stevens, that's followed by michelle obama giving her last public beach as first lady. later, incoming white house press secretary talks about the presidential transition process and future relations with the press. ♪ this week on "q&a", rosemary stevens. professor stevens the cusses her book -- discusses her book "a time of scandal. charles r. forbes, warren g. harding, and the making of the veterans bureau." , why doosemary stevens you think somebody wanted to read a book about a man named charles r. forbes? rosemary: because he's interesting. because he had been written about before.

because i thought he was fascinating, and that was because nobody had looked at the veterans bureau scandal before, and it was a big scandal in the early 1920's. most people and about the teapot dome scandal during the harding administration, at the time, the veterans bureau scandal was equally important. man had come down in history as a crook. it did not appear to me that that is what he actually done. i got intrigued by this. brian: on your first page, and the preface, you write, "good that until now that the fact that the that are in's scandal

was neglected and forbes culpability unexplored." why do you think that was? rosemary: partly because it was a huge, good story at the time, which was a different story. that was that charles forbes was a crook through and through. what's more, he was a jolly crook. this was a friend of warren harding, the president, who was a younger man, a curious man in that nobody seems to know what his thoughts were. hawaiiwarren harding in when harding had just been made senator in 1915. they got along well and became friends. when harding became president, he appointed charles forbes to a job. he did extremely well as director of the bureau of war

insurance, but then became wrapped into the much bigger veterans bureau, and forbes was raised up to become director of the veterans bureau, now the v.a.. now i've lost my train of thought. brian: let me jump in, because i wanted to read a quote from your book that explains what warren harding became president in 1921. here's what you write, from a journalist named mark sullivan about the united states in 1921. it's a little long, but it set the stage. the year was distinguished i ,ostwar malaise, discontent dissolution, and a kind of fretful sullenness, the sense of living in a cockeyed world, drinking and flouting the liquor laws, weak moral curry each,

suspect's status as an immigrant ,r an alien, wartime correction and stereotyped messages from willulture at large, together and fanning fears for the moral fabric of the nation. woodrow wilson had won the war, and warren harding was left with the effects. that sounds horrible. rosemary: i think there are some things you can get from the book to think about today, not necessarily directly comparable. it was a very unsettled time. in wartime that there had been a clamping down of freedom of speech. the development of public opinion had worked its way, the way people thought.

after the war, there was all of this on settlement. washington was being transformed. 2400 dealing with war under wilson. a building near the station, near here, for women who came in to take war jobs. war andt just stop a expect everything to go on. how do you get from centralization of government in normalcy, somehow which was what harding wanted to do? how do you get there? ,here was a burst of nastiness

people who had been estranged from free speech during the war who were becoming very smart and pointed in their critique. was a kind of nasty period altogether, but, on the other things went very well. trains went across the country, you had a good mail service, you professions developing everywhere. they were certainly a lot of questions arising among people who were in different parts of the social framework. brian: in your book, you say we were 18 months into world war i

during 1917, this is 1921. you say, 53,000 americans died in battle, 53,000 from other wounded ---4000 were 4,000 were- 200, wounded. a program was developed in 1917 to provide social benefits for veterans of world war i. this was extraordinarily expensive on the treasury, because it wasn't just the veterans, but their dependents and dependency insurance and benefits and so forth.

time. a progressive there was workers compensation for workers and dangerous jobs, and they got medical benefits as well. so the parallel with workers compensation, if you have workers compensation for getting wounded in a factory, surely you should get workers compensation for being drafted against your will into the u.s. army or navy. you should get some form of defined benefits. those defined benefits were called war risk insurance. ,hey were life insurance ,enefits for dependents sickness and disability benefits, and they came as workers compensation did, with the instruction that there were medical benefits and locational educational benefits, as well.

andther words, job training expectation of getting a new job. brian: when was that setup? how did charles forbes become the head of it? rosemary: he was the first head of it. it was a very difficult job. paperworke all the that would be necessary to set up this kind of thing. there were 4 million people in the military. they were drafted from all over the country. it was an amazing bureaucratic success to get all the people get .4 million -- to get 24 million who were registered from the draft signed up. at one point, there were 17,000 people working for the insurance

bureau, trying to get them all signed up, including officers getting signed up in the trenches. by the time the previous director of the war insurance bureau was so exhausted by all , and verye left quickly after that, he died. he was a young man. so he became a hero in retrospect because he died on the job, and it was felt that the job had killed him. maybe it had, maybe not. but that was the expectation. forhen harding was looking a job for forbes, this came up. was a decorated war veteran.

he had been a major and a lieutenant colonel in world war i. he got the distinguished service medal. he had run a divisional communications program, he was the divisional signal officer for the 33rd battalion. and he was a reasonable choice for that job, and i think he did it very well. he didn't know anything about insurance, but harding said that doesn't matter, because all of those things have been worked out. to ride people along and make sure the system worked reasonably well. but it was only one part of what became the veterans bureau because of these other benefits that had been thrown in. brian: let me go back to two things that you write a lot about in the early part of your book. the harding scandals. what were the harding scandals? rosemary: that's a very good

question. the harding scandals were scandals that were made public in the coolidge administration, the administration that followed the harding administration. there was a series of investigations, congressional investigations, into there is parts of the government where things had gone wrong that were treated to harding. one of those was the oil scandal known as teapot dome, which was where the secretary of the responsible for getting oil leases taken over from the navy department, and harding signed this.

but then he sent them to major oil corporations. i think history is still out as to what his culpability was on this, or rather he thought he was running a business of the interior. it was responsible for making it efficiently a business, or whether he was actually guilty of taking bribes for passing over oil leases. brian: was he prosecuted? rosemary: yes. brian: was he convicted? rosemary: yes, he was convicted. brian: did he go to prison? rosemary: yes he went to prison. brian: for how long? rosemary: i don't actually

remember how long. he did go to prison until the 1930's. harry dockery was the attorney general, and briefly he was at coolidge's attorney general as well. these are all fascinating people. surprised there hasn't been book of him in the department of justice and what happened at that time. the department of justice was coping with prohibition, with civil rights questions because of what the role of the hat we i -- the role of the fbi was, and all sorts of other problems. t -- dockerty dr.

was, in the 1920's, not quite gentlemen, not quite eastern establishment, and that was a time when gentlemen were supposed to do certain things and how they were supposed to behave. you not supposed to get too close to people. you're not supposed to pet people on the back. you're not supposed to be informal. you're supposed to have a mask and be charming. none of these three people really fall into that category. dockerty appeared as a political operator.

brian: was he prosecuted? rosemary: he was prosecuted. brian: was he found guilty? rosemary: no. brian: do you know why? rosemary: not exactly, because in work needs to be done on him. he was prosecuted with a man called tom miller on one case. tom miller did go to prison. but since the charge was conspiracy and he was the other conspirator, he wasn't convicted. what?estion is who did as far as i can tell, it has still not been totally taken a look at. brian: warren harding was from ohio. but you also talk about his ohio gang. was dockerty from ohio? rosemary: yes. brian: and charles forbes was

from --? him, he: if you asked would have said he was from the state of washington. harding's ohio gang was what? rosemary: his ohio gang was, in my view, a made up firm to link these three people together with some other who were prosecuted, and to call them the ohio gang. phrase of gang has describe in ohio to the republican seen in ohio after the civil war. it was a rather effective political machine. the term ohio gang was familiar. but it didn't include these three people.

from ohio, nor were they particularly connected to each other. , in's another question of termew, having an assigned which carries great weight, because the ohio gang sounds evil and really serious. part of the book talks about the development of fiction around the harding administration, which developed after his death. he died in his third year of office. in, coolidge came had this image of being an efficient, and getting along with the investigation. thatthing that was wrong

could be righted under the coolidge administration was attributed to the harding administration. administration then became this kind of gang like empire in literature. brian: let me to part for a moment to get some background on you. where are you from originally? rosemary: you could probably tell that i'm an immigrant. from england. i grew up in england, went to school in england. england at the hospital administration. and then i came over here, became a u.s. citizen in 1968, and spent most of my life in the united states. brian: why? rosemary: i came here with my husband who was teaching at yale.

then i went back to school and yale.phd at i've had -- this country has been very good to me. i've had a very interesting career for myself. brian: what subject matter did you get your degrees in? rosemary: initially, english. my undergraduate degree was in english, this is probably the most salient aspect of my had.tion that i've it was a wonderful background in terms of english history and writing, and thinking about pros. then i went into a program in england for senior hospital administration for britain. i was selected into this program, went through a graduate , ande in social management

then ran a hospital at the age of 25. i was running a 100 bed hospital as part of the national health and nutrition. in london. bad i was feeling rather because i was a woman who had a man to thelowing united states. and i abandoning england? i felt very bad about that. but then i went back to yale and ,ot a phd in public health epidemiology, sociology, and health administration. how did i become a historian, you might ask? i'm an immigrant. immigrants are naturally

comparative people. in some respects, when you come to a new country, you see things a new. not very much different coming to a country in the 1960's as i did, as looking at the country in the 1920's. a historicals had perspective on all the work i have done, including the history of the medical profession, the history of hospitals, and so forth. brian: where have you taught? , and mostly atle the university of pennsylvania. brian: are you still teaching? rosemary: no. that's one of the reasons i was able to do a huge amount of research to put this book together. i've been having a very good time doing this. brian: and you live where? rosemary: new york city.

brian: going back to charles forbes, where did you find the best material for your book? rosemary: different parts of the national archives. i couldn't have written this book 20 or 30 years ago, before the internet. the internet is really -- has really revolutionized access to historical materials. finde been able to records, national archives ,elating to the veterans bureau , andureau of war insurance federalnow get employment files for people in this period.

, his his leavenworth file fbi file. mortimer is a central character, i got his fbi file. you can put an awful lot of this stuff together from disparate sources besides book published sources and others. there is so much you can get a hold of. you can get military records, access the military records, which i did. states, forbes's and arecords in the navy teenager in the marines. and then his stint in the army.

his father was actually a cavalry man in the british army under queen victoria. it's fun what you can get. the 1920 election. woodrow wilson had been president for two terms. world war i was over. we gave the statistics earlier on how many were wounded, died, hospitalized. elect athis country united states senator, warren been in aho had little tiny town in ohio? rosemary: i'd like to ask that question. debateas a great deal of at the time. candidate, as the and he won the republican candidate, and he won the election by quite a lot.

beinge with the image of a calm, practical man. more, head been much had been lieutenant governor of , he had beenor involved in national politics. he gave a speech in 1912 to the republican national convention. a really good speech, as a matter of fact. he was a pretty experienced and he tried to someonee image of being you need in the white house who is a down to earth, practical person who will work with congress, although that didn't work extremely well.

and i think, and this period of turmoil, having somebody who seems to be normal was a very good thing. that's from the electoral point of view. these peopleny of that you wrote about play poker with him inside the white house? rosemary: difficult to say. or forbes dockerty that close to him? rosemary: they were, but other people played. some congressmen, people he knew in washington. it was a relaxation for harding. --an: what was his life like what was his wife like, and what impact did she have on the story? rosemary: that's a good question. she was a politician. she sat in on poker games.

she didn't play poker, but she was there. it is very difficult to assess comes across in a very different way. she comes over as a very supportive person and is labeled as a managerial person. i find her very difficult to assess. was a complicated individual. she was clearly a very competent person. whether or not she knew about her husband's affairs, i don't know. she protected him. she was highly protective of war and harding. -- of warren harding. she turned against charles forbes because she thought he was hurting her husband. thathat correspondents would have helped to clarify all

of this no longer exists. so it's very difficult to be precise because there are certain records which are not there anymore. she destroyed a lot of letters. she destroyed a lot of records from harding and presumably herself. it's a great pity there is a big gap there in the archive. brian: i'm jumping ahead. this is a phrase you wrote several times in your book and i want you to explain it. of $5,000 at the drake hotel." it seems to be a constant in the book. the drake hotel is in chicago. was aboutand $5,000 14 times that if you want to translate it into today's terms. it's a lot of money.

brian: i plug it into the calculator in it said $70,000 in today's money. rosemary: wow. forbes he had an extraordinary difficult talk to do. he had to pull three different groups from different parts of washington. justly with each other. the medical groups from the public health. the vocational group from the job thing. and the insurance people from the insurance side. and without you been doing this, that she couldd not live with him anymore. she took their daughters off to while area for 15 months

he was going to difficult work. he was in his 40's. she was as well. left, he and his wife had met a very charming man named eliza mortimer. there he charming -- elias mortimer. he was a con man. he was a bootlegger and a comment. -- con man brian:. brian: you couldn't drink legally during this. rosemary: he drank a lot apparently. that was beside the point as far as his role was concerned. , he leftople money

some congressman money -- went some congressman money. he was putting in good words with the prohibition directors. he led harding the money. andas lending money one way -- ing people you would set people up through friendship. tobecame a good friend catherine mortimer. it is very strange, mortimer

would not agree with him. she only supported him in public. he did not interfere with other people toss marriages. them -- then in 1922 asked if he could go to the west coast with them on a business associatesome of his from the veterans bureau. to inspect parts of it veterans bureau on the west coast. loosely --ry foolishly said that he could come.

on the business trip. mortimer wanted to say that he had been in a lengthy meetings. -- all of the meetings. that he chicago and send the bathroom us going to the bathroom he handed over $5,000 in $5,000 notes. that is not easy to cash. so he handed over the $5,000 allegedly but there were no witnesses. there was no receipt. according to mortimer, he had

this wonderful story again. they laughed and then they would back to shooting crafts with mrs. mortimer. they were doing that on the mortimer's that. they had this wonderful story of merrymaking and possibly sex. he put all this together in a month. there were no witnesses. he could not get his wife catherine to testify for him in any way. this became a central part of the investigative hearing that came up and then the trial. it was a very good story.

it seemed a very plausible. brian: let me ask you about mortimer. what did he do for a living? in addition to the $5,000 that was supposedly given, he said there was hundreds of millions of dollars that supposedly people where ripping the whole system off with. where did mortimer come from? from -- rosemary: he came from minneapolis. he was entering lots of death. incurring lots of different debt. in 1917, he did not register for the draft.

he became a contractor. he fixed contracts. there isn't much information about that about what contracts he actually fixed. it was a very energetic. they trying to get more production going. plausible.ery i could helpthat you, i know these people at this firm. he was a ideal these people in government. he would put a contract together and take a cut. doing andat he was then prohibition came along. fix -- a factor in production.

>> when he was ahead of the bureau, they were building what kind of things around the country? contracts toto the build hospitals? there is no evidence that he did. or that he influenced any contract whatsoever. there was one dubious contract for a hospital in massachusetts. it happened to be cool just how. there.he had been mayor rosemary: yes. so mortimer said he intended to fix the contract. the contractors that were involved in this case were never

in the trial what their version of events was. he said that he fixed to the contract up in new york state for a hospital called cap alike hospital. -- tupper lake hospital. he denied that mortimer had anything to do with it. mortimer was a colossal liar. brian: how old was he? rosemary: he was younger. i can't remember exactly how old he was. he was probably still in his 30's. he may have been 30 or 40. i know there is an enormous amount of detail in this book. if you talk about the event you already mentioned, we haven't

gone into detail of all the things that he constructed in the veterans bureau. how long was he a head of the veterans bureau? rosemary: i think about 18 months. brian: why was there a group of hearings had on -- heard on capitol hill? how did that all happened? was 1923.that that was after harding died. director of the veterans bureau in 1921. anyidn't initially have direct responsibilities for building hospitals. that wasn't until after may, 1922. he was involved in planning for the hospital program.

brian: why did they come about? rosemary: they came about because in 1923, there was a reaction to the way in which the veterans bureau was working. three jostling groups. the education group, the insurance group and the money group. he had been responsible for reorganizing this national social wyff -- social welfare .rogram entire 1/5 of the federal budget. he was as possible for doing this. he had to relocate a lot of people.

out, he had to provide and hire managers for these new regional districts. there were 14 districts acting. there is a very unsettled time. we were just reorganizing a group of people. 30,000 people involved at one point. almost 30,000. not surprising, there was a lot of unrest. brian: was this public by the way? rosemary: yes, there was also a faith. appointments were being made on a political basis. there were many people who were

sent out to places they didn't want to go. they had been money the public health district. now they were taken into on the bigger district. they were curious. there was a lot of unrest. he of -- he had resigned at this point, job accomplished. now it was time for phase two. he would avoid all this later stuff. was another big set of agendas. who was he getting? in congress in particular? rosemary: senator walsh, who ran democrat.

he was part of the committee of three people who were pushing for the sections. sticking with the investigative committee in 1923. ,hile harding was still alive they were told to look at the problems of the veterans bureau and see what they could do. this whole investigating committee was not supposed to be about it to begin with. it was supposed to be about what we could do to reform the system, reform it from the legal point of view. they needed to be updated. from the organizational present -- from the organizational perspective. those hearings didn't take place until 1923. they only went for a few weeks months had been done

who willigating people run by general rf ryan. called upon this investigative committee. rosemary: -- brian: where was mortimer and all this? rosemary: he was on the sidelines but he became part of the story before the hearing. he testified. he became part of the same because he said -- the theme. he said that much of this could be laid on charles r ford. he was the director. he became the star witness of both the investigative hearing

and then eventually of the trial. brian: i had jump and, what boarded between charles >>charles f board -- forward charles f ford? sometimes, around september of 1923. became the lover of catherine or the protector of catherine. she was being beaten up. brian: mortimer beat up on his wife. erd charles fort was a support

of his wife. that is the sort of thing you don't know. --is a written down anywhere it isn't written down anywhere. mortimer was very slick. he became the chief witness at the trial. by that time, he was being paid by the department of justice to be a government witness. brian: the justice department believed him? rosemary: they said so. brian: all over this $5,000 check? rosemary: that is what it boiled down to in the end. the trial was in chicago. the only major claim in chicago was the $5,000 check.

involved this payout if it was a payout. forbes had left the bureau of veterans? brian: -- rosemary: yes. prison41 to leavenworth -- ford went to leavenworth prison for how long? hello was the trial? rosemary: only a few weeks. he was convicted by a jury. there was a judge who gave a very condemning speech about the whole fabric of the nation being threatened if you had people in responsible positions being with a very fiery

prosecutor. the departmentn of justice before becoming the prosecutor. mr. crab. try to put this all in focus, you had the hardest scandals. when did the trials go on around us -- this in chicago. he was the first to go to prison. brian: the reason i mention they leavenworth thing. in here.a paragraph one of the things that you found out was that there were 30 doctors. rosemary: is that funny?

probably many of them on drug charges. there was not only alcohol flowing but there was a lot of drugs flowing. a lot of street drugs. smuggling ande, trafficking were all right in this penitentiary? morphine, cocaine and heroine circulated widely in the american society in the late 1920's. battler was trying to supply narcotics to an inside syndicate. estimated that one third of the leavenworth inmates were on drugs. doing have any similarities to the opioid problem in this country? rosemary: i think so.

i would hope not. i hope that is not going on. weree says that drugs readily available. alcohol addiction as well. we do have a major problem with that. >> and listed you like office happening because of world war i? >> i don't know. it is very interesting. the history of drugs. it is also the literature on the history of our all. brian: what were your conclusions during all of this research?

thinking thats forbes was innocent of the crimes that he was convicted. he should not have gone to prison. he should not have been convicted. he was convicted on the word of liar, a who was a known very compelling liar. he was a brilliant witness. he was witness in other cases as well. that forbes was without blame. careless with his reputation. people.ated a lot of the most interesting part of this is that nobody in said i saws bureau

forbes one day with a bottle. nobody says that. forbes doing some 30 work with some of his associates . that is extraordinary. he had a secretary, a personal assistant. this is a man who was never accused of anything and seemed to be a very upright person. he came back and worked in the federal government. he worked until 1940. he was 100% behind forward. ford.

it was a very germane piece. he had a reputation for rectitude. he had written lots of stuff. he blamed this person and he wrote a letter. saying that it was the worst is --f whatever the word and justice. -- injustice. i think he became a scapegoat for troubles in the veterans bureau. and for assigning government back to the harding

administration. by the time of the hearing and the trial, he had been dead a few weeks. he lived to be in his 70's. that was the rest of his life like? did he stayed married to catherine mortimer? rosemary: he did stay married to her. it is difficult to follow somebody for whom there is a public record. he and catherine went out and lived in california for a well. which is as station nice little thing to think of. guess station for a big deal then. were a big deal then. he called himself retired.

he wasn't readily distinguishable. catherine, this poor woman from philadelphia who had been beaten up by mortimer, she became a federal civil servant in the 1930's. she would for the new deal. she worked for the bureau of budget. when forbes died, she organized a magnificent funeral for him. he is buried with honors in arlington cemetery. our to on and off on this book for 10 years. rosemary: how many of these have

you done? seven or eight. i don't know. brian: most of these books that you have written were on what? written: i've have about specialization. i wrote about the history of the british national health service from the medical point of view and the political point of view. i have written about immigration into the united states. that was a big deal then. i have written about the history of hospitals in the united states, particularly in the 20th and it was out of the history of hospitals that i became interested in why we were having metro -- veteran hospitals. by the we have a different system for veterans services? most of the countries don't.

brian: i am sorry, we are out of time. the name of the book is "a time of scandal" we thank you rosemary stevens for joining us. thank you, it was a pleasure. >> for free transcripts or for your commas about this program, is it us at uni.org. q&a programs are also available on c-span podcast. >> if you enjoyed this week's q&a interview, here are some other programs you may like. a talk about medical services

available to veterans. also this book about sex, suffrage and scandal in the 1920's. you can search our entire library at c-span.org. journaln's washington is like every day. coming up on monday morning, to roundtable discussions from the alabama senator jeff sessions. first, we will hear from susan crabtree. statehouse, we will discuss senator session's latest political history in his years in both state and federal government. and then the committee for civil clark, ther kristin former senate judiciary committee will talk about the

arguments that have been offered by those who support and oppose senator sessions. the washington journal is live at 7:00 eastern on monday morning. .oin the discussion michelle obama gives her final speech as first lady. conversation with sean spicer. and at 11 p.m., in other chance to see q&a with author rosemary stevens. last official remarks as first lady, show obama talked about the educational initiatives. twocalled on the nation's empower themselves with the good education. this is 30 minutes. obama: -- >> thank you to mrs. obaor