popularity. that they reached out to all of the former presidents who were living, including hoover, and reached out to all of the former president and ask them their advice about what was going on. he constantly talked to them. one day, president truman came to visit. it was the same day that another person came to visit. there were these two wonderful story tellers, wonderful americans there together. i went over to daddy's office to listen in and see what was going on. .

>> because mother was -- she always was trying to make sure that we stretched our budget. [laughter] although the state dinners were paid for, we personally paid for our own food, so we were having hash. and daddy love hash, so he leans over and says to present truman, do you like cash? [laughter] he says yes. -- he says h do says hash. -- he says he he sayshsh.

so we had president truman coming over to eat in this beautiful dining room having hash for lunch. having these people they're listening to these conversations, as somebody who like history, i was a history major. i was fascinated. the question cannot daddy was going through so many traumas and was not sleeping, staying up late worrying about every person in vietnam and everybody. so we asked president truman the question about the bomb. i would like to quote what he said about it. he said that when he was

informed of the existence of the bomb, you may know that president roosevelt had not told him that we had this bomb, so he learned about it only when he became president and how it would probably bring japan to its knees in two or three days. he asked general marshall and general bradley if we invade the japanese islands, how many lives of american boys will be lost? they answered their best guest was between 200,000 people and 300,000 people. president truman said there was not any decision to make. there was nothing to do but dropped it. he went on to say that it was the hardest decision he ever made, but once he made that decision, having gotten the best advice he could get from his advisers, he slipped easy and

this is 1960. -- he slept easy. he fell that the possibility of saving as 300,000 americans and all of the japanese that would have died fighting was worth it. so i really felt that i was there in a moment of history hearing this from the man who had to make that decision. >> you both obviously met some extremely important significant colorful people during your time there. you have mentioned two of them. who else stands out in your memory as someone who is particularly interesting? >> i could go on and on forever, but who i want to tell you about is carl sandburg. i was taking american literature in college. that was a great opportunity. i was going to get to see the

real person, so i brought my school book and he was coming over -- the secretary was giving him a tour of washington and he had his sweet little wife who was 85-years old, about his age. it happened that her brother was the great photographer and he was there with his very young, beautiful wife. we were kind of all -- you know. carl sandberg just looks like he just got out of bed. his clothes were all rumpled and his hair was going every which way. we took him up to the lincoln bedroom and, and this was the room where lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation. so we took him up there and mother had brought the white house books he had written

about the civil war. we asked him to sign them. these were ones that belong to the white house library. i brought my school book and asked him to sign chicago and a lot of his columns, feeling very proud and could hardly to go to class the next day to brag. over there in the room there was a copy of -- mother said carl sandburg, we are so excited. over here we have one of the five copies of the gettysburg address in lincoln's and own handwriting. to which he said everybody knew he could write. [laughter] that is a show-stopper. we all just said huh?

in that time just like today, they were always trying to raise a little money. the red cross-type organization had asked the president to write out his address in his own hand so they could auction it off. somehow this copy had come back to the white house. we were so proud of it, but carl sandberg put us in our place. [laughter] >> out of all the people that you met, it does any one person stand out? >> harry, as a roman catholic convert, this religious journeyed meant the world to me. obviously, having a chance to meet pope paul when he came to the united states, the first pope to come to this country,

was thrilling beyond words. but as important a religious journey as this was, i look back at the photograph that hangs on my wall of his holiness and of my father. what touches me the most deeply is the look on my father's face. pope paul is giving me a special remembrance and my father is looking at me and saying are you happy? did i do well? does this mean something to you? it is the love of a father in the midst of all of this hubub of responsibility penetrating that very historic moment, it was a very personal and touching moment knowing that my father knew that this would mean the world to me.

and i meant the world to him. of course, the facts are that this gift that he made possible in my life was irrepressibly precious, but the gift of his love in the midst of all of those pressures on him makes me realize just how very blessed i was. >> you both were married during this year's. luci, your wedding was notable because it was all mixed up with [unintelligible] >> most girls, when they choose their wedding dress, they make their decisions based on the time of year, the fashion, what is flattering to them, at the budget, those kinds of things. i was no exception.

it did not occur to me that i needed to look for the union label. but i can assure you it occurred to my father. [laughter] and when he found out that i was about to bring on him the biggest embarrassment of all, that after all the women's garment union had done for him and i was going to make its president cry because i was not to be married in a dress with a union label. we decided to take into account the admonishment that my father left on all he knew and loved. maybe let me change that, all he knew period, which was i am not interested in how it cannot be done.

i already know that. i am interested in how it can be done. so we managed to get a second wedding dress made with a union label, and i guess the state secret was that we never announced to the public which dress i wore. [laughter] the other affair of state that came crashing in that most intimate of days was when my father and i were approaching the shrine of the immaculate conception were my ex-husband and i were married. we had our reception in the white house back then. i was the first white house tried in 50 years. later, my sister was actually married in the white house and i was no longer a white house bride. that is how quickly they forget

in public life. [laughter] but that was all right by me because my sister was a history major and it was moving to her, and i was delighted to be a part of it, but this was a special moment in my life. we rounded the bend and i saw pictures -- i saw picketers. this was august 6, 1966, so one might assume that the picketing was vietnam's, but not so. anybody know? [laughter] she probably knew because she heard about it but also new because she was a history major. but i can assure you that i did not. that was when i looked out and saw the picketers who were

picketing me to have been so insensitive to have chosen the anniversary of the day that we had bombed hiroshima for my wedding day. so one realizes on that magical moment, at your wedding day, when you are in the white house and your father is the president, every decision needs to be linked to the affairs of state. there really are no personal decisions, because the fall out of everything you say and do can affect the president and the first leader -- the first lady and history. i looked at my father with a sense of sorrow and forgive me, i did not mean to do that to you. he reached over and gave me a

big hug. i knew a father's love it was going to be with this -- what this moment in history was all about for me. but any advice i can give to any other first family members that ever ask for it is just noknow l the decisions you make, maybe like my mother is seen on the front page of the "new york times." so make sure they are ones that you will be proud of. >> you were married in the white house and i don't recall if there were any problems involved with that one. >> i decided to get married on december 7. [laughter] [applause]

actually, i got married on december 9. but we did have parties on the seventh. but my husband was heading to vietnam. he was a marine and he had asked to go to vietnam. he asked several times for his assignment to go to vietnam. they finally took him up on it just when i accepted to get married to him. anyway, we were going to get married on december 9, and he was then going to leave in march to go to vietnam, so there was a certain amount of sadness over the ceremony because we knew that we were going to be separated soon, but we had the most beautiful wedding. i would have to say it really was just gorgeous.

carolyn, who you have an award for pierre , she was in the wedding. -- you have an award for here. it was a wonderful occasion but we had this great concern. the night before river to get married, the rehearsal dinner, daddy called shock over and he said that plane you are plannin gon chartering tomorrow, you don't know this but the company will be bought by a big armed forces, defense, somebody who buys a lot of planes to the air force. it would be very bad if you rented that charter plane

because this would look bad. so i just think you probably ought not to do it. here we are the night before we are supposed to get married and we had no way to get away. because we were getting married at 4:00 in the afternoon and there were no commercial planes we could catch to get to this spot. so there are a few things that happened when you are in that state. it was a wonderful wedding and i always said that by that time in 1967, we did not have as many friends and i did i get as many good presence. [laughter] luci got married in 1966, so at that point there were still more people. [laughter] we had saidit gets, but fortunately some people sent

them anyway. -- we had said no state gets. one of our friends had been married in the white house 50 years before. mine was the second big white house wedding. my first big 1 cents hers. i had read all the things she got. -- my first big one since hers. she got all this jewelry, alice kane to our wedding -- she c ame to our wedding. she had been to the wedding of several others. i think she had been to the

tafts' 25th anniversary. she had been back to -- i cannot remember all the places. she was a great part of the washington establishment at that time. she came to our wedding and then i was invited and luci was invited to go to trisha's. we felt like there was something to this that was very exciting. one of our guests that came was a friend of chucks' side of the family and they had been to alice's wedding. we felt that this was a family affair. the white house had more people in it than you could shake a stick at it. it all turned out right.

chuck and i are still married. i swore i would never marry a politician and then i married a marine and he became a politician. belair. [laughter] -- beware. >> in the latter part of 1968 when the war was going on, in the latter part of the year you both had husbands who were over in vietnam. that was a very important part of your life, but without talking about that i would like to ask a couple of things. without any publicity, if you've visited service people in the hospitals. >> i did, i went to walter reed and bethesda and i would go through and visit some of our military. some of them have lost arms and had legs missing.

it was a wide variety. in world war ii, you were lucky if you were -- if you survived. by the time viet nam came around, it went so well in emergency medicine that we had more people surviving but you had more people that were coming back with great trauma. we see this now, because i am still involved with some of the people who are at walter reed in bethesda nel -- at bethesda now. because my husband was at vietnam's, they accepted me. i would talk to them and do anything i can to commiserate with them. they were wonderful. they would tell me how they

wanted to getthat new leg so they could go back again. they were so patriotic. i would go many times without any publicity, and finally some of the work that out -- some of the word got out, and we did not want these people to feel like they were being used, so we decided to have a surprise party for them at the white house. we invited a lot of them to come, and there was a man who we had used before named tony. he had had a little band, so we cleared the chair is out of the movie theater and we turned into tony's pizza parlor. we have all these little tables and we got a lot of the attractive young women that windmill who worked at the white

house -- attractive young women that we knew to come and sit and talk. some of the men who could got at and we danced. then i said why don't we give some of the man who could got up and dance. i wanted to give them a tour and that gave everybody, those who were in wheelchairs and those who needed extra help to get around made everybody feel good about taking the elevator. i gave them 84. it was a wonderful opportunity for me. -- a gave them a tour. it made me so proud to be an american to have these young people. it was all men, but to see them there enjoying themselves, and

something that i could do for them. and later on, before i left i was part of something called the waiting wives. that time i was very pregnant. when i told the chef i was going to have a tea party for the waiting wives, they said 400 pregnant women? i said no, not all of them are waiting like that. [laughter] but i had joined this group and it was the waiting wives that were the ones waiting for their husbands to come home. we would get together and have lunches every month. i had them oelrich of the white house and we had a wonderful time. the chef survived.

>> luci, there was a point in time when your father turned yield four shall -- for some help with the war. >> one time i was at the movie theater and i received a call from my father. he said do you know of any charges that might be up all night knowing that my faith was an important part of my life. i said i am sure i can find one. he said find one for your father. he hung up the phone and i called some friends of mine at st. dominics, which was a dominican church in washington. i said is there any chance that the chapel might be open throughout the night. they said it can be. i said that would mean the world to me. i did not say why and they did not ask.

my father called me a little bit later and said meet me in the diplomatic reception room. this was a room where you exited in order to go out to the south lawn at the white house. i met him there and it was a little past midnight. the white house limousine came and we got in there. the secret service turned to me and said where are we going? the idea today at taking the president somewhere at midnight without having any idea where you were going is pretty chilling. i told them where we were going and we went and went into the church. my father got on his knees and i did, too. i had not asked him why we were going there. what i did not know i could not leak, and i didn't want to be

the source of news that would compromise my father, so i prayed for whatever his intentions were. he knelt there for about an hour and then he got up and soberly left. i got up and walked behind him. we came back to the white house and my mother and sister was away. my father said any chance you can come to your debt is room? i said i cannot think of anything i would rather do. i went into his room and climbed up to the bed and i sat on the other side. he tossed and he turned no more sweeping than i was sitting upright. about 3:00 in the morning the telephone rang. my father answered it quickly and said yes, yes, yes, oh, thank god.

and hung up the phone. he said ok, do you want to know what has happened? i said not unless you feel is appropriate for me to know. he said it is ok now. i had to send young men into bomb a harbor. i just got the news the last of our pilots has come home safely. you may leave now. [laughter] and it was one of those moments that was written in my heart for forever, because i realize that the weight of the presidency is never heavier than when your commander in chief, and the chance that i had been able to help him be comforted. my father on sunday used to chart -- used to start of church at his own church. then he would go to my mother

and sisters church at 11:00. then at noon he would offer to come to mass with me. i would say no, you have already been to church twice. you may want to go home and listen to "meet the press." my father would look at me and shake his head. he said you think i am just going for you? when you are in my situation, you need all the help you can get. so that night i thought maybe i had been able to get him some of that help that he yearned for. but i also knew that when he went to mass with me on sunday, he was going for his little girl whose husband was away at war, and he knew he wanted to be there and be a loving presence in my life and make all the difference, and he did.

>> one of the hopeful at the saids that turned out to be not his starkly significant but it was hopeful -- it turned out to not be hystericallyh beistorically significant was a meeting between president johnson and the chairmen of the soviet union. they got together to talk about things that were the fighting the nations. they did strike an atmosphere of comedy. you had the unique experience of a company your father. -- you had the experience of a copyinga accomanying your father. >> the president had a daughter , so she came with her father.

the two of us struck up a friendship, and the funny thing about where we were meeting, and it is poignant being here in san marcus, we were meeting in a small college town that a small college. the reason why that glassboro was chosen was that it was halfway between washington and new york. he was up there at the un, and daddy was at the white house. this way each of them had to go equally far to meet, so everybody wants to meet on their home ground. here we were in this neutral ground and we took over the president of the college gave us his house. it was very victorian.

who knows what this people must have thought fell crazyweed work, but he could not have been nicer. they just moved up -- who knows what these people must have thought? while they were meeting we went off with the wife two-seat new jersey. [laughter] by helicopter. so we went and we went up and saw wonderful beaches. as you know, new jersey is a farming state with tiny little farms. so you could see all of that from the air. then we went to the home of the governor, and gov. hughes had 10 children. only seven of them were there when we arrived. one of them was three-years old

and had on his peanuts t-shirt, and the oldest was about 17. he could have cared less about who we were. you know how it is. we all had a typical american meal. i am sure she thought that this was -- the americans would have their fancy houses and everything would be up to date. it was very modest. i am sure it surprise turn having heard all of the -- i am sure it surprised her having heard all the propaganda about how consumer-oriented we work, because this was salad and simplicity, but it was a wonderful time because the two of us with fathers in these very important positions were meeting and talking about what everybody

was talking about all over the world. eating a meal, talking about family. both of us hoping that the talks would go well, but we were looking at these tiny spots in new jersey where this tiny little college was, and our two fathers were meeting there. i felt like i was part of history. it is one of my favorite pictures. there i am with daddy and the president and the dean, and m. a very important picture. >> you were not there but your participation in and contribution to the deletions -- to the deliberations were quite

unique. >> one of my favorite pictures is one i have with my father and my infant son, a graduate of texas state. it was taken on june 23, 1967. my father is talking to my son and to me and telling me a story. he said i had just come from glassboro, and it was one of the most waking moments of my presidency. i recognize i had a chance to meet the head of the union of the soviet socialist republic. if we got off on the right start maybe we could come and reason together, and be able to heal some of the great divisions that our nation is faced.

if we got off to the wrong start maybe we would be on the wrong side of history. and then you saved the day. i looked at my father and said i saved the day? he said yes, you had patrick lyndon nugent on two days ago. when i walked into that room and i reached out to the prime minister, i was able to say i understand that your grandfather -- that you are a grandfather. i want you to know that moments ago my little girl gave me a grandfather, too. i have no doubt that you want

what i want, and what every grandfather are around the world wants, peace in the time of their grandchildren. the difference is that you and i can do something about it. let's get to work. so he turned to me and took my son's little figure and he shook it, and he hugged me and said your timing was right. [laughter] so obviously, i had no idea giving birth to my son lyndon nugent on june 21, the longest day of the year, would indeed be that kind of gift to my father. but lyndon johnson had a way of making everybody feel important,

no matter who they were, whether they were friends he made at texas state or this little girl. two days after she gave birth to her firstborn. and he was a master at it. i, who had missed the chance to be the eye witness to history that my sister had enjoyed and my family had enjoyed, somehow he made me feel included, too. i think those were skills he first home here -- skills he first honed here. >> we are running overtime but there are two final questions. the first one has to do with march 31, 1968. that was the day president

johnson announced that he was not going to run again for the presidency. he took himself out of the race. this was an occasion in which you both were there, but i would like to get your separate perspectives on this day and your reaction to it. >> i have just put a check on a plane to vietnam, and i was pregnant. i saw him off to california. i would have gotten on the plane if they let me, but i had gone as far as i could go with him. so he left and i was feeling miserable and sick to my stomach. i got on the midnight flight back, and i arrived in washington early in the morning on the 31st.

i went to bed. in the middle of the day when i got up, i heard he was not going to run, i said you cannot do that. schack has gone to vietnam -- chuck has gone to vietnam. i knew that daddy was very concerned about every person who was over in vietnam and doing everything he could to get peace. i was scared for chuck, i was scared for me. i knew chuck was going to be over there 13 months and i thought at least i would be in the white house nurtured by my parents while i was having this first baby. i did everything i could to try to persuade him to change his mind and run again. he had told us before that he

might announce he was not going to run and he asked chuck to wear his uniform when we sat in the gallery at his speech to the congress before chuck left. and he spoke and never announce anything. i thought maybe again we would be able to persuade him not to announce he was not going to run, but he knew better than i did. but i was thinking of myself. there were these posters, things that were put up on trees offering bounty for chalk. if you bring him in a live we will give you some much money. -- offering bounty for chuck. because having the president's son-in-law would have been a big

prize. before he left he wrote a letter basically saying and gave it to liz carpenter. it said open this letter if something happens to me. it went on to say i do not want to be ransom. i am going over on my own volition because i believe is the right thing to do, and i don't want anything special done for me. so i really just wanted daddy to be there in control because i did not know what would happen when somebody else succeeded him. >> what are your reactions on that? >> it was a cornucopia of feelings. as the wife of a man about to be

deployed, i felt the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. as a mother of daddies' grandson, i felt some sense of hope that maybe my little boy we get a chance to know his grandfather and we could have those family moments that had easily the best in a lifetime of public service. -- moments that had allud -- moments that --eluded us. the captain i had faith in was leaving the helm and i was anxious about who would replace him. my father want -- once told a story about a young man who wanted a job and when they were looking for a school teacher during the depression, the school board asked him about what they thought about the

shape of the earth. he said i need this job so badly i can teach flat or round. [laughter] and that is the way i felt. there were personal moments that recognized that the presidency was aging my father rapidly as it does all people, and that the burden was the most stressful in the world. and he had had a heart attack years ago on my ninth birthday. i wanted my little boy to get to know and love his grandfather. and i wanted to be able to share moments with my daddy, too. and then there were the

feelings that felt like with him in charge i believe he was giving all that he had to try to bring us to an honorable peace. it seemed that it was so close and yet so far away. i wanted him to be able to make that happen. ultimately, i think i came to the conclusion that my father wanted so badly to get us to the peace table, and he felt he had somehow become this lightning rod. no matter what he said or did, the division in the country was such that maybe the best way to bring about that honorable peace

was to remove himself from the picture. and if that was the price he had to pay, he was grateful to do it. because he loved his country more than he cared about his political life. so when he gave his political life, anybody who knew lyndon johnson knew it was not just his political life, it was his life, because he spent a lifetime in politics. but he had come to the conclusion that this was the best decision. in spite of the fact that he had toldlynda and me he was going to do it, we hope it was something he would say and not something he would follow through on. but when he did, there was a sense of daddy knows best. >> there was a great sense of

relief for him because -- i agree with luci. daddy had become the lightning rod. he had tried to get peace and they continued to try, and actually got the south vietnamese and north vietnamese, and everything together at the paris peace table. then the south vietnamese got a message that they might get a better deal with the next administration, so we did not get peace again, but daddy did think if he was not there, maybe they would get together and could make honorable peace. >> for the final question, i would like to ask you each to summarize your memories of the

experience you had during this five -- during those five turbulent years when you were not only an eyewitness to but a participant in the history of some of the most dramatic years of our experience. >> i think it marks you forever. because i am interested in history, i have tried to seek out the other presidential children, because nobody knows what it is like except for us. we are a very small group. to give you some idea of how young this country is, right now in virginia the grandson of president tyler, who was

president in 1840 is living in the same house that his grandfather came back to, john tyler came back to. you figure he was president in 1840 and the grandson is still alive. we are a very young country. i searched out other presidential children. charlie taft came to the white house and we had an evening with presidential families. everybody told a wonderful stories. mother had president grant's granddaughter who was born in the white house on her grandfather was president. that was some 100 years before. it is absolutely unbelievable

what a young country we are. talking to them about their memories and talking to people like alice, talking to people like julie nixon, who certainly went through a lot of agony. talking to some of the carter children. going and needing helen taft manning, and president roosevelt's granddaughter who live in the white house during the second world war. it gave me great insight into american history. it made me recognize just how young we are and how brazilian we are. i am just so proud to be a member of that very small group of people, the presidential children. -- how young we are and how

resilant we are. >> it was the best of times and the worst of times, but it was a unique privilege that will not pass my way again. by an accident of birth, i got to be an eye witness to history. yes, if i could have chosen, at age 16 would not have been the year i would have liked to have that opportunity to be phony. -- that opportunity to befall me, because i was so very young, but i am eternally grateful taht by the time i was 21, and because my parents gave me an opportunity to travel across this country and get to know the american people to be present at parties for orphans in the white

house, to get a chance to volunteer for project headstart in washington, because volunteers and has a connotation of something optional, doesn't it? volunteerism for our family was no more optional an oxygen. -- no more optional than oxygen. i had the opportunity to do visual screenings in ghettos in washington. it gave me a focus of community service, that community service that is the common thread in your comment experience that you have been reflecting upon this year of daddies' centennial. it was first home for me really during this precious years.

it gave me a purpose for a lifetime. i came back to texas and started an organization with 22 headstarts in washington. i did it screens for a head start school across the way from the lbj ranch, the one where my father started off as a more private school because they could get -- they could i get federal money right away. -- they could not get federal money right away. it gave me the nurturing, recognition that the getting in life was to come from the getting, -- was to come from the giving, and we had given our

country the best we had. and the country had given back to us more than any human being ever deserves, a chance to make a difference for which i was and will remain eternally grateful. >> i think we can probably go through the night because there are a lot of other stories and experiences, but our time has come to an end. i think life has been shed on -- >> she came up right here. >> for me it has been a pleasure to participate in this discussion with these ladies who lived through and saw some great experiences, and to help bring this centennial year of the birth of the president we all loved to an end. thank you for being here. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you, lynda and luci for sharing this insights, your love of your parents and your love of this country with us. as usual, kerry, you are masterful. we truly appreciate that. -- as usual, harry, you are masterful. we have medallions we are given to you. these are given to our lbj speakers. we want you to have a medallion so that you can remember this

lecture. we have one for you as well. please accept them with our gratitude and affection. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> also, both the city of san marcos and hays the had designated april 14 as lbj centennial recognition day. we want you to have copies at each of these proclamations. brett will give this to you. lynda, you graciously loans as a textbook your father used when he was a student in english, and a poetry book. we are going to return that to you. it has been on display at the lbj museum. thank you very much for landing

that. >> can i save one word about that? today, i've brought for the president and actual report card. it is 3 by 5 of daddy. it was economics 102, and he got an a-. i expect because of this is why he saved it. [laughter] because what you will read in this book is that not all of his grades were a-. and i was looking through here and i thought how interesting it was that four days before he died, he came over here bringing his economic adviser, walter heller to speak to some of your students.

i guess it was because he had done so well in the economics course. [laughter] >> you > >a = 4 today. -- you get an a = 4 today. >> president obama leave sunday for a trip to russia. among the highlights, the president will be in moscow to meet with president-and mikheil gorbachev. -- meet with president dmitry medvedev. and then meet with the chinese president and the pope. and ghana will be the last up on the president's trip. they will have a series of meetings. check our web site at c-span.org for the latest on the president's trip and updates on the coverage of his stops. >> this weekend on "book tv"

john takes your calls on our first president live from mount vernon cost the state tomorrow at noon eastern. also, his passion for cars and the americas need to drive like crazy. and a nobel peace prize recipient and the challenges facing africa. find out what else is on. >> in this week's on-line addresses, president obama and john mccain discussed the fourth of july and domestic and international challenges facing the u.s. this is about 10 minutes. >> hello and happy fourth of july every body. this weekend is a time to get together with family and friends, kick back and enjoy time off. i hope that is what all of you do. but i also want to take a moment to reflect on what i believe is

the meaning of this distinctly american holiday. today, we are called to remember not only the day our country was born, we are also called to remember the spirit of the first american citizens who made that they possible. . to build an industrial economy unrivaled around the world. it's what has always led us as a people. not to wilt or cowor at a difficulty moment, but to face

down any trial and rise to any challenge, understanding that each of us has a hand in writing america's destiny. that is the spirit we are called to show once more. we're facing an a array of challenges on a scale unseen in our time. we are waging two wars. we're battling a deep recession. and our economy and our nation itself are endangered by festering problems we've kicked down the road for far too long, spiraling health care costs, inadequate schools, and a dependence or froils. meeting these -- foreign oils. that's an effort we cannot defer any longer. now is the time to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity. now is the time to vee vamp our education system, demand more from our teachers, parents, and stuneds. and build schools to prepare every student to outcompete every worker in the world.

now is the time to rebuild an unsustainable health care system. we need to protect what works, fix what's broken, and bring down costs for all americans. no more talk. no more delay. health care reform must happen this year. and now is the time to meet our energy challenge, one of the greatest challenges we've ever confronted as a people or as a planet. for the sake of our economy and our children, we must build on the historic bill passed by the house of representatives and make clean energy the profitable kind of energy so we can break our dependence on foreign oil. these are some of the challenges, and yet there are those who have us try what has already failed. they argue that our health care system is fine the way it is. and that a clean energy economy can wait. they say we're trying to do too much. that we're moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just

take a deep breath and scale back our goals. these nay sayers have short memories. they forget that we as a people did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. we didn't get here by doing what was easy. that's not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the united states of america. we're not a people who fear the future. we're a people who make it. and on this july 4th, we need to summon that spirit once more. we need to summon the same spirit that inhabited independence hall 233 years ago today. that's how this generation of americans will make its mark on history. that's how we will make the most of this extraordinary moment. and that's how we will write the next great chapter in the great american story. thank you. and happy 4th of july. >> i'm senator john mccain. today we celebrate our independence declared 233 years ago, achieved through the trial of a long and difficult war and

preserved through the years with the blood and sacrifice of millions. it's an occasion for americans to reunite with family and enjoy a mid summer holiday with pick nicks and barbecues, ball games and golf, and other recreation. our appreciation for what happened on a hot summer day in philadelphia all these years ago is often limited to a fleeting warm feeling about an ancient generation of americans who against great odds stood up to a powerful oppressor, and claimed their natural right to liberty. this an accurate but incomplete understanding of the revolution begun that day. for written on that piece of yellow pampment is not only the assergs that 13 colonies would remain free and independents states, by also the once radical idea that history has a right side and a wrong side and that americans stood and will always stand on the right side.

the signers put their names and randsomes their lives to a universal not just a national idea that all human beings everywhere, not just americans, not just the mostly well off, white men, gathered in philadelphia for the occasion, are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, tand pursuit of happiness. we've not always been true to that ideal. and the rights guaranteed by our constitution, slavery, jim crow, the disenfranchisement of women, were betrayals of the principles enshrined in our founding documents and had to be conquered before we could claim without qualification to be firmly on the right side of history. but we overcame our faults, corrected our mistakes, and in the unfinished story of our republic, we continue our progress toward a more perfect

union. and in the struggles to do so, we have achieved greatness. our wealth and power unequaled by any nation before or since are not the cause of our greatness. our ideals have made us great. we are strong and prosperous because we are free. not the other way around. we have marched in fits and starts toward the right side of history and have ascended to a most exalted station in the affairs of mankind. leader of the free world. it's a great tribute to us, but also a great responsibility. we share a kinship of ideals with every man and woman on earth who struggles for their god-given rights. the world must never doubt where we stand in the liberation struggles of our time. we stand with those who risk the anger of tyrants and their lives for the proposition that just government is derived from the consent of the governed,

that all people are entitled to equal justice under the law. today, we stand with the millions of iranians who brave batons, imprisonment and gunfire to have their voices heard and their votes counted. they do not ask us to arm them or come to their assistance with anything other than public declarations of solidarity and public denunciations of the tyrants who op press them. we have a moral obligation to do so. there are those among us who warn that a strong and unequivecal declaration of moral support for iranians would be used by the cruel regime and power there to subject their people that the united states is behind the civil unrest that they have attempted to hide from the world. fwu regime will make that claim no matter what we say or do. do they really believe iranians don't know why they're protesting and who is

oppressing them? do they think iranians whose votes were discarded, whose voses have been ignored, whose lives have been threatened will think america has put them in that position, that the c.i.a. caused the brave and ideal stick young woman to step out of her car to join their protest only to be instantly murdered by the henchmen of the regime? iranians know the truth. they know who is oppressing them and why. it's a government that governs without their consent, which beats them, i am prisons them, and threatens their lives. and not to resist some imagined foreign enemy. they are not fools, these brave and determine iranians. they are on the right side of history and the cynics among us who think them fools are on the wrong side. liberty and justice will some day be theirs.

let us hope they will have reason to remember then who their friends were in their struggle for freedom. this is john mccain. wishing you a happy and meaningful 4th of july. >> and the senate is back on monday at 2:00 p.m. eastern to resume work on legislative branch spending in 2010 with votes scheduled to begin at 5:30. then they'll move on to homeland security for 2010.

on friday, alaska governor sara palin announced she won't run for reelection and will leave office at the end of the month. the former republican vice presidential candidate made her announcement at her home. her remarks are about 15 minutes. >> we are doing so well my administration. my administration's accomplishments. they speak for themselves. we work tirelessly for alaskaance. we aggressively and responsibly develop our resources because they are created to be used to better our world, to help people. and we protect the environment and alaskaance. here are some of the things that we have done. we created a petroleum

integrity office to oversee safe development. we held the line for alaskaance on point thompson. and for the first time you are seeing drilling for oil and gas. we have a massive bipartisan victory. 58-1 also succeeding as intended, protecting us as our clean natural gas will flow to energize alaska and america. it's through very different than what had happened before, through a very competitive pro-private sector project. this is the largest ever. this is energy independence. and aces. another bipartisan effort. it's working as intended and industry is publicly acknowledging its success. our new oil and gas clear and equitable formula. it is so alaskaance will no longer be taken advantage of.

it incentivizes jobs that were previously not going to happen, not with a monopolized basen. we cleaned up previously accepted unethical actions. and we ushered in bipartisan ethics reform. we also slowed the rate of government growth. i made no lobbyist friends with my hundreds of millions of dollars in budget vetos. but living beyond our means today is irresponsible for tomorrow. we took government out of the dairy business. we put it back into the private sector where it should be. we provided unprecedented support for education nishtoifs. and with the right leadership we finally filled long, vacant public safety positions. we bimt a subcab net for climate change. and we took heat from outside special interests for our blodgeically sound wild life management for abundant

practices, predator control. we broke new ground on the state's new prison. and, we made a common sens conservative choice to eliminate personal luxuries, things like the jet and the chef and the junk ets and the entourage, and the lieutenant governor and i, we said no to our pay raises. really, there is so much success in this first term. and this success, i am proud to take credit for hiring the right people. our goal was to achieve a gasline project and more fair oil and gas explore ration and ethics reform in four years. we did it in two. and it's because of the people. the good people, good public serve nts surrounding the governor's office with service hearts and astounding work ethic. they are alaska's success. and we are doing well. and i really wish that you would hear more from the media. more from the media of the state's good progress and how we tackled outside interests,

special interests daily we're tackling. those interests that would stymie a our state, even those debt ridden stimulus dollars that would force the heavy hand of federal government into our communities with an all knowing attitude. i've taken the slings and arrows with that unpopular move. it was the right thing to do because i know being right is better than being popular. and it wasn't a popular stand to take. but some of those dollars would harm alaska and they harm america. i resisted those dollars braws of the obscene national debt that we're forcing our children to pay because of today's big government spending. it is immoral and it doesn't even make economic sense. another accomplishment. our law department protected states rights, two huge supreme court reverseles came down against that liberal ninth circuit deciding in our state's

that federalist protect state rights as manned stated in the tenth amendment. you don't hear much about the good stuff in the press any more though. do you? some say things changed for me on august 29, last year, the day that john mccain tapped me to be his running mate and it was an honor to stand behind a true american hero. i say others changed. and let me speak to that for a minute. political op ratives ski dended on alaska digging for dirt. the ethics law that i championed became their weapon of choice. i've been accused of all sorts of frivolous eetsdz things violation such as holding a fish in a photograph or wearing a jack wet a logeo on it and answering reporters questions. every one of these though, all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. we have won. but it hasn't been cheap. the state has wasted thousands of hours of your time and she would out some 2 million of

your -- shelled out of your dollars. and that's money that's not going to fund teachers or troopers or safer roads. and this political absurdity that politics of personal destruction? todd and i are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills just in order to set the record straight. and what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? it doesn't cost them a dime. so they're not going to stop draining the public resources, spending other people's money in this game. they won't stop. it's pretty insane. my staff and i spend most of our day dealing with this stuff instead of progressing our state now. and i know that i promised no more politics as usual. but this isn't what anyone had in mind for alaska. if i've learned one thing, it's that life is about choices and one chooses how to react to circumstances. you can choose to engage in

things that the tear down or that build up. and i choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and for productivity. i choose not to tear down and waste precious time but to build up our great country and her industrious and generous and patriotic and free people. life is too short to compromise time and resources. and though it may be tempting and more comfortable to just kind of keep your head down and plod along and appease those who are demanding, just sit down and shut up, but that's a worthless easy pass out. that's a quiter's way out. and i think a problem today wowl be apathy. it would be apthetic to go with the flow. we're fishermen. we know that only dead fish go with the flow. no productive fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wildly utilize precious time to build up. and there is such a need to build up and fight for our state and our country.

and i choose to fight for it. and i work very hard for others who still believe in free enterprise and smaller government and strong national security for our country and support for our troops and energy independence. and for those who will protect freedom and equality and life, i will work hard for and campaign for those who are proud to be american and who are inspired by our ideals, and they won't deride them. i will support others who seek to serve in or out of office. and i don't care what party they're in or no party at all. inside alaska or outside of alaska. but i won't do it from the governor's desk. i've never believed that i nor anyone else needs a title to do this, to make a difference, to help people. so i choose for my state and for my family more freedom to progress all the way around so that alaska may progress i will not seek reelection as

governor. and so as i thought about this announcement that i wouldn't run for reelection and what that means for alaska, i thought about, well, how much fun some governors have as lame ducks. they maybe travel around their state, travel around other states, maybe take their overseas international trade missions. so many politics do that. and then i thought that's what's wrong. many accept that status, hit the road, draw a pay check, and milk it. and i'm not going to put alaskaance through that. i promise efficiencies and effectiveness. i'm not wired to operate under the same old politics as usual. i promised that four years ago and i meant it. it is not what is best for alaska at this time. i'm determined to take the right path for alaska. even though it is unconventional and it's not so comfortable. with this announcement that i'm not seeking reelection, i've determined it's best to transfer the authority of governor to lieutenant governor

partner ell and i'm willing to do this so that this administration with its positive agenda and its accomplishments and its successful road to an incredible future for alaska, so that it can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success. my choice is to take a stand and effect change, and not just hit our head against the wall and watch valuable state time and money. millions of your dollars go down this drain in this new political environment. rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities. and so we will. for alaskaance, and for americans. let me go back quickly to a comfortable analogy for me, and that's sports. basketball. and i use it because you are naive if you don't see a full court press from the national level picking away right now a good point guard. here's what she does.

she drives through a full court press protecting the ball, keeping her head up because she needs to keep her eye on the basket and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. and that is what i'm doing. that represents sound priorities. they represent energy independence and naller government and national security and freedom. and i know when it's time to pass the ball for victory. and i've given my reasons now very candidly, truthfully, and my last day won't be for another few weeks. so the transition will be very smooth. in fact, we look forward to swearing in shawn partner ell up there in fair banks at the conclusion of our pick nick at the end of the month. and i don't want to disappoint anyone with this announcement. all i can ask is that you trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual. and some alaskas seems today don't mind wasting public dollars and state time but i do

andically not stand here as your governor and allow the millions of dollars and all that time go to waste just so that i can hold the title of governor. and i don't know if my children are going to allow it any way. some will question the timing of this. this has been in the works for a while. in fact, this decision comes after much conversation, prayer and conversation, and finally i pulled polled the most important people in my life, my kids wrrks the count was unanimous, do you want me to make a positive difference and fight for all our children's future outside the governor's office? it was four yeses and one hell yeah. and some day i'll talk about the details of that. recently seeing their baby brother mocked and ridiculed by some pretty mean spirited eyeu adults recently. and by the way, i sure wish folks could ever understand all

that we can learn, all of us, from someone like trig. i know he needs me. but i know that i need him even more. and what achild can offer to set priorities right, know that time is precious. the world needs more trigs not fewer. my decision was also fort fid during this most recent trip to kosovo and lamb stel to visit our wounded sold jest overseas, those who truly sacrifice themselves in war for our freedom and our security. and we can all learn from our self-less, self-less troops. they're bold and they don't give up and they take a stand and they know that life is short so they choose not to waste time. they choose to be productive and to serve something greater than self. and to build up their families and their states and our great country. these troops and their important missions now, there is where truly the worthy causes are in this world. and that's where our public resources should be, our public

priority. with time and resources spent anthat. not on this superficial, wasteful political blood sport. so may we all learn from them. really, we've just got to put first things first. and first things first as governor, i love my job and i love alaska. and it hurts to make this choice. but i'm doing what's best for alaska. and i have explained why. so i think of the saying on my parents' refrigerator. that says, don't explain. your friends don't need it and your enemies won't believe it anyway. so i'm taking my fight for what's right for alaska in a new direction. i sure don't want anyone, any alaskan dissuaded from entering politics after seeing this real climate change that began in august. no, we need hard working average americans fighting for what's right. and i will support you because we need you and you can effect change. and i can, too, on the outside.

we need those who will respect our constitution where government is supposed to serve from the bottom up and not move toward this top down big government but rather protectors of individual rights who also have enough common sense to acknowledge when conditions have changed and they're willing to call an audible and pass the ball when it's time so the team can win. and that's what i'm doing. remember alaska america is now more than ever looking north to the future. and it will be good. so god bless you. and from me and from my family to all alaska, you have my heart and we're going to be in really great hands, the capable hands of our lieutenant governor. >> governor palin took office in december of 2006. the associated press reports that the transfer of power to the lieutenant governor will take place on july 26.

this week on america and the courts, a look at the life and cream of the supreme court nominee through friends, colleagues and former class mates, including childhood friend and class mates. america and the courts today at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. on "newsmakers" this week, austin goolsbri, chief economist on the president's economic recovery advisory board. >> unfortunately, i don't think we're done. obviously we aren't out of the woods. we've had some pretty tough job market reports over since december 2007 when the recession began. the rate of job loss has slowed considerably, fortunately,

since the president has been in office. but i imagine that unemployment may be pushing in double digits by the time we get to the peak of this. >> see the entire interview on "newsmakers" sunday at 10:00 a.m. and again at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> these places remind me of modern cats drals. >> princeton class of 1983, would like to see a few changes to the system of higher education. >> i think that these wonderfully concentrated islands of talent and wealth and areas should be opened up to the larger society not kept separate, which thray still are, and i can't understand why. >> lost in america tocksi, the

education of an overachiever. sunday night at 8:00. you can also listen on xm satellite radio. or download the c-span podcast. >> a forum now on american presidential succession in the event of an attack. we'll hear about a new report on potential weak points. among those taking part is martin frost. this is just over an hour. >> how is this for a seamless transition? i'm tom man n. delighted to be a part of this event. and to be part of this project and the commission. norm and i have over the years collaborated with our two institutions on a number of projects and going back a

decade ago john has been an important part of all of those starting with a transition project and continuing now to this continuity of government. so delighted to be here and delighted to have three members of the continuity of government commission here to segway a bit from what's the problem, what is to be done to focusing a bit, if not exclusively, on how in the world to do it. norm, i think, mentioned that it's been eight years since 9/11. it was hours after the attack that the concern about continuity first arose to -- in the mind of norm and brian

bared and some others, efforts were begun almost immediately. and yet, tover years, relatively little has happened. an what has happened in congress i would argue is -- has been perhaps at best neutral, having no impact, and at worst, more harm than good. martin frost knows well the obstacles on capitol hill, having listened to the concerns of some members of congress that it would be a travesty of the constitution and of our system of constitutional government to allow for any temporary appointments to the house of representatives, violating the notion that

anyone who enters the body has been elected by their constituents. and, further making the argument of the distinctiontive difference between the house and the senate, although it seems to not take into account a constitutional amendment that provided for the direct election of senators. but that's another story. there also is of course the sort of continuing problem of how in the world do you remove the speaker of the house and the present protestimony of the senate from the line of succession without implicitly criticizing or diminishing them and therefore setting up political obstacles that seem to be insurmountable and -- in

getting anything actually accomplished. so, our task in this panel in part at least is to look back and look ahead to simply ask the question, one, are we right? have we got a rough sense of the seriousness of the problems and the ways to deal with it? in a statutory sense with resfoket presidential succession. but perhaps in a constitutional amendment sense, to encompass the broader issues that include the congress. and, if so, how do we make the months and years ahead more productive than the ones since 9/11? that's our task. we have a wonderful group of people. and thank you all for coming to join us again. we're going to proceed in the order in which they're listed

in the program. martin frost, now an attorney with a local firm. but we know him as a long-time, influential member of the house of representatives. chairman of the caucus, ranking member on the rules committee, a dean of the texas delegation, a very important and constructive member of congress who actually was involved in many of the discussions after 9/11 about what to do on continuity front. jamie, who is now a part anywhere of womener hail has served in numerous capacities of, in government, as deputy

attorney general, as general counsel, department of defense, member of the 9/11 commission. it goes on and ofpblet she brings great experience and wisdom to bear on these issues. jim, immediately to my right, who is now the solstor general of the state of texas, has managed to practice as well in all three branches of the federal government. as a clerk in the appellate courts, including serving working for justice clarnse thomas in the supreme court. on the executive side, in the department of justice. and on capitol hill in the senate working for senator john

cornen and deeply involved in continuity issues in both the congress and the presidency. and finally my dear colleague norman oirnsteen who was present at the creation of contemporary tofertse deal responsibly with the continuity issue. martin, why don't you kick us off. why don't you kick us off. >> well, thank you. and i had the interesting task of being cochair of a special task force that the congressional leadership set up on this subject after 9/11. and y'all, of course, both participated in that. and i have some observations from having been through that experience. first of all, the first thing that this commission or anyone has to do is to convince the congressional leadership, bipartisan, bicameral that this is something worth spending

their time on and the frustration we had is that the leadership of neither party of neither house felt that this was an important issue and so we could not convince the democratic leadership or the republican leadership to really invest any capital in trying to address this problem. now y'all got to figure out how you go to the -- you have different leaders now than you did right after 9/11 and how you convinced the current speaker and the current majority leader and the current minority leaders that this really should be dealt with. the biggest obstacle in the house was that you had a very stubborn chairman of the judiciary committee, my friend, jim sensenbrenner who would not cooperate. and he had his own reasons he felt his view of the constitution and you didn't have the leadership to say mr. chairman we really have to do this, you know, we have to figure this out. they wouldn't pick a fight with

jim sensenbrenner and nothing would happen. and specifically on a couple of issues, he was against large members of congress who were killed. and interim appointments and going to what was discussed at the beginning, the question that the only way anyone ever has served in the house of representatives is buy election. of course, this is all a historical accident that senators can be appointed when a senator dies and house members can. the reason senator members were initially appointed in the first part of our history and only became elected later and so you had a tradition of appointing united states senators but not a tradition of house members. somehow you have to overcome that and the united states has to be amended so that if large numbers of the house are killed, are permanently incapacitated that they can be replaced by

appointments by their governors of their states. it's the only thing that makes any sense. secondly, on the question of congressional succession, i don't support taking congressional leaders out of the line of succession. first of all, you probably won't get anything passed if you take them out. secondly, i think it makes good sense to have congressional leaders in the line of succession. they've dealt with a wide range of issues in their current positions. most of them -- you don't get to be a leader in congress without having served many years in the legislative branch. i do think there's a technical issue you could very easily address that is recommended in the report that you designate the majority leader as president pro tem so you don't have a situation with an aging president pro tem -- i don't remember carl hayden sitting behind lyndon johnson after -- when johnson took over the presidency, and you had mccormick and hayden as the two people sitting behind the president when he was giving --

speaking to a joint session of congress and it sent chills through everybody. so you should -- clearly, the majority should be in the line of succession and he's not an officer of the -- official officer of the senate so you make him an official officer by changing the rules and make him a president pro tem. that's a relatively minor fix. i have a mixed view in terms of designating people outside of d.c. i can understand why that's necessary. my preference would be to continue to have the cabinet be in the line of succession, though, you should reorder the priorities of the cabinet members. it shouldn't just be an accident in terms of the creation, the time that the cabinet position was created. there are good reasons to put the secretary of homeland security fairly high up, maybe not in the top four but maybe at the fifth or sixth.

and the real problem here is that you do have different individuals, different personalities, different backgrounds in the cabinet and i don't know if you could reorder -- have some procedure where you would reorder this at the beginning of each term. clearly, the fact that you have two governors in the cabinet right now, governor sebelius and governor napolitano who are very low in the line of succession but it would make sense if you were going to have this proceed through the cabinet to have them higher in the line of succession than they currently are. the difficulty clearly in our commission that i worked on early on -- clearly, initially identified this bumping procedure where a subsequently elected speaker could replace someone who had been sworn in as president, that has to be changed. that simply cannot be permitted to stand. once someone becomes president in the line of succession, they should continue holding that office until the next election.

they shouldn't be bumped by someone elected by the speaker who's died. these are all very constructive things. we ought to come up with some solutions that make sense but unless this group or others can convince the congressional leadership that this is an important thing that needs to be dealt with, it's never going to happen. you would think that right after 9/11 that you would have had the attention of the congressional leadership but that did not turn out to be the case and the problem is that congressional leaders are awfully busy trying to enact the president's agenda if they happen to be of the same party of the president or fighting the president's jeeb n in -- agenda if they are in an opposite party and i don't know how you make this into a priority item but somehow -- the country has to convince the people who control the levels of power in congress that action needs to be taken on this. i'll be glad to stop and comment on what other people have to

say. >> martin, thank you very much. jamie? >> well, let me pick up where martin left off and my answer to the question what will prompt congressional leaders to take on this issue is another event. you know, we just have short memories here in this country and we move on to the next issue and we're just not focusing on or remembering the lessons of our experience of 9/11. so i'd like to just echo a couple of points that were made in the earlier panel and by martin and give some examples of issues that i think we really need to take account of. akhil and others made the point that we need to have a debate and we need to have a plan and we need to have it ratified so it is legitimate. one of the ways that you deal with the threat of terror is to

take out the terrifying consequence or to minimize the terrifying consequence. one of the terrifying consequences is chaos. and if you have an agreed-upon and legitimately held order, you diminish the power of terrorism itself. and we can see that in the planning for wmd events and we should see it here in planning for succession in leadership. i want to underscore the importance of a sense of legitimacy. this issue is brought home to me in one of our staff reports leading up to the ultimate 9/11 commission report. in that report, we discussed the reaction in the white house post-9/11. it was one of our last reports, and the way in which the commission worked was that the staff would develop a review of the facts and present that view

to the commission as a prelude to witnesses that we would hear in the hearings. and for this particular report, the staff among other things looked at the conduct of the vice president and others who were in the white house on the day of the 9/11, their communications with the president, how orders were given, how orders were received and we also look among other things at the desire on the part of some to look at whether saddam hussein had been to blame for 9/11 and participated. so the staff report had many issues but many of them -- one of them was this issue of the immediate aftermath and the staff -- the staff's factual layout appeared to suggest pretty strongly that the vice president had given shoot-down orders without having first cleared those orders with the

president. and another issue -- a4d%)@@@ @ as a matter of practice, we vetted our staff reports with the white house before presenting them for the purposes of clearing any classified information. but it was always the case that the white house would then also take the opportunity to give us comments on various elements of the report substantively. and they really lit up on this issue of whether the vice president had given these orders without presidential authority and had basically not said much at all about this issue of the connection between saddam hussein and 9/11 or the lack thereof. which was kind of stunning to me, very surprising to me that of these two issues it would

choose the former rather than the latter. former rather than the latter. i should note that after the hear when the press announced the saddam hussein finding, the white house was much more active on that. but it drove home to me how sensitive we are about who position the right to exercise what authority. i would have thought myself that it was a good thing that the vice president felt free to give a shoot-down order in an emergency circumstance when the president -- when communications with the president were not as good as they should and there was enormous sensitively around this issue. we'll never know what happens. the board lays out the facts as it does and i'm not here to rehearse that but simply to remind you of how sensitive

people are about who has what authority and, thus, the importance of really landing this issue after as martin says a public debate. the second a little bit of color i would like to lay out for you as a predicate to thinking about this report are the human factors that you can see playing out in an emergency and particularly the emergency of 9/11. and the first factor is just how human human beings are. we had elaborate plans. we're taking members of congress and particularly the leadership out of places of danger into places of safety so that we would have continuity of government. i can't tell you how many members of congress and senators would not go. why? because they wanted to see if

their families were okay. they wanted to be with their families. that's a completely human and understandable response, utterly ignored in our planning. the second point i would make is that you cannot underestimate the fog of war which is why you have to have blistering clarity about what's going to happen. rememb rudy gilani put his command center at the base of the world trade center and it collapsed. the building in which it was collapsed. second, the secretary of defense is directly in the chain of command. in an emergency like we had on 9/11. and yet secretary rumsfeld did not come to the command center

until all the planes were down. until the entire event was long over. at first he thought he didn't need to come. that it would be handled in the ordinary course. and then when the plane hit the pentagon, he went out to help. again, a very human instinct but indeed we had no phone call, not the faa's call, not the nsc's call, not the pentagon's call were all the relevant players were on the phone. you had an faa call with the faa folks and dod call with the dod folks. nobody had the secretary of defense. and only some of them were plugged into the vice president. so having -- having real clarity is very important and making sure that we have all joined

hands around that clarity is critical for a sense of legitimate si. -- legitimacy. let me make a couple of comments on some of the debates we had here, do we have individuals in the line of succession who were outside of washington? i think we can't trivialize the possibility that washington is not functioning. and we just to have come to grips with that. now, you can send a cabinet member out of town and have a schedule and do it that way. you could. and then the question is, how far down in that cabinet do you go to make sure you have the right expertise and executive authority to be viewed as a legitimate leader if you are the one that is out of town. reminding you that our cabinet is now huge. it barely fits around the

cabinet table because so many people have negotiated for cabinet status that it is a highly watered-down credential, i would say. the second is the issue of acting secretaries. and i would just make the comment that not everybody deputy is nick katzenbach we have several people who could be skilled secretaries i say this as one of the deputies in the four agencies that would be in that chain, you know, it would -- it would have given me no end of pleasure to be in the line of presidential succession but nevertheless, i certainly pause over the notion that we should include all acting secretaries. >> thank you, jamie. jim? >> well, i want to begin by thanking both the american enterprise institute and the brookings institution for

establishing the commission and for putting together today's event. we've heard a lot of talk this morning about the founding fathers. i think it's fair to say that the combination of norm orstein and tom mann and john fortier there are part of this continuity government that is so important and i'm glad to be here and with my very distinguished copanelists. this is a very strong report that the commission has issued today. and i would really commend everyone who has a chance to read it, both in the room and if you have a hard copy or i think it's on the website or soon to be on the website -- it's a very easy read. it actually opens with a very stirring, dramatic narrative that to me reads kind of like a seasoned synopsis of the television show "24." i flew here from texas expecting to get a chance to meet kiefer sutherland who i assumed might be keynoting the event.

but it is a very important report and the substance of the report, of course, is what we're really focusing on today. these are very real issues that we face including some very frighteningly real nightmare scenarios and i think it's clear we need reform and i'm glad we had that first panel to really focus on some of these reform issues. i want to focus my remarks kind of following up on my predecessors here on this panel because what i found particularly striking about the report -- even once you set aside the substantive issues and what i found striking and even perhaps alarming about the report is seeing just how often throughout our nation's history congress has seemed to make some of these changes to the presidential succession statute based at least as much about politics as principle. and i think that's what congressman frost was trying to remind us today. we saw this, in fact, in the very first act in our nation's history. the very first time we dealt

with presidential succession. during the second congress we sought to exclude cabinet officers from that line of succession and this effort was essentially led as i understand by opponents of thomas jefferson, our first secretary of state. and so i do want to focus my time here on some of the political realities and constraints that, unfortunately, we have to deal with because otherwise they may stand in the way of wise reform. and it's hard enough as we talked about especially as time passes -- it's hard enough to get folks to pay attention to this issue at all. and yet when we do get folks' attention it's even then in that remote situation, it's hard to get past the politics and on to the principle. i recall during my time working for senator cornyn we decided well, let's working with the commission folks we wanted to start with maybe some sort of modest incremental steps, try to make some bite size changes and try to maybe build some momentum

for the cause and so we began with what we frankly thought was a straightforward, easy sell, a nonbinding sense of the senate resolution, a resolution that would simply encourage every outgoing president to nominate and with the senate's consent to appoint all the cabinet members of the incoming president and to do so before inauguration, not right after with the incoming president doing it but having the outgoing president doing it before and that way what you would have is in the event of a tragic inauguration day catastrophe, terrorist attack at least you would have all of your cabinet successors being of the new administration, not the old one to avoid some of the party disruption that akhil amir. there would be an attempt to launch an inauguration day

attack to overturn the effects of an election. we thought it was a nonbinding election and we in senator cornyn's office put this forth and came up with what we thought was a very creative name for the protocol. we called it the cornyn protocol. unfortunately, the cornyn protocol was never approved by the senate. and i know what some of you may be thinking. it must have been a partisan democrat who stopped senator cornyn his moment of glory. wrong. we learned it was senator ted stevens who placed the hold that prevented our fine resolution from being approved by the senate by unanimous consent. now, why would he do that? we never actually got an official response. they never returned my calls, frankly. but i later learned from a staffer that the office essentially feared that this was really step one in a larger ambition to remove the senate president pro tem from the line of succession.

now, of course, we did have to plead guilty to that charge. i know we've had some very robust debate on this issue. i think it was our view that the presence of congressional leadership in the presidential line of succession is arguably probably constitutional and in our view certainly unwise. but what struck me most about this development was this. you know, it seems highly unlikely and certainly we hope it would be extremely unlikely that a speaker or a senate president pro tem would ever actually succeed to the presidency, at least outside of an episode of the "west wing." everyone knows that. and we hope that would be an unlikely occurrence. but the fact is, just the mere fact of being a member of the line of succession, that is a valuable, prestigious thing, a credential that people may be understandably proud of as we just heard and so, therefore, because it's perhaps valuable, it's a source for robust political jockeying.

we saw this also in the debate over where to place the secretary of homeland security in the line of succession. you can certainly imagine a good argument that you should place dhs somewhere in the middle or even high up in the line of succession. it's the fact that it's a sensitive, national security position and also the fact that dhs really isn't a completely new department. it's really a reassembling of parts of established departments. at the end the pressures were too great and dhs comes after veterans affairs so we have to deal with the political constraints. i could not agree more with the congressman that we have some wise reforms here the real question is how do we get them done? unfortunately, i don't have any grand solutions to offer. mainly, i just want to try to focus attention on this concern because i think that the commission really does have it right on the policy and it's a matter of figuring out the implementation. ..

after the next election. that way, we would really diminish any signal that any kind of change would be sort of a personal attack or a question of credibility. because that certainly is not the goal of the commission. to be sort of the last person in their position to be in this line of succession. i don't have any idea if that would work. i'll leave it to the real political experts to figure out how to make this work. i'm just an attorney. but as an attorney, i do think that the commission has diagnosed some real serious problems and developed some serious and important solutions. so i guess it's time for the

political experts and legislative strategists to tell us how to get this done. thank you. >> i don't know. i think you've got a bright future as a political strategist. figuring out a way to turn a losing situation into a winning one historically? that's promising. norm. . . was a staff director of the subcommittee on the constitution subcommittee on the constitution that senator kerry actua for the only hearing that we have had onit was a joint hearie

rules committee in the senate which also has jurisdiction and unfortunately nothing has come of it ended for reasons martin frost suggested over almost the last eight years we have really tried repeatedly to get congressional leaders, the speakers of the house, the majority and minority leaders, of the senate to understand their fiduciary understanding to protect their own institutions, but also to focus on the need for statutory changes for presidential succession. and the supreme court which is actually in even worse shape because we really have nothing there except a statutory quorum requirement of six. and i won't go into the great detail of one of the more interesting anecdotes of the morning of 9/11. let me just say that the judicial conference of the united states was meeting at the supreme court, barely 150 yards from the capital the morning

that united 93 was almost certainly headed for the capitol dome. and that meant all of the leadership of our federal judiciary, all the members of the supreme court, the chief judges of the appeals courts, most of the other leadership were sitting there within a very short distance of what would have been if that plane had hit the cast-iron dome, i see an shower going for long distance of a molten cast-iron, chunks of marble and concrete, burning jet fuel and the like, that could have created catastrophe. and given the fog of war issue that jamie so eloquently talked about, if we had such an event at the inaugural, the worst-case scenario, and you get a bunch of people popping up after we have lost the incoming and outgoing president and vice president and almost everybody formerly in the line of succession, with some questions about who remains, people popping up and saying i'm

in charge here. having a supreme court to adjudicate rather than having 13 separate appeal court each popping up and saying well, we will have an opinion on this, becomes even more important to guarantee some sense of assurance in people that we actually have that line of succession. at also add that i have pled with chief justice roberts to take on his role as the fiduciary for the court and do something about this, and he has not indicated any interest either. so with that, just one other note on the fog of war issue. i participated with fran townsend actually in a wargame. anybody who has done one of these wargames, which extend over a couple of days, with a plausible sonar you of some catastrophe taking place knows how much we do not know how little we have been able to prepare, how you get into situations where the information is ambiguous if an attack is taking place, what kind of

attack, what might follow. and you get people in the room who play the major players, and try to come up with different decisions that will take place and what the repercussions would be. you realize how little we know, how poorly we are prepared. one of the things that fran did as homeland security adviser, was to mandate that cabinet members and senior white house staff do these wargames. but she met with enormous resistance again for the human reasons, because it meant taking one or two or three days on a periodic basis out of their extraordinarily busy schedules and going offsite somewhere to go through these scenarios. after doing it, they all said how viable it was, how it opened their eyes to problems they had not known existed. but getting them to do it again without having a president directly ordering them to do it became almost impossible. so we've got problems. we know that we have focused on some of these issues and

problems before. and we know that presidential succession was, and keeping the continuity of government was very much in the minds of our leaders during the cold war era. and we know among other things they set up an elaborate bunker, secret bunker at the greenbriar resort faraway from washington. that is now a tourist attraction that you can go to. hardened with food supplies, with a mini chamber so that congress could get down there in the event of a nuclear attack. but of course it was all set up with the premise that once the missiles were logged in from siberia, we would have enough time to hustle the members away, and helicopters, entrées, perhaps in some instances by car, to get them out of the danger zone. what we now know after 9/11, and should have realized even before that is the kind of attack we are talking about in the modern era don't come with any notice.

and can be of a devastating variety and require a different response. and it's a response that might have come because if you get three, four or five nuclear bombs spread around washington set off at the same time, you could wipe out the entire cabinet without them having to be in the same room in the hardened location. we know from anthrax attack on the senate that it is not at all out of the question that you could get a kind of biological attack or a chemical attack that could get into a system and incapacitate government. we need to think about the worst case scenario. we also know though that through history we have seen this pattern repeated. a pattern built on inertia, built on the human nature that we all see with very smart people who don't write wills. even when they have small children, there are serious issues of whether you have a plan in place for who would take

care of your kids if you happen to die together. because it's easy to rationalize the way because nobody likes to contemplate the prospect of their own demise. and basically because there's a superstition involved also, that maybe if you do something it would encourage the actual outcome that you fear the most. if you look at presidential succession, we at other periods where we are in much greater danger, lengthy periods where we had no vice president and we did not have congress in session and you didn't have the cabinet in place. it took several events, assassinations of presidents, to lead to and to spur changes in the presidential succession act. and now since 1947, even though we've had dangers before and we did finally get some action thanks to john feerick and birch by and a few others to actually clarify some elements of presidential discussion in the

hardest way possible through a constitutional amendment, but the easier fashion of reform of the presidential succession act passively not been on the table, even though we know these issues exist. .com is a responsible way to do with this is to look at worst-case scenarios. the odds may be small. they may be very small, but we know they are not zero. we know they are not in intestinal. we know that in fact the odds of worst-case scenarios increased as we get easier access to a variety of mass destruction that can be used by large numbers of people, not just by nationstates are in getting insurance against those worst cases is a simple thing to do. it's not a costly thing to do. the reason we have some of these recommendations in the report, including having people from outside of washington in the line of succession, is because

the worst-case scenario really is that you wipe out everybody who is in that line. and it's no longer just a matter of having one event of the state of the union where you get a cabinet member who can be offsite. there are many others. we were able to get, fortunately, this time around a variation of the corn and approach for this in our girl. thanks to the core operation, both of the bush administration going out and the obama administration coming in, but also thanks to the good fortune that there was a cabinet member who was continuing in place, the secretary of defense, who stayed away from the inaugural. and we got the cooperation to have the secretary of homeland security, michael chertoff, stay beyond the inaugural, be away from sight so if anything happened, he could direct the homeland security response. next time around we may not have that, and we need to think about ways in which we can deal with it because of the niger is the

worst-case. but finding a way to make sure that we protect worst-case and arias is the fiduciary responsibility of our leaders to insist that if we have a period of martial law, it is as short as possible, that we get our constitutional institutions of government up and running quickly. that there is no question about who was actually in charge and that we get some responsiveness to the will of the people as we go along. there are ways to do it. these are not written in stone. we thought very carefully and evaded, weighing some of those issues. and all we really ask for now is that we begin to get some hearings and debate in congress so that we can move forward, not having to wait, although i think jamie is right, and then have the american people say why didn't you do something before.

>> norm, i disagree that you necessarily have to wait. i think all that is required is for some group of people to convince either nancy pelosi or harry reid that this needs to be done now. you just need to have one congressional leader who says we are going to do this and we will do whatever is required to get it done. i don't know how you accomplish that, but i mean, i think that's the first order of business. >> and we have seen when speaker pelosi puts her mind to something things have a way of happening. i would like to press you a bit on the issue of whether congressional leaders should be removed from a line of succession. this is one of the more controversial proposals, one that seems to ensure that a

broader effort doesn't go forward so one could say on purely pragmatic grounds leave it out, it's problematic. and i would like to get the reaction of the others of you as well. i'm a first branch of government guy. you know, i believe in the importance of congress. its particular role in the institution. and i'm wondering why a genuine sense of institutional pride and commitment, patriotism, wouldn't leave one to leave the speaker, the president pro tem has no business in that line of succession because they have more important work to do. that is to say, in the event that losing our president and vice president, the congress has a critical role to play, and why

not, therefore, allow for an executive branch transition for an executive branch position in maintaining the continuity if it's there of the congress itself. especially in the context of a politics where parties are so important in the delegitimizing of government if you have any effect a non-electoral transition of party control government. >> the argument is that whoever happens to be, separate us from the current individuals who occupy these officers, but whoever happens to be speaker and whoever happens to be the majority leader are national figures. now, maybe they didn't used to be before communications change, but they are truly national political leaders who travel the country and to deal with the

broad problems affecting the country. and i would argue that they probably have a broader knowledge and a broader political exposure and anyone else in the cabinet. and so it's not just because i was a member of congress. i happen to think that from the country's standpoint that these may be the single most competent, broad gauged political figures after the president and the vice president. it didn't used to be that way, but our country has changed. >> let me take that debate to the next level. it seems to me that in keeping congressional leaders and the line of succession, you vastly increase the potential for medical intrigue, for a possible advantage in terms of having a national

political intrigue will just undermine the legitimacy in almost every scenario you can imagine, even an intraparty transfer of power. >> i do not see it that way, because i think that these particular individuals, even though they come from one state or district, are recognized by the public at large as national figures. debt on a national scene. >> let's just say that is true. you still have the issue of political intrigue, the potential for change in party or wings of a party, and given the issues that have surrounded every assassination, the declaration of at the inability

of a president to serve, you can imagine all sorts of monkey business, which is not -- it is delegitimizing. >> both of you are essentially right, and this is a debate that the country has had for over two and years, from james madison on one side to. trim and on the other side. what i would offer is following up on what jimi said earlier, which is that when you are in an extreme situation where we have a president or vice-president of the need for clarity. you, i tie between madison and in trueman, i think the tie goes to what is sort of unimpeachably clear and so there isn't any unconstitutional about. i think there is some doubt among some of our most prominent scholars, why not construe that doubt in favor of removal.

>> navia mention, let me just give one historic comeback, that backs up what jamie said. keep in mind that after lincoln was assassinated and andrew johnson became president, he was impeached by the house and came within one vote of being convicted and removed from the office by the senate. at that time the next person in line for the presidency was the president pro tem of the senate who voted to remove johnson from office. who had a very strong vested interest in that process. and so it's not just -- or hypothetical. it can be impeachment. but also let's just get back to a kills point. you can have a four years with the political will of the country by moving from somebody at one end of the political spectrum to someone radically at the other end. it's really worth thinking

through whether that is an appropriate way to have succession. and add to that, in our temporary politics, the speaker of the house and a leader of the senate, even if it were the majority leader are not sort of consensual figures in the country that naturally unified people, because they are strong leaders like nancy pelosi, they are really quite controversial figures, oftentimes with a negative rating in the broader public partly because they are pushing at a particular party program, an agenda, and therefore have a lot of opposition. if it were a period, divided party government, i think there would be no legitimacy attached to succession to power by a

speaker of the other party. it would seem more like a two. >> but what about contra to that, what about a succession by secretary of the treasury or even an attorney general who is totally unknown in the country? you're talking about legitimacy now. someone the people out in the country barely could even name and in many cases might not be able to name. is that who you want leading the country at a time of crisis? >> you know, ironically the secretary of state and secretary of treasury now are better known than the majority leader of the senate. >> but that's only because of the current economic crisis. i would suggest to you that in a normal time, no one -- very few people would be able to invite with the secretary of the treasure is. a lot of people wouldn't even know who the attorney general of the united states is. >> all right.

do we have any questions here ask please. >> i think the discussion has been an outstanding discussion. just i'll go very quickly. i like sony people in the legal profession have been on many commissions and chaired a number and almost 50 years of it. and i guess i reflect the philosophy of a very dear friend of mine who said how important it is to american democracy that there be groups like you that keep alive important subjects and put out what you think is right. and american democracy functions incrementally. and the fact that you are out

there and your successes might be out there, ideas, in time a number of these ideas might become more of a political reality. so the importance of what you do cannot be deemphasize. >> i know the frustrations of jerry serving as on the commission or i would use a keypad at. but i, having said that, why some incremental steps couldn't be taken. made reference, congressman. jamie, you talked about whether the acting secretary should be in or out. there shouldn't be any question about that. they are either in or out. i think there's a consensus that could be developed there. and in some of these other areas about looking at the party rules, making sure that they are where they should be.

however, and then there were suggestions, on this whole inauguration period. so if you can get some of the incremental things done, that might set the bases, maybe not the same time, but a little bit down the line for some more steps. because people are thinking, you know, this is right to do to protect the safety and security of our country. i just throw that out. >> if i could react to that. in theory you're correct. i mean, it would be nice to be able to take, let's solve this problem, let's solve that problem. my guess is you're only going to get one bite at the apple here, and that if you ever get congress to pay attention to this and you haven't yet, you better get him to deal with this as much as possible at that one time.

>> discovery institute. to suggestions, this is a discussion you might consider and i would be interested in your comment. instead of an arbitrary order of the cabinet department, why not let each president be required by congress to pass the law, to designate before being sworn and while president-elect, the order of succession. but everybody, including the big four. because for example with this administration i would hope that general sasaki would be right near the top and even against the attorney general or mr. geithner. any other thing is, it's appalling how long it's taking to get the government in place. one way to finesse the confirmation issue without congress surrendering ultimate power is that the president's appointments, at least the

senior officer in each department, i think it should be done for the juniors as well, takes office subject to confirmation within 100 days by the congress. so the president starts, and he has full cabinet, or she has a full cabinet on day one, designates that succession adherence to ford and if it turns out someone didn't pay their taxes or didn't hire, reporter nanny or something and then the president will appoint someone else. >> i don't actually like that latter suggestion at all. we don't have much in the way of delay any more for actual cabinet members. and if you gave him an additional 100 days, they would take it. and serving in an unconfirmed status and having to make hard decisions not confirmed is not a good way to be a leader. you would trim your sails too much, you would be worried about

the confirmation process. we did in the 9/11 commission report make recommendations, many of which norms that have been acted upon. to cut down the period in which the subcabinet leadership in addition to the cabinet leadership is subject to confirmation. but at the cabinet level, i think the issue actually has more or less than salt. >> i like one of your recommendations about maybe getting each president the opportunity to order his or her own line of succession, the agi thing can set their own line of succession and sometimes include u.s. attorneys from obviously throughout the country which builds on the point about being outside of dc. my one question about your proposal would be whether it's constitutional. i don't have a reason right now but article to talk about congress by law shall provide for the line of succession. so the question is could congress pass a law delegating

that to the president, that would be a question i think we need to take a look at. if it works out i think it's an interesting idea. >> i think probably the way to do that is before the end on girl, the president makes a recommendation for a line of succession and then congress can pass along ratifying it. there is some real merit to that. part of the reason being that you may find a secretary of veterans affairs who is supremely qualified. i could go back to the secretaries of veterans affairs over the last period since we created the department and take many who were not chosen because they had the breadth of experience, depth and knowledge. and that is true of many cabinet nevers and that is one reason why we wanted to move just to the top four. but i'm perfectly happy to let the president designate six or however many. as long as we add in some people who are outside washington. having all the cabinet, given

what we know about the way cabinet officers are chosen, there are criteria that every president-elect our president will have. they are regional criteria. they are political criteria. they aren't gender and other ethnic criteria that may have nothing to do with whether you got somebody who has that coming into the white house. so rethinking this process all little bit, even if you don't like a lot of the ideas that we have, is important and worth doing and it can be done by legislation. just on the second point. there remains a big problem with the nomination and confirmation process. there is an enormous blog here. the way the process is set up, you have way too many people who have to get full fbi driven security clearances, 1141 senate

confirmable president nominees. it narrows a pipeline and you have a huge flood of people coming in. and what it means is that months into a new administration, this was true on 9/11 by the way, large numbers of people at that subcabinet level. people unita operationalized much of your policy had not been confirmed. that has got to change. and there also we need strong leadership from congress, part of it may be reducing the number of presidential appointees, and certainly reducing the number of senate confirmable once. these are not easy to do for the obvious recent. >> jim. >> i just wanted to point out the two main, the two arguments that have been made over and over again about removing the professional leaders from the line of succession. one, political intrigue. and two, that these tend to be controversial figures. both of these arguments apply

equally to the new federal officials you are talking about. whether its governors or former president or vice president, you have the opportunity for different kinds of political intrigue. and that these figures, you know, if it's former president, whether it's bush or bill clinton, or whether it's a former president who is up in his '80s like gerald ford, or ronald reagan, that's another problem. or whether it's a governor. all of these create new problems other involving controversy or intrigue. >> i cannot understand, because president clinton did not pick bigger gingrich.

if it is presidentially appointed federal offices, we can go back and forth. but you could eliminate or reduce this. >> but the injury would be in having the making of that appointment. >> if the president pick somebody who is out of line or a political flashpoint, you have confirmation by the senate, and i do not think he will find the president's, either one responsible and who will look for people clearly qualified -- you will not have the senate saying, "oh, let's take this 85- year-old who is clearly losing it." if i was president, i would put donna shalala and line of succession, people with a lot of breadth of experience who are active, vigorous, intelligent,, who would have those qualities.

if you want to keep them up to speed by having them get briefings on what is going on, you will have lots of people winning easy confirmation. >> i think that reflects to a real problem, a kind of condescension to the existing cabinet members who also have their own qualities and qualifications that you are in effect downgrading people who love served governors as chief of staff. in a case where it seems to me there are solutions with the existing system, i am putting aside now about taking congress of the line of succession. but the line of moving the cabinet to four people and then

replacing them with some group of elders who are new their appointed by the president to run an executive agency nor elected, i find that a remarkable change that does not seem justified. >> if we are successful in getting in attention to this report from speaker pelosi, majority leader reid and others and actually have some hearings and move it along, i am convinced that all of these arguments will be returned to and front and center.

he is wonderfully if

concentrated in silence of talent and wealth, and erudition. it should be opened next to a larger society. they're still separate, and i can not do it. >> he can listen on celebrity or download the p -- you can listen on satellite read or download the podcast. >> shepherds town, west virginia, is located near antietam and harper's ferry. founded by thomas shepard in 1734 and chartered by the virginia assembly in 1752, is the oldest town in the state. today, it is home to a division of the u.s. fish and wildlife service. a bureau of the departments of

the interior. that is where we went in late april to talk with historians about the influence of our 26 president on the history of the conservation movement. it is called, "the wilderness a warrior -- theodore roosevelt and the crusade for america is out o." >> this is the headquarters of fish and wildlife, but people come here for seminars and to learn proper technique. here, i'm walking past pictures of caribou in alaska.

roosevelt was very interested in all big game, and what interests me is building -- roosevelt is really the father of west virginia fish and wildlife. >> it is roosevelt realized that the federal government has an obligation to take birds and animals and to save plants and trees, and the president has an obligation to make sure we put aside natural wonders. they turned this training center for conservation into a museum to theodore roosevelt, almost. when did you first get interested? >> i loved reading about him as a child. but i really got intereseted in him in 1992, when i had a

program across the country and went to the badlands of north dakota. i went to the branch where she did some of his hunting and he wrote incredible books. many have commented, but it was incredibly informed. roosevelt knew more about the bad lands than any personal life 100 years ago. and i was teaching ' university , and wheat code-hosted a presidential conference. i was co-chair on theodore roosevelt. we had papers coming in from all over, and i started realizing that there had never been a book written on conservation

with teddy roosevelt on any magnitude. i started realizing that between the civil war, and it's a patient proclamation, and world war one, roosevelt using the white house to promote conservation and nature and what he called the strenuous life, wanting to save birds, the audubon society, and eventually fish and wildlife, it has changed. on a random minnelli ask this, you see america, and it is green -- on a rand mcnally atlas. so now as people talk about, roosevelt is becoming the key figure to understand. he was the only politician of

the day who had absorbent bar when mating habits and actually did something. he is a president could in his young days shot a buffalo, and he is the president who created wichita mountains, reserve for buffalo. >> one thing you see outside the center is taxidermy. >> roosevelt was trained in taxidermy. as a young boy, his teacher in new york was a man named john bell, who had been all the bond -- audubon stuart. as young, ted roosevelt had asthma and was sickly. but then he was obsessed with birds, creating his own museum. the father was a founder of the

american museum of natural history in new york, and young teddy roosevelt became a bird lover. if first document we have about him is about birds, and the last article at age 60 was about birds. he was a world expert on coloration and variation and created his bird preservation, 51 of them now being the heart and soul of u.s. fish and wildlife. all of the people watching have heard of it but do not realize it all began with these 51 byrd reservations, trying to save egrets and spoonbills and pelicans, etc., on both coasts. we are in shepard's town west virginia, not too far from washington, about 90 minutes.

it is a beautiful campus here in west virginia. here is the archive where i did research. they have papers of people like carson, who worked for fish and wildlife. for me, this is an archival treasure trove. they have local archives, one in michigan or arizona, and they even went to puerto rico recently to see the national forest she saved for the national forest service which is the only reinforced in our entire protection system in the united states, home to a reporter regan parrot -- rare puerto rican parrot. i would go to these places and

meet the ranger and wharton and interview them and also get documentation. but this is the nerve center. that is roosevelt with john muir in 1903. roosevelt got sworn in in buffalo. two months into presidency, he creates an aggressive conservation program. he created the first wildlife protection for big game groups. as governor of new york, he could have been considered a radical on preservation of resources.

in 1903, he gets on a train and goes to yellowstone with john burroughs, and he goes to the grand canyon and ends up in the woods of northern california. and they can out, spending three days in the wild, camping under redwood trees, which roosevelt thought were our great cathedrals. he would use religious imagery. and with his enthusiasm, he said it was the greatest day in his life, freezing and the snowstorm. and there were trying to out- naturalist each other. no one knew birds like roosevelt, but muir would talk about plants. they had a friendly competition. roosevelt but muir was one of our great figures.

your thought that only in extreme cases of hunger should you should and an animal. but hunters with a great conservationists. he ended up going to africa, collecting for science perhaps. the way our great ornithologist would have birds, he could have won bluebird and know something definitively about it. so you had to have a wide selection. he collected for the biological survey for u.s. fish and wildlife.

where for he went, he would send specimens in to get them analyzed. after the civil war, he wanted things mapped. he said, i want to know what wild flowers we have, what grasses, insects, songbirds. iowa numbers. so he is our only scientist trained president, applying what he learned at harvard as a natural study is major. in the 20th-century?

i do not want to say the wrong number. i do not know. i do not want to say wrong, but i would say around 150 million, if i had to guess, but i do not want to. when he went west, it was not that populated. mexico was a territory, arizona was a territory, so he could use the power of executive office to make executive orders on behalf of it, because they were territories. he came in and he died when he was 60 years old. at that point, he was our youngest american presidents. later, there is always a trick. john kennedy was the youngest elected. he was in the prime of his life,

incredibly vigorous, and one thing that argued in this book is that there is a psychiatrist at johns hopkins university who wrote a book called " exuberance." she has argued roosevelt had a form of manic depression called exuberance, and he could not turn his mind or energy off. he would hike 40 miles, 50 miles. he would go in rock. park and horseback ride all the time. he would -- as president, to disappear in the wild for days at a time without reporters. this was part of his need to act all the time. he was a person of pure emotion, locomotion. constant. entering our room, he took it over. >> are you in little but like

him? >> [laughter] . i identified with him. i had asthma as a boy. it was not fun. for some reason i have felt a lot of relief from nature. so i go on nature hikes with my kids. the outdoors to me as a great replenish her. whenever i get a chance -- i'm living in austin, so i go to the wild base and a lot, down to big bend national park. in addition to that to my parents were high school teachers, so we had a trailer and used to go around the country and camp all of these places. i very much like roosevelt and his love of animals. we just had a kit of raccoons going under my daughter's bedroom. i have an opossum that eats from the cat dish, bird feeders allover. i like to have wild life around me, and roosevelt was a believer.

urban people can develop nature deficiency, and roosevelt was concerned about industrialization for help and you had to get back to nature. you do not have to live in the wild, but you need these parks and monuments, a place to replenish your spirit. >> i remember when you spend a summer in north dakota. how many years ago was that? >> 1992. not every summer, every other summer. i did a lot of research for this book up their. the badlands is nine national park. there is a wonderful parks superintendent, valerie naylor, who helped me a lot, help me to understand the terrain. there's also a woman i dedicated the book to whether like very much. many people go on vacation in

the summer to south dakota because of mount rushmore and the black hills, some of the roosevelt parts are there. if you go north, to north dakota, theodore roosevelt national park. families will see buffalo, antelope. i go jogging or mountain biking and there are records of antelope. summers in montana, you're getting a lot of fired now. the air quality is not as great in montana. this part of the badlands, the whole sky is like a planetarium at nine night.

hopefully, the obama administration will do more to protect things. the interior of the united states, the midwest and great plains is a part of this country i feel happiest and. -- happiest in. >> you have published several books and articles. your book on katrina came out when? >> 2006. >> had been working on this book? >> i was. i have been working on this book for a long time, collecting. roosevelt's papers are divided at harvard, library of congress has some papers on microfiche, but we're looking at a man who wrote over 150,000 letters and was traditionally -- people are

traditional looking in his correspondence and with trust- busting, people would skirt over his birds as a hobby. we know him as the rough wider -- roughrider. when he trained in san antonio, tx 3 mascots. he had a cougar cubs named josephine, a gold eagle, and a dog. soviet three animals with him at all times -- so he had three animals at all times and would write letters. he would find it funny. this man jury continued in the white house. he had a pony in the elevator, which is where he would feed him potatoes and warm milk. he did not have a dog.

he had six dogs around him all the time. all this time around him, the dog skip. he inherited this love of animals from his uncle, robert roosevelt, who in the 1860's and 1870's was the expert on fish, writing books of canada, ontario, florida. it became part of the tradition, being a conservationist. >> how did you convince the publishing of the 1000 page book in this economy? >> my vision is to do a quartet, cult of america in the age of conservation. they do not want to promote first volumes, so we are now marketing it that way. but i wanted to do something very definitive. i have loved these multiple

series of america, and i realized we have never written a conservation history of the country. roosevelt, because of his diaries and books, was the perfect person. i could have cut down the book, but yuo would have to start cutting some of the places. i did not want that. my book was a chance for people to understand these battles. there were foot soldiers for conservation everywhere, and roosevelt was networking with them. this is a book about him and a conservationist naturalists around him. there has been others.

the head of the smithsonian institute started caring about wildlife. buffalo were spread at the bronx zoo. roosevelt was the founder. they went to repopulate the planes. the doctor running the biological survey. and there are many. i wanted to inject these names into history. i did not want to be relegated to a specialist. i spent time in almost all. not in all the forests, but all of his parks and monuments. this has been my hobby -- visiting his places. so what was very exciting for me is that i would pick a place i had not been that was not a

park. it was a cabin in virginia, outside charlottesville, and it was in the wild. roosevelt as president saw the last passenger pigeon. there used to be a million, but it is extinct now. roosevelt wrote the last description of one in the wild, and you get to see the person most comfortable in nature. people do not want to think of his confirmation as a policy as much as a passion. the foresight and precedency had -- and precedents that he had. animals had to have had a touch. because of darwins influence, he believed that losing a species was like wearing a mask -- losing a mass -- losing a masterpiece.

to live without wild life was to live in utter pain, in modern condition of commerce and not romance. he was a scientist, but he got romantic excitement from the wild and species in the wild. >> so here at the conservation center, you are paid for by the taxpayer. did know about it? -- do they know about it? >> no. that is one of the reasons i wanted to come. if you look at the pacific coast, washington, oregon, roosevelt is stating this. you see it on the map. he saved those. roosevelt was interested in wildlife photography. he had a man named william family, another guy deal with in my book, and he would come in the white house and showed pictures of oregon it.

he went to portland to meet, and it became a movement to save the wildlife of oregon. so these states, particularly in the west, in florida, you cannot write about the states without seeing the impact roosevelt had. and these were not easy things to do. when he saved the grand canyon, he went there and said, do not mar the grant canyon. it is for future generations. you cannot improve the beauty of it. he then was shocked to find a congress that was ready to mine it for zinc and copper and commercialize it. and roosevelt used an executive order, meaning that congress refused to make the grand canyon national park. they refused. he had a weapon, the antiquities act of 1906. he said, i so declared a national monument for future

generations, overriding congress. the key is that he did it with this group, but we're not reading into the federal government's role. roosevelt's conservation can be seen as inspired by lincoln, with the power of the federal government. and his heroes were very keen on protecting yellowstone in 1872 as president. sherman and sheridan, union generals, were hunters, but it wanted to create game reserves. so roosevelt is part of that tradition, but also he was determined to use the executive power to save wild america. . .

the planet in peril, like anderson cooper's book. roosevelt created the global modern conservation movement. he, as president, was calling for international conferences to save rainforests and redwood forests, old evergreen forests. it was just not -- it was not just localized to america. he could see the problems of hyper industrialization and the havoc it was going to have on wilderness areas. >> tell me if i'm wrong, we

would not be here without robert byrd. money came in to build this place, specific to this requirement here. the thinkers developed would be surprised if he saw this? >> she would love it. >> do think he would be surprised? >> i do not think he would. he was creating conservationist foot soldiers. what he was doing was creating a movement, kind of like martin luther king creating a civil rights movement. he was involved in spearheading the conservation movement for perpetuity. many of the rangers and the rest -- in the west were rough riders. he was worried about poaching, people stealing petrified wood, people carving their initials,

so he was doing law-enforcement, saying that we were going to protect our air looms. he called all these places like wind cave, yosemite, mesa verde national park, and we're going to police them and protect them. and how -- >> if you look at these in the room, do you think at the time he thought they would be that important, all these years later they would be basically celebrated in history? >> he would be pleased. because of time limits, i cannot get into it deeply. >> you might want to buy the book then.

>> people talk about the bull moose party in american history. roosevelt leads in 1909. his last weeks, he put bird reserves in monuments everywhere. at the very last minute, using executive orders -- this was a lame duck president. he did elect to go to africa for one year. william howard taft fired his chief. he is in a picture they're heading to a memphis conservation conference. taft fired him over alaska land argument. taft was trying to let congress and the lands that fdr put aside. he goes to italy and meets teddy

roosevelt. taft is daring to put back even a portion -- a portion of his conservationist legacy. result attacked him for not being a warrior on the conservation front. >> roosevelt and taft for together at a dinner. the question is asked about what he wants to do next. was that 1908? >> and they do get together, and he really believed in taft during his presidency. that is why he was the hand- picked successor. he is the only real president that just relinquish power because he had other things to do. teddy roosevelt left the presidency to collect for the american museum of national history, he went to brazil to

collect -- your listeners explain how much this was who was. he did not have a conservation policy, he was a naturalist. he was one of the four or five top naturalists of his era. this is what his chosen profession was. he saw himself as the bridge between the laboratory scientists and the public imagination. he morphed james cooper's outdoor tales with the science of our when 0-- of darwin. and many people listening have a bird bath in the backyard. taft fell in line as a conservation foot soldier.

taft had spent time in the philippines -- when he breaks on conservation with roosevelt, that was finished. >> when he was asked if he wanted to be a president of the united states and budget -- or a supreme court justice -- >> he preferred to be a supreme court justice, but his wife wanted him to be president. at the taft inaugural address in 1909, there was a blizzard. it was one of the worst weather is for an inaugural. roosevelt said that he would -- it would be the result blizzard. tass said, it would be the taft blizzard.

roosevelts turns it into the media as the heroic roosevelt a blizzard. i'm going out in a blizzard. it was hard for taft to have to succeed the popular president. teddy roosevelt as the teddy bear. they did not get a bear hunt. somebody tried one against the tree, and he refused to kill ait because it would be on sporting. it would become the teddy bear. someone sent him a letter asking if they could make a teddy bear, and he says, i do not think there is much of a market, but you have my blessing to make it.

the teddy bear is now the most popular tory in the world. -- the most popular toy in the world. billy possum went nowhere. people thought they could take magic from teddy roosevelt. he was so generous. taft has become a very victimized person, andersonville did not help them any. -- and roosevelt did not help him any. >> the 1912 presidential race -- the reason i get to that is because i have been there, i remember seeing the shirt with the bullet hole in it. that is an assassination attempt you don't hear much about. what is the story? >> roosevelt was running as a third-party candidate.

he went to give a speech in milwaukee. a crazed anarchist took a shot at him, and he was bleeding. he had such bad eyesight that he had always carried a burden glasses with him in his pocket. he had this fix script. and he has a metal like case so he could see the coloration details. that is what the bullet hit. it wounded him, but there was thinking that if it had not gone to that birdwatching kit, he would have died. he is bleeding, and he said it will take more than that to kill the bull moose and keeps going. much like when ronald reagan was shot in 1981, the public opinions -- he becomes a folklore moment. the bulldozer could not be knocked down.

-- the bull mooser could not be knocked down. the folklore of roosevelt that he was always conscious of went down in history. >> the most popular place is the eagle's nest. many people tap in to see the baby eagle. what you think people are so asset -- fascinated by eagles? the way, it is eagle.com. you can watch it on a live camera. >> there is a huge birdwatching community. it is a very good sport in the united states. people love it. an ego is a magnificent bird of

prey. that is the kind of thing that a result would have loved. herbert job had a book that to roosevelt's wrote the introduction for. he saved the key west, and this fellow took these photographs down there. roosevelt would write an introduction to his book believing that nothing like imagery of birds and wildlife photography was going to make people feel the need to preserve nature. you just can't talk about a bird. to see it on the internet back then, the wildlife photography was just beginning as an art form. roosevelt championed all of these photographers.

>> why should the american people want to pay this price nationwide -- and how much has been set aside? >> the roosevelt reserves have 240 million acres. sometimes something gets declassified. i will pick one by the bretton islands in louisiana. the barrier islands are eroding. roosevelt believed this is what made the united states unique. yes the have westminster abbey, the louvre. did not have the tetons, the grand canyon, the giant redwood trees. he boasted that our natural beauty was so spectacular that we had this a bit. his language is always for generations -- the american

character was going to be formed by having these into meant contacts with the wild. even for character building, he thought that the best soldiers were people who knew how to live and survive in the woods for three are four days and understood how to read nature. roosevelt had been kind of a triumphal list. his writings, the winning of the west, had a good attitude. as president and in his writings, he gets to take on what i call an native american view of nature. as ex-president, he goes to live with the tribe who does rattlesnake candling. he is surrounded in a hot by

people who are handling rattlesnakes, and he wrote and essay. right near fort sill, it is gorgeous. it is the wichita mountains. there is a beautiful mountain in the plains. the indians believed that the 60 million buffalo disappeared and they all went down the top of it and left. roosevelt takes the time to bring buffalo that he sponsored, put them in a rail car back to oklahoma as a gift to the comanche to get the planes depopulated with buffalo. roosevelt's romanticism -- it is a pointer really want to make clear. he is a child of the post civil war era. he saw the north fight the south. he believed that the north messed it up, the american dream

got messed up because of a hyper industrialization. sewage was done in the river. at the south was stigmatized to do to slavery and racism. his evening was west of the mississippi river -- he's even -- his eden was west of the mississippi. their places -- l.a. would bother him. he wanted smaller cities where you have universities and businesses surrounded by wilderness the you could go on day trips back packing. it was very speedy hyper industrialization.

he was engineering the west a lot. it angered a lot of people. if you do not like a strong president, don't like theodore roosevelt. he didn't even look at laws. his phrase was "iso declare it? -- his phrase was "bi so declare its." he wants the federal government to protect the american wilderness for future generations. >> the like that? >> i think it is bought on. you know what happened to yellowstone? they were going to take the railroad and cut to the middle of yellowstone. build up as a commercial center, and all of these contraptions. roosevelt went to congress and fought to stop -- to preserve

the integrity of yellowstone. >> you like the idea that he just declared -- >> i love it. that is what it was like back then. i think there was a moment to save wild america. it was a moment to save our species and habitat. you go to our rocky mountains, you're going to see wildlife. it is special. anybody who ever interacts -- i saw a spotted owl. you go to yellowstone and to get the chance to see a black bear. it is all inspiring. roosevelt was working to save all these things. the left has had trouble with roosevelt as hunter. and they have trouble with him because he wanted to wipe out predators. he was the world's expert on

cougars. he wrote papers on them. he also knew about different types of coyotes and wolves. they would use ways to eradicate wolves because he was mainly wanting to save the antelope, caribou, deer, and elk. the first book published by president as president ever was theatre roosevelt's book. it was his book called "that your family." . -- "the der family -- deer family." a hundred years ago, they were dying out. we used to have the carolina parakeet day you read about --

south carolina and georgia, they were all over these -- they were all over. you have to go to the bahamas now. roosevelt wanted to save all of these because he felt that that added to the charm of american life, that in many ways to he hooked up with the frontier thesis and believed what made the american and american was space and wilderness. and if we lost that, we would lose our american character. >> when did you start writing? when the right the first chapter? >> i started writing the prologue about four years ago on pelican island, florida. and about how he started saving wild florida. >> that would have been 2005?

>> i had been collecting on this for my files and going to these places since the 90's. i went down and visited with paul, a guy who works -- one of the neat things with the u.s. fishing and wildlife is that when i visit places, they were so excited that i was interested in the history of that refuge. they would take me -- i have people taking me to watch sea turtles. at night, with the great turtle expert, i watched the turtles lay eggs on the beach. after they lay their eggs, they move to the ocean. it felt like the birth of mankind. it was biblical to watch these turtles interact. i was not just looking at documents, i was trying to experience some of the wildlife that indirectly or directly

roosevelt's saved. >> when did you do the gerald ford book? >> four it did for the -- ford i did for the -- their big books and small books. it is a small book for the general reader. this book was for me, the book was going to live and die by. i was putting everything i had from my childhood experience to my knowledge of theodore roosevelt's. many women have written incredible books -- there is great literature out there. we of old un to know each other.

i visited and talked -- that we have really gotten to know each other. >> i want to go back to how you did this. the reagan diaries you edited. >> what happened with the reagan diaries is, i was not expecting it. i had written a book about u.s. army rangers and d-day. it reflected back to reagan's famous speeches that he gave. there was an opportunity and an offer to be -- to pete wilson, i have to give credit to the former governor of california. i was stunned to see that reagan wrote a diarrhea every day. -- wrote to a diary every day.

to continue work, roosevelt book, or is this an important thing to do? we ended up saying, let's bring our kids and go out to california. >> you were living in new orleans? >> yes. we came back to new orleans. i named my american studies center the theodore roosevelt center. i was teaching class is on theatre roosevelt and conservation. at rice university, i teach a class on theatre roosevelt and conservation. i have been forming myself, on the research part of the story, for a long long time. it was the main thing i wanted to do with my life, to write the history of teddy roosevelt, fdr, u.s. fishing and wildlife,

ladybird johnson during the '60s, up until the present time dealing with global -- global warming. i went to see all of that to the eyes of the presidency. i wanted to use people like to roosevelt, fdr, truman, lyndon johnson, jimmy carter, clinton. to talk about these characters -- >> when the duke "the reagan diaries?" -- when did you do "the reagan diaries?" >> i had a couple of chapters written when i started the reagan diaries. if you're going to the mesa

verde, when you go there, it is in southwest colorado in the four corners region. there are some arguments about the native culture, but is the cliff -- at the cliff dwellings there. -- it is the cliff dwellings there. i go knock on the door, i: advance, and i say, you're the expert. what you have in your files. -- what do you have in your files? help me. all of these national parks or wildlife refuges have zero main office. they save the clippings. the have all sorts of things. i have been xerox in thing since

1992 to get to this place to write the book. it becomes kind of chronological. there is a whole group of national forests. i cannot write about 80 of them, so here the three went to to focus on as examples of that 80. >> you said your wife and you moved to austin tx, teaching houston tx -- moved to austin, texas. you teach in houston, texas. >> my oldest daughter is 6, named after the famous painter thomas benton. i've always modeled my career on thomas benton because he used to do these great murals of america and had all these characters that were in it. i used to have prints of him in my bedroom. it got me so excited.

i named my first daughter benton. the second is johnny brinkley. i had an uncle who was killed in bomb in world war two. he was a marine. he was kind of a hero in my life even though i never met him because he died in world war two. i was also a big fan of johnny cash. >> are you going to call him john for the rest of his life for john? >> johnny. he is for. my own guess is 2 years old. that is cassidy. -- and my youngest is 2 years old. her name is cassidy. it is kind of irish sounding. my wife is formerly and goldman

of new orleans. we met there, got married, and becoming a family man has changed my life. all my kids want to do is go to the wild basin to see animals. we have a place in austin where i take them all the time. now they don't look and say -- if they see a fish, they say the perch. i get them to start knowing all of them. they each have favorite animals that they have honed in on. benton it like ducks -- likes the ducks. she probably has 200 toy ducks. >> 200? >> we have surrounded her. it is an obsession.

there is a whole series of birds stuffed toys which are really fun because you can get a hearing it, or an e grid, and we have a lot of those, too. >> he talked about pelican island. >> when i did my first draft, i right at the sites. it is like james mcpherson going to a civil war battlefield. >> are you left handed? >> i am. obama is left-handed. clinton was left-handed. bush 41 was left-handed. >> what does that mean? >> we are a tribe. >> last question, who named it "wilderness warrior?"

>> i did. my wife made me the originator of it, but we both wrote a list of titles, and a think it is because tedder roosevelt was seen as a warrior. his sense of being a warrior was not just about battlefield. he liked to have fights about everything that he believed in. he was a warrior fighting to save wild america. the title kind of came naturally. the subtitle has the word " crusade" in it. to confront roosevelt on wanting to save the grand canyon, mesa verde, or the bird refuges in florida, it was an act of -- you better be strong. i do not know any president that was as bold as roosevelt.

nothing infuriates me more worried and people say that bill clinton was like theodore roosevelt. he is nothing like him. george bush was nothing like him. he was a deep, introspective writer. he never lied. >> we did not have time to talk about your bob dylan interview order book on concrete. we will have to do that later. host[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> presidential domestic policy advisers that worked from president nixon to president bush talk about the present -- talked about the lessons they learned while serving the chief. sunday at 4:25 eastern on c- span. >> these places remind me of modern cathedrals that donors would build things on hoping they would go to heaven. >> he would like to see a few changes to the higher education system. >> i think princeton philosophy should be on the web.

i think that he's wonderfully concentrated islands of talent and wealth should be opened up to the larger society, not coltish lee kept separate. they still are, and i can't understand why. >> the under education of an overachiever. sunday night at 8:00 on c-span. down of the c-span pot cast -- pdcast. -- download the c- span podcast. >> in last week's installment, mr. brinkley talked about the genesis of his interest in the subject. >> what interests me is

roosevelt really is the father of u.s. fish and wildlife. roosevelt realized that the federal government has an obligation to save species, birds, animals, to save plants, trees, and the president has an obligation to make sure that we put aside, for generations on born, natural wonders like roosevelt did for the grand canyon, mt. olympus, or the petrified forest. >> they turned this center into a museum for theodore roosevelt. >> that training center is the national conservation training center, one of the many places douglas brinkley went. >> we talked about the eagle's nest with our discussion -- in our discussion with doug brinkley. >> we had a pair of bald eagles i came in and started to try to

build a nest. the first season, they did not do a very good job. the second season, they came back and try again. they succeeded in building that nest. they had to eaglets that year. -- two eaglets taht year. -- that year. one died, the other one lived. it was actually taken off the endangered species list about a year ago. i think it is a good model for us to aspire to, critters that were almost gone have come back. >> why you do this job here? >> i am environmental historian. the dream for me was to work in a history job.

i help teach a lot of biologists. the displays your seen by of 15,000 students a year. i feel like my history is making a difference. >> we know that people can see it on the web, but does it bring anybody to your telephone? >> we have a history website. we get a lot of phone calls there. we have pictures of artifacts. we even put up historic books. a lot of people come for images for books or films or dissertations. we get a lot of traffic. >> telesat the institution got here, who supports it, who pays for it -- >> we're located about 80 miles northwest of washington d.c. here and shepherd's town west virginia.

they did their training at the typical airport hilton or holiday inn. when we started to design this place, we looked to build it as a place where the people and the fish and wildlife service could call home. a place that would represent the importance the service puts into investing in to its employees. we're really talented folks that work for the fish and wildlife service. it is critical that they continue to build their skills so they can do a better job of dealing with the complex conservation challenges that we face today. >> how much does this cost, and who pays for it? >> steve would have the answer that. >> this place the cost about $150 million. senator robert c. byrd major we

had the funding. the first bush administration and the clinton administration requested and supported the project. >> we have about 17 buildings. >> how long did it take for it to be built? >> it took us about three years. >> what can book like douglas brinkley's riding -- writing do for you? >> our employees can organize their own heritage and help the american public realize that just like any other historic artifact, these parks are an important part of history. a lot of us give little talks at parks or schools that last for an hour or so. it is useful if you can turn them over -- if they want to know more about the history.

i graduated from harvard in 1989 with a ph.d. in history of science. >> how long have you been here? >> i have been here 10 years. it is my tenth anniversary. hear, i feel like i'm doing history in the field. >> i have a master's in public administration from hartford. i worked a lot of difference jobs environmental education and public government. i came in in 1990. this project can along, and i was able to jump in at the very start of it. there is a lot of operational planning. i was privileged to watch this place rise to one of the

greatest conservation training locations on the planet. >> there are a lot of archives in this country. this was devoted to fish and wildlife. how important are they to historian's research? >> this is ground zero for anyone wanting to do with issues of wildlife protection.

in these file cabinets and the samples they have, this is how wild america got saved. you can go look at the documents for what was called a biological survey which later became u.s. fish and wildlife. if you wanted to learn about gray wolves or manatees, this would be a place to come and start finding how the protection movement got underfoot. >> one of the people you write about what about in your book is john burroughs. -- that you write a lot about in your book is john burroughs. the issue is taken under the wing of walt whitman during the civil war when whitman was a nurse with soldiers. he -- whitman tapped him for greatness. get a great mind as a poet and writer. he was the most popular person riding on nature after the civil

war. -- riding on nature after the civil war. teddy roosevelt -- when i read all of his correspondence, because people buy their first name or last name. he felt adopted by john burroughs. result wanted to be boroughs in his riding. each attributed the greatest american -- a person that lived up in the catskills. he lived in it -- he wrote about a bluebird building a nest in his backyard, -- he said, you have the universe in your backyard.

a brilliant writer. i've been trying to make sure all his homes get preserved. boroughs belongs in the top tier. he is one of the finest naturalist writers in the united states. t.r. loved him as president. they went hiking and camping together. the only guest in his country home was john burroughs, and they would go birdwatching. their correspondence is mostly about what they are seeing. it was not just about hunting,

but preservation. >> he had a very personal note in there about john burroughs. he said that he loved walt whitman. he said there was no evidence that they had a homosexual relationship. why did you need to write that? >> walt whitman was gay. during the civil war, whitman had adopted john burroughs. you can't tell, but when he was a young man, he had these extraordinary looks. it basically had love notes to each other. he became the great student of walwyn in egypt of walt whitman. their relationship was one of a platonic major. -- platonic nature. >> we're at the conservation center for training. how much time is spent in this room? >> this is a place where they keep the artifacts.

we get special access, although i would be shown items here to inform my riding. behind me, there is a bag that says "biological survey poison." there is a time in the biological survey's job was to do pest control and predator control. on the other side of that mission was -- farmers would sometimes just shoot birds willy nilly. they said you have to keep the birds, they're eating the can -- eating the miskitos, controlling the insects, and controlling the pestilence. they're putting out information for farmers on why wildlife is important to keep on your farm, you do not want to get rid of birds. remember, scarecrows are about birds not eating anything.

the sophistication started coming -- and also issues of soil erosion. animals claim -- is claimed that animals up an ecosystem stay alive. i do not think people in america realize how serious trees are. if you lose trees, you lose everything. you get soil erosion, you have run off, problems result would plant trees in nebraska -- a windstorm would kill the corn. now we have the green revolution, etc.. back then, you had have trees just to blunt wind. it is not just about bag limits

and monitoring wildlife and protecting animals. they also had a mission of helping farmers and people living out in the wild coexist with nature in a way that was both economic, utilitarian, and aesthetic. >> go back to the first time you thought about coming to this facility. how did it happen? how did you find that it even existed? >> wanted to begin my book with the birth of the 51 federal byrd reservations that t are created. i went to pelican island, florida. i went out on a boat. i went to the island which is a bird refuge. you could step on birds' nests. there are many like this off our coast. pelican island, pelican's would come and would breed and nest there. they will be in a cluster.

bill -- when in's fashion during the gilded age, they want to fedders for women's caps. -- they wanted feathers for women's caps. people would come and massacre birds, gun them down. we were losing species in florida. if he thought the west was wild, florida was the last untamed place down to the swaps in the everglades. these were a lot of ex confederates on the land who could not stand the federal government. their view was, if it is a bird, i will shoot it. roosevelt's place -- his first place was pelican island, florida. these are 1902 surveys of pelican island which is like a dollop of land. it was an incredible pelican

resting area. this kind of information, these documents are talking about the bird life. it is the first mapping we have of this part of wild florida. these ornithologists and frank chapman in particular, they eventually got to t.r. who was a fellow ornithologist who said, we're going to lose the birds of florida of we do not do anything. roosevelt looked into it and famously said, is there anything to stop me? i so declare a federal byrd -- federal bird refuge. before that, you had a fat -- a yellow stone that was for people. there was a sign that said "no trespassing."

i can go to the island, look at the birds, talk to people. i had to come here to see documents like this. if you go to sebastian, fla., there is a statue of him there. paul cradle -- cragle -- haunts christian andersen's folk tale about the storks, he came over to the united states and arrived in florida right across from pelican island. he saw these people slaughtering the birds. polls started independently taking a shot gun and pointing it people who would dare to approach to slaughter these birds. he became the pelican watcher. he was considered a bit of a cook -- kook because he cared

about pelican's some much. roosevelt's game wardens out of this usda, -- two of them were murdered down there. i write about bradley in my book. here is the first kauai -- -- here is the first guy. he stays on the job. i did not get to put this in the footnotes of my book for length reasons, but i went to his ancestors's homes in florida. they showed me theatre roosevelt's's badges that he gave him, and a double barreled shotgun that he would point that anybody approaching these birds. t r dyes, -- dies in january.

warren harding comes down in a yacht by pelican island and the roosevelt's said that nobody had set foot on the island. there were on a golfing trip. he is president harding. the approach pelican island. he made his own boat, pointed a gun at the president of the united states, and he turned harding and those guys back. the point is, conservation was a battle. there were two sides to it just like there are now. it was nasty in florida. not only did he create pelican island in 1903, but he created a strategy, all the way down florida.

it was t.r. saving them. we would have lost while florida forever if roosevelt had not acted when he did. he spent time as the rough rider on his way to fight. here is taking notes on the tampa bay area. there is a lot on the gulf coast of florida. key west, the dry tortugas. >> go back to the beginning. how did you find this place? >> when i go to the sites, they all said, did you go here? >> i am asking these questions -- how did you get in the door? i called the historian for the u.s. fishing and wildlife. his job is to interface with scholars and tell me -- i was

talking about the use of the old slides. there is cragle in a canoe down there. they have slides of florida of these early wars. in u.s. fishing and wildlife culture, he is a hero. he is known all over. he has a whole monument down there. he is near where his -- he saved manatees, etc.. come to any of these places. the research and come here, try

to look at documents. books are pretty much have, but they can find this -- they have the up-to-date numbers here on species i am writing about. for example, that is a louisiana black bear. it is almost extinct. there are only about 200 left in the river region of louisiana and mississippi up there near arkansas. >> in the alive? >> we're about to lose the louisiana black bear. here at this u.s. fishing and wildlife area -- some people used to hunt them. i was speaking in monroe,

louisiana. they want to save the louisiana black bear. people are very proud of their their history. the famously wrote the short story, the bear modeled loosely on collier, who was a bear hunter. there are these legendary beer people down there in the delta. there is mass agriculture, over hunting, harvesting, killing bears because they were considered predators. we almost destroyed them. here is where there rehabilitating them. t.r. had spent time and wrote about the river region in great detail. to inform my book, i needed to ask them, what is going on there today? what were the black bear populations like back then? what are they like today? this is the place i had to come to check. >> when you come to a place like this, how long he's been here,

and what you do while you're here? dodge a look at documents and books. one of the most helpful things is out there. they have a library. they gave me to titles i did not know about for feature writing of mine because they collect everything here. i just noticed a minute ago behind me in this cabinet, i never saw this little book by cb colby. it is a great archived, but the problem with -- i am feeling i am walking into a treasure trove. people are riding on national parks, mostly. yellowstone, yosemite, the great smoky mountains. the parks service -- ken burns is doing the national parks. people did not know much about what u.s. fishing and wildlife does.

it was how to save species and their habitats. if you do not have enough wetlands, you cannot have the species. they monitor everything here. for example, fish and wildlife declared the florida panther and endangered species. many of them are being hit by cars, making it very are for them to survive. the government has treated a wildlife refuge under the result way of thinking. this created habitats of this panther can live. we should not lose the florida panther. we should not lose the jaguars and new mexico and arizona. we should not lose the polar bear in alaska. this is where the endangered species act is real. these are the people at fishing and wildlife that are out there on the ground. my book is not just about theodore roosevelt, it is about

how we got to where this triumphant story -- we do have a great system. the problem we have is, we're not maintenance and properly due to not enough funding. people do not like it -- you mean i cannot build a condo complex because of the great panther? it is always that balance. >> how we look at other countries? >> all of them at -- all of them around the world, and rest -- and roosevelt was the progenitor of the movement. .

it is born of a presidency of roosevelt. >> how often in your research in this book did you go from a conversation or to a place and say they are doing their job? >> on the ground? >> did you ever get irritated by the attitude somebody had or the federal agencies that keep all this stuff.

>> i give them and a across the board. not that many people are writing about the history of wall of protection for the history of conservation as you might think. for me to come in having written a number of books, they like it and yellowstone because a lot has been written about it. every american should go to crater lake. they need to seek the blue- colla color. they were helping me get documents left and right. they were thrilled to learn about the history.

i would try to look at the history. >> what evidence do you have that this kind of book would sell? >> it is $35. online is less than that. i think presidential studies do well. i wanted to do the book as fairly and accurately as possible. i had to cut a lot to get it down to 1000 pages. it is that bridge of a story. i do not write these books -- i am not saying that i will not do it in my career.

i wrote the book for future generations. i wanted to lay this down so that every kid would know what happened. we do not just sort of have these sites in certain areas. each side was a battle of whether the federal government should have the slander not. each state has a local hero. i jotted focus on some of those people. -- i tried to focus on some of those people. all white, alaska, florida, oklahoma, virginia, i took the battle to a lot of these places.

i wanted to see a new generation of environmental heroes to look at. there was a real battle out there. i will am involved with san francisco. roosevelt, in hawaii, if you look at a map of hawaii, and looked to the west of it, roosevelt say it all of that bird sanctuaries. when japan would try to kill birds on the island, he threatened war with japan. roosevelt heard that a group of japanese hunters trying to kill american signals.

-- seals. he was willing to go over -- go to war over that period you cannot understand the essence of theodore roosevelt if you do not understand the forestry in america and his love for conservation as some. he was an early reader of darwin. we do not know the exact moment he discovered borrowing. we know that he was 14 years old. he writes about darwin. he talks about how we evolve from the stork. roosevelt has himself evolving from a store. it shows his brother involving

from an animal. but the time theodore roosevelt goes to harvard majoring in natural studies, darwin was the rage. it was the revolution. people became darwinian. i argue in this book that don is the central figure in the intellectual life of roosevelt. what some people do not like about his foreign policy, survival of the fittest, we are going to be the biggest power in the world, that one side of him -- he was right on understanding management.

he was a great lover of the prairies. he would get seasick. he went abroad going to panama and pr. he wrote about birds. he was taking the field notes of the wildlife of panama. he saved forests in reporter week opuerto rico. it is fascinating. >> why the white gloves? >> they make you wear them at a lot of archival places. this document i am holding, you could call it the birth of u.s. wildlife.

this is what made roosevelt start all of this with wildlife protection. c-span should go to pelican island some time. there is an incredible boardwalk down there. this plant has a beautiful view. family vacations to florida should include pelican island in panama. you a guaranteed to seek a where passage of while florida. i would stay in a beach that is in between st. augustine and palm beach on the atlantic coast. the ding darling national

wildlife refuge it is spectacular. it created the national forest in florida that links the atlantic to the gulf. if you look at a map, and you can see a big part of the forest. he preserved that area. >> i have been interviewing you for several years. how you remember all of this? >> i love history. you know that. i just love it. i have a good memory i guess. when i get into something -- >> do you have a photographic memory? >> i am not so sure it is that. if i am excited about documents, i remember them well. before i was not thinking about the back story of how we got this system when i did my

research. look at our incredible national forests and parks. we have an obligation to maintain it properly. >> when you are doing your research, how do you keep track of the all? what is your system? >> one person told me to abandon chronology. i realized it does not happen day-by-day. you get in a danger if he switched around date. writing rise and try to stay chronological. then i get the dates of all the places. the date he declared something, i have that date. and the dates of all these

places. i say, i know about politics. who is the champion that got the winning results? the was the champion of yosemite etcetera. then i tried to bring them into the story. >> where you put it? >> the notebooks, yellow legal pads, etc.. i had a devil's tower by its. i would arrange it in different ways.

i am terribly influenced by my environment, where i am at. the places i went to is where i oncwanted to write about. everything i could get, i tried to include it. >> you are finished with your manuscript. how do you ensure that it is accurate? >> it is hard. someone emails you are ready letter and it asks you to include something in the next edition. i sit chapters to all of the people. i sent one person the entire manuscript.

i sent my florida chapters to one man in the panel region. he had some guys look into it to make sure it was accurate. one person is an ox -- expert in the building dams. one person is an expert on the west. i would ask them for feedback. everybody i sent a chapter to found something wrong. sometimes they found five of them. sometimes it was a word change.