>> tonight, john burns, foreign correspondent for "the new york times." then on the premonitions questions, british prime mr. national captioning

you national captioning institute] cable satellite corp. 2010] >> this week, our guest is john f. burns, london bureau chief of "the new york times." he joins us from the studios of westminster live, located across the thames river from the house of parliament. >> john burns, the last time we chatted, i ask you about a book, would you write your memoirs? >> i thought about it. there are a few agents in new york who can tell you that i am remiss. i came back from iraq after quite a few years a couple of years ago. i really did not relish the idea of the solitude of writing the book. i would have told you that when i was in iraq and afghanistan that i was relishing the assignment. i hated leaving. i had not anticipated was the difficulty of readjustment. coming off of a very big story,

partly, it is because of the camaraderie, the exhilaration. but part of it, too, it is being in a place which is beyond, in some respects, the consciousness or imaginings of people, notwithstanding television and everything else. and i think, probably, i am talking now about how the season has receded by this assignment here, which turned out to be something against the odds, one of the more important aassignments that the "new york times" has. we generate an enormous amount of news in london. when you come back from an external race parents like that to a period of recession, that is what i had when i came back. not a day goes back without agents or publishers come to me without saying, "write a book." the book about your own experiences. i think i do have a story to tell.

i think i have to tell it. if i want to be able to belong to a golf club in my retirement, i will have to. >> where will you start? >> where would i start? i think i know the subtitle. it would be something that the iraqi information minister under saddam is known here. he is a fellow with coke bottles backs. he said something to me which i think would be the title to my book. when american troops arrived in baghdad. as i recall, on the 7th of april, 2003, and we saw baghdad bob on a news 6conference on the mezzanine

roof of the baghdad hotel. it gives us a view to like what we have here of the palace of westminster. he stood with his back to the palace, which was about one dozen yards behind, across the river. he told us that the american army had been defeated at the gates of baghdad and was in retreat and that tens of thousands of american soldiers had been killed. at that moment, over his shoulder, there were troops of the third infantry of the division of the united states army who were dangling their feet off a peer, cooling their feet. i said, if you look over your shoulder, you will see that the united states army is far from defeated. they have captured the heart of saddam hussein's power. and unblinking, he looked at me and he said, mr. fisher, i'm here to tell you

that you are too far from reality. i think my book would be about living beyond the bounds the common western experience. the soviet union at the deaths of the cold war, north korea, afghanistan, who are the extraordinary people that you meet, the extraordinary evil that you encounter, but also of the inspiriting goodness in the human soul, which is rather the largest thing for me. i'm not particularly religious. i hope i'm not particularly self righteous. but that would be a very major thing for me.

-- that would be a major theme for me, that how in the midst of darkness there is always light. >> for some of those who have never heard us talk before, what year is it in china? >> from 1971 to 1975, that was the last five years of mao tse-tung's life. also the mid to late part of the cultural revolution which mao occasions by trying to turn chinese society upside down. i went back to china when they opened to the world in the 1980's, an assignment that ended with my imprisonment for spying, which i hated to say of which i was not guilty and the chinese ultimately themselves acknowledged two years or three years later. i was in the soviet union between those two.

i was there at the time of brz hnev, but i felt that i had season tickets to funerals. i was in south africa in the depths of apartheid. i certainly did not set out to have these assignments. i had a kind of angel on my shoulder that carried me to these places and at times of particular interest. and there was somebody there prepared to pay me for it. for me, it is true, if i were a working man, which i am not, i would have done with my professional life exactly what i have done. >> we were talking in 2007. you were between iraq -- actually, you were going to london. to be the bureau chief of "the

new york times." "how does iraq look to you from here? >> i have to say, i am apprehensive. i have a particular penchant for apprehension. my wife continues to work in baghdad. i have a wider personal interest in what becomes of iraq. i have always felt, and i think recent indications support this, that has american presence diminishes, and it is now at or below 50,000 and set to go to either zero or some negotiated number, much lower than 50,000, within the 15 months, that we would see a resurgence of violence and possibly even a --

-- even a renaissance of civil war there. because none of the fundamental problems have been solved. the problems that occasioned all the troubles that have enveloped the united states and europe and iraq and the iraqi people since 2003, all those problems remain. there has been no fundamental political reconciliation in iraq. i have fought for a very long time, from the time that i was there, ever since then, that the keeper of the peace, to the extent that there has been peace, and there has been a lot when the last two years or three years than most of my time there, has been the united states, for which there are reasons that are not to for to see. but i do not think that what the united states will leave behind in iraq will likely to grow stable. i think we have to open our minds to the possibility that much of it will be washed away,

that there could be an onset of something like a civil war, perhaps not immediately. it might take a year or two years or three years. if i had to put my money on a likely outcome, it would be that peace in iraq, and it might be a very harsh peace, is likely, ultimately, to be imposed once again by it an autopsy. -- by an autotocracy. we just have to hope that, if that does happen, the new ruler, the new dictator, will be a lot more benign than was saddam hussein. >> i was reading this morning, and by the time it airs, it will

not be quite the same number, but in iraq in 2007, we lost 961. the united kingdom has lost 344 in afghanistan and we have lost 1393 the whole time. it is disproportionate to what it has been in iraq. >> it is not much noted outside these precincts, especially the house of commons on 10 downing street. it is a not much noted fact that

proportional to the size of the deployment in iraq, the size of deployment, 10,000 british troops in iraq compared to 700,000 americans. >> so far in 2010. if you think about it, that is close to the number of americans who died in iraq in the first year in iraq. this is pretty discouraging. much of my family lives in canada and i started my journalistic career in canada. every time i write about the high incidence of british casualties in afghanistan, i get quite a few e-mails from canada, from people saying, "why you never mentioned canada in this?"

canada has lost between 150 soldiers to 200 soldiers in afghanistan. which proportional to their deployment, which has never exceeded 2,000 troops, over the last several years, make them by quite a distance the nation that has paid the highest price. and they said they are coming out, their troops, and their combat mission. i think canada deserves recognition for this, because canada had developed recognition for being part of the united nations peacekeeping efforts but had not had their troops in combat commission in any serious conflict since korea.

>> you once referenced, when your father was in the royal air force, he was born in south africa. >> he was. >> did he once command 60,000? >> used to say when he retired, referring to the time in germany, he said, "i went from running 60,000 men to running a lawn mower." he of course retired, as military people do, in his mid 50's. i understand now that i am well past their rage, what a tremendously difficult transition it must be for people to make. i am fortunate in being able to carry on. i crossed my 50th birthday 10 years before assigned to the war in iraq. i feel tremendously lucky to

have been able to carry on a career in our business well past the point at which many people in public service certainly retire. there was some satisfaction in iraq when the united states congress increase to the retirement age for american general's. i forgot what it is, but senior generals, four stars, something on the nature of 64. it was a bit of a jarring thing to realize, in my time in iraq, to realize that i was older than all of the successive american commanders there. i think the oldest of them in my time there was general casey who would have been at the end of his assignment about 58. he is now chief staff of the army. general petraeus is about 57 or 58.

they can well do without a lecture from me about this. but it seems to me that, if we set aside the kind of things you commonly hear, who knows what the the biologist would say about that. it seems to me that many people my age would say, you put the challenge to me and you see if i can perform as you want. i think that we see lots of evidence that people in their late 50's and 60's are able of performing just as high a level. they may not be as fleet of foot, but you make up for that. >> the reason i mention your

father is i wanted to know how long he spent in the service. >> 40. >> what kind of impact that have on you, being in a military family, as you began to be a reporter? >> i'm sure my harshest critics would say, as i see it, my time to see both the best and the worst in american military performance in these wars, he would not say that it was because his father was a senior officer in the british armed forces. >> how high was his rank? >> well, he became a one-star general prior to the cold war. it is that it gave me my first encounter with americans, as it

happens. i was playing golf with him in germany. 14th fair way. we passed this dome surrounded by concentric rings of razor wire and attended by these curious looking characters in army camouflage. he said, "do you know who they are? those are americans." something for which he probably could've been court-martialed. he said, "that is where we keep the nuclear weapons that we would carry to war in british aircraft if there was a war with the soviet union." at that time, i don't know if that installation still exists.

there was a joint key shed force operation where the weapons were american weapons released to britain by the united states at the point of imminence of war and the british prime minister had his decision to make whether to deploy them. i was 14 years old. for reasons i pondered ever since, since my father has been gone now for 20 years, he said to me, "those are the people they keep the peace in the world." i am thinking now, from what i have learned about some of the conflicts in which he was engaged, the internal conflicts, the reason he said that was that, in the aftermath of the second world war and still this -- still vestigially there was

some unease in britain and the british military remained with some people regarded as the use of power in the united states, which was the imperial power of the late 19th century and early 20th-century. it would be the way david cameron said -- the relationship changed substantially. the 1950's were a time of the unease. on d-day, britain and its commonwealth partners, australia, new zealand, and canada landed as many troops on the beaches of normandy as did the united states. that was probably the last moment in the second world war at which there was that kind of

equivalent. after general patton, britain became a much smaller component. he recognized a slight discomfort with the unease that some british officers had about american power. to his dying day, he was terribly proud of an encounter that he had in germany during maneuvers with american forces. it was a winter day on the plains in what was then east germany where many of the forces were concentrated. there were maneuvers. they lost their way. he was in a jeep with an american driver. the cam across some tanks across this open plain. the driver said, i will see if

they can tell us where headquarters is. the driver said, general, sir, somebody would like to meet you. he got out of the jeep and walked and this gi saluted him. he said, "sgt, elvis presley." he had an american identification card. he said thank you. it was a great pleasure to meet you. whenever my father had an opportunity to pull this out of his pocket, he had been a fighter pilot in the world war and commanded the army in germany, but that was the more magical moment out of anything he had done. so i would confess, out of all this, i came to america and i came to my encounters with american military with a basically positive disposition. i still do believe in what my father said that day in that golf course in germany.

that it is correct. in a turbulent world, it is america, more than any other power, overwhelmingly, that keeps the peace in the world. >> you were -- >> you mentioned that your wife is still in afghanistan. in 2007, she was the bureau chief. how long will she be there? >> we will see. she is in a position similar to me. she does not go to war. but she is living in and working in very dangerous places. now that i have been back from those places for some time, i understand much better when it is for those thousands of families who have their loved ones at war.

you keep your fingers crossed. i think she will continue to do it. it is very unusual. as my wife, she accompanied me for 30 years ago to far-flung assignments. she had her job, not just the raising of their children, but helping to run the operations of "the new york times." that became formalized with these wars. she left for pakistan and later to afghanistan within three weeks of 9/11. she never really came back. she comes back on leave. she is, too, now in her 60's. to say she loves it, how can anybody love war? she finds it exhilarating. like any woman of her age, she finds it very engaging to be

needed, to be able to do something useful. we just had a jarring experience with the "new york times," that you may be aware of. once we deployed lots of people to these wars, we have been fortunate in one sense that we have not lost to this moment any of our expatriate, our new york-based reporters, photographers, or others. we have lost an afghan and two iraqis. two weeks or three weeks ago, this change for us when one of our photographers, one of the great war photographers of our time and one of the nicest men you'll ever meet, rob silver, stepped on a taliban mine, i.e.d.,

on an inbed with the united states military outside of kandahar. he was grievously wounded, i am afraid to say. he survived. he is now in the army hospital in washington. he has lost both his legs. he is a remarkable character, a truly remarkable. the first conscious words he spoke were "i am good." born in portugal, raised in south africa. we have been experiencing this and a tragic incident like this at a very close hand. we have seen it a thousand times occurring to others. now it has happened to us. and it is a very educated experience. i must say, we're all extremely happy that he has, through the generosity of the united states military, been taken in to walter reed, where he is and

will be amongst many soldiers who have had similar experiences . that is almost without question the greatest rehabilitation center in the world. he will have the come fort, if one can call it that, to be with others who are going through the same thing, and fight their way back to health. i think we will see no braver man no more popular ever carried a camera into battle. i will put my money on him being back there, carrying a camera back to battle before anybody can imagine it. >> there were about 100 people involved in the baghdad bureau. how big is it now? >> it has not shrunk a great deal.

i'm sure this is some disappointment to the people who have to pay the bills. the war for america is tapering down, and our hope would be that we would do the same thing. there is a critical mass that you need because we have to provide our own security. this is another kind of bravery on the part of "the new york times" and the people that make the decisions. as you know, foreign coverage by american newspapers and american television has shrunk considerably. it was already shrinking before the recession. it has shrunk further. "the new york times" has had financial battles to fight, as have all newspapers, because of the recession, but because also the internet.

but it would have been understandable if the people who make these decisions had decided that we could no longer spend that kind of money. they did not. they committed themselves to continue to giving full spectrum covers to these wars. this war, i think, is a long way from over even if the american troops are drawn down. there will be a huge american interests there for some time. we will continue to be there as long as there is an american interest. >> let's go back over some of the places you were. did you ever think, when you were back in china, that they would own a trillion dollars of american debt? >> i haven't been back to china since the day they put me in a paddy wagon

in 1986 and drove me to the airport, literally in shackles, over the alleged spying incident. i have watched with wonder what is happening in china. they have invited me back many times. i am not avoiding it. i have some apprehension because it is a bit to glib. when the people of china, it is no doubt that this extraordinary creation of wealth and power -- they have an extraordinary capability and resilience. these were people that if given a chance were going to rebuild china to something like the greatness it had. it went into decline in the late 18th, early 19th century. if there is a threat of apprehension, it is because the china that i saw 40 years ago

was a china that communism had changed very little in the previous 50 years. i could get onto a bicycle and cycle into central china. in three minutes. that was an enchanting place. it was an enchanting kingdom. i loved it. during my second assignment in the 1980's, when they say that the door was open for foreign investment, the china that loved mao tse-tung was a far more agreeable place than the china that worshipped the dollar. of course there is no argument that the chinese people are vastly better off than they were with the fact that they can afford to buy $1 trillion in american debt. they are changing the entire configuration of the world we live in. that is very good for the people of china. it will present us with a whole manner of problems, certainly.

but i am speaking only of the experience as a visitor. i think i will have a strong nostalgia for the china of my youth. >> what kind of grade would you give mao tse-tung as a leader? >> as a guerrilla leader? >> why did they adore him, if they did? >> mao tse-tung wrote his own epitaph on the first of october 1949. this was the moment when the communists took control of all of mainland china. and he ascended to the gates of heavenly peace on tiananmen square. and he said something like those words that church yill spoke in

1940 that will resonate forever in chinese history. he said, "after centuries of oppression and humiliation, the chinese people have stood up." that had an enormously motivating power for the people of china. of course, in their enthusiasm, they allowed to be invested in mao tse-tung absolute power. and that power was corrupted. by some estimates, 10 million people died. more than that died some 10 years earlier than that. an awful lot of people in china died as a result of the dictatorship imposed by mao tse-tung.

it will be history and history measured probably a long time forward from now before settled opinion can be reached about mao tse-tung. from what i have seen and experience from talking with chinese people, not only chinese officials, china is in a very conflicted state about mao tse-tung. they speak openly about the disasters that were brought upon the country, but they also recognized the 1949 marked a historic turning point of enormous importance. i find him fascinating a figure. in my home, i have a wonderful porcelain bust of mao tse-tung. underneath it, on a little wooden stand, his little red book.

remember how the millions of chinese walked through the streets waving their little red book? the little red book is actually quite a valuable little document, partly because it is a kind of boiled down synopsized version of chinese philosophy through the ages, confucius, son su, the military strategist, and some of the teachings in that little red book i have found very useful in getting out of or avoiding getting into trouble of all kinds. one of them, his doctrine on guerilla warfare. i told my children about this. doctrine number one, do not engage the enemy of less victory -- unless victory is certain.

number two, don't engage the enemy unless victory is essential to your cause. now, if you apply those two provisos to many incidents in life where there is a potential for conflict, it turns out that you can avoid about 80% of them. first of all, if you look realistically at it, in many such conflicts, potential conflicts with people who employ you, with a difficult officials in faraway countries, it is safe to assume that you will not win. if you will not win, do not engage. some people would say that this is a formula for ducking problems. i think it is a formula for success in life. >> you mentioned kids. we talked about your son last time. i figure he's about 28 now.

>> yes. >> you mentioned he was born a pound. >> he was only 1.1 pounds. there are three of us in our family. he's one, i'm another, my wife is a third, who are the beneficiaries of high-technology in american medicine. i don't to be melodramatic about it, but all three of us would not be walking around now if it were not for that. >> we talked about you spending a year in hospital. >> they wanted to turn me around and pushed me back into the street. the relevance of that, the 700 -- england has a socialized system of medicare.

england spends about 700 billion pounds in england, something like 105 billion pounds is spent on the national health service. that figure has more or less tripled in the last 10 years or 13 years. it has become a huge financial burden. mr. cameron, the prime minister, is in the process of bringing in government expenditures. he will cut all other departments by an average of 20%. the health budget will not be cut. >> we call that grandfathering. >> same thing. >> why does he do that? >> he did that because, in 1947 or 1948, a labor government, a reformist labor government after the second world war introduced the national health service with fierce opposition. fierce opposition from the

republican party and fierce opposition from the medical community. it is now the jewel in the crown of his kingdom. no political party that came to be seen as likely to destroy or undermine the national health service could possibly survive. that reflects the live experience of the national health service if you live in this country. there are many things wrong with it. including long waiting lists, including occasional denial of life-saving drugs, and so forth, on the basis of cost. but there are many things right. principally, is what they call medical care free at the point of delivery. when you go to a clinic or hospital, nobody asks about your ability to pay. you may get varying levels of treatment. at the cancer hospital here across the street. if you get cancer somewhere else in this kingdom or more remote places, your chances of survival will be proportionally reduced.

that is also true under the american system of medical practice. i ended up conflicted. on the one hand, i and my son, who was born 12 weeks premature, and my wife have all been beneficiaries of high-technology american medicine. in medicine, had we been in the u.k., we would have been unlikely to get. i had said once to joe liliveld, former editor to my wife and i -- former editor to the "new york times" and helped my wife and i when i had cancer and

through that difficult time, and for whom i shall be eternally grateful, i said to him at the end of the experience that i sat at patient meetings and saw a new york police officer weeping at patient meetings over the bills he was getting. he mortgaged his house, second mortgage his house, borrowed money from his brother-in-law. he thought was going to die. he did die. i think that is the dramatic version of what can happen. i know now that there are many things in the american medical system and even before president obama's reforms that mitigate that. i come to america to the high-technology system of medicine which has saved my life and i see a new york city police officer weeping at patients meetings because of the cost, and then my native country that could not give me that kind of cancer care. nobody is going to ruin his family as he descends to the end of life through cancer or any other chronic disease.

and joe said, and i have pondered this ever since, he said, "i do not think you need to ponder too hard over that. the way i see it, the u.k. has the only medical care system i want in my country and the united states has the medical care i want for my family." that's more or less how i think about this. if i were to list the things i find about this country most ad myrrhable,the national health service would be a the top and the bbc would be not far behind it. >> you have written that the united states has 11 active aircraft carriers. this country has one. >> has a 0. >> there are two that are supposedly to be built.

america looks over here and sees an 8% cut in four years and that these aircraft carriers will go away. >> it really expresses very sharply the dilemma that the cameron government face. they were the most indebted country in europe. there was a very serious threat of a sovereign debt crisis in this country. there was something in the nature of 80 billion pounds over four years from the 700 billion pounds per year budget. they grandfathered the national health service. the united kingdom eight overseas. all departments had to take this hit, including the defense apartment, probably the most

controversial of all the cuts they made. it was not a 20% cut, but an 8% cut. they decided to scrap immediately britain's only aircraft carrier capable of carrying a fixed wing jets. the arc royal that resonates through history in england since king henry xiii. a 25-year-old ship was scrapped. all the aircraft flown from that carrier were scrapped immediately. two aircraft carriers are being built in scotland, i believe. it cost about something in the nature of $8 billion, $4 billion each. it is much more than an american aircraft carrier. they decided it would be more expensive to scrap them than to

build them. but then they went a step further, which i must say has people scratching their head. they said, we will build them, but one of those two would be put in service for three years before selling it. they are building them only knowing it will do three years' service. the other one will be put into operation, queen elizabeth it will be called, and we will get a new generation of the most expensive aircraft ever built. they will not get those aircraft. they will not be deployable for another 10 years. so britain will be without aircraft carriers or aircraft that can fly from carriers. a lot of people think britain is

taking a big risk, for example, the falklands, for example, in 1982. they say that we had a much better air field in the falkland islands. the island itself is our aircraft carrier. the same circumstances won't arise again. the argentines would not again brave the fury of the united nations by invading the falkland islands. >> cynics would say that this is a gimmick. because they will build these two aircraft carriers, if the economy comes back, the money will come back, and they will keep them deployed. >> that is true. obviously a decision to blt and deploy in three years leads -- leaves open that possibility. mr. cameron is an optimist. he made a speech to nights or three nights ago, a foreign-policy speech, which is

extraordinarily optimistic about britain's ability to climb out of this economic mess in terms of austerity now and in terms of britain's innate ability to get back up on its feet and punch its weight around the world. i think, if you could ask him, he might say, well, we might be able to do that, we might be able to keep the second carrier. i think they said, economically military perverse. this is only one of thousands of

really tough decisions that he has made. it is a big gamble. who knows? it could be that the british public will not be able to stomach the types of austerity measures that mr. cameron is administering. in the last week or so, there were student demonstrations against rising college fees. americans would smile widely it does. but students have gone to state colleges, 99% of them, and paying fees in the region of 3,000 pounds a year. that is about $4,500 a year. the cameron government says that that will now rise to as high as 9,000 pounds, which is about $14,000 a year. with all kinds of offsets to scholarships and ways of mitigating this, deferred repayment, so on and so forth, that put into the streets 50,000

students who marched along the embankment in the government trict over my shoulder here. as so often happens, there was a troublemaking element within those students, an anarchist group. many of them were from cambridge university who attended and somebody threw a fire extinguisher off the roof. it was a jarring incident because many can remember when mrs. thatcher was in power and impose a much less severe regime of austerity and there was serious turbulence in the streets. we do not know if the cameron government can avoid it. so far, polls show that 60% of the british public, many more than who voted for mr. cameron and his partners in government, support it. that is a good sign.

but then, the medicine has not been administered. it has been announced, but it has not been taken. we will have to see. the government might fall over this. or, just as likely, it will get through this. people will look at what is happening in ireland, in greece, spain, portugal, and italy, and say was it not our good fortune that we got a government just-in-time to steer us away from a sovereign debt crisis? and the liberal democrats can march on for another 10 years or 15 years in power. at the moment, it is finely balanced. >> you went to school if mcgill university in china. >> i did. >> you were born here, and now you are back here in great britain. are your kids american? >> well, born in the united

states. >> 310 million people. >> yes. >> because of this, i want you to define the difference between a canadian, a brit, and an american. >> the easiest way to address it is to say what it is that i admire most about the united states. tremendous optimism, a tremendous kind of get up and go, something that we have seen in both of the two wars, of fundamental importance, a tremendous ability to learn lessons, to say "this is not working" and to go back to first principles and start again. david petraeus, in his two years in fort leavenworth, putting that into effect in iraq with the effects that we have seen and now in afghanistan, open the doors, open minds.

britain has a rugged resilience. we have seen this year -- we saw -- and of course, my father having been a fighter pilot, this meant a lot to me. chirchill standing across the river and making his finest hour speech, and then making the speech about the battle britain, never has the human conflict been noted to so few, there is a tremendous resilience in this country, a tremendous base of common sense, and a tremendous instinks for fairness, which, i must say, i find very engaging. canada, a country having to live alongside and on top of a country vastly more powerful than themselves, with remarkable

success, they have constructed a kind of alternate society there. it is a society which has bridged the distance between europe and america. they have, for example, a system of medical care which is a hybrid between the american system and the british system. they fought with extraordinary valor in the two wars, the first and second world wars, and again in afghanistan. as anyone in the 49th parallel knows, canada it is an extraordinarily pleasant place. i did not choose it to be so. i it, in some ways, have experienced the best in all three countries. >> i want to make sure that we have something to talk about in the future. what has to be done in order to get you to remember your life? >> i have to sit down, seriously consider my financial

well-being, have a little bit more many say than i have. like many in my colleagues, i invested in the future, in the news system. i am optimistic about that. i think we will make it through. i think "the new york times" could very well have one of its most profitable times in its history. i will have to listen to the publishers and the agents. i will just have to get used to getting up at 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. and doing the work. abe rosenthal first said he cut

me off mid sentence, he said, you know, john, what i've discovered in 40 or 50 years in this business, when things don't get done, they don't get done because they don't get done. in other words, you can excuse anything. the truth is, writing a book is simply an act of courage, and i have to summon up the courage to do it. >> of all the assignments you got, which one was the most exhilarating? >> exhilarating were the wars. these wars impose the quintessential questions of life in their darkest form because they bore so heavily on the

interest of the united states and of my newspaper, an american newspaper. in terms of sheer fun, and exhilaration, i would say china during revolution. but do you know something? i used to say to colleagues of mine who were moving from very desirable assignments to those that were less desirable that there is no such thing as a bad foreign assignment. all i know is that i worked very little in the united states. people would say, well, he would say that, would he not? to be a correspondent in "the new york's times" is to have a front-row seat. i have had an enormous amount of fun in my life.

i have had an ongoing paid education. honestly, had i won the lottery when i was 25, i would have wished to do exactly what i have done. i cannot think of anything else that i would have been well suited for. my father persuaded me not to go into the royal forces. many times on the golf course, he said, when i persuaded you not to do that, i was not thinking so much of your welfare. i said, what were you thinking about? i said, i came to the conclusion by the time you're 13 or 14, you would have made the worst officer the royal air force ever had. he said, i was saving myself from embarrassment. that was a turn well taken. i fell backwards into this business. i would not change a day of it. >> john fisher burns, "the new york times" here in london. >> thank you. >> thank you.

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