welcome to amanpour on pbs. we're looking back at some of our favorite interviews this year. tonight, he's the pulitzer prize winning author behind the book and hit tv series, "the looming tower." lawrence wright joins me with his new book "god save texas" and why minorities in america will change that state and the political future. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> welcome to this special edition of our program. i'm christiane amanpour in london. when it comes to investigative

journalism, few people come close to the award winning reporter lawrence wright. his 2006 book, the looming tower, is widely considered the definitive account of the events leading up to 9/11, and it's now a popular tv drama on hulu. now with his new book, god save texas, wright sees america's future taking shape in his home state. i spoke with him when he was in london for the book's u.k. release. so, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> your book, god save texas purports to say texas is the center of the universe. >> well, not of the universe perhaps, but of america for sure. >> how so? >> well, texas is the future. it's growing faster than any other state. by 2050 it will double in size at which time it will be about the size of california and new york combined.

>> that's huge. >> it's already 10% of children in america. >> you yourself rover to that. is that a good thing for america that it's going to dominate the it's good and bad. on the good side, texas is a great job creator. in the last quarter of last year, texas grew 5.2%. there wasn't a single other state except for idaho that got into 4%. so, you know, people come to texas for the jobs. they don't come for the scenery, but there is a tremendous amount of growth, economic growth in the state. where we're falling down is we're not educating our children and we're not building the infrastructure we need for the massive amount of growth. >> you've written in the south, it went very republican in some cases, very sort of back to the future so to speak, quite right wing, quite conservative. and, you know, dragging the rest of the country with it when it

comes too big elections. but you say it should actually be a blue state. in other words, democrat. how do you say that? why? what are the demographics? >> well, texas is a majority minority state. it has that in common with california. and, of course, california is the largest state and also the largest blue state, largest democratic state. and texas is the largest republican state. they're very similar demographically, but totally opposite in -- what's the difference, hispanics vote in california and they don't in texas. >> is that what the difference is? in other words, if they all came out, would it be a blue state? >> oh, yeah. >> it's hard to figure out why it's a majority minority state and still conservative republican. >> i've wondered about this. here's my analysis. there are 29 million texans and 19 million of them were registered to vote in the presidential election. only 9 million did vote. so they took the trouble to register, but not to actually go cast their ballot.

and donald trump and hillary clinton were the least popular candidates in the history of american presidential elections, so there was that. but i think in the whole modern history of texas, there has not been a compelling candidate who spoke to the disenfranchised, especially hispanic voters who would go have a reason to go out and vote. and when that day arrives, texas could turn blue really quickly. demographically, it already should be. >> i mean, it looks like hispanics around the united states really did help president trump more than any expected. how do you explain that, given the immigration dilemma, given the sort of -- president trump's known views on immigration, migrants, people who aren't white? >> well, you know, if you take the ethnic question out of it, who doesn't vote in texas or anywhere, really? the poor, the young and the poorly educated. there are a lot of hispanics in

texas who fit into those categories. and we have just -- you know, we have an abundance of people in texas who haven't been well educated, who are young, and who are struggling. >> you grew up in texas. >> yep. >> was it always a source of pride for you growing up in texas? >> not at all. i was in dallas when kennedy was killed. it was a tremendous stigma. one of the reasons i fled the state shortly after that, because having -- you know, even being from texas at large, especially being from dallas, dallas was taken down like no other american city in our history. and it was -- >> after the assassination? >> yeah. the idea -- i really felt alienated from the political scene in dallas which was extremely right wing, but it was not a right winger that killed kennedy, it was a marxist. i had no idea we had a marxist in dallas. i hardly knew any democrats. it was awful being from dallas

and being from texas then. and, you know, and then when linden johnson was president, it was such -- a lot of sneering that went on because of his accent. and i know how self-conscious i felt the first time i heard myself trying to speak spanish in language lab and talking through my nose like a real texan. i said, i'm done with that accent. >> you still have the accent. >> i can acquire it when needed n. >> did you talk spanish and bring it back? >> the way i'm speaking now -- north texas and dallas, you talk through your nose. you talk a little bit like that, and i decided that was not going to be me. >> in the book, you do talk about your history. you had ancestors. they fought the confederacy, they fought for that. you kept a portrait when you were young of general robert leon your bedroom wall. then you went on to cover the civil rights movement and all

the rest. and you said, i still feel ashamed of the prejudices that i struggle to shed. >> yeah. >> what was the biggest prejudice you had to shed? >> i think -- i thought people of other races were strange and not -- that i couldn't relate to them. and they were exotic. i mean, the only black person that i knew at all was our weekly maid. i went through the entire public education in texas without ever having a single black classmate. and this was years after brown versus board of education. you know, texas, the whole south fought integration and successfully for so many years. so, you know, people of color were kind of frightening to me in their exoticness. >> what switched you to a more rational view of your fellow human beings? >> well, you know, of course i spent a couple of years living in cairo and i got to the point where i learned something about foreign cultures and i loved my

students so much. and then after that i went to work for a race relations reporter covering the civil rights movement and seeing the nobility of the cause. it was so stirring to me. i think -- since the revolution, the american revolution, it's the greatest accomplishment in our history. >> you know, you just said even after brown vs. board of education, even after integration of schools, you barely saw maybe just one, you said, black person in your school. >> right. >> and i wonder whether you think now how far, again we're going back to the future, so many articles written by local media in parts of the south, texas including many other countries, talking about a deliberate, you know, resegregation and redrawing of school districts and things like that. i mean, it's really sad. >> it's a form of tribalism that i think has infected our entire country, especially our

politics. and i feel despair about that. where i don't feel despair, other parts of our culture, sports and entertainment which are very robust and deeply loved by americans, and especially texans, you know, there is a sense of community. and i think if we concentrate on what it is in those environments that gives us that sense of togetherness, how can we apply that to our political systems? >> well, again, everybody is trying to grapple with what's happened to our political system, whether it's terrible polarization and just this real sort of stress that's around. and i wonder what you make, again, this is talking about your book. this was cecile richards of planned parenthood. she's quoting evan smith w.h.o. in your book says, white people are scared of change believing that what they have is being taken away from them. in 2004, the anglo population of texas became a minority, which you just said, and is no

coincidence that social conservatives who ruled the state for two decades have continued to look backward. describe what they're looking at. the social movements that they are hanging onto. >> well, they would like to have gays back in the closet. not just no gay marriage. they just want to eliminate the identity of home oosexuals. it's nuts. there is one character i write about in the book. he talked about how they're propagating sodom y in the kindergartens. these one of the main funders of the republican party. eliminate abortion entirely. remove government from almost all walks of life, even down to the security cameras on the traffic lights. you know, get out of the u.n., i mean, these are things that i heard about as a child in the '50s. and now, you know, this agenda has come back and, in my

opinion, the republican party at large, you know, has been ripped apart and essentially donald trump has run away with it. and the republican party in texas has taken an overdose of some kind of hallucinogen that makes them think they can antagonize 40% of the population, hispanics, with show me your papers provision, and then alienate young people who are so much more tolerant and so past the whole thing of homosexuals, state convention of the republican party, they refused to seek the law of republicans, gay republicans. we're in another millennium, and yet that's what evan was talking about. >> exactly. and i wonder if you can reflect, then, that it's having potentially an equal but opposite effect on the democratic party. there have been primaries in

four states overnight, and it looks like in some of them the moderate democrats lost in their primaries and the very left wing democrats won. so you're having, again, in both parties, this massive polarization. where is there any hope? how does one ever get back to what we're told the majority prefers, which is somewhere in the middle? >> you have to have the candidates that speak to that. i can only say about texas, we haven't had those people. there is an interesting race going on right now, ted cruz is facing for a really quite powerful challenger in beto o'rourke who has out raised him in terms of money, which is really surprising, and is within the margin of error right now in terms of the polling. he's a democrat. he's from el paso. we haven't elected a democrat statewide office in more than 20 years, and we've never elected anybody from el paso. i don't know why that is. but he's a very appealing

candidate and quite talented. it's the kind of candidate we need more of in both parties who are willing to speak to the center, which feels so hollowed out right now. >> what do you make of the latest study that came out that basically scientifically showed some of what i was talking about, that it's a bit of a white lash, this election of donald trump, which is what van jones, political commentator said on cnn the night of the election. but they're seeing it wasn't actually about a fear of losing jobs or being unemployed or economic, you know -- it was mostly white christian america didn't want things to change. >> it's true. throughout american history, the politics of resentment has always played a big role. and i certainly understood there is a child in dallas, the idea that the eastern establishment as we called it, sneered at us,

looked down at us and was fighting our values. so we reacted against it. and there is still a feature of politics all over the country. and who feels that resentment? who feels marginalized? well, it's the people who are in favor of -- who oppose abortion, the people who are evangelical christians. the white people like men who have lost their jobs. it's a broad swath of america and they feel despised. and trump gives voice to their complaints and that's why they've turned to him. >> so president trump has also been very active on the foreign policy stage. i just want to go to the looming tower quickly. >> sure. >> that was one of your seminal works. i think you said it may be the most important thing you will ever write. >> oh, i think so. >> you do. the rise of al qaeda led to 9/11. why do you think it's the most

important thing and how did you come to write it? why did you get onto that track? >> well, it was more of a mission than, you know, anything else. as a young man, i taught in cairo. i spoke some arabic, although it had been a long time. i lived in a muslim country and i loved my time in egypt. i had written a movie called "the siege" with denzel washington and bruce willis which is about what would happen if terror came to america. for instance, to new york city. this came out in 1998. and it was in many ways like the events of 9/11. there were a number of different things that were affecting me. mainly just as an american, i knew this was a turning point in our history. and as a reporter i had an obligation to try to go out and understand what was it that led to this and why did we fail to stop it. >> and right now, anybody who

didn't read your book is getting to watch the looming tower on television, the screen. it's on amazon prime. it is really fantastic. but what really stands out is in sharp relief is the battle between american agencies, the fbi and cia would seem to prevent them, preventing intelligence using it to prevent 9/11 from happening. it's quite shocking. >> it continues to shock, because, you know, the cia knew in 2000 -- al qaeda's future high jackers came to america and they failed to tell the fbi. they arrived in january of 2000, 19 months before 9/11. and in march of 2000, the cia found out about it and they withheld that information. it wasn't an accident.

>> i still can't figure out why, having read your book, having watched the thing. what were they thinking? >> well, there were two theories within the fbi. they had asked about a meeting in malaysia where these high jackers had flown from. cia told the fbi that they didn't know anything about it, although they had the malaysian authorities surveil it. they had photos. >> photos and everything. >> so, is it the case that the cia wanted to recruit them? this is one possibility. they're not supposed to work in the united states, but the fbi has authority over cases of domestic terrorism inside the united states, and they had a warrant on al qaeda. the other thing is was it an agreement between the ci ericss a and the saudi intelligence who were going to monitor these guys and maybe try to turn them. if you look at some of the

behavior of the saudi people that were in l.a. and san diego working with these high jackers, then i think there is some plausibility to that theory. >> did that ever get satisfactorily resolved in the 9/11 commission? >> there was still -- there were missing 28 pages, produce some additional information about that. >> society spent a long time making sure they were redacted and missing. >> actually, they said they wanted it produced because it was -- it reflected poorly on them. but it didn't help them when the pages came out because there was information in there that i had no idea about, that there were training flights where people were casing how to get into the pilot's cab in and stuff like that. when they were questioned, our flight had been paid for by the saudi embassy. it was very damning material. and of course the families of the 9/11 victims have also been suing the saudi government.

a lot of information has been produced in depositions, especially by agents that i didn't know about that had been involved in the investigation. >> do you think that the relationship now between these two big agencies, fbi, cia is corrected in terms of this never being able to happen again? >> it's far better now than it was. you know, the creation of the national counterterrorism center, for instance, has been a big help. we have 16 different agents, intelligence agencies and they're mandate todd to sit togr and trade information. the director of national intelligence is above the cia and is theoretically able to control this. what concerns me, you know, there was that conflict between the agencies and that was -- it obstructed our ability to stop the plot. now there is this argument between the administration and the intelligence agencies.

and, of course, it is donald trump's intelligence agencies. they report to him. but the disparity between what he's saying and what they were actually doing is alarming to me because al qaeda is far stronger now than it was on 9/11. >> still? >> on 9/11 there were maybe 400 people in al qaeda. now there are thousands -- >> do you think it was decimated and decapitated? >> at one time, yes, it was. >> the drone strikes relentlessly relentlessly? >> now it has chapters in 18 countries. that doesn't count the progeny like isis and boca ha ran. there are thousands of people following this jihadist philosophy and their intentions haven't changed. fortunately our abilities have improved, but so have the ability of our opponents. and having this, this degradation of our intelligence agency at a time we're under

threat, not just america, but certainly europe, i think is a really bad experience. >> when you say, you know, they're stronger than ever and their intentions never changed, they're able to play on the muslim grievance, the suffering of their muslim brothers. we've seen that in technicolor with split screens around the world of everybody laughing joyfully opening the u.s. embassy, breaking the 70 years of tradition. at the same time lethal force used by protesters on the israeli forces. they said they failed to minimize the casualties. they know the world has come down on them for that. you wrote the book 13 days in september. the dramatic story of the struggle for peace. of course it was about that incredible moment in '78 and '79, camp david, the very hard line right wing president of israel, began, king of the arab world president anwar sadat,

those days seem like a long time ago. >> people say peace is impossible. you mention began. he was the head -- >> against the british. >> and also against palestinians. remember, yassin. and there was anwar sadat had been an assassin against british troops. jimmy carter was a one-term georgia governor, evangelical christian. those three men managed to make a peace that has lasted to this day, and it's never been replicated. there was another part of that treaty which was going to be about the palestinians. of course, the palestinians weren't represented at camp david, and that portion of it has never been enacted. but what is the difference? there are two things, i think. one is carter put the relationship with america on the

line. you make peace or our relationship is fractured and i will tell the congress and i'll tell the world that it was ypfat this was a very powerful hammer to bring down. and the other thing was the men that were all there at camp david had political courage. and i think that is a quality that's notably absent now. >> it's very interesting you say that. carter did what he did. fast forward to 1991 when president george h.w. bush and his quite magnificent secretary of state james baker also played the honest broker to a point. remember james baker call me up, call me when you're ready. that was prime minister shamir at that time. >> right. >> the americans did knock both heads together. knowing israel was their main ally, believing peace was in israel's best interest. where do you see it going now, now with the so-called kushner/green blatt peace plan

when they are so heavily sided with one side? >> to be frank, i don't think that's going anywhere because - two-state model. and everybody says they want two states, but we don't have two states. it's because nobody believes in it. and even the palestinians are distancing themselves from it. and, you know, where it's really headed i think is gaza becomes a kind of model for the rest of the palestinian population in the west bank with, you know, being isolated into little thiefdoms cut off by these roads, guarded by israeli troops, you know. and what's really striking with all the furor in the world, nobody is really doing anything about it. even the arabs have turned against the palestinians. i think that that's part of what's fueling the despair in gaza. i've been to gaza and it's -- it really is a prison, you know. it's just a big open-air prison.

while i was there a little girl was shot and her brother was wounded. they were out working in the fields and they got too close to the fence. there are automatic weapons stationed every, like, mile. they're remotely controlled. you know, it's just a sense of -- you know, absolute mastery over the population. >> just to finish, this administration is, as i said, putting its hand in a lot of areas hoping that tough lines, different lines, disruptive lines of engagement will create change where it hasn't before. whether it's in the palestinian-israeli, moving the embassy, north korea, having a high-level summit, pulling out of the arms agreement with the iranians. just reflect for a moment. there probably would not be a hamas in charge if the united states under george w. bush

hadn't insisted on elections then, despite advice from the israeli prime minister and the prime minister leadership. if you have an election in 2006, hamas is going to win. tell me a little bit -- >> unintended consequence, the whole middle east -- there are two lessons you can draw from spending time in the middle east. one is every action has an unintended consequence. and the other lesson is things can always get worse. >> on that note, lawrence wright, thank you very much indeed. >> my pleasure, christiane. >> and we hope you enjoyed dipping into our archive with us. that's it for our special edition. thanks for watching amanpour on pbs and join us again tomorrow night. ♪ ♪ >> you're watching pbs

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