>> rose: welcomeo the broadcast. we begin this eveng with a look at e c.i.a. followinghe tragedy that happed to c.i.a. operatives in ahanistan. we talk with mark mzetti of the "new york times,"ob baer, former c.i.a. agent, and did ignatius of the "washiton post." >> this was the in the minds e jordanians and the c.i.a. sort of aold-plated sort. a guy who cld get them access to aqaeda in ways they've never seen since 9/11. >> it's going to cause the c.i.a. to pull ck, the c.i.a. in afghanistan and ira is going to second guess every person who knocks on the door we call these walk ins likehis dr. a.c. w.a.c.. our ielligence isgoing to get woe. >> this was a ll planned and

subtle opetion. the notion that al qaeda is much othe run now that it can't operate,t can't hit us which yowere hearing overthe last year from some intelligee officials have been clearly shown to be ong. >> rose: we cclude with jason epstei well-kno editor, well-kno writer about food. we'll talk about books and food. >> i would s on the woodbox ne to the stove to keep warm and watch my grandmoer take pies out of t oven andtews and everything she was making and i felt se and cozy in at siation. the windwas blowing outside, the snow was piling up outside the housand i don't have to be anywhere but in the kitchen. so it mad a profound impression on me which ie never got over. i've always associat with safety, comfort, warmth. >> rose: a look atthe futurof the.i.a. and a look back at books and food next.

if you've had coke in the last years, ( screams ) you've h a hand in giving coege scholarships... and support to tusands of o nation's... most promisi students. ♪ ( coca-cola 5-note mmonic ) captioningponsored by se communications fr our studios in new york city, this is chare rose. >> rose: we beginonight with an ongoing look at the united stat intellence cmunity. over the weekend c.i.a.irector leon petta pubcly defended

his agent dustry criticis over lt month's suide attack in afghanistan tha killed seven of his employees. in an etorial in the "washington post,"panetta dismisseclaims that agents had practid poor trade craft. the public defense came days after presidt obama acknledged security missts th led to al qda's attempt to bring dn a u.s. airline on christmaday. in addition, t mitary's highest-rankin intelligence ofcer in afghanisn released a crital self-assessment last week. major general chael flynn wrote thatnalysis was unable to understand and answer fundamtal questions about the war. joining me now from washington david ignatius, he's a columnist in for t "washington post." he also cove th intligence mmunity and writing novels about it. in berkeley, california, bob baer, former c.a. officer. in new york, mark mzetti of the "new york times." he covers naonal security sues for the newspaper. m pleased to have all of them here to talk aut this impoant subject. vid, you and i have had ny conversations abouthe c.i.a. and aboutc.i.a. activities,

incling fiction coming out of you mind andalso what's often sed on things at you know from thereal le. tell me what we now know about what happened in afghanistano those c.i.a. ants and what we now know about the al qaeda operative an howhe fooledso many people. >> the c.i.a., chare, is still piecing together the details of this, but this point, ty ha a fairl clear pture. this was alassic case of deceptio this jordanian, alalawi, was well known blicly as an islac radical. after he was arrested by the joanian intelligencervice and was flipped, w turned to become a coerating double agent, was sent into pakistan andbegan feeding the jordanians

and the c.i.a. very tantalizi material. i'm told that he sent a detailed assessment sdz of our predator missile atcks on al qaeda operativ in the tribal areas in pakista he sen photographs of himlf with higlevel al qaeda operativeshereby establishg his bona fides as avery fective double agent. so on the day tha he came to this c.i.a.s may be in ost in eastern afghanista there was a large group of americs and one jordanian waitg for him with greatest excitemenbecause it s hoped that this jordanian double ent could take them, could give them information that would allow the targeting of man al-zawahiri,the numbe twofficial in al qaeda. he arrives i a car, t car is ken to a place the agency says where he wasoing to be paed down as he's gettingut of the car with three c.i.a. surity

officers near him, he reaches into hisjacket, the c.i.a. officers telthem to stop that and athat point the bo detonates. the bomb was so powful, so sophistiteed that c.i.a. people who were there waing for him 50 ft away, some distce away, were among those lled. the threeecurity offers closest to him were obviously immediately killed. what's disturbg as you look at is, i think, are t things. firs the breakdown iasic tradcraft, the basic ways in which the c.i.a. tries to secure itself against the danrs of this kind o dble agent who rns out to be a triple agent coming back against you. and secondly wh it shows us out the sophisticatio of al qaeda. this was an incredibly well-plann and subtle operation. the notion that al qaeda is so much on the run now that it can'operate, it can't hit us which you were hring over the last yeafrom some intelligence officialslearly has bn shown

to be wrong. rose: bob? >> o i think it was a serious mistake on t part of the c.i.a. u doring formants behind the wire but only to bring them through metal detectors first, through scanner. the c.i.a.'s established procedure er the years, i used to use in the beirut, you walk them throughhe embassy i one gate and outhe other, they're clean. if they've got y metal them it picked up and they're patted down the local employees. the fact that ther were 13 ople standing around waing for an informant baks all the rules. informants are met one on one. i have a series of problems with the fact that the base was... there was no linguist case office that spoke pasun, ri or arac. i have a problem with outsourcinour intelligence jordan. and i could goon and on and on. so y put the michael flynn report thatcomes a couple days after this in context and we

have a real proem in pakistan. we just... you know, intellence is bad, as the military ss. >> rose: so whatdo you s leon panetta's op-ed piece? >> oh, hes has been lutely had to s that. i'm s pessimistic abt the c.a. i'm just wondering whetr it shouldn't be reorganized. you know,take itown the sts and rebuild it. it iin bad ape. >> rose: what would you do to build it? >> you know, you're going to have to get back to basics. the british taught us intelligen in world war and we're ing to have to g back to those bac which is ever intelligce service in the world runs by tm and we just n't anymore. the service was deofessionalized or the years d right thrgh the bush years as well, too. rose: so it's just gone fro one administration to th other. i gus back to... i don't know whatoint you would suggt it started. >> you know, i'm a bit of old timer. i hate to say that. but when i was in the c.i.a.e had people that went rough the

erational training course working in high-threat areas. there s a meoring system that people went throug but never would ever consider letting peop who had not had traing and experience meetn important informant le this. it would never have happened. i think ople on theseventh floor should be fire that let this happen. >> rose: david,ou wrote the c.i.a. needs better trade craft th its conact and that e c.i.a. and its allies nee to lift their gam so you and bob sm to be saying the sa thing. >> well, ithink bob said it well i think over theears in par because e c.i.a. has been so batted by public criticism, both parties seem to agree it makes sense to take apart our intelligence services r some reason. but it's had effect. with one gd thing that i learned today atirector netta at the c.i.a. is

gathering a high-level gup within the agenc to look at what wenwrong. theye going to look at three thingsone, who was this jordanian double or triple ent. what do we know about when he went bad, how this ception worked. second, what do we know about what went wrong at security the se. bob wenthrough the bics but the agenc will do tha much more thoroughly and most important, whacan th agcy learn aboutrade craft in these war zones in afghanistan, pakian, in iraq that wl help them going forward. and i think ct that panetta's ing this is one signf trying toearn somelessons from this. >> ros i'moing come back to what general flynn said but let me go tohis issue. tell me what you kno, a, about the man who set off the bo, the doublegent. and, b, the c.i.a. operatives and officials th were killed d the sigficance of their loss.

>> theerson who t off the bomb, as david said, is a joanian doctor who ha developed a persona on the web known asne of the sort of top five jihadi b writs, very inuential character. rked in some of the palestian refugee camps jordan and spent some time in a jordanian prison. it's believethat during t time ia jordaanrison he wa... t jordaans thought turn, flipped to work for them. and then set off for afghanist and pastan and after some period of time gotn contact with the jordanian tell inten seice who thentarted feeding this informati to the c.i.a. so this was in the mind of t jordanians and the c.i. aort of golplated sort. a gu who could t them access to al qaeda in ways that they'd never seen sinc 9/11. and as both did and bob said, th was... you know, a guywho could maybe deliver the mother lode. he could get em al-zawari

and ybe bin len. soou saw this eagness to ke this happen. e c.i.a. said the number-two official from...heir number-two official afghanistan from kabul to kht... >> rose:kay. talk about who tho people were and what they did and how centrathey were to the present c.i.a. effortgainst al qaeda. >> it's a mix of people as you would see any kind of c.i.a. se. you had security guards, some c.i.a. surity guards, some... >> rose: private contractors. >> blawater, now known as z corporation. you had anasts who would be the ones who would sort of get ... get some of the intelligence report analyze tm sort of run it through the systems and then send it bac to washingt. you had a... the bas chief, the rson in charge out khos who was a woman in her 40s, a mother of the, a.i.a. veteran who d beenpart of the c.i.a.'s bin laden unit before september 11 known as alex ation. and was sent tafghanistan last ar as part of this st of surge the c.i.a. has had in

afghanistan. toort of do the typ of thing, to find the typeof people,hat they wer hoping to find on december 30 at that meeting. >> rose: it is said th she knew more abo al qaeda than anybody elsen the c.i.a. or at ast was in that... she had the sort of institional knowledge that she'd been studying the names, studying these conneions, stying these netwks for at least a decade. and so it w an institutional ss to the c.i.a in the sense of tir knowledge about al qaeda. there were some other fairly nior people as well who were lo in the blast. >> rose: bob,ick up onhat. what's the i.a. lost becae of thitragedy? >> it's lo the expertise, ere's no dbt about it. let's n't mistake aboutt, people are heroic serveing in ost, but it's going cae the c.i.a. to pull back, the c.i. infghanistan and iraq i going to seconduess every person who ocks on the door, we ll these walk-ins like this dr. al-balawi. they're going pull back in afghanistan, our intelligence is

going to get wor than it is now. you're goingo... there going be seconduessing and the c.i.a. top of this is being investigated f renditionsnd torture which l mak it very difficult to be an eective intelligenceperation. and so this was huge loss. >> rose: david... go ahead vid, comment on that but als, david, the jordanians lost, who was al killed by the bomb, someone who was close to the king as i underand it. >> he was a member o the royal faly, i think a cousin of the ki. was,n effect, the case officer handling the ctor al-balawi. >> ros didn't the kg meet his body when it ca back? >> he did. the ng and que both attended the funeral. it was very unusu. one thing i wod just note. i think er the next seral months without announcement, any notice you're ing to see some orations by the jordanians, by their intelligence svice to aveng

this. they feel embarrassed, they're angry andthey're pretty fective in these battlegrods i hope bob is wrong about the agency pulling back even more. and partf why this happened was that the agency dsn't like to meet sourcesn thesear zones outside the wire. itas people coming io the green zone in baghdad, it has people come in these bases. and the bob is right an that gets even worse, that's a problem. >> maybe, may people willook athis and say we do nd to lift our ge. need to take this more serisly, we need the country toack it more than the country does now. panetta's people are talking about being more aggresse. certainly inhe last week you've seen aery,ery aggressive predator stre in the tribal area against al qaeda and thetaliban. i assume that's meant to be read as strikingack hard.

but if. bob kno that place better than almostanybody. if his diagnosis ishatt's ing to contract even more, move even mo into a she, that's scary. >> rose: mark, can you add more? well, at least publicly and privately the i.a. is saying we're not pulling back it's pedal the metal, we will see, time will tell what actually happens. but as davidust said about the predator sikes. we've seen. since the attack alone, at least thinkfive predat strikes, which is a... even by the rate of... in the last year or so is a pretty accelerated rate. and so they are going after targets whether it's just for retrution or whether they jus l of a sudden got good intelligencewho knows. but this is. i meanthis is c.i.a. war right now. it's one of tse things y have to keep... youust keep shing a light on to some exnt because the c.i.a. is running aar in pakistan. and they a launcng predator

strikes at least onca week and it's sort of a fcinating period right now of these sort paramility operations in the c.i.a. >> rose: it was said david...r b, that this particular doctor was motivated by the death of the taliban leader in pakistan which had beenilled by a drone if remember. gohead. >> it's a remarkable video in which th jordanian doctorhe suicide bomber, is sitting with the current head ofhe kistani taliban and... in which this man speaks of his desireo avenge thedeath by drone attack of shud. it has been lieved that the edatorttacks has been extremelsuccessful in putting these people on the run, taking out key leaders. the obama adnistration, whater else you c say about their reign policy, has been extremely aggresve in using the predators in pakistan. and they thoht they were ving some affect.

obviously even if these people are on the run they' not so much on the runhat they can't plan extremely subtle and damaging operatis. but think that tse pretor attacks will coinue. iaw today in e paktani pez for the firsttime a very aggressive defense othe predator attacks written by a pakistani journalist. that amazed me. if you see me of tt, tt might be iortant. >> re: you think thatwas reflecti of what? a change of mind abouthe pakianis? >> t paktanis are suffeng suicide bomb attacks every other day in one of their citie they are fing a real problem. abt they've sent their army into the swat valley in the knot they've sent their arm into soh was in the west and they'restill getting pounded. ordinary pakistanis are really gettin afraid of this teat an they're looking for ways to deal with it. >> david, i think to sad

something...ou're absolutely right. but what scares me pakistan i we're getting i theiddle of a civiwar. by a tuul las me sood is not a member of al qaeda, the c.a. apparely killed him and what 'r seeing here is a bod feud which is going to b taking out onhe c.i.a. and our troops in afghastan. i'm having really hd time with this administrati and the last adminiration fining what victory in afghanistan i at will itook like when we're actually wning and if w just expand this war to al th pashtuns and keep on hitting people with predators by the way, the kill radius on is very... you're killing alot of people that arennocent as well. so we have to worry that we're not facing some sort of conrad's heart of daress when they sthel jungle. >> ros bob, t me undstand. are u saying they shouldot have killed mesd. >> hs killed a lot of pakistanis but is thatur war? >> he's charged with the responsibility of killing

benazir bhutto, right? >> yes, but is that our war, though? that's the question. are we going to night the tribal areas in pakistan? and can we? i don't think we he enough soldiers to, frank. >> re: let me just put back the table what general flynn said whichas who i understand toe as close to general mcchrystal so thathis is what he said. "eight years intthe war in afghistan, the u.s. inteigence community is oy rginally relevant to the overall sategy. having focused ovehelming majori of brain powern insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundantal questions about the environment in wch u.s. and allied forces operate and the pele they seek to persuade. now, h may beaying in his rert they're doing too muc of whathese c.i.a. operatives were doing and not enough of understanding more aut the taliban in afghantan. is that what y read him saying david? >> i think hes saying tha, i think that there a realebate

now out msions of the c.i.a. the core mission is to collect foreign intelligence. to have spies who steal secrets there's an additional role which we call covertction which ranges from paying off political parties, bribing politicians, the nd of ramilitary cert action that you see with the prator strikes andther operations. and e c.i.a., i think, is being pulled in two differen rections. what flynn was sayin is that the thing yolook to a intelligence agey for, the texture, the feel for a place, the baland judgment, t linguistic and culture understanding rely is not forthcominhere. it's kind of bken down. and what i seehen i goo afghanistan and i wen a nber of times last year isthe that the military intereingly is developi those skills that flynn says areooking in our

intelligence agency. there's an interesting imbalance now. thmilitary has people who are knowledgeable who increasingly have that feelon their fingerti and i think military is ireasingly fstrated th s intelligenceartner, the c.i.a., ist at the sam level ofophisticationor intensity. >>e's absolutely right. the probleis the c.i.a.'s locked up behind t wire and you've got military patrols going out and they are collecting on-the-grnd intelligence which is really putting the c.i.a.n a disadvantage and it's come in a sense minor player in afghistan. >> rose: wl, one... i mean, one other aspect of this,hough which we saw at khost was that was developing thisnetwork of bases in easrn and southern afghanistan. they hop will solve ts prlem, get them to t field to be able to not only be more relevant for the military t be

able to develop soces for their ultimate missions which to get top taliban and al qaeda leaders. solaces like coast, places like outside of kandahar, the only way they're goingto be able toevelop these soces is to get out of the embassy in kabul an develop these sort of network of fire bases. now, we saw in khost a tragedy that may or may not have been able to have been averted. howeve it is a sign that they e ying at least to get o more. now, they may still be briing ople on to the fire bases but they are actually gting out away from thmbassies. now...ut it is to your point abougeneral flynn, ther is this real tension rig now in afghanistan beeen what the militarys doing from counterinsurgency point view and the counterteorism huntin al qaeda, hunting the taliban that primarily ishat the c.i. has to be doing right now. >> rose: but've asked that qution of general mcchryst and otrs. they always say there's no reason ty can't do both

counterinsurgency and counteerrorism at the same time. righ bob? >> they can do both. but i'd le to goack to what rk said. i mean, i presh qlat the c.i.a. is doing keeping bases out there and ving a lot of people out there. but, again, it goes back to the language, how ny pashn speakers are there? and what struck me athost, i think i ow almost evebody there. there were no pashtun speakers orven darrry speakers and in that part of ahanistan if you don't speak the lguage it's virtually impoible toet to the populace. and th mility i've seen internally is complaining th most of theirforeign languag specialists speak darr i rather than pasun wch... you know, thiss same problem the british had in the thr wars they fought in afghanisn. they hadery few pashtun speakers. >> rose: it sound like blocking and tackling in football to me. n't understanding pashtun central to being able to understand whas going on afghanistan and pakistan? >> is crucial. it absolutely cruci.

>> rose: should we have been... this is all about al-zawahiri. should we ha been able to with the rig order and the right freedom and the rig people have been able to find al-zawahiri and bin lady now bob? >> it's dficult. i was in pakistan last year and i was amazed how justcut off foreigners are,ven in phawar ... person peswar. it a very dangous place, afghanistan. and i woulddd this that i could myself... i wouldn't do mu better than anybody el. if i were assigned to afghistan. it is a very, very htile area d anywhere with those thr lete-- c.i.a.-- is a target. and there's a good indication that the taliba is getting to thpoint where they are targeting mitary linguists as well on ou bases their intelligence is amazing at the grass-roots. so the odds are stacked against uswhich adds tohe rest ofhe

problems. >> rose: david, what's the assessment of thadministration inerms of... younow, we've also had this mplaint that erupted over the weeke in terms of how fa they were getting theew troops over there. >> well, there's some tension between the ite house and the litary. the white hous feels that the military promiseit could get the 30,000 troops the summer, by july/aust and when i was in afghanisn in december i asked genera rodriguez, who's the numb-two commander of u. foes there if he could meet that timetable and he said no, i don't think so. i don't think we'll be able to get the tros, all of them, until nomber is the first time anybody had actually sai what i think a lot of people thought was obvious. so the are those teions. just going bk to what b was saying a mont ago. i'm struck by h much the

agency wanted to believe that this agent could deler al-zawahiri. >> rose: okay, david that's a very important poi and i've got 1:30 left. tell me why, your point, of why that's so important. >> becse if you want something at badly, you make mistakes. you're too hungry and you cha it a you make mistas in chasing it. >> andet's not forget, th is coming five days after an attempted bombing of an airliner over the united states. i mean, this is... ty're part of kind of t sametory in the sense at the desire to get the top al qaeda leadersomes in part because othe evidence that these guys are still able to operate, they're still able to plot attacks. the heat es up rightfter these nd of attacks whether they were successful or not. at's when the pressure ramps up to findhe goln source who's gog to get the t leaders. >> rose: bob, i'll comeo you for a close, we' got seconds.

so what is essential to doow? you really think that they've really got to go back and look at this fr the top? >> oh, i think they ould. i think ey should be very host and see where the c.i.a.'s gon wrong. and itan be fixed. >> re: and who could do that? >> leon panea could, this adminiration could. but we jus have toet the politics out ofhe i.a. and focus on intelligence colltion. and it doable. we can tininguists. we can get peopleith exrience in these bases. rose: allight. thk you very ch. bob baerom san francisco, or berkeley, as he would say. dad ignatius from the "washington po" in washington, mark mazzetti who writ about naonal security r the "new york times" with me in the stud wrote here in newyork. we'll be back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: jason epste is here.

we's well known for his remarkable career in publishing. for 40 yes he was the editorial director a random hous he's als cultiva add life long interesin food, writing, and cookinare not that differen he ss because recipes are essentially stories. er the years, he has ted andpublished litery and culinary giants. here's a look some of them. >> i thinkthere's a mont of transcend dense that enable u to get io a novelecause we all are filled wi experices in o life but theydon't coalesce. at any given moment u can almost feel something physical in yourself, something stirrin, almost like the ginning of a spring on a winte day andou say yes, i think i'm getting ready for a novel. and you may not know wt the novel is gng to be. it takes a turn or two you get into it. >> if you make these right decions about buying food from people who are taki care of the la and people who share your values tt yore changed in the pross. you sort of build a ltle communit you end up tting

with your fami and frien at the table. >> re: vard vals and all. >> yr life is changed. >> it's alway an actof discovy. when i write, i'm finding ings out just as t reader does at any gin point. the process is the... the feeling you have is discering things, not fl pogue saysive, not of inventi or calculate organize anything t of discovering thin. >> i think what's going o in my pots and pansnd whas going on on the ble and what's going on in... i'metting involve with eve detail of the operation beuse i love every detail of tha operation. and i thin i driven to prove beside a chef big a great restaurant tour also. >> there was a you man at the bar named joe. a yuck fellow that came in to fix m speakers. i'm watching hip at the bar. 'd had dinner and he's looking around, looking around and i kn he's thinking and i'm saying what' going nonhis mind

and i go sit next to joe and i say "joey, how's itoing?" he says "good, fnk." he said "you know whathe fference is between this and ery other restaurt?" i looked at him, said "tell me joey." said "when you leave other restaurants you leav full." he said "wn you leave here, you leavefulfilled." >>ou write certain books for the people. >> ectly. >> because y know they don't know anything or they don't know whatou think the ought to know because the schoolswon't teach it why do you think i bother to spend my life telng the sto of the uted states. >> re: so washington, d.c. would be one of those books? >>eah, for its time andlace. eation was for those who know nothinabout the fifth centur whenever idea at we have came along. d there was our no our lord, i may say, at work a that time. >> ros (laughs) his new memoir "eating" los back at hilife through the ism of food. i'm eased to havejason epstein backt thisable.

lcome. do you misthe plishing buness and the role that you played? no, i'm hap to be o of the business because the busiss is going through great anguish now, agony. and it's ing to be renstitutes. anthat's going to b at the expense of the existing industry i'm not quite out of it, because i've deloped a business based on a machine, like an a.t.m., that receivea dital file from anywhere and prints as a quality pape back bookn a matterf minutes. and we are... i n't be specific, but we're at this pot about to announce a partnership with a major prting company to market and service it throught the world and we have another arngement th an important publishing group in china and i think that will be one of the ways which

the book business will survive in the fute. >> rose: what's thehreat to the book business? >>ell, it's not as simple as many pple think. it's... digitization is going to change evething. it's going to change the whole nature of the book business. digitization you don need inventory anyre, you don't need warehouses amore, you don't need ses forces anymore. you sell ur books directly from the digil file through that web site to tend user. that how it's goi to be in the future. a radically dentralized marketplace. in theory itill soon be possibleo downloa the enti contents of e beijing library right at this table. one click of the mouse, one keyboard. that doe't giveublishers ch to do. the functis that have defined them over years are now redundant. wh isn't redun dant, of course, are the edowards who are filter who decide wt should and shouldn'te published and preparet for

publicatio there's another oblem which is system, it's not... it's even more decisive than the ructural... than the knew tenology that i just described and that is that when i first enred the busins it was a abt back list, that'shat pt us together. books you publish once and sell year after yr after year after all the risk and expenses ar out them. they were like annuities. that's what kept the plishing company together. it's what paid the billsnd created the continuity. without it, publishe could not rvive. by the mid-80s bk lists began to deteriorate rapidly. i used to wat thatappen the way one today might watch a glacier lting never to be replaced. it was analarming proce. was the result of a demoaphic shift, i believe, from the cits to theuburbs. the great cit bookstores that used to be ae totock 80,0, 100,000 back list titles were disappearing and being replaced

by the shoing malls with their little chain stores not much bigger than a boga, walden and dalt. anthey couldn't carry muc inventory so there waso place for a publisr to sell eir back list and the back list began disappearing there was so a revion in the tax law at encouraged tt even further which won't go into. but by the late 1980s, the publhers were now depending upon bessellers to keep going. and it's a very risky gambling busiss. in the o days wn i was first in theusiness, besselling auors like... alluthors were loyal to the publish they had been with foryears. but when the publishers fou themselves december pendg no longer un back lists but now on potential bestellers they had to acqui thoset auction and the authors would t their agts sell them the highest dder. and often that highest bidd

was rced to pay me for the right to publish that boo than it was ever going to earn bac and sometimes i didn't earn anything back. so that was thproblem for publishers. so depending un back listing they're now depenng upon th gambling game with front lts with authors appearing on th best-seller list. so that problem combined with the efftive digitization has set the... hareated chaosn e industry right now and it will... it can'te fixed. >> rose: what itill look like in five years? >> i thi the future plishing companwill consistf a handful like-minded ed tords. they ndn't be in one roomr even i one city. they'll tend to be specialized. they'll publish books that they... on asubject they kw a lot about, whever it happens to b and they will post their own web sites ofelated interest. >> rose: and how will they generate income?

>> by selling those books. the same wayhe publishers do now. anmore income because they wot have to spend... >> rose: ty won't have co. shipping and warehousing and rerns and all that stu. they wille more for the author more for the publisher and less cost to the consumer. me of those boo will be read on devices like kindle, but there are some books tt one wants toeep. the and those will be pnted on dend by a machine lik the one... >> rose: the espresso. >> yeah. >> rose: whatare we losin >> i don't think we're losing anything. i thk we... we're not losing what puishing has alway been out-- story telling. people do. that's instincve with us, we can't stop doing it. we're doing right now. that will continue. except the way it's distributed wi beifferent.

we will be losin.. people will be losing their jobs, i'msorry to say... >> rose: at the big publishing companies? >> these big publishing houses ich is rough and i... people who run these compaes are facing that problem and they don't... ty're very uappy aboutt. but they ve become redundant, that's undeniable. >> re: what do youhink of google's bookproject? >>ell, i.... >> rosewhich is essentially to digitize evething they can get their hands on. i think it's potentially great. they got off the wron foot. ey... four years ago lry page came to see me and scribed this to me. >> rose: one of the twofounders of google. >> and he didn't know much about books. he's an engineer, he thinks o oks as manua of containg informatiothat you can look things up in tm. that's not whatbooks areor. what would you look up in "mo

dick" or "emma" or "war and peace." >> rose: life lessons. >> >> but the book itself is th formation. i also said if you're going to digitize books in copyrig, you have to beareful because they belongo people. you have to get t right to do that ande didn'tquite gsp at i was saying athat point. i also said "u're going to need a bibliography, youan't st walk into a libra and start digitizg everything without knowing wh it is." for example, the were seven editions of "leaves of grass" in whitman's litime. each was a separate book, including manyf the same poems. i said "which one areou going to get? someone s to know how the do that or y'll make aess." wellhe didn't have bibliographynd he didn't consulthe right lawyersand he had a bit of a proem but it will straighn out. it would have been wderful if when he had broached this--as i think he did-- to the libraryf congress they saidyes, we'll it together. you put up the money and the

techlogy and we'll do the bib bibliography itidn't happen that way. if it did itould be in a good situation. it will take a while to gethe thing backogether. >> re: what situation aree in right now? they're digitizing like crazy and they don'tnow what to do with it? >> they've digitized about eight or ten million titles so far. they're aware of t bibly owe graphical probleand they'll dealt with. >> rose: and what about e copyright problem? >> thecopyright problem is a mess because the american association of publishers and the autr's guild sued googl for having digitized and appropriated to itlf book that people own. many boo out o print b they're stil copyright. those are lled orphan books, in some cases. no one knows who owns them but they're stl technically i pyright. under the recent copyright law, a book stays i copyright for 75

years fromhe author's death which, by the way, is much much too long butt was a law passed at the time of disney. it is the mickey mouseaw and it ally has withheld a great many books from e public that the public should have. it's very hao find out who owns them and makehem availabl anyway the guild and the authors and the publishs' associatn have agreed wit google to a sution too complicated to go intobut a solution. and that's now bore the court to decide whether thacan be done legally, whether the agreement will hd up. anthe court hn't yet ruled on it. my hunch is that ey will rule in google's favor and in favor of the deal. with some restrictions. >> rose:n tms of readi books, do you have a kind?

do you have a reader from sony? >>o, i don't... i have to read. i'm very old-fashioned about this. it has to be aook. rose: because that washe great thing they were worried about. could you ke it feel at all... how could you mostly make it feel like an experience of a ok, so the type lookelike e size of a boo >> well, make it a book, i would say, like th one you've got there your hand. >> but it's ao something if yore traveling being able to take ten books... >> but where r you going to travel that youeed ten books? to the south pole for months? >> rose:laughs) well, yes. >> i jus came back om a ip to st. lucia. >> rose right you were on boat. >> i was on a friend's boat and i hadith me a 600 ge history ofafrica which w perfe for that six days. >> rose: perfect size. >> perfect ze. e day we left the boat i was on the last chapter. >> rose: did you leave the book on the boat? >> n i brought it home with . 's a very good book. >> rose: what did you learnmost about africa >> well, it begins with e

formation of the eth, of the unerse and focusesown, down down until you finally get to this ctinent that split off from the whe body of continents. anhow the human species evolved from that... othat veryertile place. all kis of things could grow ther >> rose: i'm going tolang the subject. one of the gre experiences i have that...i'm sayingthis without... ithat this man loves to ck and lov to talk those twowo things go together especially product of cooking. and i remember maybe ten to 12 years ago coming to your house, your artment for lunch and you prepared lunch and we sat in t kitchen and talke >>f course. rose: do you remember tha >> yes. >> rose: good, this book is call "eating." ur love of food, was it any different from anybody else' >> well, i know a lot of friends who cook but they're mostly professional people. most people like yourself rlly

dot do much cooking. >> rose: exactly. i know when i... i know when it must have begun. my grandmother lived in a big windy fmhouse on aill in the city in the wintertime it was eezing in that place. therwas a wheezey old furnace that didn't do much goodo we all sat inhe kitchen where therwas a big ack coal stove. wood stove, actually ani would sit on the wood box next to the stove to keeparm and watch my grandmother ke pies out of the oious and stews d everything she was making and felt veryafe and koz sni at situation. the wind is blowing outsi, the snow isiling up outside the hous and i don't have to be awhere buin the kchen. so it made a profound impression on me which i' never go over. ve always associed it with safety, comfort, warmth, love >> rose: you cook mor than judy? >> judy tried to ck. when s lived in washinon she used to give dinner parties

herself and she ma a bowlof shroom soup for me and she thout it was a great recipe and i said "it okay" and she never cookedgain. >> rose: i'mot proud of this question so rgive me. wh's the best meal you'veever d? >> oh, my goodness. i'm trying to tnk. maybe the firsttime i had... the first al i add in chez bernice s pretty gd. >> rose: alice waters who says "what astoryteller. brings food intoheultural experice in a autiful way." >> i can't think... i mean, there have been so my great... >> re: well, the great thing about her is she uses... the inedients she uses is it not >> >> local. she starteden that whole thing, insisting on theest local stuff. she's a genius. >> rose:ut this book i a memoir of ur love affair with food. >> well, it's a memoir, yh. it's abo cooking. a littleit aboutublishing. >> rose: (laughs >> her than the ft that they'rboth story telli, they bothrom a story telling

exrience, cooking, story telling. >> yeah. >> rose: books are story telling. that's what they share? >>hey're narratives. >> rose: this comes om yates "gtitude to the unkno instructors. what they undertoo do the brought pass all things hang like a drop ofew upon a glade of grass." >> and that describ our eire civization. that's wt he was saying ther. he said aot in tho four lines. >> ros "what they undertook to do they brough to pass, all ings hang like arop of dew pop a blade of gras" >> civilization took a lot to do by a lot of peoe and it' fragile. to say that in four lin is very good. >> rose: you say u prefer plain cookin >>ell, i'mnot a genius li this. i'm notnything like daniel and i'm t running arestaurant that has to please people. >> rose: why haven't y run a rest sflaunt >> ianted to once. and i wished to work in them when i was a kid.

but i got invoed in the book business instead. there was a moment when i was in the publishing business i rked at doubleday at i thought i woulstart a rest wraunt friend but he got col et and left. so iecided not to bother wi it. buit would have been a good restaurant. >>ose: the state of the novel toda >> i think it's pretty good. >> rose: iean, doctor roe was right there in your collection. >> yeah. i mean, we nev know when we're in the midst o who's dick kens andho's jane austen ando on. it takes a while f that to ev out. look at melflil his own lifetime. he was scorned by critics and look at him w. i ink wre doing about as well as ever. i'm readg a wonder. ok of short stories by a young pakistani-america whose book was listed for the national book award. it's a name i can't pronounce. hi first name is danielle and

his last ne is beyd me. this guy cam out ofnow where and he's like chekhov. i mean thosetories are absolutely brilliant ke your breath away-- at least mine. he's goi to be a great writer if he ist already. and hean... he could havbeen a grt writer in any century. that realtalent. >> rose: as a great editor, ho do y aluate your own writg? >> my own? >> rose: uhuh. >> i'm ver modest about it. i can do itbutou'll learn this after while. i decided without ging it much thought when i was young i do not want to be a writer. i didn want to take the risk. didn't trust mysel that way. and doctorow had been a publisher and desighed heould write and i thought th was king a tremendous sk. here he's giving up his salary. >> rose: tiorrison had been

an editor. >> toni morrison used to work for ust ranm house. >> rose: she was... she worked in the... i n't know wheer she was an editor but she worked in publishing. >> that's h she came to us. she was working f a small textbook publisher in syracuse and we bough that cpany and the compa itself amounted to nothing, we shouldn't have bought it but we got her with it. >>ose: she sold a lot of books. >> that more than made up fo that siy purchase. bernstein who wathe president ofhe random house made a deal that i think was unfair. he saidthat toni should be an editor at random house but be publisheat knopf. >> rose: you would have preferred she would have beean editor at knopf. >> i would have prerred she be anmployee, edir and a writer as it ise're dear friends and shlivespstairs from me in oubuilding downtown. rose: what do you look for in a bo? >> the firs paragraph. >> rose: really? >>f that gets me i'm... >> rose: youere that?

>> i don' stop. the first paragraph is great, the rest will be. >> re: but a some poin you give up. in other words, if you're ten pages into it and nothing speaks to you it's... >> that's it. >> rose: throwt awa >> rose: but you're in the business along as i've been u can tell by the fir sentence. >> rose: really. >> i can tell a movie by... >>ose: i cancertainly tell a vie. >> if it's no good, i'm gone. >> rose: wt's the bt first senten you ever read? maybe "lita." we usedo visit edmund willis, the great critic livingin wellfleet on capcod in those daysut thanksgiving, barbara and i, my first wife at the end of one of these thanksgiving weekends he called me into his study and he saide took two black binders off his shelf an said "here's a novel by my friend nabakov but he doesn't want anye to know who wrote it i thk it's repulsivut maybe you'll feel differeny." >> ros (laughs)

that'sreat. >> and wtever that first ntence was i said "wow, what's the matter with eund?" and doubleday didn't want to publis it for the usual foosh asons but it was very impresve. >> rose: whagave you the mos pride as an editor? >> oh, a lot. a lot. i don't think. i can't single anythingut. i mean i... i wasn just an editor, started a t of businesses, too. rose: oh, inow. i had that sideline. when i went to work at random house, benne, a wonderful fell, by the way. >> rose what made h wonderful? we mostly knowim from television. >> rose: >> well, he was hreal publisheand i think real publishers are wonderful people. he really knew what he was doing and he crted a wonderful publishing company. i mean, he was a spoiled baby, too, among other this and an egomaniac and all that.

>> rose: (laughs >> has to do his jokes a t time a only one in tenas memorable. but he said "why don't y come to work hereas an editor?" d i said "i don'tant. to i want to starty own business." he saidyou can dohat too. stayere as an editor, don't haveny other obligions and u can start yourwn sinesses. and we may even go in with you." so that was a deal... >> rose: and what businesses d you want t start? >> well, helped to start the new york revi report >> rose: but that was becausof a crisis. >> well, thank g. >>ose: yeah, exactly. >> tre was a newspaper strike. >> rose: you and your wife and rort lowell. >> a his wife. the eatpoet. and we were having diber in our apartment whi was one of those bi duex apartments on7th street, no furnure, we just mod in, we had no fuiture an we're sitng at the ble d i was making a duck with olives, idescribe in the this

book d elizabeth said "ank d for the strike. th"new york times" book reew n't here anymore." she'd just written a very netive piece about in the harper magazine and i was lieved about it, too, it was a ve vulgar thing in those da. we couldn'tust say that but the strike gave us a chce to do our own. it was like a judy garland movi wel make our own dance. so that's how we agrd to start the w york revw. so that was one tng. >>ose: and itstill lives. >> it still les andt's still ted by tha genius bob silvers. edit. the libry of america and now i'm doing this thing with that book machine. thalways with respe to... everhing i've done has been developed and preserved back list. >> rose: here's what rprises

me. how many bks have you sflaed >> only three orour, i/k think. >> rose: why only three or four? >> because ifou're in the publishing siness as i w, you have to submerge your own ego the work of other people you don't want anything interfere th that. you to rget that you ve interests of your own and do everything for the writer. so it's onlyfter i left the business that i was ableo writit all. and this thing grew out... this little book here grew out of ticles i wrote for the "tes" mazine. >> rose: "eating, a memoir" jason epstein. isit alys good to be able to ta aboutsomebody's passion. if you can tap into t passion of someone--whether it's food or books or theater or some other aspect of wha makes them ge up everyday-- it's a great story. >> oh, yeah. yeah. alwa. >> rose: and ts is a great story.

thk you. >> thank y.

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