cyberspace. i'm not a defender of the company, i am saying we need the best technology and we need to be a but a complete. and it is important that we address the risk. i've never been told what to say or what i cannot say, and frankly when you look at the bigger picture we do not speak through the china government and they do not speak for us. announcer: watch the show tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. -- on c-span2. announcer: the complete guide to congress is available. it has details about the house and the senate for the current session of congress. contact and bio information about every senator and representative, plus information about congressional committees, state governors, and the cabinet. the 2019 congressional directory is a handy spiral-bound guide. order your copy from the c-span online store for $18.95. ♪

announcer: david, when did you decide to name your book "a good american family?" david: it was not the first title. i was calling it "judgment in room 740," the courtroom in detroit where the americans activities committee conducted hearings in 1952 on communism in the detroit area. but i realized that -- that was early on in the process. i knew that i wanted to bring people into that room, not just my father and my family, but the chairman of the committee and the fbi informant and so on, so that was the nexus of the peace.

but in the end it was more -- it is not a memoir, it is partly that but more history, but i knew that once i came across the quote from charles potter from michigan, who expressed surprise that somebody from a good american family could be a member of the communist party at any point, i said that is it. because i knew my family was a good american family in every possible way. so i wanted that tension to define the book. >> i want to put it up on the screen, your mother and father, tell us away in the picture was taken. and when you look at them, what do you think about them? in 1944.at was taken my father was on leave. he was in the army and it was during world war ii. i think about how

beautiful my mother was, first my dad was also already going through a tough time, but he did not show it much. he had been a radical at the university of michigan. and the u.s. army had not only the intelligence division, they had already investigated him because he was applying for -- he wanted to be an officer. and he made it to become an officer and right after this he went off to camp in virginia to command an all-black unit of salvage repair. thiso i'm thinking about being the early part of their lives before they had their four children. and they were idealistic, i would say. >> when did you discover that both your mother and father were

communists at one point? david: it was always in the background of our lives, but never in the forefront, because he was called before the committee when i was two. i was not conscious. by the time i was sort of a aware of the world around me, we had moved to madison and i was seven years old. i have memories before that, but nothing really sticking out strongly about our family unit. had alreadyas -- he reinvented himself. so had my mother. it was not talked about. it was in the background. occasionally, he might say something that alluded to that era, but never in specifics. i tried to interview him maybe 40 years ago about parts of it and he really avoided it. then iasn't -- and started thinking about it more, but i knew i was not going to write about it until they were gone.

and then as i reported the book, i think a say in the other part of the book that i spent my career studying strangers until they become familiar to me, and there were people who were very familiar to me and i was worried they would become strangers as i went deeper into their lives. most people, you know, they know about their families, family stories and mythology, but they do not have a biographer going to study what really happened and i was doing that with my family. so i was learning more about their involvement in the coming his party is young people, as i reported on the book. >> what would've been the years they were communists? that my would say mother was a member of the young communist league as a young student at the university of michigan. my father was not, but he was a leftist. and then after he came back from

1946ar, i would say from -1952. brian lamb: you say you are not sure in your book what they ever saw in the soviet union. did they like the idea of the soviet union? david: i think they liked -- my father was stubborn in his ignorance. uihink that they liked the guide terri an idea -- and i think that my mother to some extent was a shaped by what he saw as the economic inequalities that grew out of or former obvious during the great depression, the notion of capitalism that was being questioned more strongly because of what happened with the collapse of that system. and i think that the stubbornness and his ignorance was not seen the paranoia and

murders history of the soviet union until later. brian lamb: when did he lose his first job and why? february,was fired in 1952, during the hearings when an fbi informant called the grandmothers spy, baldwin, was called to testify. she was a paid informant for the fbi from 1943-1952. she came in from the cold then. everybody in the party knew her. she testified and she named names. the point was really to investigate the united auto workers and the coming us in the -- communists in the union, but other people were collateral damage and my father was one of those. brian lamb: house un-american activities commission, 1938,

abolished in 1975. david: it was part of america's history. and one of the central questions of my book is, what is an american? what does it mean to be american? the chairman of the committee in would, whohn stevens voted against every civil rights bill that came through congress and had been a member of the ku klux klan and other dark parts of his past, calling my father, who had been the commander of an all-black unit in world war ii un-american. brian lamb: where is he from? david: northern georgia. he grew up on a farm and then became a lawyer in canton, georgia. briefly working at the north georgia circuit as a judge and was a lawyer. then he got elected to congress from there.

came fromhe woodstock, virginia, out in the shenandoah valley. and he was sort of a product of the machine out there. or he -- in world war ii, right after world war ii he served as the acting general counsel for the u.s. mission at the tokyo war crimes tribunal. the japanese, who were responsible for the atrocities. brian lamb: we are going to this idea of having a council interview somebody from the

committee, and in this case he was counsel and he asked your father -- david: he did all the questioning. the committee members would participate as well, but most of the tough questions were done by the committee counsel, that was the way it worked. brian lamb: the fifth amendment. david: the fifth amendment is the right -- you invoke the fifth amendment and not testify against yourself. it is written into the constitution of the united states. yetit is -- it is -- and historically, people who have used the fifth amendment as -- o r they define it by saying, that means you are guilty. the point is not whether you are guilty or innocent, it is whether you have the right not to be browbeaten into confessing. brian lamb: how often did your father use that? david: i did not count the

number of times, but almost -- not all the questions, but he certainly used it to not testify not only against himself, but to name other names or testify against anybody else, as he was interrogated. brian lamb: when you started this project, where did you go to find the things he needed to write the book? david: i went summoning places. ofso many places, but one the first was the national archives right down the street. and the people there were terrific. and all of the house of americans activities committee records are open now. it is like a congressional committee. helped mechivists find what i needed in terms of those two weeks of hearings. and within those files there was one file that was for elliott marinus, my father. before that, because it was a public hearing in detroit, i had

known about the transcript. in the transcript my father says , i have a statement i would like to read. the chairman, wood, does not allow him to read it. he probably would have let him read it if my father had confessed to his sins and sought absolution and named names, but he didn't, therefore he was not allowed to read that statement. so i thought, where is that statement? what did he say? that i found it in his file, it was one of the most powerful or the most powerful movement of my experience reporting this book and it washed over me for the first time. and i was in my mid-60's this was a central part of my family's back story.

i had never really allowed myself or i never really focused before that moment on what my father had endured. statement andt one part of it, which was, it "thes by saying statement" with the capital "s." those who have used typewriters remember those moving up a have space. that moment of seeing it, i knew my dad had typed, he had been a typist for years and i knew that he typed really hard and the keys would stick and that was it, that was me finally putting myself in my father's place at that moment. brian lamb: specifically, i am

on page 288 where you print the statement, where did you find it and how long did it take you to find it? david: i wish i could cite the exact box number in a file number. it is in the book. -- in in the files of the detroit at the national archives in their research room. and it was right there. brian lamb: in detroit or here? david: downtown washington dc archives, they have all the congressional files. and it was one of the first things i found among all the documents that i uncovered doing this. brian lamb: he was 34 years old the day he testified and wanted to read the statement and the chairman said no. where was the family and how big was the family and did he have a job? david: he had just been fired a week earlier from the detroit

times, a first newspaper where he was the lead write man on the copy desk, which was a different job in that era than it is today, we take the feeds from reporters and put it into motion , you write the stories. and so he did not have a job. two- the family was, i was and a half. my older sister jeanie was five. wasjill was almost -- jim almost seven. and my mother, it was a family of five at that point and we were living in detroit in a flat in detroit. and i don't remember it. the first thing i say in the book is i have no memory of that day. brian lamb: but does your brother remember it? david: he does.

first of all, my older brother is, both my brother and his sister are two of the smartest people i've ever known in my life. and jim has not a photographic memory, but a very sharp memory of certain things. he can recite any poem he has ever read, that kind of stuff. but he was traumatized by this period, much more so than i. he and my sister were in school and so the five years that hey were this event t bouncing from one school to another as my father was trying to find or get his life back together. so jim remembers, he even remembers going to the headquarters of the communist party, the newspaper where my father was also working as an editor, the michigan herald, and the michigan worker. he remembers some of that, much more so than i do. there is one thing where he remembers after -- or

immediately after my father was called to testify, there were stories in the newspapers there and one of his friend's mothers said jim's dad is a communist. to back off of that, 1952, and how did he find himself in the united states military and what year did he go in and was he a communist then? david: he went in right after pearl harbor. and he enlisted. he was not a member of the communist party. he was definitely a leftist, i would say. roberter's brother, cummings, was a member of the communist party. he wanted to fight against hitler' and mussolini and doing the war effort. -- join the war effort.

and one of the wonderful, or one of the important illuminating parts of my book, in terms of understanding my dad, were that he wrote all the letters home to my mother during the whole 1945, from 1941 to hundreds of letters. and of course they have some typical romance and other things in them, but they are also very illuminating in terms of the way that he viewed the world and particularly once he was able to show his leadership skills as a commander of the all-black unit, and you see in those letters, and i would argue you also see in the many essays which we will get to later, the editorials he wrote when he was at the michigan daily as a student, i think you see his love of america throughout that period. in, you know, his belief not

the destroying america, but in making it better. brian lamb: what would it have meant to be a communist in 1939 versus a communist in 1952? david: i think it meant different things. was939, there were -- there already evidence of the eagles -- evils of the soviet union, but there were a lot of different factors involved. war,as the spanish civil which we can also talk about, which had just ended, where the united states and france and great britain were neutral, and it was really the communist party -- that was part of the effort to defeat franco and hitl inand mussolini in spain this important precursor to world war ii. so there was that. during the war itself, the soviet union and u.s. were

allies fighting against hitler, so that was a very different period. was, youthe cold war were deep into the cold war. there was also a war going on in korea against the communists there. so it was a different matter. and i think that the members of the communist party in the united states, the membership had it shrunk considerably from 1939 to 1952. and many had turned away from the party by then. so my parents, there were people who continued after that, my parents did not. but they did longer than i would've thought. brian lamb: you mentioned charles potter who was a republican, a member of the. committeeand in those years it was run by democrats, although there were a couple years run by

republicans. what is his a story? david: i found charles potter to be a very interesting study. mainstreamassic midwesterner from michigan. not the upper peninsula, but the northern part of michigan. he went off to fight in world war ii. officer through the battle of the bulge, and then the -- pocket, where he was severely wounded and he ended up losing both of his legs and one of his testicles. and heroically trying to work therop a pocket of germans e and stepped on a landmine. so he came back like so many veterans to their home states and towns and got involved in politics, he was one of those

young veterans. he was elected to congress. put on the house of activities committee. like richard nixon and others, they sort of made their name fighting communism and they were staunch anti-communists. wheng the time of 1952, the hearings were in detroit, he was starting to run for the senate. brian lamb: potter? david: yes, i'm sorry. and he was elected into that year. he served one term. in the senate, he was put on the subcommittee with joe mccarthy. and that is where he started to see sort of the different manipulations of mccarthy and the complexity of a lot of the issues that had it seemed before that pretty black and white.

-- jump forward to the 1960's he wrote a book, talking aboute," mccarthy going as far as he did. and he even wrote a section where he defends the fifth amendment and regret it was used the way of saying that people were guilty, when it is an important right. i'm not going to -- this is the only time i will let you ask me about it again and jump forward, but it was the republicans, smith, and several other republicans, including president eisenhower, who saw the excesses of what was going on and they stopped it. aays of shame," will

republican write a book like that 10 years from now? brian lamb: when you look back, it is hard to believe joe mccarthy was only 48 when he died. buried in your home state. david: yes, he died right before our family was saved. brian lamb: i want to show you some video of harry truman speaking. this is only 20 seconds. and then go to another issue you sent me to in your book. here is harry truman in 1950. >> i will tell you how we are not going to fight communism. orare not going to transfer transform our fine fbi into a gestapo secret police as some people would like to do. [applause] we are not going to try to control what our people read, say, and think. brian lamb: that was 1950. you sent me to this. the executive order 9835. david: ok. brian lamb: from march 21, 1947.

truman is president and he issues this executive order. where as, it is of vital importance that persons employed in the federal service be of complete and unswerving loyalty to the united states, and i'll jump down to part one. one, there shall be a loyalty investigation of every person entering the city civilian employment of any department or agency of the executive branch of the federal government. it goes on and on. but what was this about, put this in context. david: it was not just the federal government there were , loyalty oaths going all the way down through the state governments, the board of education, teachers in states were ordered to sign loyalty oaths, many of them refused and were fired. but it was the intense hysteria, you might say, at least fear of the cold war, and of an internal threat to the united states, that just washed over this country in that period. and harry truman and the

democrats were caught in a place that they basically had been dealing with it in various ways ever since, which is the conundrum of how do you uphold the civil liberties, which are at the heart of the american democracy, and yet not be accused of being soft on whatever. communism, or the enemies within and without, and so on. and so during that period, i , hadn't seen that statement before, thanks for showing it, he made that and he also went the other way. they were trying to find their way through this difficult period. brian lamb: i want to ask you, further on in this executive order, this is one of his points, what would happen with this today? the head of each department and agency shall appoint one or more loyalty boards. each composed of not less than three representatives of the department of agency concerned, for the purpose of hearing loyalty cases arising within

such department or agency and making recommendations with the respect to the removal of any officer on the grounds relating to loyalty. david: that is chilling isn't , it? especially when you think about how that could be -- how not only it was misused during that period, and there is -- there are parts of that, that aren't even in the book, like the lavender scare, where they went after gay and lesbian people in that same period, in the same ways, in the federal government. but loyalty to what? and to whom? who defines it? and, you know, how that can be, you know, how it was defined then in terms of loyalty to america versus the soviet union? what were, you know, is it loyalty in your mind and in your

writing or is it loyalty in your actions? which are two very different things, and the ways that was misused and could be misused in the present is chilling. brian lamb: reaction of your brother and sister when they knew you were doing this and what you found? david: that was an interesting and important process. so for the whole period that my parents were alive, i was not going to write this book, and it was not something my father or my mother really talked about much. and when i really started to become obsessed with it and i was talking to my sister and brother, jenny was supportive from the beginning. she might have had qualms about what i would find but she -- she's not the type of person,

she's just very supportive of me always. jim, it was a little more complicated. he, i think in part because he was conscious during this period and maybe felt it was more his story than mine. i was just 2. what did i know? i think he underestimated perhaps my research capacity to find -- you could say what can , you really know about what my parents were thinking? after reading 200 letters from my father and 200 editorials and essays and stories that he wrote for the michigan daily you start to get a pretty good sense of what he was thinking. not entirely, of course, because no biographer ever knows the internal thoughts of another human being, i mean, you don't know what i'm thinking at this moment, you know, nor i know what you're thinking, because there is a contradictory thoughts that flow through

period. in any case, jim was pretty much -- he'll now say he didn't try to talk me out of it but i felt like he was trying to talk me out of it. brian lamb: where are those two today? david: jim, he lives in western massachusetts. he was a professor for decades at amherst university. professor of spanish, including the spanish civil war. spanish literature, a calderon specialist. and he just retired. my sister lives in pittsburgh. she was the chief research librarian at carnegie mellon university. brian lamb: we need to talk about the spanish war, because your uncle fought in it and you told us about it. bob cummings. david: bob cummings. my mother's oldest brother. and he was radicalized at the university of michigan. and the day he graduated in 1937, he and two of his friends,

ralph and edmund, left michigan, went to new york, got on a boat, took the boat across to france, took a train across france to the spanish border, climbed over the pyrenees to fight against franco in the spanish civil war. brian lamb: what was motivating him? david: ideology, politics. hatred of fascism. most of the americans and canadiens who went over there had some, or 2/3 of them had some affiliation with the young communist league. so you can say, you know, that that was financially what -- they didn't make money off of this, of course, but that's how they got there. but what was driving them was a belief in a better egalitarian world and a hatred of fascism. brian lamb: what happened to him after that?

david: he was there from 1937 until the americans were sent home, a little bit before the war ended with franco defeating the loyalists, the republicans. and he came back to ann arbor. the third member of that group, ralph, was captured by franco's troops and executed. and if you don't mind, when my wife and i were in spain, one of the most powerful moments was, i knew where he was captured and the cathedral where he and some other american soldiers were held, in the cathedral in the top of the town, and to go there, into that church, you know, all these 70 plus years later, and it still felt like a

dungeon of death. it was a very moving experience to do that, and to trace his route all the way through spain. so after he came home, he was hailed at the university of michigan. he and elman, for surviving the war and what they had done. 400 or 500 people came to an event at the michigan union. his little sister, mary cummings, my mother, was there. a reporter for the michigan daily, elliott, covered the event and that's where my parents met. brian lamb: that day? david maraniss: yes. brian lamb: let's go back to that photograph just briefly to look at your mother and father. i want to ask you, both of them had the philosophy of the communist party at that time. where did they get it from? in other words, what were their parents like? and is that where the atmosphere they grew up in?

david maraniss: you know, my mother was a member of the uncommunist league. but to say they have the philosophy of the communist party is narrowing about what their philosophy of life was. i'm not denying but there was more -- brian lamb: i'm more interested in where their philosophy came from. david maraniss: i would say to some extent my mother was influenced by her older brother, bob, who was already active in michigan, and then went off to fight in the spanish civil war. brian lamb: where did he get it? david maraniss: good question. i think from the times partly. my grandparents, my mother, and bob cummings father, andrew adair cummins, was born on the side of a hill in northwestern kansas. went through the whole struggle of the depression as a young engineer, bounced from city-to-city, trying to get

work. he started sort of, you might say, as a modestly country club republican and was not radicalized but became an fdr supporter during the new deal and all of that. but i would say where my mother and my uncle got it was from the times. i think you can compare somewhat the period from 1934 to 1939 to the period from 1964 to 1969. a lot of young people were being radicalized by the events of that era. not everybody, obviously. both then and in the 1960s, there were more young republicans than there were radicals. but it was a radicalization process of a lot of people. brian lamb: if we can do this quickly, i just want for context purposes, at one point in the book you say seven moves,

four kids, and the blacklist. david maraniss: yeah. brian lamb: where were the seven moves? david maraniss: well, from the time he was fired in detroit, our first move was to coney island, brooklyn, where my grandparents, my father's parents, lived. we lived in a small apartment on the edge -- near satisfy gate in coney island but not in seagate, which was a little more exclusive. then we moved back to -- we moved back to ann arbor and lived with my mother's parents briefly. then we moved to cleveland, ohio, where he briefly had a job grandparents, my father's with with the cleveland plain dealer until the publisher of that paper found out what had happened in detroit. which my father readily acknowledged. he was fired from the plain dealer. we moved back to detroit. he worked outside of the newspaper industry for a few

years selling party favors for a labor organizational place. we moved twice in detroit. then, in 1956, he was hired to be an editor at the local addition of labors daily in bentondorf, iowa. the typographical union was on on strikeinst -- against newspapers in the area, and my father got back into newspapers there. we were there for a little over a year, and then got to madison, madison capital times hired him in 1957. joe mccarthy had just died. milwaukee braves were on their way to winning the world series. i was seven turning eight and life seemed good. brian lamb: the consequences of that hearing, did they find him to be in contempt or what happened as a result of those

hearings? david maraniss: no. there were many people over the course of the years who did not take the fifth amendment. but took the first amendment, cited their first amendment rights, and they were cited for contempt. you can't cite someone for contempt for taking the fifth amendment. that's a constitutional right. covered by that, but if you try to claim the first amendment, you're not covered. so people ranging from arthur miller, who we haven't talked about, the great playright, who coincidentally, went to abraham lincoln high school in brooklyn before my father, then went to the university of michigan before my father, was a friend of my uncle, bob cummings, and a very close friend of ralph nevis , the other spanish civil war veteran, who was killed during the spanish civil war, years later, wrote arthur miller -- he was called before, because he

had a communist past, and he didn't take the fifth amendment but he refused -- he didn't answer, he was asked the question and the subject turned away from that but he never answered it. he wouldn't name names. he would only talk about himself and he was excited for contempt. -- as were the hollywood ten back in 1947, who did not take the fifth amendment but stood up and said they had the right, freedom of speech, and they were all cited for contempt and imprisoned. brian lamb: your father's lawyer, george crockett. david maraniss: yeah. brian lamb: congressman. david maraniss: i didn't know any of that until i started researching this book. george crockett later became a congressman from detroit. he was part of an integrated law firm in detroit before there were any really anywhere else. and he was a leftist but not a communist ever. but he believed deeply in protecting the rights of

controversial minority groups because he said, you know, if they go after -- the same rights are due to members of the communist party as have been denied to african-americans. so he saw a connection between the two. he wrote a statement called freedom is everybody's business, and that was his strong sort of manifesto defense of why he was defending communists even if he didn't agree with them because he saw the same dangers that could go against anyone else. brian lamb: the former mayor of detroit. david maraniss: you could write a whole book about him. i didn't make him a major character. he was called before those same hearings in 1952 as my father. had the same lawyer, crockett, and coleman young turned those hearings on end. he was not a member of the communist party. he was friendly with a lot of

communists, and part of the radical movement earlier in the united autoworkers, but when they called him, they really didn't know how to deal with somebody who was not afraid of them like that. and so both chairman wood and frank tavener, they both had southern accents and sensibilities, both came out of racist backgrounds so when they said or tried to say negro, which is what blacks were called then, whether consciously or subconsciously, it would come out negra. coleman young went nuts against that and said, you know, that's not how you pronounce it. it's negro, not negra, and then from then on, sort of developed more and more control over the

questioning, so that he wasn't taking anything from them about, you know, any of those issues. about, you know what it meant to be an american, when he and millions of african-americans were second class citizens, denied the right to vote. he talked about his experiences in world war ii when he was kicked out of an officer's club even though he was an officer because he was black. he really sort of made a powerful argument against them. and when it was over, he said, he told this to studs who interviewed him, walking through the streets of detroit it was like joe louis coming home from a fight. barbershops, walking down the street, everybody was padding me -- patting me on the back, saying, you stood up to those southern racists. brian lamb: here he is, just a little 38 second clip talking about john wood and others. [video clip] >> i took the trouble to look at the record of all the persons on

the committee. and none of them had anything to be proud of. i've forgotten chairman, who was from georgia. but i checked him out, and his district consisted of about 80% blacks and yet only 5% of the blacks voted in his election so i decided the best way, either you run from these guys and you cringe, or you attack. brian lamb: that was 1988. what's happened, do you think, since then to this day? about voting in places like georgia? david maraniss: well, i mean, it's different, it's a different context but there are still voter suppression in states all over this country now. it's one thing that i have never quite, i mean, i understand it in terms of power politics. but in terms of reverence for

democracy, why does this country, that upholds itself as the beacon of liberty throughout the world and of democracy, repress the democratic process. it's getting close in some states. brian lamb: i want to put on our screen some people that you write about in the book. here's martin dise. tell us about him. david maraniss: he was the first chairman of the committee from texas. he was a blatant racist. i don't want to say too much more. the earliest members of that committee were, it was dominated by southern racists. brian lamb: let's look at john rankin. david maraniss: from mississippi, similar. he was even more blatant, you know, in the congressional record, you can see him calling

jews kikes and blacks ni -- brian lamb: did you know anything about this before you got into the research? david maraniss: i knew vaguely about sort of that history, but i didn't really know it. brian lamb: jay parnell thomas. david maraniss: he was a republican chairman of the committee, who was the chairman of the committee during the hollywood 10 hearings. upholding what it means to be an american and calling these screenwriters and others unamerican, and shortly after that he was convicted of some embezzling, in his new jersey congressional office. and he ended up in the same prison as lardner, one of the hollywood 10. brian lamb: john wood. john stevenss: wood is a major character, figure in this book.

the chairman, in 1952, congressman from north jersey -- north georgia, who, after world war i, had briefly joined the ku klux klan, and in another incident that i only came across during the research, although there is a wonderful book at the lynching of leo frank by my friend steve oney. leo frank was an atlanta industrialist that ran a pencil factory, and he was accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in his pencil factory. it was by all records, accounts, a frame up. he was innocent. but he was convicted, and then the governor of georgia, after a lot of pressure, a lot of coverage of it in "the new york times" and elsewhere, this is 1913, he commuted the death sentence, and the people of

marietta, georgia, leader of marietta, georgia, took it upon themselves to break him out of prison and lynch him. the leader of that effort was a local judge, named newt morris, and his chief disciple, who drove the car that carried his body after the lynching was john stevens wood, future chairman of the house on unamerican activities committee. brian lamb: your parents lived for how long? david maraniss: my father lived to age 86. he died in 2004. my mother lived to age 84. died in 2006. she only lived a year and a half after he was gone. brian lamb: and what was their life like in the last, say, 20 years? david maraniss: well, i think their lives from 1957 on, when he got to madison, was,

i don't want to be simplistic, but it was the life of a good american family. they were wonderful parents. our house was full of music and books and friendship. they were open to the world. as i write in the book, my father, by the time i was conscious, taught me to not fall for any rigid ideology, to be open to humans of all sorts, to hate the message, not the person. if it was racism or whatever. and he was -- he succeeded as a journalist in madison, eventually became editor of the capital times, progressive paper in that city. my mother went back to school, was phi beta kappa at the university of wisconsin and became a book editor. jump forward, my father retired at age 65. my mother would go on to teach literacy to immigrants and poor people and they moved to milwaukee from madison.

my dad said sort of half jokingly he didn't want to wake up every day and re-edit the newspaper, after he retired, so he moved a little bit away. i would go visit them in milwaukee and there would be a stack of 20 books on the couch that my father had checked out of the library that he was reading. they had nine grandchildren along with their kids, and that was their life. good american family life. brian lamb: we have a book out called "the presidents." in your interview that we did years ago in your book, on bill clinton, it's in there, but it was before he became president. how does it stand up, in your opinion to this day? david maraniss: well, i think that the central threads of that book hold up. and i would say, there were two central themes of the book.

one was that with bill clinton, you can't separate the good from the bad. they are all part of the same human being. and the same sort of motivations that drive him in a better sense drive him into difficulty as well. complicated in that sense, and maybe an exaggeration of all of us. sometimes often for the worst. sometimes for the better. the other thread is that, loss and recovery. when he's down, he would find his way up. when he was up he would find his way down. cycle again and again. i think when i talked to you in probably 1995, he was before monica lewinsky. it was before the impeachment. timenk i talked about the

of loss and recovery. you see that time and again all the way through his presidency and post presidency. i think in the current era of 2018-2019 of the me too movement, there is somewhat of a reassessment of his behavior towards women, and i think that's totally justified and the achilles heel of bill clinton. brian lamb: you did a book on barack obama. when did the text on that end, at what point in his life? david maraniss: that was even -- clinton -- my book on clinton, i'm fascinated by the formations, what shapes them, why they are the way they are. and i go back to look at that. so with bill clinton, it ended the day he announced for president, in little rock, arkansas, in 1991. , i didn't even get close to that. i hope to write a second volume, long after his book comes out and after there are archives at

his presidential library. but the first book was really an attempt to do two things. one, really study the world that shaped him and how he reshaped himself. how he found his way. so that book ends the day he drives off to harvard to go to law school. you can see his political future forming. brian lamb: i want to show you some video of an earlier interview. not by you, this is a moment, we'll see if you can get some more response. let's watch this and it will all make sense to you. [video clip] >> this is a tweet. >> right. >> from david maraniss. i know you've seen this. we'll put it on the screen. we will say this only ones, author of the new obama bio, was vile, undercutting, a noble competitor unlike any i have encountered. what is that about? >> i do not know.

brian lamb: you know david? >> he says encountered, i have never met or spoken with david maraniss. zero. no interaction whatsoever. to me, this is a sort of, you know, trump-like, people getting angry on twitter at someone they don't know. brian lamb: he wrote a book on barack obama, and that was a tweet that you sent out. can you help us? david maraniss: somewhat. i mean, i said it, i'm only said it once, i'm not going to say those words again. i will say i have respect for david gero, what he does. not for the way he behaved as a researcher or writer. i have spent my whole year competing against reporters at the "new york times," "wall street journal," the los angeles times, and even doing books that other writers are doing, and never before had i encountered someone who went out of his way to tell sources not to talk to me because i wouldn't get it

right and only he would. he did that time and again. undercutting not just me but also david remnick who was doing a biography of obama at the same time. it was mind boggling. not only did he do it then but then in his own book he goes on to criticize myself again. for what reason? what was -- i just found it, i mean, i used those words, i don't regret them. again -- he says we never encountered each other, no, but i certainly encountered him through the source i was dealing with who would call me up or write me, this guy just said this about you. i never had that before, and that's what happened. brian lamb: what would be your approach if you went back and wrote another book on barack obama? david maraniss: well, i mean, what would be my approach. brian lamb: what aspect of his life would you like to write

about specifically? david maraniss: well, i mean, i think i would take it from where i left off. the first book, it was not just about barack obama. it was about his father, his mother, hawaii, kenya, indonesia. i'm satisfied with all of that. but to take it from that point through the illinois legislature to his presidency, and looking at both the choices and compromises, and path he had to follow to get all the way to the presidency, would be my next book. brian lamb: you said that the possibility when you started, the title of this book, instead of a good american family would have been room at 740. david maraniss: judgment at 740. brian lamb: is room 740 still there? [laughter] david maraniss: i've been in that building.

parts of it were moved to a new building. so that room is not there any longer. brian lamb: have you had any reaction from your siblings about this book yet? david maraniss: my brother, who had questions about it, he's been very positive. he's read it several times. and they are both rooting for me. you know, a lot of my -- there are cousins in the book, too, who were very important. bob cummings' daughters, other cousins. i sent to it all of them and told them this is coming, you know. this is a family history that really hadn't been told before. it was also important for madison to know this story, madison, wisconsin, with my father was well known. most of the people didn't know this part of his story. we'll see what happens, reception so far has been really warm. brian lamb: let's look at the cover of the book and i want you to tell me where the picture was

taken. i assume that -- david maraniss: isn't it interesting to see that house in the background. when i first saw it, i thought, is that a phony photo? and then i started studying the statue of liberty photos from that era. that house is further back than it looks but it is on the island so we're visiting the statue of liberty shortly after we left detroit, after my father was called before the committee. and, you know, my parents, my dad with his arm around jim, my older brother. i'm the little guy in the shorts blinking into the sun, goofily, and then jenny and my mother,

and the statue of liberty, life and the statue of liberty, life savor there. it's a family picture that we've always had. mean, interviewed by the military intelligence and asked whether my father should be a member -- an officer in the military he now says it was the biggest shame of his life but he said negative things about my dad. brian lamb: title of the book, a good american family, the red scare and my father, and our author has been david maraniss. i thank you very much for your time. david maraniss: thank you, brian. always a pleasure to be interviewed by you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the

national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> all q&a programs are veil on -- are available on our website or as a podcast at c-span.org. announcer: next sunday on q&a historian and author david mccullough discusses his historic pioneers: the story of the settlers who brought the american ideal west." q&a next sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific time on c-span. announcer: c-span's newest book, the presidents, noted historians rank america's best and worst chief executives. provides insight into the lives of the 44 american presidents. true stories gathered by interviews with noted presidential historians. explore the life events that shaped our leaders, the

challenges they faced and the legacies that they left line. -- they left behind. order your copy today. c-span's "the presidents" is available as a hardcover or ebook at c-span.org/thepresidents. announcer: new york congresswoman alexandra oh cassie a cortez promotes bernie about rally -- about climate change. that is live starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. tonight on the communicators, -- >> it is amazing the pushback from germany, other countries in europe, and other countries around the world that are basically saying you have not given us, you have not given us evidence of cybersecurity wrongdoing eyewall way. -- by huawei. announcer: the concerns about

u.s. efforts to not use his company's equipments over fears it will be used to spy on americans. he is joined by drew fitzgerald. >> i was going to be able to be an advocate for a safer american cyber safe -- cyberspace. i am saying we need the best technology, we need to compete. it is critically important we address the risk. we believe the risk mitigation measures. i have never been told what to say or what i cannot say. when you look at the bigger picture, huawei, we do not speak through the china government and they do not speak for us. announcer: watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span two. a look outhere is primetime schedule on the c-span networks. starting at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, democratic presidential candidate joe biden campaigns in hampton, new hampshire. c-span p.m. eastern on two, a hearing looks at

humanitarian and security challenges at the u.s.-mexico border. c-span3,00 p.m. on testimony from fbi justice department and homeland security officials on the rise of domestic terrorism. tuesday, delaware senator chris coons discusses u.s. relations with china. he recently traveled to east asia and he will talk about that tomorrow at the council on foreign relations. it is live tuesday starting at 8:00 -- 8:30 a.m. eastern. the senate judiciary committee tomorrow holds a hearing on national security, intellectual property, and other issues related to the rollout of 5g technology throughout the united states. that is live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. the c-span bus recently traveled to idaho and wyoming asking folks, what does it mean to be american? >> i think to be an american, it

is to create so many opportunities for everybody. my folks immigrated here with basically nothing. i come from a family of 10. hard work and working on the farming in the dairy industry, my folks showed me what you can accomplish and america. i believe america provides those opportunities for everybody and everybody. >> we live in the greatest country in the world. we have all of the freedoms and can enjoy all of the benefits and consequences of our choices. i love that we can have a mix of people and ideas from all walks of life that can come together and make decisions about how to govern ourselves. chance to try and succeed or to fail. first ofan american, all, to be a citizen of the united states is also on honor.

it is a great responsibility because of the feelings we have to protect and make sure that we do everything we can. when 9/11 happened, that was my first term as mayor. we had to get together an emergency task to work with that. it changed the responsibility to make sure we could do everything we can to protect citizens. it is just a privilege. announcer: voices from the road on c-span. presidential candidate senator michael bennet spoke to supporters in bedford, new hampshire. the colorado democrat who was a former superintendent of denver public schools that he would make education one of his top priorities if elected president. sen. bennet: hi, everybody. [applause]