energy, it's very evident. >> what have you got next?

>> i can't even remember. one of the things the police had to do was to work out who these people were. the metropolitan police had never heard of the area. it was an unknown conflict taking place in a distant land. the learning curve was very, very steep. these are the earliest photos and reports and attempts by the police to work out who these people were. who were the hostages? who was inside that building? they were a very mixed bag. one of the other things they had to do -- much of the intelligence they were gathering was based on audio probes. right from the beginning, mi5, our security service, the equivalent of the fbi and police technicians began drilling micro-probes through the adjoining walls from either building on either side.

also, they began lowering eavesdropping devices down the chimneys. every package of food that went in contained a listening device as well. this was an attempt to get an audio picture of who was who inside there. to try to work out both where the hostages and gunmen were located, who were the leaders, who were organizing this. they felt the hostages might have been complicit. the audio picture was a tricky thing. it sounds rustic technology today. today, it would have been easy to beam in eavesdropping devices many then devices. you had to use hand drills. it made a noise. >> tell them about the "1812 overturn e overture." >> they were aware the gunmen were listening. there's a weird moment where at

the albert hall, a performance of "1912 overture" was planned. hang on, when the cannonade bit happens, the famous bit, the gunmen are going to think they're being attacked. it's a real conversation that took place with the conductor where a policeman approached him and said, would you mind not doing that bit? of course, we're going to do that. anyway, they did and nothing happened. the audio probes nearly went drastically wrong. the gunmen could hear this squeaking noise. trevor lock was summoned by the lead gunman to where the noises were happening. we're about to be attacked. trevor knew exactly what that was. he put his cap on and listened to the wall. i think we have mice. it was total nonsense. he knew it was.

the audio problems, the police picked up that conversation and decided that they would have to cover the noise somehow. the first thing they did was to call the gas board and arrange for two men in overalls with large drills to arrive about 100 feet from the front door and start digging a large and completely unnecessary hole in the pavement to try to cover the noise of the drills. it was deafening. no one could do anything. even the police were being driven bonkers. they had to stop doing that. the next thing was stranger. they contacted the civil aviation authority at heathrow. arranged for planes to be diverted from usual ths to fly lower over the embassy. those planes were noisier today -- then than they are today. it worked. strangely, the technicians would wait until they could hear the rumble of a plane.

then drill like mad into the wall and wait until the sound stopped. by the end, a lot of the reports were based on what they were hearing inside the embassy. those transcripts, those were gold dust. that allows me to know what was being said among the different people inside. the dialogue in the book, much of the dialogue comes from these devices. >> i don't want to misrepresent you. between this and rogue heroes, one might wealthy that you are a specialist exclusively in stories about commandos. that's something you do very well. but you also write about spies. wonderful book made into a movie called "the spy among friends." the story about the cambridge spies. what's more fun to write about? >> that's very difficult. in a way, the sas are themselves

a form of espionage. they do operate under covert rules. for me, espionage, spying is the kind -- the first love. i'm particularly attracted to that kind of -- that species. you can write about -- spying for a non-fiction writer, it's such a rich resource. when you write about espionage, you can write about the sorts of things that novelists usually write about, loyalty and love and betrayal and adventure and romance. they're all true. spies are wonderfully indiscreet. they love telling stories. particularly if they are not supposed to. they are also extremely unreliable narraters of their lives. you have the challenge of trying to figure it out, what is true and what is not. i think that's why i'm sort of attracted to that world. if you can find a sufficient

density of material, you really can tell a story if it works that feels like a novel. and yet, is entirely true. as true as i can make it. i'm very, very rigorous about that. if i say the room smelt of steal bread and she had a headache, that's because i know it was true. in a way, the spy stories allow you to do that. there's often particularly if you have declassified files, there's access to these real richness of material. >> was your introduction to that world through fiction like so many of us? >> yes. i read a lot of summerset moore. these are spies these people. spying and novel writing, they're not so different. both are weaving an artificial world and trying to lure other people into it.

there's a reason why ian fleming, summerset moore, graham green, they had been in the spy services at some point. i guess that was my introduction. that was sort of how it started. i was briefly recruited by mi6 when i was at university. >> how did that go? >> not very well, really. i enjoyed it. i wanted to be recruited. i sort of -- i hung around the particular tutor who i knew was the recruiter. eventually, he sent me to meet a man. i enjoyed it. i did it for a little bit. it became clear quickly that as i have demonstrated, i can't keep a secret. i wasn't the right person. i don't like keeping secrets. i like revealing them. it's more fun. it left me with a long fascination for that world. i think it's a wonderful world. it has built into it a moral --

a central moral conundrum. spies do bad things sometimes for good reasons. >> who is your favorite among the novelists? this may not be the same question. who comes the closest to getting it right, past or present? >> past john lacarry. he was also a friend of mine. he was incredibly helpful to my writing. you mentioned "a spy among friends." that story came from him. he gave me that story on a walk when i was fishing around for a new book. he said, i have a really good idea. he knew one of the protagonists in the story. he was generous. nobody before or since has quite dug into the psychology of spying with his acuteness and his style and his brilliance. he was the best.

mick herron of the current lot is brilliant, too. >> he is the guy who writes the slow horses novels. i believe you have a connection with that show. >> yes, i do. have you watched slow horses? i don't know which channel it's on here. glad you love it. i think it's brilliant. in a way, what herron has done and will smith, the screenwriter, is to create a new world of spying, which is really -- it's the anti-bond. they are wonderful. they are completely hopeless. they are not, actually. they turn out to be good. they smoke and fart all the time. it's an undermining of the glinting 007 genre. it's brilliant, i think. i have a connection. will smith, the screenwriter of that series, is writing the screenplay of this one. he is doing it at the moment. they will do a six-part series,

which will be -- it will be a day an episode. it will be a gradual -tock. i am executive producer. is that right? >> a very demanding role. >> some sort of made-up title. i haven't asked what it means. i discovered from being involved is that it -- you either stand around not nod looking pretty o they want you to have input. i'm happy either way. i would love to have a bit baltimore to more to do with this. will is ily. he is interested in character. he is interested in personality. i know he doesn't want to make this just another shoot 'em up story. it's about -- done from all the

different vantage points, not just sas, it's the police and gunmen and hostage negotiators and politicians and thatcher and america. there are different ways of looking at this story. i think -- i hope he will -- i know he will make it into a multifacetted story. >> i can't wait. i will open it up to questions in a couple of minutes. i hope people have some. >> i have the mic. i will pass it around. >> you have more slides. >> i will take you quickly through the final moments. that's the frontal assault. that's simm escaping. that's some of the hostages on the back lawn. they couldn't be sure who was

a hostage -- >> i don't want -- the one in the red jacket is one of the gunmen. >> these photos are captioned cagily in the book. >> th is margaret thatcher with her farite military unit. >> second from the left, right? >> yes. this is just after -- this is not giving too much away. after the assault on the emssy, the sas troopers gather for a party. the beer is flowing. they are all completely up to their ears in testosterone. they are all wearing the overalls soaked in tear gas they have gone into the building on. margaret thatcher and her husband turn up. they began wandering among the troopers and shaking hands. somebody noticed margaret had tears running down her face.

everyone thought it was -- it was the tear gas. she wasn't moved by who was going on. she was too tough for that. there's a moment in the scene i think when the story comes on the television and it's -- the footage is playing. all the troopers, the soldiers are watching themselves on television for the first time. a figure moves in front of the screen. they all shout, sit back down. sit down whoever it is. it's margaret thatcher. she ducks out of the way. it's one of my favorite bits. she was not used to being talked to like that. >> you save it for the end of the chapter, where it belongs. most of the chapters end where they want to. the risk with a book like this is everybody is fascinated by the story and they don't notice how brilliantly it's told. what else? >> that's it. >> we're there. i hope everybody has some questions. >> i do.

before i get to all of you, i guess i could have you guys ask questions. i will forget if i wait. you said -- i'm so glad you didn't become a spy. i'm so glad. thank you very much. but you would have been a great one because you like to reveal things. what about revealing disinformation. think of all the stuff you could make up and then give to the bad guys. >> i think that would have been fun. you are right. i'm not sure i would be good on the front line. i would enjoy being in the back cooking up mad deception plans. i would love to have been involved in operation mincemeat, one i read about. they were all frustrated writers. all the people who planned that bonkers plot, which was to get a dead body, give it a false identity, false papers, ship it

where the germans would find it and divert german attention from the assault on cicely. it was a completely mad, mad plot. all the people involved were frustrated novelists. they treated it as if they were writing a novel. they gave this character a back story and a girlfriend. an angry father. they stuffed this stuff in his wallet. they went completely over the top. they said, we're not trying to convince everybody. we're trying to convince germans. they thought the literalness would work. weirdly, that has been made into a musical, believe it or not. it's an all singing, all dancing musical in the west end. it's totally mad. i loved it. i went determined not to like it. i emerged thinking this is brilliant. six actors playing 23 parts. it's about a dead body.

>> i just caught up with the television version. that was very good. >> wonderful. i was quite closely involved in that. >> congratulations. >> that was such fun. to answer your question, i would love to have been one of those people cooking up odd plots. i don't think i would have been much good behind the iron curtain trying to ferret out secrets from military officials. that wouldn't have been my scene at all. >> you have a journalist background. no journalist would omit to ask the question, are you a frustrated novelist? >> if i'm -- i would love to have a try. i never dared. i guess, narrative non-fiction

gives me a structure. a begin, a middle and an end. if i was unleashed on fiction, i wouldn't know where to stop. >> you could pull a ruth rendell and have many names. >> i would love to try one day. >> spy fiction? >> it would have to be. >> it's an honor to be here. thank you for bringing this information. i was born in iran. i was 14 during the revolution. when i read that email, i have never in my life heard of this incident. >> where were you at the time? >> iran. i was 15 years old. that was during the hostage taking, american hostages. of course, my family, my father was military in the army. we were the westerners.

>> really? how did your family get out? >> we couldn't. we couldn't. it was very difficult. honestly, i don't know what percentage of people in iran really know about this incident. i'm not sure. >> more than you would think. it was quite big news at the time in iran as it was around the world. iran's government immediately leapt to the conclusion it must have been organized by the cia. they immediately blamed america for this. it wasn't. it was done by saddam hussein. the immediate assumption was it must be a reciprocal revenge attack for what was happening at the american embassy in tehran. when it became clear that wasn't the case, the iranians began to put pressure on britain to bring it an early conclusion, to save

the diplomats to get them out. america was also putting pressure on britain in the hope that if it could be solved bloodlessly, if that would in a way curry favor with the iran regime and be used as a lever to try to get the hostages out of the american embassy. all of these things were linked up. it was daily news in the iranian press as well of what was going on. it was blamed on the imperialist powers. it was a big story. the other thing the iranian government said was all the iranians will be happy to die as martyrs, which is not true. many of the iranians had no intention of dying as martyrs. >> i bet they didn't. one thing you mentioned, maybe i'm the complete ignorant person who lived in iran. i was a teenager. i never heard of the area.

to iranians, it's saudi arabia. i never knew there were arabs in iran. we knew there were kurds. >> i think that's fascinating you didn't -- there were 4 million of them. there's still a sizable majority in the province, which is what iranian or persian iranians refer to that region as, the oil rich region. it was used as the name used by arabs of that part. it wouldn't have been used or used by persian speaking iranians. it's used today. the protesting minority refer to it that way. it had briefly been that name in the 19th century. there was a small group known by

that. it was supported by the british and americans. then in the power politics of the time, support was withdrawn. had it continued, it would have been qatar, a very small, very rich arabic oil state. it was an accident of history it didn't happen. >> thank you for entertaining everybody. it was wonderful. the sas were very impressed with margaret thatcher. is it true about when margaret thatcher went to the killing room with the secretary? you want to tell that story? >> i didn't put it in the book. she tells douglas herd not to be so scared? >> yeah. margaret thatcher went to where the sas are. she went to the killing room where they practice with live

ammunition. she had the secretary with her. the sas burst in and opened fire. the secretary basically jumped under the chairs and was -- the sas said that margaret thatcher didn't bat an eye. she sat there. what did she say? basically, yeah -- >> i half believe that story. >> exactly. >> that sounds like a story that margaret thatch er would have told. one that i know true is that -- the killing house is a non- non-descript building. following the olympic massacre, the sas had been preparing and had a unit on standby to do this. almost every day they would go into the building and different hostage scenarios would play

out. the room layout would change. there would be figures in the corner that represent gunmen or hostages. the royal family was taken there and still are to see what would happen in a hostage situation. there was a moment -- because i had corroboration -- when prince charles and princess diana went to witness an episode in the killing house. they accidentally set fire to her hair. i know this is true. i got two witnesses to it. she was very nice about it. >> another question was, is it true that the sas wanted to drag one of the terrorists back into the building? >> this is the most controversial element of this story is that right at the end, the man in the red jacket you saw face down on the lawn there, had managed to escape really by hiding among the hostages. particularly the women who had

become fond of him. there's this moment when one of the other hostages spotted this man, spotted that he had got out and said to them, that's a terrorist. grab him. the sas got to him. lifted him up. the women gathered -- they hadn't been handcuffed. gathered and said, don't hurt him. he is our brother. whether the sas would have dragged him back inside and killed him, as some eyewitnesses believe, or whether that was -- the senior officers say that would never have happened. there were too many witnesses. it's not what they were trained to do. that wasn't their job. they weren't there to kill people. they were there to save lives. in the book it's one of the few moments i am ambivalent about. i think it will never be solved. certainly, he seems to have

feared he was going to be killed. some of the troopers have described the red mist that comes down when those things happen. what we know for certain is that it didn't happen. they did not execute that last person. >> thank you. i thought i knew the story, like a lot of people, and i didn't. tremendous amount of interest in details. fascinating. two things. i was living in knights bridge at the time. i was 200 yards away when the bomb went off, the explosion. we heard it, turned on the tv and watched it. that was great. >> fantastic. >> it was. i was 22. the second point which i'm going to make is very impolite and i'm ruder than you. you were too polite. a large part of the reason why the brits loved this is because

the americans had failed six days earlier. honestly. we solutely loved it. that's huge. >> you make a very good point. it was -- you are right. also, margaret thatcher was not above crowing to the americans immediately afterwards. she sent wonderfully sort of faux polite cables saying, if you need any help, we are here to help. absolutely. it was a bit of oneupmanship. it was battle above its weight. the brits still had it to -- better than the americans. perhaps the down side is that i think it did lead to this gung-ho attitude toward the

falklands. you are the first person i know who heard it live going off. one of the tricky elements of this book has been sort of trying -- particularly among the sas, working out who was there and who wasn't. there's an old joke, if everybody who claimed to have been on that balcony had been on the balcony, it would have fallen off. there's great tradition in british life of saying, i was a part of that. i was there at the time. half the fun here has been -- not the fun. one of the privileges has been that the sas -- the surviving sas people who were involved were given formal military authorization to talk to me. the ministry of defense issued them with passes to talk to me. they have never -- that's never happened before with the sas. officially, they are not supposed to talk about any secret operation they took part in. for this -- i think there are 18 still alive. i have interviewed 14 of them.

>> do we have more? >> i will sneak -- no. there's somebody. >> you can sneak one. >> i don't know how many books, at least half a dozen by now, they all seem to focus on espionage or commando actions in the past. do you take an interest in more contemporary subjects? would you just as soon steer clear? are there events you would love to get your hands on but they are top secret? >> there are plenty of those. on the -- commenting on the current sas operation is a mug's game. there are big investigations in the sas in afghanistan. i try not to draw parallels between that time and this. i mean, my earlier books were earlier. the wartime stuff. when i started 30 years ago, there were living witnesses. i could ask people what it was

like in room 13 where they cooked up operation mincemeat. they have all gone now. i am becoming more modern. i'm moving up into the cold war. this is the most modern one i have done. i found most living witnesses. i need that combination, to have the combination of written material and declassified material and somebody who can tell me what it was like in that room. that's when it really gels together, i think. >> i was just wondering if you interviewed the surviving -- the man in the red vest. >> it's not a question i can really answer. i have tried to cover the identities of a lot of the people in the book. i'm under a no names, no pact. i have covered the names of the sas people. they talked to me. this is a measure of their

modesty. most of them did not want me to use their real name. i'm going to slide away from that question. i haven't identified anybody really particularly. he served 27 years in a british prison. again, if you don't mind, i will slide away from that question. he served his time. he did -- he is an interesting character. he was 20 when it happened. he had no real idea what he was doing. he had never left kazakhstan. he was manipulated by the others. he was excited. anyone who has a 20-year-old son knows what they are like. they think they are invulnerable and run the world. i'm not making excuses for him. he was a fool. but he did serve his time. he lives in britain. he can't go back to iran. he is stuck.

>> i wanted to ask about the future of spying and maybe what you might write fiction about. i read some of your stuff. thespycraft of the old days. you are under surveillance. current spying has to be completely different based on the digital revolution. people aren't going to stop. what will it look like? >> it's a good question. there's always signals intelligence and human intelligence right back to the war, intercepting telegrams, reading people's mail. it has to be combined. even if you have a digital trace on someone, you still need to have somebody in the room to say

when they're on the telephone. you still need to have somebody who can sit opposite your agent and work out whether they are lying to you, whether they are on the other side. human intelligence -- the digital story is so huge -- is more important than ever. it's rarer. it doesn't happen nearly as much. recruiting foreign agents -- you are right. we have a digital footprint from the moment we pick up a mobile phone. that's also falsifiable. there's a training program at gchq, our equivalent of the nsa, a government communication center, they do all that. there's a training program called operation mincemeat, believe it or not. that is where they make false digital identities. in the same way that the dead

body in operation mincemeat was invested with a made-up character, the modern operation mincemeat is about creating false people, people who don't exist but have perfect digital backgrounds. they have facebook. they have instagram accounts. they have emails. those could be falsified. of course, they have to be, because the other side is digging. the russians are trying to find out who is who. if you are trying to foist a false agent on someone you better make sure the digital wallet is as convincing as it was for operation mincemeat. those will bet be the future. i would love to track the chinese digital espionage. that's sophisticated. certainly to me and i suspect most people, incredibly opaque. it's really hard to get a proper handle on that. i think that will be the story.

>> hello. thank you. this has been very enjoyable. like many people here, i never heard of this event before. it's fascinating. can't wait to read the book. basically, maybe a larger kind of question about craft. you mentioned lacarry telling you "the spy among friends request friends " and giving you the story. how do you decide between a good story and a story worth writing about? >> i have a bottom drawer filled with books i'm never going to write. i got sort of into the research and realized there wasn't enough. it only works if you have enough. if you can really drill into what people are thinking and saying and how they were interacting with each other, which is why it's a difficult story.

david cornwall, one piece of advice he gave me -- i have never forgotten it. he said, what we have to do is we have to ensure there's jeopardy on every page that we write. i think by that -- i know what he meant. he didn't mean, will the bomb go off or will our hero be killed? that could be part of it. not that obvious exciting jeopardy. how do you ensure the reader is invested in turning the next page? how do you keep them engaged in what you are doing here? i have -- as a novelist in a way to answer your question about fiction, you have cart blanche to do that. with non-fiction, it's more difficult. you have this wealth of information, half of which you will never use. i'm ruthless. if it doesn't interest me and it doesn't keep the jeopardy going, it goes in the waste paper basket.

these are not scholarly terms where i'm trying to get everything in there with all the footnotes. i'm trying to write a story that will entertain and engage. above all, keep that jeopardy going. that in the end is the final arbitor of whether it's a book i can write and live with or one that i'm going to be struggling. i always feel that with narrative non-fiction, you can tell when the author has run out of road, when they just don't have enough. often it's dressed in a language that says, we may imagine that he thought at this point, or perhaps further down the road he spotted -- those are weasel words, perhaps and let's speculate or wonder that. by that point, you know you are stuffed. you have run out. you haven't got enough to write this. you are making it up. when you feel that -- when i have felt that on the few

occasions, i thought, i need to stop this. i'm not going to be able to tell the story the way i want to. >> last question while you are walking. are all the next books in the drawer? is there one on the table in. >> it's half in the laptop. i'm doing another cold war spy story. it's about a kgb agent who is recruited by western intelligence. unpicks -- never been told before -- a huge amount of middle eastern intelligence in the early '80s. it's also -- i find it completely fascinating, because it's a strange psycho-sexual story. his motives are very bound up with his emotional and his sexual life. it makes him tremendously

interesting. he is run in a complicated way. >> if you haven't -- if it hasn't been told before, how did you find out about it? >> sources. >> they must be knocking on your door around the clock. >> i wish. people think that what happens is mi6 will ring up, we have the next one for you. it doesn't work like that. this is not one that the intelligence services will find very easy, i suspect. i wish they came to one. this comes from a sort of -- from a tip off, yeah. i get sort of criticism. sometimes they disagree with my conclusions or -- the one i wrote about, the spy and the traitor, that was interesting because i had cooperation from

mi6 for that. they didn't prevent me from interviewing their officers who had been involved. some they are more sensitive about, absolutely. some affect national security. this story, i did allow the sas -- one particular person in the sas to read it. they have no editorial control. the only thing i took out was some contemporary capabilities, they call it, that there are things they did at -- one particular thing that they did at this embassy that they would do again if a similar situation arose. they simply said, please don't put it in. it will compromise that capability. that seemed to be a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for. other than that, i don't get much shback. >> i wanted to ask another craft question. on this particular project, what was the most difficult or challenging thing that you had

to solve as a writer? the biggest problem that it posed. >> in terms of craft, the trickiest element i had with this was trying to work out which memories are true and which are not. memory is such a strange thing. when you talk to people about events that took place 43 years ago, they think they have recall of what happened. but actually, memory isn't truth. it's definitely not reality. memory is the story that we tell ourselves, the narrative we tell ourselves to make sense of the past. often our memories are borrowed. we heard somebody else say something about an event we were at. we will sort of absorb that and take it on. it will become part of our memories. there were several examples of this in this story. individuals would be at the same event at the same time and have

completely contrasting memories of what had happened. no one was lying. nobody was deliberately misleading. that's the way memory works. more than one of the officers told me about an incident where towards the end of the assault a sniper had taken a shot from a hidden position in hyde park and killed one of the gunmen through an open window. i had to say to them, that didn't happen. i know that didn't happen. i read all the forensic reports. nobody died that way. those are tricky moments when people have been kind enough and generous enough and some cases -- they are emotionally are telling you what happened. yet, you know or you think you know that it's not quite what did happen. that was the trickiest thing for me was to interview dozens of people and some of them will be

unhappy that i have not taken their version, that i have taken a different version. that's where it becomes, i suppose, in a way, a judgment call on my part. i have do that thing of saying, this is the one i believe and this is the one i don't. that can cause real upset to people. you have to do it. the more interviews you have, the more interviewees you have, the better pattern you have of what's going on. it's true of groups. i think groups, particularly the sas who were not allowed to talk about it outside their group, developed a narrative that they all sort of shared, even if some didn't really remember it. you see what i mean? that's one of the things you have to fight against. >> perhaps the last question or two will have to wait until -- if you are so good to join you outside. >> delighted.

>> in the meantime, we want you to race on home as quickly as possible to your desk and inform us about your kgb agent. if they applaud loudly enough, will you come out and sell a few books and sign them? >> i would be thrilled to. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, david. non-fiction book lovers, c-span has a number of podcasts for you. listen to non-fiction authors and influential interviews.

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