live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c- span. >> next, nick clegg takes questions of the british house of commons. after that, the candidates in the new hampshire senate primary race me for a debate. -- meet for a debate. .

knew

and who absorber who he was who taught obama community organizing or something like that. obama at one point actually wrote a paper in which he discusses alinsky. alinsky seems to have had an important influence on his life. it is clear just listening to the man that community organizing had an enormous influence on his life, whether or not he did it well, that is another story. that does not really matter, it still will teach you something. >> when did you meet him, and how old were you? >> i was a brash young man of about 22 years of age, something like that. i met him because i had tried to start, or had started, an organization in chicago of

porter ricans and some other spanish-speaking people who were being kicked around in a rundown neighborhood in chicago. so i started this organization, which very shortly went way over my head and i really did not know what i was doing. i was just feeling my way, and of course it was costing a lot of money, which i did not have. so luckily, i had run into a catholic priest who started running around trying to raise money for this ridiculous thing. finally, he introduced me to another catholic priest who was a great friend of alinsky, who was an important figure in washington. he was the catholic church's lobbyist on social issues in the

1930's and 1940's. of ady, who had just a bit broke, said ago i like young man, you have fire in your belly, and i want you to meet this man, salt alinsky." i had no idea who he was. they set up a supper meeting, and i met him, and asked me to explain to saul what i was doing. he listened to this, and at the end of my presentation he said "that is a crock of -- in expletive deleted." i got up full of fire and youthful indignation and informed him that he might be over the hill, but block lot blah. blah he said "oh, sit down."

>> what brought you to washington? >> i grew up in new york and my parents had the idea that i should go to college. i tried it for a week, and i said this is not for me. i do not want to spend the next four years drinking beer, and i left and started roaming around, doing one thing or another. i worked in the stockyards, did a lot of stuff like that. i went back east for a while and fell into one kind of organizing or another. i would say i was a ruthless and -- rootless and bootless. >> did you ever get a college degree? >> no. >> somebody my age remembers you quite capably from the 1960's and 1970's. he did "60 minutes." you also wrote lots of spicy things for "the washington

post." we'll come back to alinsky in a minute. what was that part of your life, and i know you are familiar with this quote, that you were fired by don hewitt on "60 minutes," because you said richard nixon -- you called him a dead mouse on america's kitchen floor. >> the next line was "in the american family, in bathrobe and slippers, surrounding it, debating about who was going to pick the mouse up by the tail and drop him in the trash." >> at what point did you feel that strongly? >> what it was was a statement about nixon's political situation, that he was a dead mouse at this point. it was leading right up to the impeachment, and it was clear that he was a dead dodo, a mouse

or whatever. the only reason we did this on the air was because he would said to me and to kill patrick -- hewitt said to me and my partner, jack kilpatrick, we need another nixon. we said "not another nixon, because nixon was already irrelevant." so don calls me up the next day you have set broadcast journalism back by 20 years. he tell me later -- told me later that was the greatest mistake he had ever made. i think bill paley made him do it. that was long and short of it.

he was always complaining about me. >> how long did you appear on "point-counterpoint" on "60 minutes"? >> long enough. i not only had 15 minutes of fame, i have probably 25. as you know, it has real drawbacks, not the least of which is your head no longer fits in the hat in the closet. >> why, what happened to you after you appeared like that? >> when you are on a program like that, everybody knows you. you don't know anybody when you walk down the street, and everybody tells you how smart and wonderful you are, and you believe it. >> but at the same time, you are writing for -- how long did that dawan? >> that went on for 10 years, something like that. >> here is some prose from back

then, august 10, 1973. i will read a little bit. spiro agne the remember the way you felt about spiro agnew? >> i don't remember if it was that peace or another in which i wrote that i felt that vice- president agnew had done the country a great favor, because he had brought corruption within the means of the middle class of the american family. in the family could have bought

the vice-president. you could have saved up and said you bought the vice-president. >> i think he admitted deal before he was accused. we will get back to that, but where did you learn to be so -- use your own word if you want -- confrontational, hippie, in writing? where did you learn that? >> you don't learn that. it comes from someplace that you do not really know, down there somewhere. >> people say that if you don't go to college, you cannot learn how to write. >> you probably cannot learn how to write if you don't read, but reading in college -- reading in college only have an occasional confluence, as you know. a lot of very good writers did not go to college, and a very

rigid lot of very good american writers, such as mark twain, h.l. mencken, and we could go on. >> your living where now? >> in maine. >> permanently there? >> yes. year round. >> what part of maine? >> i don't want to get too specific. a fly speck on the ocean. >> were due to live most of your life? >> i don't know. i moved around along. i grew up in new york, and i fear i still have an affection for this city which i cannot explain or apologize for, but i have it. so i suppose new york. >> and you have written how many books by now? >> a lot. i cannot remember. it is over 10. most of which would be

forgotten. >> back to your 10 years with saul alinsky. what impact did that have with your life? >> enormous. just enormous. we had very much of a father-son relationship. he not only taught me a great deal, but he gave me the opportunity to teach myself, which i think is really a special gift from one person to another. in my case, he did this way, if i may tell this little story. when he hired me, which was out of that meeting i just described, he said "i will hire you, but you are going to have to go and get a haircut and buy a suit." sa reported for work -- so i reported for work, and he said to me "i wanted to go out to the

west side of chicago, and i want you to find out what is going on out there. you are to send me a report every week until you hear otherwise. you are not to call here. you are not to attend to contact me in any way. you are to send your very small expenses to dorothy -- his secretary. now, get out of here and go do it." it was the best learning experience of my life. >> what kind of money were you making? >> $100 a week. that was in the early 1950's. >> where did he get his money? >> such as it was, and it was always a scramble to get money, at that time, he might have been getting a little foundation money.

there are a couple of foundations here and there along his life that actually cough up some money for him. he got money sometimes from church groups, sometimes from private givers, frequently from private givers. some very wealthy people. >> what about the catholic church, and what about the mob or the capone crowd? >> saul niche among very, very well. he had studied them -- saul knew the mob very well. he had studied them at postgraduate university. he later got to know them again when he was a criminologist at the illinois penitentiary. then of course in the course of much of what we are doing, we

ran into the mob and had dealings with them one way or another. but he was never really he never took a bad time. he was very good about money. this was rule #1, you do not take money from strangers, and any money you spend, you account for. >> what was his goal, and in turn, what was your goal? >> his goal, i think we can see clearly from the things that he has written. he was enormously influenced by people like tom paine, etc. one of the things he is to say, i get mad when i see somebody being kicked around. that was one of the things that always operated in his life. he wanted to do something about the people who were being kicked around. but the second thing which comes

from -- he descends philosophically from classic british liberalism, and he believed very much in the real self determination for people, that building structures that would permit individuals to have a real say in the course of their lives. that is what he was always trying to do throughout his whole career, which begins with a labor unions. in the 1930's, when he was very close with john l. lewis, a name now forgotten, but he was once as well known as martin luther king jr.. he is the man who produced big industrial unions. saul was his advisor and biographer and worked with lewis for very long time. then he started -- he realized

that in some situations, straight union organizing was not enough, so he devised -- and this is one of the reasons he devised the idea of community organizing -- was that he realized that whatever kind of thing you are trying to do, if you do not have the support of a surrounding people and community, you are not going to get it done. that is true in chicago and is also true in afghanistan. >> where do you put yourself now on the political spectrum, or how you define your own views? >> i have a reputation of being a howling liberal, which is not true. i will confess that the first person i ever voted for was quite eisenhower. in fact, in 1960, i almost

gotsaul to vote for nixon. >> why? >> because i got suckered by nixon. i listened to what was being said in the campaign, and if you listened to the campaign, john kennedy was the bellicose one he was going to take us to war, and was the voice of reason. and i bought it. i got him halfway there, but saul said i was crazy. >> you have done some work for cato? >> yes, because i have that streak in me. that streak is each of government, bringing government and decisionmaking to the lowest possible level that you practically can. it does not mean using these ideas as a way to hide from hard facts. a hard fact was the condition of

african-americans in america. if conservative -- people have a concerted cast of mind said that does not matter, or we have too many excuses, that was a disaster and is a disaster. you cannot do that. my inclination was to put the two together. and also, i had fun. do not forget that, i had fun. >> you say in your book that saul alinsky met with barry goldwater? >> yes. >> why? >> goldwater wanted to do it. alinsky didn't. saul would talk to anybody. where he would make a deal is another matter. they talked about civil rights legislation, which saul had a

lot of reservations about, individual liberty, etc. as he said to go water, unless you have a better idea, you have to vote for it b.g.e. as he said to goldwater. one thing you cannot do is nothing. but he elected to do nothing. by saulis the book' alinsky. >> is selling like hotcakes. >> it seems to be something that the conservative radio talk-show hosts and the glenn becks on fox news use all the time, and the alinsky connection to barack obama infuriates him. >> i think that is true. on the other hand, this book, i am told, rules for radicals, is selling about 25,000 copies a year.

most of those copies, or many of them, are bought by people who we call the party people. a lot of people on the right read this book and say "this gives the rules of how you get it done." they are using it as a kind of cookbook for organizing. it won't work, but they don't know that. >> 1 not? >> because there is more to it than that. saul has some wonderful things in that book, and that is his best book, and it really is fun. he has marlon's epigrams and things like that, but man does not live by epigram alone. >> this book -- i think he died in 1972 and it came out in 1971. >> richard nixon would have been president then, in the middle of the vietnam war. this is how he ends the book.

how does that fit with what has happened since 1971? >> sol had real inklings about what was about to happen to the american middle class. those words are informed by that.

of course, he thought that the vietnam war was having a terrible effect on american society. he did opposed the war. in fact, the night of the great police riot in chicago at the 1968 convention, he was down there in front of the hotel with the woman who he subsequently married, to show support for the anti-war people. but saul was what i would call an opto-pessimist. he never stopped dreaming and believing in hoping, but he never kidded himself about the way things work. he was a neat dresser.

never informal. he defies all the stereotypes of what a rabble rouser is supposed to be. he was not a terribly good public speaker. that was not one of his strong point. obviously he could speak in public, and did endlessly, but he was not a sam walker. it was more content and style in his speaking. he was a wonderful man to work for. first of all, he was the kind of loss who really wanted you -- kind of boss who really wanted you to tell him what you thought. you scored no points with saul alinsky by being a yes person, none whatsoever. he loved arguing. he always said, this is not a

democracy, or sometimes he would say this is a democracy, but i have a one-vote. in the end, he made the decision. he was loyal to the grave. he used to say to me, "if you make a mistake, i will ship your fanny off and private, but i will always back you in public." that is always what he did. he was married three times. his first wife died in a terrible drowning accidents, and in some ways, he never recover from it. helene was the love of his life. it was just awful. >> did you know her? >> i did not know her, but he talked about her a lot. it affected his life in many, many ways.

as i say, he never got over her death. then he married a very nice woman. helene understood exactly what he was doing. she was a very sophisticated woman, a social worker. she understood what he was about. then he married a very nice woman who came from a completely different background. it seemed to work very well. then she came down with multiple sclerosis and went really crazy. it was impossible -- of a visit them, and she would rushed to the house, throwing things, carrying on. all his friends said you have to ended this marriage, which he did not want to do, because he had this loyalty thing.

finally he did, but he always looked after her. the day he died, he had flown to california to check her out and make sure she was ok. he had just finished visiting her when he had a fatal heart attack. the loyalty thing was just one of the things about who he was. >> he said he died on the streets of carmel? >> that is right. for years, we always complain to him about the way he ate, and he smoked a lot. what are you going to do? >> what about the third marriage? >> the third marriage, he married a wonderful woman, irene, a university professor. she is still alive, in retirement. i won't say exactly where. i speak to her from time to time. she is a terrific person. >> are people like you worry that people will come after you in some way, a security risk, for the way the world is today?

>> i don't worry about those things. >> do you think she does? >> if she does, she has not suggested to me. >> what does she think of all the attention he is getting now? >> she is pleased. she was a great backer of what he was doing, and she is pleased, because wherever he is, he wants to think he is down there, because he thought of really interesting people were down there. [laughter] that book that you are holding, he dedicated to the big guy down there, lucifer, who recall the first revolutionary. >> he was jewish, and you write a lot about his relationship with the catholic church and the cardinals and the bishops and among seniors. what is that all about?

-- the monsignors. >> he also had a similar relationship with an enormous number of protestant ministers. i think these guys, and the ones that i knew who were around him, some of them were very exceptional men, men of real stature. i think they saw in him a person who was living what they thought was a religious life, that they saw in him an enormous, very powerful, moral figure, but not a preachy one. one of the things about being a around saul, it was always a

lag. it was always fun. he is to say "if it stops being fun, just of doing it." he was a funny man, and he loved people who were funny. >> you had a view of the cardinals and the life they lived, the tension that was paid, the ring kissing and all that. how close did you see the cardinals? >> i was very close to one of them. he is redefined out all kinds of things, to scope out things b.g.e. he is me to find out all kinds of things -- he used me to find out all kinds of things. i was the go-between with city

hall. every so often, i had to go over there. it was very funny, because they knew of was speaking for the cardinal. prould call up the mayor's guy, who of believe ended up in the big house. i would say i needed to see him, and riley would say, when do you want to come in? >> and mayor daley was catholic. >> but they had a very bad relationship. >> over what? >> i think basically, daley was a person of the past, as far as the connection between politics and the catholic church was itch wasd, that stretc

trying to get the catholic church of politics and turned that huge institution in a very different direction. i remember in chicago at one point, there was a pastor on the southwest side named danny burns. it was said that you could not make sgt et -- in the police department if you did not go out and have a visit with danny burns. i cannot vouch for that story, but it was widely said. i remember working with one pastor on the far southwest side of the city. these were different times. our viewers are not even going to begin to understand what life was like then. we are talking about 50 years

ago. this was another monsignor, and i think he had 90% of the police captains in the city in his parish. i remember one day we were talking about race relations, etc., and he finally turned to me and said for god sakes, we just let the dago's in last year. the ethnic tensions, hostilities were huge. the lines were no more clearly drawn than they were in chicago, not only between white people and african-americans, but among the various white people. the history, for example, of the battle between poles and other

eastern europeans, roman catholics against the irish, inside both the roman catholic church and inside the democratic political party. people would not believe what went on. basict was saul alinsky's tactics in organizing? >> to find out what the situation is, that was the beginning. he had no set of tools. he believed that you had to dress yourself to the realities on the ground, and that their tactics had to be -- adjust themselves to what was there. you could not do it the other way. the first thing, and the most important thing, about organizing, in his opinion, and

i think he was right, is you have to know what is going on where you hope to do organizing. you cannot do it the other way. >> what is next? >> next comes from what you learn. that will tell you what is next. >> how do you get an organization to be effective and make change? >> piece by piece. there is no formula. a lot of people today say the alinsky message, the alinsky this or that. wassky's believe in what right and what was wrong injured and was always the same, but what he would do in a given situation depended entirely on the situation. >> did he get a chance to see your success? >> yes. we stayed very close after i

left to greg's what year did you leave him? >> 1963, approximately, and i went into the newspaper business. we saw each other all the time. we did not see each other all the time, because we were in different places, but we talked all the time. >> how did you get from an organizer to the newspaper business? >> thereby hangs the tale. one of the things that i did when i worked for saul, and i knew i was not going to stay with him forever. he did not want to live that life forever. it was a tough, tough life. so i knew that, and therefore the one thing that i did through all the battles was, i never permitted my name to appear in a newspaper, and i never appeared

on a radio program or a tv program. so i was completely anonymous, and therefore, not tagged in a public sense. privately, people knew i was, but that is another matter. in fact, my first newspaper job was difficult to get, because privately people knew exactly who i was, but the man who hired me had a terrible time hiring me. >> what was that job? >> i decided, having no useful skills whatsoever, to become a newspaper reporter. what else? so i went to see a man by the name of larry fanning who was the editor of the chicago daily news. i said i wanted the job, and he

said "why should we hire you? i said i am one of the few people who understands why and how. he said he would give me an assignment to see what i was like. it so happened that the naacp was having a national convention in chicago the coming weekend. he said to cover that, so i went out and covered it for them and file a story. the next day, he had it on the front page. i came in to see him, and he said "well, now we will see if i can hire you." the newspaper was owned by marshall field iv, who had absolutely no warm feelings for saul.

this went on for some weeks. subsequently, he told me the way he got me on the paper was that he went to field and said look, you have may be the executive editor of this paper because i think you believe that i have the competence and ability to run it well. if you do not let me hire this man, i am going to think that you no longer have confidence in me. that point, fanning said field said "all right, go ahead and hire him if you must." >> how long were you there? next three years, something like that. the post hired me from the news. >> i remember you making a lot of people very mad. he made a lot of people happy, too.

what was your approach? >> first all, you want people to read the darn thing, so you have to make it in your teaentertain. you can say the same thing in gray and drab words, and people will say you are being very responsible and that is an interesting point of view. or, you can say that same things in colorful ways, humorous, etc. >> the september 1968 deadline, you write --

>> we hope this is language calculated to elicit -- >> this is from 1967. clearly, i am sure michigan did

not like being referred to as a conglomerate of of the buildings. >> it is true. i occasionally threw in some unsolicited architectural criticism. >> what was the worst moment over those years where people were really coming down on you for what yoryou wrote? do you remember? >> yes, i took what was considered to be a very anti-is rarely point of view. -- anti-israeli point of view. i wrote a column -- and this is for memory, i may not have exact right. it was something like the little israeli state that is visually

pounding stars of david into swastikas. i think that was a stroke that was used. -- that was the trope that was used. i decided at that point that probably too much had come down and i would not be we were if i kept that up. -- i would not get anywhere if i kept that up. instead of causing people to think, i was causing people to shutter their minds. that time, the atmosphere in the country was such that that kind of criticism of israel would finally begin to get a unit, you put yourself in the category of a kook. so i did not do anything, i just talked writing about it. >> what kind of feedback did you get? >> much. at various times, i was

picketed by all kinds of people for all kinds of thought list things. >> is in light at your age you are calm. are you still angry? -- you seem like at your age c you arealm. >> i was not really angry. >> were you ever? >> not really. saul was more angry. i always had a happy go lucky streak in me that was not saul's. i had these opinions, but whether it was that or whatever , i would say them in the most colorful way i could, but i am not going to get in a big wrestling match with you. for me, it is not a life-and- death thing.

i think they did -- had enough of me. i had driven bradley crazy. >> what year was it? >> that was about 1976 or 1977. >> what did you do from then on? >> i freelanced. >> how much fun was that? >> i have always been lucky. i am very lucky. i am a man of modest talent and great luck. >> on december 17, 1969, you wrote another headline, " my son drops out." >> i forgot that one.

what happened to that son? >> he went on to get a phd. from harvard. [laughter] >> how did that happen? >> well, a lot of people find that after they are out for a while, they would rather go back in. that is basically what happened. >> you have three sons? >> yes. >> were they doing? >> one is a scholar, writer, etc. one is a soldier, a policeman sort of like. the third one is also a freelance business writer.

>> you are not big on more. >> no, it is not my favorite thing. >> how does it work out with your son being a policeman-older type? >> i am not big on war, but i certainly believe that you need to have an army. they are the guardians of the night. my father was a soldier. it is an honorable profession, but i am not responsible for the crimes of the politicians who send them to all wars that ought not be fought. >> update on your feelings about the country at this point and the president of the united states, the congress, and the politicians? >> do you want that in five words or 10? >> take your time. and now you can give me two words. >> three words, it's a mess.

i don't think it's going to be less of a mess for some time. i voted for mr. obama, and i admire him. i thought that he was the world's luckiest politician until the day he took the oath of office. he has now become the world's unluckiest politician. that does not mean that i agree with everything that he has done. in fact, i think as far as the economic situation is concerned, he probably made an irretrievable, fatal mistake at the meeting in the white house before he was elected. i think it was in october 2008, when senator mccain suspended his campaign and they all met at the white house, and secretary of the treasury paulson came in and said i have to have the -- i

can understand why they did it, but i think that texas to where we are, and we are now in a situation where i don't believe essentially what either party is suggesting millworks. >> what will work? >> i think we need -- i guess you might call it a new business plan for this society, one that involves being able to earn our own way. that is now essential. to get there, i think a great many things have to be done that range from having a great many bankruptcies to get debt out of the system, to looking at a society that cannot believe that

its future is infinite growth, that you have to have kind of an intro but society in which she developed -- intro quick society in which to develop what you have. that involves taking a look at the population question. all those kind of things. >> speaking a language, i hear in your language words that don't always have an immediate definition for some of us. one word you use in here that i have never seen before. >> i hope i know what it means. >> this is in relation to gondi. you probably know how to pronounce it, i don't.

>> i cannot pronounced it either. it is basically the non-violent approach. that is the word that he uses. >> how does the dandy way of doing things relate to alinsky? >> he was a close student of ghandi. many people look gandhi and see a moral figure. alinsky looked at him and salt a superb politician. alinsky sa all ingandhi a politician who said i have got to kick the british out of india. i have my potential following, as poor as human beings can be, they have no guns, that have no money. the only thing have is their bodies. so we will use their bodies.

for saul, this is a perfect example of analyzing the situation, seeing what it is, understanding the enemy, knowing that you could use this tactic against the nazis, but understanding who the brits were, and devising a tactic that was superbly fitted for the situation. >> again, going back to the conservative talk-show hosts, conservative columnists, who are convinced that barack obama is using saul alinsky tactics to change and revolutionize the united states. based on what you know, what about that? >> saul would be the first to say, there is no such thing as saul alinsky tactics. there are just tactics.

you choose them well or you choose them poorly. as far as obama using -- my guess is, and i want to stress this is a guess, i have never met obama. my guess is that he continues to have the insights, the sympathies, etc., that he learned from community organizing and from whatever he learned from alinsky, but as far as running his office is concerned, he does a the way every other president does it. i think you can see, for example, in some of the things that he says about education, about the role of parents and community, things like that. you see a view that i think is

informed by alinsky, and other people, too. i don't want to suggest that saul has a monopoly on that kind of thing. >> i found this paragraph in the book. you are talking about acorn. >> yes. well, one of the things that saul was inflexible on was the absolute accounting for every penny. if you bought so much as a

muffin and a cup of coffee, you had to document it if you were going to put it on your expense account. nothing went undocumented. nothing went unjustified. he understood how it would be used against us if we started cutting corners. he was merciless about that kind of thing. saul was -- he feared the government as much as he feared big corporations, etc. at one time i think he did. unions, but he saw them disappear -- at one time he did. unions, but he saw them disappear. he was always thinking of

corporations as gigantic organizations. he did not believe it was possible to take government from the money and not become a government servant. he was not an ad business. >> you are right that he had no use for president johnson's great society with his war on poverty. he said washington would spend that kind of dough, the government might as well station people on the get go street corners and hand out $100 bills to passing pedestrians. >> saul had no use for the great society stuff. he saw it as both corrupting and futile. people being able to live an independent, self-governing life. >> you look back on your own 10 years with him. >> i love every minute of it. it was marvelous.

>> what was the high point? >> that is really hard to say. i cannot -- i think some of the meetings that we were able to pull together, particularly when we were organizing low-income, black, south side, and when people said we cannot do anything with those people -- when you saw those people come together and organize themselves and do for themselves, and there were certain points where i remember -- at one.

they are arranged all the money for a voter registration campaign in which they hired buses to take 2000 or 3000 people down to city hall on saturday morning to register to vote. they raised the money for the buses, to rent the buses. even the hookers were out there doing eit. they arranged for the buses, chicago transit authority buses. city hall heard about this and yanked the buses at the last minute. they went and found suburban school buses to rent. they got the parade under way, and they got half way downtown and they were met by a string of chicago policeman across what is

now martin luther king boulevard. they had machine guns and shotguns. they said you cannot go any further. but we had an escort of four or five black police officers, and it looked at that moment as though something terrible was going to happen, and in the lead car was a wonderful priest. he leaps out of the lead car and its between the two and gives these white police officers to get hold of themselves. they backed off. downtown, city hall is surrounded by cops, again with machine guns. in the midst of this