>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin tonight with the firing of f.b.i. director james comey. joining me margaret talev of bloomberg news and phil rucker of "the washington post." >> the context in which we're looking at this comes just after director comey's most recent testimony before congress and several weeks after he did confirm publicly that there are active criminal investigations into possible collusion between trump associates from during the campaign time and the russians. >> rose: and we continue this evening with the chief technology officer of facebook mike schroepfer. >> a.i. is underpinning all these things and a.i. is being advanced because our computers are becoming faster and we're training on larger data sets. the science is advancing to quite a fastics tent, so we need

smart computer scientists to build better algorithms. >> rose: and we conclude with sally bedell smith who's written a biography of prince charles. >> to me, he is such a fascinating combination of modern and traditional, and people in england find him confounding. they can't put him in a box. he is -- i think there's a good way of putting it. he's a prophet without honor in his own land. >> rose: the firing of james comey, facebook looks to the future, and a biography of prince charles, when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and

information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with late-break news from the white house. in a remarkable development, president trump has fired f.b.i. director james comey. the white house said in a statement that the president ated ope on the clear recommendations of both the deputy attorney general and attorney general jeff sessions. the sudden firing raise as host of questions including whether the firing is an attempt by president trump to influence the russian probe. it also brings to an end what has been a turbulent year for the f.b.i. chief and one-time career prosecutor. here's a report from cbs news evening news with scott pelley. >> this evening, president trump fired the director of the f.b.i.

james comey was leading the investigation into whether associates of mr. trump colluded with the russian government to influence the u.s. presidential election. late today, in an oddly-worded letter in which the president declares his own innocence, mr. trump told comey that he has concluded that comey is not able to effectively lead the pure o. comey, well known for geeing integty, was appointed by president obama and had about another six years to go on a ten-year appointment. recently, he has been controversial with both democrats and republicans, leading the investigation of hillary clinton's e-mails and the russian election tampering probe. >> rose: joining me from warrants is margaret talev of bloomberg news and phil rucker of "the washington post." i am pleased to have both of them to join me for this remarkable story. margaret, i begin with you.

tell me what you know, where is this going and what's the context we look at this? >> the context in which we're looking at this comes just after director comey's most recent testimony before congress and several weeks after he did confirm publicly that there are active criminal investigations into possible collusion between trump associates from during the campaign time and the russians, and this was a very big deal, not only because he said more in that public venue than folks expected him, to but because it was widely believed that after he put that on the record, president trump would not be able to make director comey go away until the conclusion of that investigation if he were so inclined. it also comes about two weeks after the senate did confirm rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who ended up writing the lengthy letter ex pli kateing

why he believed director comey should be forced to leave his position is that before i go to phil, let me read the two letters we know about, this is from the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. as attorney general we commit to the high level of discipline, integrity and rule of law in the department of justice. based on my evaluation and the reason expressed by the deputy attorney general in the attached memorandum, i have concluded a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the f.b.i. it is essential this department of justice clearly reafirearm its commitment of longstanding principles that ensure fair investigations and the prosecution must be someone who sets the right example for law enforcement officials and others in the department, therefore i must recommend that you remove director james comey and identify an experienced and qualified individual to lead the great men and women of the f.b.i. that from the attorney general and depp to you attorney general. the president writes, i've received the attached letters

recommending your dismissal. i've accepted the recommendations and you are hereby terminated and removed from office effective immediately. phil, what do you make of this? >> you know, charlie, it's a pretty explosive development. there are a ouple of things that stand out. one is the explanation provided by deputy attorney general rod rosenstein is almost entirely based on comey's handling of the clinton email investigation and things that happened last year. the july fifth 2016 press conference where comey had that long run of come tear about clinton's use of the private email server and his subsequent letter to congress in october. so it leaves open the question of why president trump has decided to terminate comey at this point today. there's no connection with the email -- clinton email investigation today and it raises a lot of questions about whether trump was influenced to make this decision not because of comey's handling of the clinton email probe but rather

because of comey's continued probe at the f.b.i. of the connections between trump associates and campaign officials and the russians. >> rose: let's assume that the president wanted somehow to camp down that investigation and not knowing exactly where it's leading. would the firing of the f.b.i. director be the right way to go? >> it certainly could. you know, i don't know if that's -- what the president was intending to do, but certainly it's in his interest to do that and firing the f.b.i. director, we don't know now whether this investigation is going to continue, who will be leading it, will the replacement for comey be some sort of trump loyalist like sai rudy giuliani, the former new york mayor, or will trump attack somebody who's been at the f.b.i. a long time, credibility across the aisle who could continue the russia probe? we don't know and do not have answers from this white house. >> rose: margaret? that's right. for now we know the deputy director to have the f.b.i.

andrew mccabe is able to fill in that position but is not expected to remain there long term. phil's right. certainly, internally, it matters who the f.b.i. director is, but there are a couple of other factors to consider. one is the reaction on capitol hill, overwhelming outcry from democrats, both in the house and the senate likening this to the saturday night massacre, forking out -- >> rose: watergate. that's right, renewed calls for a special prosecutor, representative eric swalwell of california, democrats on the house intelligence committee saying this is not what an innocent person would do. this is an abusive power. shows consciousness of guilt. pat lahey, senator from vermont, says it's nothing less than nixonian. most republicans we've heard so far in the early hour or two since this has begun unfolding have stood by the decision for comey to go saying he had been a

lightning rod and contention figure. one notable exception, senator john mccain, saying while trump has the power to do this, he's disappointed in president trump and that this just underscores the need for a special congressional committee. so while this certainly affects internally how the administration moves forward, it is like throwing gas on the fire in terms of the congressional reaction. >> rose: one point which you just referred to, the president does have the authority to fire the f.b.i. director for any reason. there is also this comment from richard durbin who is a ranking democrat in the united states senate. he said "any attempt to stop or undermine the f.b.i. investigation would raise grave constitutional issues. are we being thrown into some kind of constitutional crisis this evening by this action? phil? >> potentially, we may be. certainly, there are a few democrats including senator

durbin, as you noted, who have alluded to that in their reaction statements. i think at this point we're still in the fact gathering mode. >> rose: exactly. we're trying to figure out what happened. why tid the president decide to make this decision today. what is he going to do to backfill comey? what happens to this investigation? is there going to be a special prosecutor? do the congressional investigations continue as planned? there are just a lot of unknowns now and we're trying to navigate through that. >> and, charlie, there are two other timeline points i would note. one is the most recent testimony by comey, the one where he felt mildly nauseous thinking he might have impacted the outcome of the election, but also saying if he had to do it again he would make the exact same choice again. that seemed to be the point that the attorney general and deputy attorney general and perhaps the president himself have latched on to in terms to have the finality of their decision-making. the other is president trump's treatment of comey, all of these months since his inauguration, i was in the blue room on january 22, two days after his

inauguration as president trump gathered all these law enforcement folks who had been part of the security procedures for the inauguration to thank them, and he infamously called james comey forward, asked him to step forward and gave him this sort of bro hug is what we called him at the time and seemed to be praising him, seemed to be with the hug showing a sense of confidence in him. up until really only a couple of days ago has consistently asked or when his aides have been asked says he continues to have confidence in james comey. so at least in terms of public signaling, it's really only been in the very immediate couple of days that we've seen signs that he might be moving this direction. >> rose: the next step is one we'll learn all the facts we can and see what further the president has to say about this. one intriguing question for me is the real of the deputy attorney general. jeff sessions, the attorney general, had removed himself from the investigation into what

happened on the transition because he had been involved in the political campaign. but here we have the deputy attorney general. why is that significant and what does that say? >> i think, charlie, it's significant that rod rosenstein was the person to write this letter in part because rosenstein the deputy attorney general has such credibility across the aisle in washington. he had been the u.s. attorney in maryland, widely respected by democrats and republicans alike. he is not considered a trump lackey or campaign loyalist in the same way jeff sessions is and therefore can speak with a little more credibility in making this argument about comey. have no doubt, this is a personal decision by president trump to fire jim comey. this is not a normal step for a president, and i think one thing today that underscored that is that president trump dispatched keith schiller who is his former long-time body guard and head of personal security at trump

tower. he now is white house director of oval operations. he is the person who hand delivered trump's firing letter to the comey office today at f.b.i. headquarters in washington. >> rose: that suggested to you what? >> a situation trump is taking personally and keeping close to the vest. he did not deploy reince priebus or don mcghan, instead turned to a trusted loyalist. keith schiewler is almost like a family member to president trump and the fact he hand delivered the letter is telling. comey was out of town and not at his office to receive the letter but apparently it was read to him over the phone. >> rose: margaret and phil, thank you so much. extraordinary story. we'll be reporting on it tomorrow. back in a moment. >> rose: mike schroepfer is here, chief technology officer at facebook, the social networking giant used by nearly

2 billion people globally. its am p bigs is to one day connect the entire world. last month c.e.o. mark zuckerberg and other top executives underscored the road map for facebook over the next ten years. along with connectivity, the company reiterated it continues to invest heavily in artificial intelligence and virtual reality to expand existing platform and explore new frontiers. pleased to have mike schroepfer at this table for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: what does it mean to be chief technology officer? you're in charge of all the technology at facebook? >> two jobs. one, to make sure the teams have what they need to deliver products, and other foot is in the future trying to build the ten-year mission, connect the world, build a.i. and build virtual reality systems. >> rose: when you look at -- there's a mantra around facebook, i think it says move fast, break things. >> yeah. >> rose: what does that mean? you know, it means don't be afraid to try to bring the

future forward. in order to do that, some things may break, you may make mistakes. if you try to do everything perfect you will never make forward progress. we try to encourage everyone in the company not to care too much about how we did it in the past but figure out what's the right thing to do. >> rose: define these terms for me. you said over that ten-year plan, it was artificial intelligence, virtual reality and connectivity. >> yeah. >> rose: artificial intelligence? >> a.i., artificial intelligence is trying to make machines smarter, make computers see the world like we do, to be able to learn from reading and listening like we do as humans and take that information and make judgments and make reasoned decisions about them so they can help us with lots of tasks around the world. >> rose: virtual reality? v.r. is a technology that makes it feel as if you are somewhere else. you put a headset on, a pair of goggles and looks like you have been transported to maybe an alien world or maybe to visit

your family member who's thousands of miles away. >> rose: and connectivity? connectivity is an easy one. it's 4.1 billion people around the world don't have access to the internet. most people don't have access to the internet. >> rose: it's stunning when you think about it. >> crazy. >> rose: it's a central part of our lives. >> can you imagine living without the internet? hard to believe. >> rose: part of the push is how to get it to the people. >> this is a place where technology can help. we say how can we radically reduce the cost of internet? we fly a carbon fiber plane powered by the sun to provide internet access instead of cables. instead of tearing up streets in the city, we use wireless access points that can be attached to power polls, could take the cost of delivering internet down by 5 or 10x to deliver it across the world. >> rose: give anyone power to share anything they want with anyone else. that's the goal. >> yeah, to give people ability

to be who they are and connect with others. >> rose: what will the world look like in 2027? >> what we hope is a lot more people are connected to the internet. we hope technologies like v.r. -- do you have family members who live far away? >> yes, north carolina. there you go. wouldn't it be great if i gave you this technology and you would feel like you are at home with your family. >> rose: yeah. everyone wants that. hopefully v.r. in ten years will take us there. a.i. has the power to transform our world in so many ways. it starts basic things like helping me communicate in different languages. we transmit 2 billion posts on facebook a day in 45 languages. in ten years i hope i will be able to go to a foreign country, put on a pair of glasses and instantly read the street sign

and strike up a conversation on the street as if i was a native. those are the sort of things within our reach in a.i. >> rose: it's within your availability because you have to find the technology to do that or enhance the technology you have to do that. >> can't do it yet but it looks like we can get there. >> rose: what is it you need to get there? >> you know, these things are built on such a foundation, so, you know, a.i. is really underpinning all of these things, and a.i. is being advanced because our computers are getting faster, we're able to train on larger data sets. the really exciting thing is the algorithms, the way these things work are advancing to quite a fastics tent. we need smart computer scientists to build better algorithms and more data on the a.i. side. when you think of virtual reality, you think of having glasses with superpowers, there is a lot of hardware problems to solve there, getting light into my eyes and making it comfortable enough to wear all day long. >> rose: people talk about the figure five -- facebook,

google, apple, amazon, microsoft -- is that your competition or is your competition snapchat? >> our competition is everything because our products are free. you can download a new app at anypoint and switch. this is one of the things we talk about to everyone in the company. our whole discussion is about culture. move fast break things you asked about earlier, it's about realizing we have to change and adapt because the world does and if we don't people will use something else. >> rose: i remember a conversation with mark zuckerberg and also other people as well. it is the power that -- or the revenue that facebook got when you found out there was going to be advertising on mobiles, correct? >> yeah. >> rose: there was a big question about that. >> well, prior to that, no one had a big advertising business on mobile. people would say things like you don't buy things on your phone,

too hard to type in the credit card. this was one of the examples where we jumped in with both feet and said people are using mobile phones, we have to build a business but that starts with building a great experience. we put our company towards mobile and figured out how to make an ad business work on mobile and now a vast majority of our advertising is mobile. >> rose: where is 3-d? the world is 3-d. this glass is here, this table is here. one of the magic of v.r., you put it on and you're in a 3-d environment. watching people sculpt in v.r. is amazing. we've seen medical professionals train and understand human anatomy using v.r. the human heart is a complex item and it's very three dimensional. having healthcare professionals being able to understand exactly how it works is easier done in 3-d than on a piece of paper or a model opt table so it has the

power to transform a lot of things. >> rose: a lot of things you thought previously had to be carried out in the cloud can be carried out on your iphone. >> and what's amazing is even in the last year the a.i. algorithms advancing so quickly are run on big servers that use a lot of power and are were powerful. figuring out how to crunch and e phone. to run information on instead of havin the cloud, havo your phone. so people are diagnosing skin cancer with a.i. and you can imagine a future where you can do it without internet access. a cell phone app takes a picture and gives th the doctor anywhern the world the power to diagnose diseases. the combination of a.i. and advances in putting it on your smartphone have been something we have been surprised about.

>> rose: silicon valley is where everybody is in everybody's business, but you haven't developed a phone. >> no. >> rose: is that a "not yet" question? >> our products are used by almost 2 billion people and they're used by all sorts of different phones all over the world. we want to bring them to where people are. we are happy to bring the service there. a lot of what i spend my time on is what's next after the phone? >> rose: so tell me. it's not going to be a little rectangle in your pocket. >> rose: think aloud for me. it's an amazing idea. >> you're starting to see the beginnings of it today. i'll tell you the aspects i'm most excited about. when you think about if you've used, you know, amazon alexei or something in your home and you've spoken to it to ask it to play music. >> rose: personal assistance or agents. >> yeah, what's amazing most people miss is it's starting to get technology to be in the background rather than the foreground. if i want to play music, i pull

out my phone, stare at it, i've dropped out of the world to do this. with this i can say, hey, play red hot chili peppers and i'm done. that's today. it can turn on your lights and play music. so fast forward, you have an agent that accomplish tasks. maybe i have glasses that displays information. i have notes i want to say, appointments next, a cheery message from my wife showing on my screen all without having to pull my phone out and remove myself from this conversation. >> rose: who has the competitive advantages in something like that? >> i think it's a new field. >> rose: amazon's there in a big way. >> yeah. >> rose: google coming in. there's so much technology to develop there. so much of what i'm talking about doesn't exist and that's

why it's exciting because you've got to build it and that's why we're investing. >> augmented reality? the ability to take reality, us here today, and augment it. i can decorate this glass, i can have an overlay of information signature next to you. i can do anything i want. i can make my house look like a harry potter castle if that's what my kids are into. that's what we're excited about, too, is taking the digital and the power of being able to -- >> rose: the ease of putting you in another world. >> doing it wherever you are. >> rose: what happened to google glass? >> i think it was early. it was just too early in the morning, the technology wasn't ready. >> rose: how do you know when the right time is? >> you know, i think it's hard to tell sometimes and the you only really know once you get a product on market and see how people react to it. that's the real challenge. i was talking to ron in our lab and he was too early. he had ideas in the late '80s

and light '90s. these ideas are underpinning the ideas we're having. >> rose: too early because the components were not ready? >> yes. in that case you didn't have the competitionle power or the data to take advantage of his ideas but the same ideas 20 years later are like magic. >> rose: is social media ripe for transformation from all of this because of a.i., machine learning and a whole range of things? >> if you think about the basis of what we're trying to do with social media is connect you to the people you care about and the information you want to see. the challenge we have is too much information online, way too much to consume. >> rose: too many things to do, not enough hours. >> if i said i had this magic technology and it made sure it knew exactly what you wanted to see, it's like a friend who stayed up all night drinking red bull, knows you independently and the preparing, charlie, this is what you need to see, make sure you don't miss this update from your friend and family and

news article and you had access to this, that's the sort of thing a.i. can do that i don't know any other technology can do is make sure every moment we spend -- >> rose: is it taking command of our lives? >> no, it's a tool. we control it. it gives control back to us. i want to go hike and be online. great, when i get back i want to see exactly what i missed in order. i want to make sure i never lose touch with key friends. a friend's having a hard miss it? how far away at that? >> years away. >> rose: what's the limitation there? >> you know, now we're starting to talk about things that start to understand people a lot better than any of our a.i. systems do today thaimplet pretty good at understanding basic things. i can tell you this is a glass and this is a table but understanding what's important to me requires a much more nuanced understanding. >> rose: how much time do you and mark spend thinking about

how people are misusing technology, whether fake news or something else? >> yeah, i mean, we care a lot about how people use the platform and mark has talked about this extensively about this with his community letter. we want to make sure that people get access to what they want, but they have, you know, accurate information and the tools they need to understand kind of what they're reading and, you know, this is a big part of what we do and what we work on every single day. >> rose: so how are you going to correct the problems we've seen? >> well, you know, i think it starts in a couple different ways. first of all, you know, false news is something that's -- the whole triis challenged with it. there is different forms. there is people trying to make money off this. that's the first easy thing to do is disrupt that. it's not right for people to make money trying to do this and we can disrupt it the way they're trying to monetize it with ads and things like that and i think we can give better tools to people to understand what third parties may say about this article or understand a wider variety of views on thistomic than the one they're

seeing to make sure people are better informed. this is a long problem that we in the whole industry i think will be working on for a while. >> rose: let's do something we call moon shooting, which is thinking about big ideas. >> sure. >> rose: what are the big ideas for facebook, other than we've talked about connectivity and the virtual reality? tell me where you're really thinking about blue sky stuff. >> yeah, i think it's -- >> rose: deliver language through skin, from the brain going directly to text. >> yeah. i mean, i think all of this fits into the category of unlocking human potential. you and i are talking today. the speed at which we're talking is hundreds or thousands of times slower than your brain is operating now. this is a slow -- >> rose: it slows down when we communicate. >> ever use a dialup modem back in the day? >> rose: yea. we're talking about the speed of a dialup modem. our brain is going through the

speed of -- >> rose: so the more we learn about the brain, the more we'll be able to enhance the velocity of change by machines? >> i think so. i think be able to build machines that are smarter and can better do what we want and then building ways for us to communicate without the type or in some cases talk, you know, directly through thoughts at some point in the future, and that will unlock a whole new set of applications. >> we've talked about virtual reality a lot. i mean, the whole idea of filmmakers using virtual reality to tell their stories. a remarkable concept in the sense that you're there on stage with the actors. >> yeah. i mean, the goal of film has always been emersion, right, get lost in the show. you know, virtual reality is so powerful, i think you may have done the demo where you look like you're standing on the edge of the building. i've given that hundreds of times and it's my favorite thing to get people to walk off the ledge. barely anyone can do it. >> rose: they forget for the

moment that in fact this is our virtual reality. >> that's right, they get lost in the story, in the scene, and, so, imagine what you can do that with. >> rose: what's amazing is some of our best news organizations are beginning to use it extensively. >> yeah. you talk about ever any, right? >> rose: yeah. this is the ultimate empathy device. what's it actually like to live in this part of the world, to be in a refugee camp, to be in a war zone, to be going through the elections? and v.r. is one of those technologies that can transport you there and get you as close as you can to actually being there. >> rose: and from a technical standpoint, we're just beginning to figure out how we can do this? >> we're in a floppy disk and computer phase of v.r., as far as i'm concerned. it's starting to work but we're just at the beginning, there is a lot more to go. >> rose: what have you been caught offguard by? what has surprised you? were you surprised how people were live streaming violence and

pornography and putting cameras in their bedroom and all that stuff? >> obviously that's terrible and the events themselves are terrible and the fact they're being broadcast is also terrible, so i think that's something -- you know, mark talked recently about hiring another 3,000 people to help us respond to that. so, i've also been surprised the positive ways people use live. mark posted about us working on this problem, a bunch of people commented and said, you know what? my brother was able to see someone's graduation overseas even though he's in the military, or i was able to take a class i didn't miss because i didn't have childcare because a friend streamed it online. you have to look at the other uses and hope there are a lot more of these happening every single day than these terrible things. >> rose: how far are we from the day some moviemaker will want to premiere his movie, not at movie theaters but

facebook? >> you know, i don't know. >> rose: 2 billion available viewers. >> yeah, i think we're going to see lots of creative stuff. this is, you know, i'm working on the future, but it's sometimes hard to tell where this is all going to go. that's kind to have the fun part. you build these technology platforms and it unlocks the creativity of others who thought of things i never thought of. that's what we're trying to do is get the technology out and get the creativity of people around the world to use it. >> rose: that makes a difference. when you're tapping into the possibilities of innovation and creativity of a worldwide population, the capacity of one person to say something that causes another person to do something and then someone else who's not thought about either a or b sees the possibility of putting them together and making c. >> absolutely. >> rose: i mean, that's the excitement of what we're doing. >> that's what makes it so fun. that's what gets me to work every day. >> rose: yeah. that's why, when we work on things like a.i., one of the things we do, we open source our code and we accomplish our

results because it's such a foundational technology, it's going to be useful for us for lots of things, but that same tellingology is useful in lots of other applications and it's great to see people build on it. >> rose: i think mark has the big interest on this, the ways you can introduce wi-fi around the world, whether balloons or -- >> working on all sorts of different things, so we've got a crazy idea for a solar powered carbon aircraft that can fly for three months at a time to fly over an area and basically be a giant internet hot spot over a 50-mile region. we have a tether drone you can deploy in a disaster area, so when disaster strikes the infrastructure goes down, the connectivity is often the first thing. we've got a drone you can fly up and have an instant cell phone tower to wi-fi access points that entrepreneurs across the world can set up a local hot spot, make money and provide

internet access for everyone in their to in. >> rose: you're at 2 billion now. >> almost. >> rose: what are you -- 1.94. >> rose: when will you reach 2 billion? >> i can't tell you. >> rose: what do you think the potential in the next ten years is? >> in terms of where we're going to grow? >> rose: in terms of number of users? >> well, you know, i think the challenge is at some point there is not enough people connected on the internet. there are billions of people yet to be connected. that's one of the goals we talked about is to get those people connected ton internet. it's hard to know where the cap is. i think the reason why the products are so popular is they fit a very basic thing people want. everyone wants to stay in touch with friends and family, it's just a matter of how they do it. >> rose: obviously, amazon, obviously apple beginning to get a lot of interest in the entertainment world in terms of being able to make or buy content. does that interest facebook? >> well, you know, i think all of that stems from, you know, people -- people are watch ago

lot of video and watch ago lot of video on phones. we're seeing this huge transformation from the tv to the device you have with you all the time. so we've had a lot of success with live video and people producing their own videos and things like that. we'll see where it goes. but it's an area where we're making sure people have interesting things to interact have on facebook. >> rose: great to have you here. >> thank you. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: sally bedell smith is here. the biographer has written books of queen elizabeth, princess diana, the kennedys, and the clintons. her new book is called "prince charles: the passions and paradoxes of an improbable life." prince charles is the longest serving heir to the prichett throne. he's been first in line for off5 years. the book offers an inside look into his childhood, his marriages and life as a king in waiting. i am pleased to have sally bedell smith back at this table. welcome. >> thank you. it's wonderful to be back.

>> rose: why is it an improbable life? >> well, you would think when he was born nearly 70 years ago in buckingham palace in 19t 19th century style -- i even have an eyewitness account of when he was three hours old and was presented to the king's court in the ballroom. >> rose: an heir is here. an heir is here. this is give ton me by a friend whose father was a private secretary to the king. >> rose: yeah. so there he was with his nurse with the wimple, and it was like out of the 19t 19th century and here was somebody who was supposed to walk a straight line and was supposed to end up on the throne wearing a crown and little did he know how long he would have to wait or create a role for himself different than any prince of wales in history and that he would really -- well, first of all, he would have an

eleven-year marriage, really, or spend 16 years of his life, given the end of his marriage, and the final divorce, that he would spend that in the most tell me pest chouse and mortifiesing, in many ways, period his life. >> rose: and embarrassing, too. >> embarrassing, and also he would adopt so many fascinating causes and would be so outspoken in so many ways. >> rose: like architecture. architecture, agriculture, against big agriculture, against gmos, against using chemicals, you know, on agriculture, using, you know, the healthcare. he's taken on all these establishments -- agriculture, architecture, medicine for not treating the whole patient. to me, he is such a fascinating combination of modern and traditional, and people in england find him confounding.

they can't put him in a box. he is -- i think there's a good way of putting it. he's a prophet without honor in his own land, but he -- >> rose: without honor because he's not become king or he's embarrassed himself -- >> because people have tried to pigeon hole him as one thing or another and they haven't -- you know, they really haven't recognized all the things that he's done. i mean, he had to -- he's had a very ad hoc life. he's had to create his role as he's gone along. that in itself is highly improbable. if you were a basic traditional prince of wales, you would spend a lot of time unveiling plaques and unveiling statutes -- >> rose: pre-kingdom jobs. yeah, and maybe being a playboy. so the fact he has created a substantive job that stretches all the way from kabul in afghanistan to the carpathian

forest in romania, to the galapagos, to jamaica where he's tried to build model towns. >> rose: is he close to his siblings? >> not terribly, i would a. he was close to ann when he was growing up who was two years younger and they were sort of a dynamic duo. she got married and they went in two different directions. it's fascinating, really. also his two younger siblings, one is 12 years younger and one is 16 years younger so they're almost like two separate families and he's never been terribly close to either of his younger brothers partly because of the age gap and partly because he is in such a separate category. you know, as the prince of wales, he is the heir to the thrown. he also is the duke of cornwall, and he has access to this vast fortune that was set up in the 14th century for the heir to the throne. so it's now worth over a billion dollars, and he gets, you know,

$30 million a year to support his household and some of his charities and his children. so he -- >> rose: almost as lucrative as writing books. >> yeah, we wish. so he has a singular position. >> rose: yeah. but i also was so surprised. he is such an original character. you know, i once asked one of his cousins, lady pamela hicks, which of his parents he most resemble, and she sort of hesitated and joarkd he may be a foundling, not discernibly like either one. >> rose: is he closer to one or the other? >> look, he had a quite lonely childhood. he had a mother who became queen when she was 25. she was surrounded by all those forbidding courtiers passing judgment on her, she had to prove herself through her dutiy.

winston churchill said the first quality that came to mind when he met her was she was incredibly conscientious. so she was applying herself to proving herself in that job. >> rose: how old is he now? just turned 91 and riding on horseback three days earlier. prince philip became head of the household. he saw in his son a very sensitive child and took it upon himself to toughen him up. sent him to a boarding school at 8. a really tough boarding school at 18, gordonstone where phillip had gone and thrived because he's such an alpha male, athletic and inherent leadership quawments. charles was much more introverted and it was a school where the older boys routinely bullied the younger boys and he was bullied especially because he was the heir to the thrown and all of these titles that affixed to his name and he had ears that stuck out and they made fun of him, so he had a

tough time as a child. be but he has a kind of softness about him when you see him, but he's -- as one of his cousins said, he has a really sort of strong, hard, moral core to him. so one of the many paradoxes about him. >> rose: most people know him because of his marriages, certainly to princess diana. >> yes. >> rose: what impact did her death have on him? >> well, he had to rebuild his life, basically. he had had, in a letter that he wrote to one of his friends who showed it to me, he said, the marriage itself was 11 years of hell. that's a pretty puff thing. >tough thing.>> rose: why was t? well because they were such a miss match. >> rose: she wasn't mean to him or anything like that? or was she? >> well, things turned pretty shower. >> rose: early. pretty early. >> rose: was that because she didn't feel like she was getting the proper attention or she

simply was too young to be in that place? >> she was emotionally very fragile and had a history of emotional instability, really, going back to the time when she was six years old and her parents had a very traumatic divorce, and she was kind of altered by that. >> rose: why did he marry her? he married her because he was under a great deal of pressure. he was 31 years old, he had been an action man during his 20s. he promised everybody he was going to get married by 30 and went through a series of brief flings with lots of supposedly suitable women, daughters of noblemen, even diana's older sister. by the time he was 31, he was under pressure from the media, his parents to get on with it and settle down with somebody and produce the next in line to the throne.

diana was -- you know, they had a 12-year age gap and the most sort of -- the one thing that really took me aback was when i discovered that they had only been together 12 times before he proposed to her, and only a few of them, you know, when they were together alone. so he just didn't really know her, and she didn't really know him, and he was very ambivalent about it in his conversations are friends. several friends came to him and said, this is a mismatch, you shouldn't do it. but she was under a lot of pressure because the press was writing really damaging things about her, and his father -- this sort of is emblematic of one of the issues that shows how he was almost constrained by formality. his father wrote him a letter. h he didn't sit down with him with a glass of whiskey in front

of the fire and say, okay, you've met this woman, what shall you do? he wrote him a letter and said this woman is being ruined by the press, you either release her or marry her, and charles felt he was driven. and diana -- i mean, he made mistakes. he took a six-week trip after they got engaged, and she was left alone in buckingham palace -- >> rose: well, see there, that seems to be his problem not her problem. >> no, no, it was definitely his problem. he later regretted having done it because she was left supposedly with people to take care of her, but they were totally unsuitable. they were very nice men and one woman, but they were way older than she was. they didn't understand her. they didn't understand what she needed. so she was left to her own devices to sort of stew, and she was also with the other x factor in all this is camilla parker

bowles, who most people don't realize charles met back in 1972 and fell in love with immediately. >> rose: he was in love with her when he married princess diana. >> he was. but he gave her up for the first five years of his marriage to diana. he's knutsenicle man, charlie. he really believed he could learn to love diana. let's face it, we all know she was beautiful, she had incredible charisma. >> rose: evidently, correct me on this, this is my expression, shows you how you can be misled by a public perception -- she was a good mother. >> she was a good mother. that was one of the things in her life that helped to stabilize her, but it didn't stabilize her quite enough because she wanted -- she needed somebody to take care of her, basically, and he needed somebody to take care of him, and neither of them was capable

of taking care of the other in a way that they required. >> rose: so bowles -- camilla. >> rose: ms. camilla bowles could take care of him. >> yes, when she first met him, shehouse a very warm, effervescent personality, a terrific sense of humor. one of her good friends says when she walks in the room you know you're going to have a laugh. charles by nature is a glass half empty kind of person. some of his friends nicknamed his eeyore after the sad donkey in winnie the pooh. and he needs somebody to bring him up and camilla has that capacity. one of her friends said she's a warm, laughing, maternal creature with a lot of sex appeal, and that's the way she was certainly when he met her. but even though he was powerfully attracted to her, he

wasn't ready to get married, he was just starting in the navy, and she was actually, at that time, madly in love with andrew parker bowles who was this big, strapping, handsome cavalry officer and she ended up marrying him not long after charles went off to sea in h royal navy for his first assignment, but they got back together toward the end of the decade. >> rose: the queen is the star of the royal family. >> always has been. >> rose: and beyond the fact she is the queen, it is the way she has handled that awesome job. >> yes. as the saying goes, she hasn't put a foot wrong. the only time -- >> rose: is that what they say? she mas not put a foot wrong? >> yeah. the only time she really ran into heavy weather was after diana's death, and she -- >> rose: tony blair had to suggest to her she needed to be more sensitive? >> he did. she was getting reports on what was happening in london, which

was really kind of unthinkable that there were people from all over the world who were flooding the parks and putting flowers in front of buckingham palace and kensington palace where charles and diana lived. >> rose: what was it about her that made her death so -- >> i always felt diana resonated with people not only because she was so beautiful and because she had a kind of informality about her. i mean, her informality and her accessibility did change the way the royal family operated after her death. but there was something about her where she was a vulnerable and sensitive and as times volatile creature. >> rose: and she also became a star in the world of fashion and -- >> yeah, and charles couldn't begin to compete with her. when she was going out in some fantastic new dress in a given day, and he was going out to give an earnest speech on the future of architecture, who was going to end up on page one?

>> rose: not him. not him. and i think that really, really bothered him because he felt -- and he was doing a lot of worthy things. >> rose: so after this and after her terrible death. >> right. >> rose: he found -- well, he had to remake his life, really. he put the sign up in his dressing room that said "be patient and endure," and he had to show the world he was a good father to william and harry, and he succeeded in doing that. it's not that he hadn't been before, it's just that diana so overshadowed and outshown him. she was publicly much more physically demonstrative than he was. >> rose: how would he be different than the queen? >> well, i think he has a very different style. , he at times, ha has expressede view he could be more outspoken in the way he has been as the

prince of wales, but he seems now to recognize that, really, as the monarch, according to walter badget who wrote the definitive book on the english constitution back in the 19t 19th century, the role of the monarch is to be -- to encourage and to warn and -- but not to give advice. so it's to be consulted. there's a different, to be consulted, to encourage and to warn. and charles has spent his whole life giving advice because he has had the freedom to do so. not necessarily true the people have taken his advice. so when he becomes king, he'll have to make a major attitude adjustment, really. and the queen, to her credit, since 2008, which i've learned when i was writing this book, she has assigned her senior most

advisor, christopher geist, who is her principal private secretary, to start working with charles to assistum him to -- to accustom him to how he will have to purport himself when he becomes king, that he will be heeding the advice of people around him and in the government and that he won't have that kind of freedom to speak out. he has actually in the last five years spoken out a lot less emphatically than he used to. he went through a whole naming and shame aing period, particularly on architecture. >> rose: i was thinking about this as you were talking. there is hardly a family in the world you can name the grandmother and grandfather, the children, the grandchildren -- >> yeah. but it was interesting to me that one of william and harry and kate's senior advisors said to me that william and harry were like two guys on a raft who

escaped the ship wreck of their family and made it to the other shore, and they realized they would need to work as a team, and that's what they've done, which is very different -- >> rose: the two brothers. the two brothers. when kate came along, she slid in. you notice when they had this campaign in recent months to promote mental health, destigmatize it, it's always the three of them, and it's very, very effective, and it's helped to lift the royal family, and there are now -- you know, the queen now has in direct succession, she has charles, she has william and she has george. i mean, there's a wonderful picture that was taken of them around her 90th birthday where little george was standing on a stack of books so he could be lined up next to everybody else. but one of her cousins told me, having that succession in place has changed the queen's life, has given her great comfort

because she knows that there is a successor. >> rose: two quick final points. one you did not get to talk to him? >> i did not. in fact, it was okay because he has written to many -- and said to many millions of words over the years. >> rose: right. that i had more than enough. plus, he was good enough to allow me access to a lot of his top people who could really explain the thinking behind a lot of his initiatives. >> rose: finally this -- what is the chi to the biographer's art? >> well, persistence. >> rose: persistence. listening. >> rose: yes. preparing -- really, really preparing. i mean, every time i went to interview anybody, say, who had written a book, i would read that book completely and make notes and figure out all the unanswered questions. >> rose: right. and i'd go to that person and i -- what you have to do is you get them to go beyond what they've dope, what they've said.

>> rose: congratulations. thank you. >> rose: thank you, sally. thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. >> you're watching pbs.

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