j. edgar hoover wearing a dress and being a transvestite. that was invented to tar j. edgar hoover by his enemies and has been promoted ever since. the problem with that story is that it distracted from the true scandal of j. edgar hoover which is that he used sex files on every senator and supreme court justice, to basically control the federal government over the 47 years he served as fbi director. it undermined the constitution. >> two days of the los angeles festival of books. we are live with our nonfiction authors featuring larry flynt and david eisenbach. >> caller: calling from the other end of america. the film that you appeared in and the rental affair which i think would be one of the very early american sex scandals would you say alexander hamilton? >> guest: right along with the father and children and slave girls and those two were the first news scandals in the beginning with the founding fathers. >> guest: in the case of alexander hamilton, stephenson, and they discovered -- and james reynolds for the race to sleep with his wife, maria reynolds. the demo

j. edgar hoover went -- heard about this plan he went bananas. hoover had his hands full keeping an eye on all the surveys that were here. the planned donovan had a fairlt exchange of information with the kgb throughout 1943 on. they exchanged a lot of intelligence. gadgets to the soviets. some of the activities and with the new was happening. as the war was drawing to an end the abortions were coming in and occupying eastern european balkan nations. don't hold me to it, but it may have been romania. they want to know who were the zero ss officers that were in country. they were actually still working together trying to round up a nazi holdover. eventually the russians knew that the zero ss officers in eastern europe are going to be spying on them as much as working with them. they forced them all out of the balkan nations. there was a brief exchange of information. >> did the british share any of the details of the enigma operation with donovan? >> yes. they shared. donovan had men and women working with the british, and they got access to the r

j. edgar hoover dies; may 1972. and that year after hoover's death becomes this really seminal moment for the way that we approach national security, the way that we approach intelligence work, and the way that we approach terrorism. hoover dies in may. in september of that year you have the munich olympics, the palestinian terror attacks on the israeli delegation to the munich olympics, the first act of violence, international terrorism. and in november of that year you have this great moment mostly lost to the cobwebs of history now, the hijacking of southern airways flight 49. now, some of you in this room may remember there was actually a time when hijackings of commercial aircraft in the united states were quite frequent. and that we actually had in the '60s and early '70s a hijacking about once a week or once every other week in the united states. and that they were almost all nonviolent. they followed the exact same path. it was a criminal looking to escape who would hijack a plane, fly to cuba, get dropped of

j. edgar hoover thought he was a nazi sympathizer. collected a lot of information and made a lot of contacts in berlin, some of which proved useful much later during the war but this was mainly in gathering business information and also in protecting his clients in germany as the nazis took over. so, he representative companies from major jewish families to try and prevent the nazis from ex-appropriating their property or their businesses. he signed a petition to i think you know prevent the prosecution of german jewish in court so he was very active on that, and having he had no illusions about what the nazis were about. he viewed hitler, and he told friends that this was the incarnation of evil and he was really in no fascinated by hitler throughout the war. in fact at one point he had a team of psychologists and psychiatrists do a very extensive psychological profile of hitler which i think is actually fairly good. it was fascinating and they predicted among other things that hitler would likely never surrender that he would hole u

j. edgar hoover thought he was a nazi sympathizer.he collected a lot of information and made a lot of contacts in berlin, some of which proved useful much later during the war but this was mainly in gathering business information and also in protecting his clients in germany as the nazis took over. so, he representative companies from major jewish families to try and prevent the nazis from ex-appropriating their property or their businesses. he signed a petition to i think you know prevent the prosecution of german jewish in court so he was very active on that, and having he had no illusions about what the nazis were about. he viewed hitler, and he told friends that this was the incarnation of evil and he was really in no fascinated by hitler throughout the war. in fact at one point he had a team of psychologists and psychiatrists do a very extensive psychological profile of hitler which i think is actually fairly good. it was fascinating and they predicted among other things that hitler would likely never surrender that he would hole

j. edgar hoover himself and the last of the president's national security team still in his same job since 9/11. he's on his second president and is about to finish out his ten-year term this september, thept -- september 3, 2011. and what he has done is really remarkable. he's on the cover of "time" magazine this week which is one of the first times he's gotten any recognition for the work he's done sort of leading this evolution of the fbi towards an agency much more focused on counterterrorism and national security than a lot of the traditional crimes we still think of the fbi as being involved. in. >> this is what the book looks like, and this is a participatory interview. we'll put the phone numbers on the screen, and our twitter address is at booktv. so get involved with this discussion about the role of the fbi and national security, and we'd very much like to hear there you. first, a detailed question. the fbi director is a ten-year term. what was the thinking on that? >> guest: this was a decision congress made after hoover died in 1972. and hoover just had, as everyone knows, thi

j. edgar hoover was on the side of, effectively, the forces of segregation. and these young people did it. and that is a great, great moment in american democ-- i think it's the best moment in american democracy since the end of world war ii. (paulson) if we could go back to the very beginning, you told their story extraordinarily well in a book called the children. and it is a large volume. and yet on day one of covering their story, you probably wrote a 22-inch story, whatever occurred that day that initiated your coverage. did you have any sense on day one that they would make history? i think i knew something was happening. i think watching these young people protest, how well-organized they were, how extraordinarily disciplined they were, the elegance of them, the body language-- we didn't talk "body language" then, but they were erect, their posture. they were extraordinarily well-dressed. i had a sense that something powerful had happened and that they would come back from-- i didn't know the depth of it. i didn't know how well-trained they were. i did

j. edgar hoover was out to destroy donovan's reputation. china went into the oss records knowing that many of them like jane and paul had been left of center. the letters in this period captured the atmosphere of fear and paranoia that permeated their diplomatic circles. julia considered mccarthy to be a desperate tower among her, she wrote and believed his vengeful campaign of innuendo and intimidation was destroying a country that she loved. i am terribly worried about mccarthyism, she wrote in 1954. what can i do as an individual? it is frightening. i am ready to bear my breast, small size blow they may be, stick my neck out. and won't turn my back on any one. we will sacrifice cookbook, husband and self. inevitably jane foster and paul child were caught in the buzz. in 1955 paul received a telegram summoning him to washington. their old friend jane foster was being investigated by the fbi as a russian spy. when she was arrested in paris the authorities ransacked her apartment and found paul child's name in her address book. they found t

j. edgar hoover had wiretapped tommy the cork's phone because the truman administration was very nervous about the old new dealers. so it started in 45, and there were claims of coverups but it was always, jack was always able to prove that he was assigned after he was cleared by a grand jury on a 20 to nothing vote, they didn't press charges against him. he was sent to tokyo to be on macarthur's staff. this is not what you do with someone who is not very competent or might be doing something illegal. hoover didn't like that at all, and he said that the case against the six was airtight unless they had to prove intent. excuse me, you always have to prove intent if you're going to find someone guilty. but he didn't give up on it, and lo and behold by 1950 after the soviets had detonated their atomic bomb and shocked the world and we found there were atomic spies, he gave a lot of information, leaked information to mccarthy who leaked it to the press and started this spies and timing is a chance in the state department. and he gave a speech that many of you may have heard of in west virgin

j. edgar hoover had long viewed king as a troublemaker, his movement a threat to law and order.on was on the line. and the f.b.i.'s efforts to get ray were relentless. >> during the 60 days he's on the lam he's the most wanted man in america. so this guy who had craved anonimity all his life suddenly got all the attention he could handle. >> reporter: ray made it to canada where he managed to obtain a fraud leapt passport. from there he traveled to britain and portugal hoping to find passage to the white- dominated african nation of rhodesia now known as zimbabwe. ray hoped to collect a numerous bounty that racist had placed on the life of dr. king. in his mind killing king, notoriety would be one reward but money could be another. >> i think his thinking was that he would get to rhodesia, a place that had no extradition treaty with the united states, that the rhodesians would smile on his crime and he would be welcomed as a hero. then he could work on getting, connecting with the bounty money that any be out there. he just didn't have time. >> reporter: after two months on the

j. edgar hoover wanted to charge him with sedition because the coverage seems to be a little too favorableto the japanese. and so -- i talk about the nation is islam is considered a bunch of lunatics by the muslim biographers written by muhammad ali. these were people who are into self-sufficiency. you see the conservatives would like that. they had their farms. they imported fish. i mean, it's a trade. they went to commerce. there were criminal elements in the nation of islam because they were recruiting prisoners. everything as one -- a man once told me, without elijah mohammed, there would be no muhammad ali so i try to cover a part of that. >> host: rob from me ohio emails in to you. i'm an aspiring writing and i was wondering if i may inquire of your writing habits. i love your work and may it continue with great exuberance. >> guest: you know, i interviewed emanuel stewart, the great boxing trainer for my book that i'm writing and he talked about things as a gym rat. well, i'm a writing and reading rat and i've always been that way. i just read voraciously. you asked me some books. i

j. edgar" opposite leonardo dicaprio playing j. edgar hoover's 55-year-old closet lover.ey want to do unless it's porn. >> if they know what they want. a lot of kids don't. >> if they know, let them follow their passion. i was rejected for so many things. each time it made me stronger. >> i think parents, it's funny. we are doing a segment on mom guilt. moms try to do the right thing. >> it comes with the territory. >> they were saying some of the number one and number two things parents or moms feel guilty about is leaving your child with someone else when you go to work or somewhere else. >> it's always hard. breast-feeding or not breast-feeding, huge thing. >> also whether you should put your kid in front of the tv, give them junk food. sometimes you feel like your kid is winning. sometimes you're fed up, you're tired. >> a lot of single moms, they don't have a lot of options. >> even if you're married, if you're pooped and your child is crying and there is a twinkie and that will solve it right now, there is the why not do that? >> we'll talk about that later. there w