on providing medicine to remote communities in alaska. watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 eastern on announcer: supreme court brett kavanaugh continues to meet with legislators on capitol hill. watch live on c-span. watch any time on c-span.org. or listen with the free c-span radio app. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," the daughter of an american diplomat discusses her memoir, "daughter of the cold war." ♪

brian: grace kennan warneke, did they call you years ago, "miss x"? grace: because my father sent back the longest telegram ever sent to the state department in 1947. this telegram became an article which he was not allowed to sign which first appeared in foreign affairs and it was called the "x article" because it was anonymous. they did not know who signed it. it was then reprinted in "life" magazine. but, because of the mystery about it, it was called "x" and i was called "miss x" by people who thought they were very smart. this was in the 1950's. i was in college. brian: the telegram is 5500 words. what was it about? grace: i have seen the whole telegram laid out on tables.

it is amazing. the telegram was about the fact that we had just finished the war. we were allies with the soviet union. my father felt that people were being taken in by the russians, they were giving them too favorable a picture. stalin was being called uncle joe, and there was this element that we were buddies. he still knew it was a pretty he felt hestem and had to write this telegram to kind of alert people that things were not as well as they thought it was. brian: there is a containment theory that he proposed. was it accepted by the state department and the government? grace: i do not know that it was ever formally accepted, but it became u.s. policy for over 50 years and had a huge influence on the state department. it's interesting, because my

father died in 2005. we thought, he is going to be part of history, but we are not going to hear anything about him. now, i hear about him all the time. he is constantly being quoted. and it means to me, it's sort of still keeps them alive. brian: let's show some video of your father in 1966, talking about vietnam. [begin video clip] >> the spectacle of americans inflicting injury on poor, helpless people, particularly the people of different race and color. no matter how warranted by military necessity, our operations might seem to us to be, the spectacle produces reaction among millions of people across the world, profoundly detrimental to the image we would like them to hold of this country. [end video clip]

brian: when you see that video, what do you first think about? grace: what a good speaker he was. i really did. brian: what was your relationship with him? grace: i had two relationships. with him, i have the childhood relationship, before he became famous. he traveled a lot. there were two years i never saw him we were separated a lot. , but when he was there, he was very funny. he would make up stories. we had a farm, and all of the animals had names and personalities. he loved "the wind it in the willows," and i think he carried that on. he would have no horse talking to the cow. things that are very appealing to children. he was always interested in whatever i brought home. whatever i was reading. brian: what was your relationship with your mother? grace: i think i was born too soon after they were married. i came nine months later.

she came from a small provincial norwegian town and did not even graduate from high school. she married of brilliant man who was also difficult because he was intellectual, introverted, and complex. i cannot believe it was so easy being married to him. i mean, she was a sort of nice, outgoing norwegian lady, girl. she was very young. she was 20-years-old when they met in berlin. they were engaged six weeks later. they married soon after that. brian: how long did they stay married? grace: all their lives. they had their 70th wedding anniversary on september 11, and of all terrible times -- none of

us could get there. brian: this book is a memoir of yours. "daughter of the cold war." grace kennan warnecke. why did you write this? the reason i ask you this is because it is very personal. grace: i hear that quite a bit. people are quite surprised by how personal it is. i wrote it because i'm a storyteller. as i tell stories, and i often did, people suggested i write them down. you have to do something with them. you had an amazing life, you have met unusual people. but i was working full-time. i couldn't write. and work full-time, it did not work. it was not reasonable for me, let's put it that way. when i came back from ukraine, where i had been living for 4.5 years, empowering ukrainian women, helping them to start small businesses, i decided it was time to empower me on a lot of levels. one of those levels was i was going to write a book.

y.ent to the 92nd street i took a course called memoirs from the middle at the y. courses,s took those it was taught by a wonderful poet. five of us made a writing circle. we meet to this day. we have been meeting for 10 years. it took me eight years to write the book. i rewrote and rewrote. the writing circle kept begging me to say more and tell more. to reveal more. the book i ended up writing was definitely not what i started out with. brian: what is the difference? grace: it is much more revealing, much more open. much more candid, i guess. but also, it is a book i would have not written if my parents were still alive. i would never have wanted to hurt my mother in any way.

but she, as you will read it in the book, was pretty much not there for me in my childhood. brian: i am just going to jump in and pick something. i'm going to pick something that stuck out on page 115. your first husband. ck mcclatchy. is that the mcclatchy newspapers? grace: yes. brian: here's this "don't you realize who you are husband is and what he is doing? don't you know he is gay?" what is that about? grace: well, he was gay and i did not know. i had no idea. i was told that by a friend of his. brian: what are the circumstances about him? where did you marry him, what was he like, and what were the circumstances where someone -- someone tell you he was gay? grace: he was a wonderful man, a really nice man. bright, interesting, and i feel so badly for him that he was gay in a time where being gay was

really not encouraged her permitted. it was looked down on. so much so that people did not talk about it. there was no conversation. ."ere was not the word "gay it was different. ," i not use the word "gay used it in my book and i think that was a mistake, actually. i think probably another word was used. he was a terribly nice man. brian: where did you meet him? grace: i met him in libertyville, illinois, the night that eisenhower accepted the republican nomination for president. brian: why were you both their? grace: we were there because i was with my father. we were in highland park, he was doing research at the university of chicago, in the library.

stephenson heard my father was there and wanted to meet him. we were invited to dinner. that is how we got there. ck mcclatchy was the assistant press secretary for stephenson. so he was there. brian: how much time after that were you married? grace: well, i did not see him again. he moved to washington after the campaign. about six months later he phoned me up. i was not sure who he was. but i knew i met him at stephenson's house. we were married probably 10 months after we met. we were married for eight years. brian: was this particular incident what killed the marriage? i just read, when a group was there at the house. grace: i am sure a few other things -- well, the fact that i had been living sort of in a world i did

not understand. brian: what does that mean? i had no idea he was gay. so i think some of those things -- all married couples have problems. i mean and there is no marriage -- at least i have seen very few that are perfect. but i think some of the problems we had came from the fact that he was really not interested in women as women. brian: where did you live when you were married? grace: sacramento, california. all of my children were born there. i had three. two of them are in california, one is now in pennsylvania. my youngest son kevin is now the chairman of the board at the mcclatchy newspapers. before that, he loved sports.

he was the managing owner of the pittsburgh pirates. so he moved to pittsburgh a long time ago. 11 years with the pirates. he was the managing owner of the football team. brian: when did your former husband die? grace: about 24 years ago. he died a long time ago. brian: a question about your relationship with him, and your kids. those kids all belong to your marriage with mcclatchy. what did they think of your memoir? grace: i think they probably had mixed feelings, but they are very nice to me. they are polite about it. but, they are also proud. brian: why would they have mixed feelings? grace: i do not think they wanted everything that was in our family life necessarily there for people to read. but i purposely did not write about them. if you look at the book, it has very little. it has something. i mentioned my children, but they are in it very little. i mentioned when my son bought the pirates because it affected

the whole family. even my father came to a pirates game and was keeping score. brian: how many places have you lived in the world? grace: i could not count. brian: lived, with your father, or the story gets complicated in germany. where have you lived? grace: we have lived in at least seven countries when i was a little girl. i did speak five languages by the time i was 12. not 11-years-old, i was 12-years-old. i spoke russian, norwegian, german, portuguese, and french. we moved all the time. in those years, we lived in latvia, where i was born. we lived in vienna, in russia,

in prague, in berlin. we then went to portugal. port lisbon, back to russia. there was a lot of back to russia. i went to a soviet school as the only foreigner. i was in the fifth grade. it was the last year of the war. brian: how is your russian? grace: it is good. brian: what is the story about your father being interred in germany? grace: he was in berlin when the war started and the germans rounded up everyone in the embassy. plus any other strays they could find. so there were journalists there, it was not just embassy people. they were taken out to an abandoned old health resort and imprisoned for six months. then they exchanged the journalists.

they had a dramatic crossing on the waters, on a swedish ship. brian: where were you during those six months? grace: we had moved for reasons i will never -- there were mysteries in my childhood. one was why my mother decided to move to bronxville, new york. it has never been clear to me. before that, we were staying with my father's sister in illinois. the year before, i had gone to school in illinois and in milwaukee. we moved there in one year, to two different places. brian: your dad was born in milwaukee? grace: yes. brian: there is a george kennan institute, but it is not your father. grace: it is. it is my father and the original george kennan for who he is named. they were born on the same day. they wanted to name it after my father. my father wanted it named after his distant relative. i always assumed it was named

after both of them. they had the same name, so it is pretty easy. brian: where is it located? grace: the woodrow wilson international center for scholars in washington, d.c. brian: how involved are you in it? grace: i am on their advisory council, and have been for 14 years. it is run by the director of the kennan insitute. brian: what does it do? grace: it provides a home forgry council, and have been for 14 scholars from the former soviet union and american scholars who are trying to learn something about russia. we have been very lucky. we have title viii money that funds these scholarships. the kennan institute puts on seminars about u.s. russia relations, cultural and political relations.

economic, the arctic. i mean, there are many different levels in which we relate to russians. brian: who are the ones who enjoy the title viii scholarships? grace: title viii, i do not want mispeak. i thought it was our russian and american scholars, but i need to double check. brian: is there a lot more activity behind the scenes between russian and american people that we do not know? all we hear about is the leaders

of russia. grace: i think there is a lot more going on than what we see. i thought it was our russian and american scholars, but i need to double check. i think there always has been. well, the reason i gave my book the title "daughter of the cold war" is not just because of my such a big played war, but alsold because i spent years of my life working on projects designed to end the cold war. i mean, that is what i cared about. i wanted to get the people together. when governments don't get together very well, when the two governments are not happy with each other, citizen diplomacy plays an important and necessary role to remind the people that we are people. that our governments are having fights at the moment, but i was thinking of cultural diplomacy, the ballet, jazz diplomacy. there is a tremendous amount of interest in russian-american jazz. we are interested in russian ballet. i was the founding executive director of the american soviet youth orchestra. we had 50 young musicians from the u.s., and 50 from the soviet union. in fact, they were all from the moscow conservatory.

brian: in your book, you talk about the fact that your father inherited money from his father. you say it was a considerable amount. then you tell us that because of the depression, the money is gone. but then you tell us you bought a farm in pennsylvania -- your father did -- for $14,000. take as through that. -- take us through that. grace: i just learned that is very recently. the reason we had that money, which was a lot then, was because they did not pay him when he was interned in the camp. they said he was not working. can you imagine? [chuckling] grace: i mean, they were not paying our diplomats who were

imprisoned. they could not possibly work. that was looked into, and some realized it was a great injustice. so they got the money is a lump sum. a lump it was the first time in a long time my parents actually had some money to do something with. brian: is the farm still in your family? grace: yes. my sister owns it. it was left to her. brian: how was it used in the early years? grace: it was the only home we had. we do not ever own anything in washington. brian: svetlana. tell us the story about her. before we do that, let me show some video of her to remind people what she looked like. this is 1967. [video clip] >> a woman once known as the little princess of the kremlin arrives from switzerland. 42-year, the

josef stalin,of sought asylum here, where women can feel free. explaining her defection from russia's she added "religion has changed me. communism dogma has lost its significance, it is impossible to exist without god." [end video clip] brian: she was 42. grace: i was there, at the airport. brian: what was your age back then? grace: in 1967? i'm not good at arithmetic. i was born in 1932. brian: so i could figure it out. 35 or so. what was your relationship with her after she arrived in the u.s.? 35 or so. grace: i had no relationship with her. she defected in india. the reason she was there is she had had an indian boyfriend who she met in the sanitarium. which in russia, that is a combination of a hospital and health spa. they are very curious.

we do not have sanitariums like that. they were there and fell in love. she claims they got married. they were never legally married. in her mind, they were married. when he died, she asked for permission to take his ashes and throw them in the gandy's river. river.dis she received that permission and took the ashes, did that. she lived for a while with his brother and family. she became vegetarian, discovered religion. she became quite spiritual at that time. when she defected, the russians said "enough is enough." you have to come home. they sent two men. there were two men who were stationed there to kind of keep an eye on her. they said, tomorrow you are going home. maybe because she was stalin's daughter, they did not take her passport. so she had a passport. so she walked to the american

embassy and walked in. you can imagine the embassy. they did not have anybody there who spoke russian. she came in off the street saying she was the daughter of stalin in new delhi. i think they did not know what to do. so she was flown to switzerland. and my father -- they asked my father -- they flew him to switzerland to talk with her and ascertain whether she was really stalin's daughter. he said, definitely, she is. they talked for two or three days. she talked about her religion. my father was quite spiritual. she said, i just want quiet and peace. she could be quite dramatic in her own way. [chuckling] grace: my father was very touched by this and said, we have a farm in pennsylvania. you can come to east berlin,

pennsylvania. she said, no, she had something else to do. she lived with her then translator, priscilla johnson, and then turned on her. in the end, svetlana always turned on everybody. she unfortunately had a bit of her father in her. it made her very difficult for her to get along with people over a long period. in the short period, her relationships were very intense. brian: this is a picture of svetlana being carried by her father. grace: that is a very famous picture. brian: what kind of relationship did they have, or what did you learn about their relationship? what did you learn about her? grace: she knew what her father had done.

he killed every member of her mother's family. they were shot. every one but one of them. so she must have known, in some way, after a while. her mother died a bit mysteriously. when svetlana was only six. so she was brought up in the kremlin. it was a strange upbringing. so, she still talked a lot about her father. i think she dedicated her book to her mother. but her mother on the other hand, she did not really know her. her mother died when she was six-years-old. the only family she had was her father, and she would kind of excuse him by saying he was influenced by beria. the bad guy. he was the head of the kgb. brian: here is a picture we have of her sitting in his lap. grace: he went after young girls. he was famous for that. but i do not think he would have

dared go after stalin's daughter. brian: so she stayed at your farm for a while? were you alone with her there from time to time? grace: my sister and her husband took care of her. they went into the peace corps, and then i came. i had three children and they took care of her. came with me. ages four, six, and eight. so then my sister said, because training, -- training, peace corps would mind taking her children. so i had five children under the age of eight. i was so excited about taking care of svetlana. i think in the back of my mind i was going to write an article. i thought this was a big thing

in my life. of course, with five children and svetlana to feed, of course she would not touch the food. as a vegetarian, hamburgers and hotdogs were not for her. she wanted risotto and elaborate things that took a lot of work. she was vegetarian. we did not have the simplest, my parents were not modern. we did not have a washer and dryer. we did not have a washer and dryer. i took the laundry for seven people and put dimes in the washing machine. in those days, it cost a dime to washer close in the washing machine. clothing in the washing machine. shopping was a big thing. seven or eight people. her translator and her lawyer came. they all stayed there and had to eat, as well. somebody had to go to the airport to pick them up, namely me. so it was hardly the image i had

envisioned. we did occasionally talk, but i spent most of the time in the kitchen. brian: here is svetlana and stalin speaking in a press conference a few days after she arrived. [video clip] >> of course i disapprove many things, but i think there are many other people who are still in our central committee and responsible for the same things which he alone was accused. killing people, injustice. i feel responsible for this is and was the party, the regime. and, the ideology. brian: why did she turn on the kennans? grace: she turned on everybody. she just dropped all communication with me. i did not hear from her, i never got a letter.

she wrote a book about that summer and i am not in it. i mean, it is as if it didn't happen. happily, i have photographs, so i can prove it did. but i mean, she felt that strongly. six years later, out of the blue, did i want to come? did i want to come have tea, did i want to come see olga? she had a little girl named olga, who was not allowed to speak russian. she spoke only english. so i went to tea and met olga. she was a sweet little girl, and i kept thinking, my god, that is stalin's granddaughter. brian: more stories from your life. here is somebody you knew well. in this picture is jacqueline kennedy and your second husband, jack warnecke. reaction? grace: i knew they had a romance before i met him.

it looks like it was taken at that time. he was the architect who designed president kennedy's grave. so he worked very closely with the first lady. brian: and the architect of the hart building in the senate here, among other things. how serious was the relationship? grace: i wasn't involved in the relationship. i think he took it -- -- my guess is she was not very serious about it. he was an architect. he was not impoverished but his financial picture went up and down dramatically from time to time. she obviously liked to marry people with money and position. i do not think in the long run -- i think this was something she enjoyed and it was very short. she broke it off. i do not think it was going anywhere.

brian: how did you meet him? grace: i met him at a party in san francisco. i had just returned from cuba. brian: what were you doing in cuba? grace: i had not been in cuba. i'm sorry. i just came back from not being in cuba. gone with my husband, and we were going to go together. he was writing articles for "the sacramento bee" about cuba. we learned that the cubans would not give me a visa. so i had to make my way back to san francisco. finally. it was difficult. i did not have a proper visa. i had a transit visa, and they would not let me go out the way i came in, because i was supposed to be transiting. you get involved sometimes with stupidities like that. brian: why were you attracted, and vice versa? why was he attracted to you?

do you remember the circumstances? grace: it was not very serious. i was married. we danced and had a good time. and yes, he was an attractive man, and i did certainly notice him, but then we met later, a couple of years later. at that time, it became much more serious. then we dated for a long time. brian: you have a spot in your book where you say, a few months later, i told jack, meaning the man you are going to marry, that you were planning to ask for a you were planning to ask for a mcclatchy andk he said, you do not know what you are doing. i don't want any part of this. i'm not interested in getting

involved with a woman with three children. i think we should stop seeing each other. grace: that is true. brian: you obviously remembered that for a long time. it is in your book. why? grace: because, i was planning on getting a divorce anyway. when i told him, and we had not seen each other that much. but it had been a strong attraction. i just remember him saying -- it was a very strong statement. i do not want to have anything to do with you and your three children. that was fine. i went ahead and got a divorce. that plan did not depend on jack warnecke. brian: but then you married him, what year? grace: we were married in 1969. brian: how long were you married? grace: eight years. brian: why did you divorce? grace: it was not a compatible marriage. we had different standards.

different values is a better way of putting it. he was a very ambitious man and not a terribly nice man. he was never terribly nice to my children. this really got to be worse and worse. brian: he is not alive? grace: he died. he was 15 years older than me and he died at age 91. brian: who did you meet through him that you became friends with? or you ended up doing tours to russia? that is what i am going to get to. grace: i became much closer to the kennedy family. he had been a real architect of the kennedy family. he did senator ted kennedy's house, bobby kennedy's pool house. jackie onassis's wind turbine or something like that. i knew senator ted kennedy.

we were in the same class at harvard and ratcliffe. we vaguely knew each other from back then. but i was not a close friend, just said hello. so we saw it -- i mean jack was -- it was a very glamorous life for me for a while. much more glamorous than i was leading. of course i was impressed by all of those things. the kennedys were one of the chief people i met. then i ended up taking ted kennedy and his wife and two children as their escort translator to the soviet union in 1974. brian: before we get there, i want to read what you said about jack warnecke. "he was controlling, insanely jealous, and wanted me to be at his beck and call, regardless of

my children and other commitments. he had an explosive temper and, when angry, would frequently keep me up most of the night. haranguing me although he knew i needed to get up in the morning with my children. sleep deprivation became a constant part of my life." grace: that was true. brian: how did you deal with that? what was your way out? grace: in the end, leaving. i think that was the biggest way out. i walked out the door. before that, i got very involved -- that is partly what may be -- made me become a photographer, i started studying photography, which jack hated because he could not call me up when i was in the photo lab. he would call me five or six times a day, to make sure i was where i was supposed to be. the photography was, for me, a different world, a world i could escape into. and, i worked as a photographer for 10 years.

brian: what is the story about the dinners he ask you to put on? grace: he was very fussy about the dinners. one time, he wrote his staff a memo with 18 things i had done wrong with the dinner. it was awful. brian: do you remember who that dinner was for? grace: i have no idea. we entertained. that is how he got clients. in those days, you get your clients, very often, from personal connections. architects. brian: i have to ask you the same question as in the beginning. why do you want people to know this? grace: for several reasons. one is, i think the book is part of history. i'm so old. part of it goes back, a lot of people do not realize we were allies with the russians. people don't have historical memories of that.

i also think the book is important because it is about a woman who graduated from college in the 1950's, when women had very few opportunities. if you didn't want to be a school teacher, librarian, or a nurse, there was not very much you could do. i wanted to go into the foreign service, and they did not take women. brian: they did not take any women? grace: secretaries. but not women officers. i was interested in doing that. i was at a woman's college, but the president was a man, because you could not have a woman president. radcliffe. crazy, that a women's college had to have a man president. there were a lot of things that were very difficult for women. we have come a long way. brian: when was the first time in your life that you felt you were your own person, and not in

the shadow of your father? grace: part of me has always felt in the shadow. i mean, my father was so brilliant. so exceptional and unusual, that you never totally -- i always felt i could never live up to it or be good enough. but i think it was when i moved over and was working so hard in russia and ukraine. because i began to develop the jobs i had and the things i did had nothing to do with my father. brian: what did you do? grace: in russia, i spent four years -- i had always worked with men. i was usually the only woman. when i was president of my own consulting company, we worked in moscow, and the men would come up to me and assume i was the interpreter. because that is all women did.

they would say, where is your president? and i would say, i am the president. it was a learning thing. my clients were always men. so i joined the alliance of american and russian women. this was sort of a do-good organization, it started at the time of the breakup of the soviet union. the idea was that the women over there did not know about running your own business. we would take american professional women over there and teach and bring american professional women to russia, and have conferences and teach people. i think that was a little bit -- looking back on it, i am a little embarrassed by how confident we were. we thought we knew better than them. our courses got a lot better, very quickly, when i realized what we were doing. brian: what is the story of the coup when you were in russia?

grace: ok, back to the coup. i was with the alliance. we put on conferences in moscow. we were always looking for ways to save money, because the alliance was not well-funded. we put them up in a guesthouse of the uzbek embassy on the other side of the river, it was a very peculiar place to have chosen. when the coup started, we did not know what was going on. the television kept playing swan lake over and over again. i was running around moscow and the women we brought over didn't know anything. we were running around moscow and we were told the embassy wanted everybody's passports. they wanted to know who was there. they were making plans to evacuate. it was very dramatic.

we still put on our conference in the middle of that. about two-thirds of the people came. it was unbelievable. the next morning, very early, was our train out of moscow. i was so relieved to get the women on the train. brian: in 1978, you took joan baez to russia. what were the circumstances? grace: a friend was on the san francisco chronicle. an acquaintance, she was not even a friend. she was supposed to be going over there with santana and the beach boys to do a big concert. i was chosen to find the right song for her to sing and to translate it into english. and i did. it was called "the circle of friends." it was the perfect song, if i do say so myself.

when the communists realized that santana and the beach boys were not what they wanted, they canceled the concert, two weeks before it was going to happen. but we all ready had our visas and were set to go. so i was very disappointed. i got a call a few days later from john wasserman from the chronicle, and was told joan wanted to go. will you take us? all my life, i have had this trouble of jumping into things for which i am not really prepared. as usual, i said, yes, of course i can arrange that. i can arrange that. but in the end, i did. brian: how? grace: joan did a lot of the work. her daughter lives in boston. the daughter of sokrov's second wife was in boston. she drew us maps.

they had cleverly taken the number off of the building, so you could not find it. she had maps. we knew what building it was. she wrote the codes to get in the front door. when we got in, they had turned out all of the light in the hall so you could not see. we felt our way along the hall, feeling the doors. i knew it was the seventh door down. we got there. at first, he wasn't very interested in joan. she is a very political -- she had strong beliefs and was very political. she was trying to tell him how bad things were in chile. he was not interested in that. then she said, can i sing for you? she had the most beautiful voice. a glorious voice. she sang, and he melted. suddenly, everyone was best

friends. and he did something very sweet. he pointed to the apartment above and said, even they like music. brian: what about the money? grace: i got a hint from john wasserman when we were in helsinki, on the last lap going into russia, he said, i think she has money in her guitar case. she was taking it to the bathroom. which she normally did not do. i was very tense, thinking we were probably smuggling money into russia and we could be in deep trouble. i felt we had gone too far, how can i back out at this point? so we were very lucky. somehow in milling around, waiting to get in line to go

through customs, we ran into a well-known film director. he did "burnt by the sun." i had translated for him, so he knew me. very friendly. so then i introduced him to joan baez. he knew who joan baez was. he said, instead of standing in this line, you get the vip treatment. his father wrote the soviet national anthem, so he was well-regarded. he took us through customs. nobody looked at a thing. we got through so fast. there has always been that element in the soviet union. if you know the right people, rules do not apply. brian: do you know how much money she gave? grace: she did not give. we went and met with the jewish dissidents and she started to talk about it and i kicked her and said to write it down because i knew the place was bugged.

then i showed it to the woman in charge, the leading figure. she said, no, we do not want any money. i mean, if she gives us money, we will go to jail. don't let her give us anything. bugging,eaking of didn't your father find a microphone? grace: yes. in the seal of the united states. it is in the spy museum in washington now. brian: how did he find it? grace: some security men came in and made him go to the residence and call his secretary, and tell her that he wanted her to dictate something to him. they began to suspect -- they had been trying to find this bug, and they suspected it could be turned on and off by remote control, which turned out to be the case. when it was off, it could not be detected.

so he dictated to his secretary in the room where the bug was. they turned it on to hear. brian: by the way, just for the heck of it, say three or four sentences in russian. grace: [speaking russian] brian: a hard language to learn? grace: yes. i learned it about five times, and finally it stuck. i learned it when i went to soviet school. i spoke perfect russian by the end of the year. brian: what age? grace: 12. brian: when was the last time you were in russia? grace: two years ago. brian: the change between early years in russia and now.

grace: humongous changes. the changes between soviet huge. and russia are brian: give us some examples. grace: one thing, now, a big differences they are modern. they were very old-fashioned. now you have fancy cars and modern apartment buildings, all of the things that the original moscow i went to did not have. people are much more traveled. more people speak english. and now, even though the tv and press is controlled, people will talk quite openly. people will talk to you about things they do not approve of, or things they like. it is never putin's fault. you understand. they are usually mad at the mayor of moscow, or the governor of some province. someone else takes the blame,

not vladimir putin. brian: when did you meet putin? grace: i met him in 1991 in st. petersburg. he was deputy mayor. i was running my business consulting firm. i had a client who wanted something to do with the port of st. petersburg. i was meeting with the real mayor, he was called away and they substituted the deputy mayor, putin. i was annoyed because i was not meeting with the mayor, i knew putin had been kgb. i was negative about it all. he came in and he was equally negative. he did not want to meet with some american woman who claimed to run a business. i think he was very suspicious of women. he had no gallantry. he had the coldest eyes i have ever seen. very big, blue, cold eyes. all i could think of was, i

wonder what would happen if he was interrogating me? because i knew he was kgb. that is really what went through my mind. i did not get what i wanted, by the way. brian: this is out of context, but i will show you some video of somebody that you knew years ago. this was an interview done in 1984. see if you remember this fellow. [video clip] >> i almost used to always vote democrat. i've always believed in nonvoting if you do not think either candidate is worthy, i don't see any reason why i should vote for one of them.

brian: joe alsab. where did you meet him? grace: he was a great friend of my family. he has my father fought endlessly. they had enormous verbal wars, but they were very good friends. he stayed at our house in princeton. he was my escort when i was invited for the first time to go with my parents to the british embassy to go to the coronation ball of queen elizabeth. he had no interest in me at all. he was interested in all of the political figures, not this young college women he had been saddled with. when we got to the ball, my father saw i did not know anybody, and he came back and said, don't you know anybody? of course i did not. he said, you have to meet someone. he takes me over and introduces me to john kennedy. that is how i met president kennedy. he was not president then, but was running for the senate or was in the senate. brian: what was his reaction to you? grace: i do not think he had

much reaction to me. however, we went out in the garden, he wanted to sit down because i think his back was hurting, looking back on it. joe immediately saw us and became extremely interested in me. he of course wanted to talk to kennedy. it had nothing to do with me. i don't know how many years later, when he was senator, he came to sacramento. there were about 30 people, an official group meeting, including my husband. my husband said to me, do you want to go? i said, of course. we were at the airport and kennedy got off the plane. he said hello to everybody. he got to me and, with his finger-pointing in that kennedy way, he said, i remember you, you were at queen elizabeth's coronation ball. it was five years later. extraordinary memory.

i had a different name. i was not grace kennan. i was grace mcclatchy, the wife of someone in sacramento. i don't think he was -- you know -- brian: your father died at 101 in 2005. if he read this book, what would he say? grace: i would not have written that book if he was still alive. brian: why not? grace: i am quite hard on my mother. i would not have wanted to hurt her that way. brian: when did she die? grace: 2008. brian: what kind of relationship did you have with her at that point? grace: she loved me and i loved her. i mean, we made up. in fact, she was so thrilled when i would come out to princeton. she had dementia, so for the last eight or 10 years of her life, she was not herself. brian: as well as you knew your

dad, what do you think he would say to you after reading this book? grace: i do not think he would like the personal parts. he would very much dislike those. i think he would be proud of the rest of it but he would not -- he, himself, has written his memoirs. have you ever read them? but there is certainly nothing personal in there. when the first volume came out, i was so excited. of course, i looked myself up in the index. a very childlike thing to do. brian: were you in there? grace: yes. it says, on june 5, 1932, a girl, grace, was born without incident. that is it. brian: what is your personal relationship with your three children? grace: i love them all. they are all very different. the two oldest live in california.

charles has had a lot of problems with addiction. a very up-and-down wife. -- life. my daughter, adair, lives with a -- partner in san francisco. she is also gay. she is involved in a lot of causes and looks after the mcclatchy family real estate. she is very busy and has a huge circle of friends. and then my son, kevin, is chairman of the board of mcclatchy newspapers. a very large newspaper chain. brian: are you still working? grace: yes. i am chairman of the national committee on foreign policy.

brian: where is that? grace: in new york. brian: what is its mission? grace: it was founded by hans morgenthau 43 years ago and its mission was to promote a more realistic american foreign policy. i do not think we have arrived. it still has a long ways to go. we do public programs. we have members. we have a membership thing. we also do a lot of work in southeast asia. we have worked closely with the chinese and taiwanese, bringing them together. things that are never advertised. or photographed or spoken of. brian: when was the happiest time in your life? grace: i am not very good at the "est"'s. happiest or saddest. brian: favorite?

grace: i think one of the happiest times is right now. to suddenly have the book -- a lot of people are reading it and enjoying it and saying it is well-written. i have fought a lot of uphill battles, and it is very nice to have this sort of recognition when you never thought you would. brian: the name of the book is "daughter of the cold war" and our guest has been grace kennan warnecke. we thank you very much. grace: thank you, brian. it is very interesting to be on the program. brian: thanks. ♪ announcer: announcer: for free transcripts, or to give your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available as c-span podcasts. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] a look at our live coverage today. house minority whip steny hoyer talks about the democrats make it in america plan to create jobs and spur economic growth. that is followed by the house at noon eastern for general speeches with legislative business at 2:00. on c-span2 there is a discussion on combating violent extremism. at 3:00 the senate returns to consider the nomination of robert wilkie to be the next secretary of veterans affairs. tore is a confirmation vote follow. on c-span3, nasa administrator join to smoke his predecessors to mark the space agency's 60th anniversary. later in the day, u.n. ambassador nikki haley and israel possibly as an for the u.s. attend --