Some of these authors have appeared on booktv. You can watch online, booktv. Org. Later story of hello girls of world war i. We begin the special features of the mayors of bryan and college station. One of the wonderful things of bryan, college station, you have two cities, the city of bryan started a couple of years before, really right after the civil war. There was a railroad coming from houston that was marching its way here. Stopped before the civil war and after civil warred and it continued on and bryan for the first few years after the civil war struggled to get itself created and was able to do that. The University Got its first six students and city of bryan was getting going and the area that you see around us today are still some of the first buildings that were being built at the time, 25 years ago this was a ghosttown. Because of area of state, geographically blurred too. Texas a m was one of the land grant institutions and over time it grew but it was 5 miles from a town and nobody knew about college except after staff got together, you know what, lets create our own city and they were able to charter a city and we are growing, somewhere between 3 to 5 and sometimes a little bit more percent every single year which makes us the 16th fastersgrowing community in the country and we have the greatest disparity of any city in the United States regarding the number of students to the number of nonstudent population. We have just under, just a hair under 60,000 students who are on this campus, a m is poised by 2025 to have 25,000 students just in the college of engineering which would make it one if not the largest Engineering Company in the country. Agriculture, the first letter a, thats what it was all about. Yeah, bryan is a different town, you can step from one town into the next. Theres a tradeoff here but its a compatible tradeoff because we both realize we have something to bring to the table thats for the good of all of our citizens. The histories of the city of bryan and, the m began together, they have been in a woven together. Up next, nicky van hitower on her book. Their opinions were just as strong. As a discriminatory act of the women of houston and i that do everything in my power to organize my own recent number 60 and elect more sensitive and people to replace you. That was women who want all rights, do not need any spokesman for them for they are making themselves heard loud and clear about abortions, lesbianism and homosexuality remember, the church apple pie, morales and motherhood made the country. It gives us a chance to do what we are supposed to do, you know, freedom. Equal rights. She doesnt represent many. Why not . Well, i dont believe the things that she spouses. You think you are doing just fine without her . Im not saying that we dont need her but she doesnt represent me. One thing can be said right now, no one in City Government can remember any single issue that has ever caused so much public response. Whats it like being a feminist in texas in the 1970s . Well, i suppose if you kept your mouth shut it wouldnt be bad, you met with people who thought the way you did but that wasnt the way it was with me. There was a new mayor in houston. I had come back in 1974. In 1976 he was elected again, fred hoffines was his name. He was under great deal of pressure by womens groups in houston. He had created this position of womens advocate. Part of the reason was because a woman had never been elected to City Government in houston and so they were all men and were making decisions about the lives of women. I got the job in 1976, yeah, 76. I was hired by mayor hoffines and i had a Job Description that was very general, very big, i was suppose today help everybody out doing everything and there was no line about authority ahead. There was no authority, so, you know, in that sense i say it was a token position. What were some of the issues that they were dealing with . They werent dealing with any issues. The issues that were out there was women were making far less than men. Women made about 55 cents an hour compared to what men for every dollar that men were making at the time. Women held virtually none at the high level, management positions in the city. There was a high degree of sex segregation and that explained part of reason in pay and women were in womens jobs and that was mainly clerical, cleaning jobs, along that line and men were in professional jobs and women put in professional jobs they were often times given different titles. This was something i ran into. They were given different titles and paid less. A man was hired as an accountant and paid a nice salary. A woman was hired as book keeper doing exactly the same things. By this time the 1964 Civil Rights Act title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act had been passed. It wasnt just being enforced and no one was paying any attention and so i would send in reports and reports and i would lobby the mayor and other authorities and they would listen to me very carefully and sin sympathetically and nothing would happen. I had no power. What it did, however, do alert not only the women in City Government but the women in the city of houston that there was this thing called a womens advocate and they could go to her with problems. I had very few solutions for them but one of the things that started landing on my desk at the time call after call was abused women and we had no shelters, we had no rape crisis hot lines in the city. The city wasnt interested in it. I started working with other womens groups in the city that were also knowledgeable and fairly concerned and very concerned about what was going on and we put together an organization, it was called the coalition of Womens Organizations to try to get something started. The shelters for women. Information and referral for women because all how do i get a lawyer, who can i talk to about this thing . They were coming to me and i was sitting with a phone in my desk and that was about it and so i talked to another Civic Organization of women, told them about the situation and they set up a womens information or Referral Service and started around the city for referrals that they could make to women who needed help and the new organization of womens groups of coalition decided they would have a rally to talk about what they were doing and and new opportunities for women, new services that were going to be available for women and they asked me to be the keynote speaker and i was doing womens advocate and i went out and talked about the difficulties of women employees, discrimination that they were facing and i talked about the violence against women and how we needed shelters and hotlines for women. I talked about womens reproductive rights, how important that was for employment and the decisions they could make in life and i talked about the need to ratify the equal rights amendment. Well, i wasnt a week later that a group of women and men went to city council complaining that i had no business talking about these issues, that wasnt my job and and they reduced my salary to a dollar a year from 18,000. I know they loved that. They didnt really want to fire me. They wanted to tell me who they thought i was and what they thought i was with a dollar a year person, a nobody. And nobody told me, the media came to me. I was in a meeting and they said, did you know your salary has been reduced to a dollar a year. What do you think about that . [laughter] i said, well, not be working for a dollar a year but i need to go find out about what happened and when i finally met with the mayor, mayor hoffines. I said what is it, what am i doing i was the womens advocate. I thought that was my job and he said, in that sense he told me that youre just a lighting rod for them. He said you indicate what they dont want to see. Their power is is is lessoning o this business of coming to city council and complaining about what i was doing because i spoke at a rally, he said this was a setup. They were waiting all along to do Something Like this and so they had me in their sights. How long ago did you have that position . I stayed there exactly almost 2 years. Mayor hoffines didnt run again in 1977. It was right after the International Womens year and so he decided he wasnt going to run for mayor. A lot of people were giving him a hard time as well and so a new mayor was elected. He was same was jim mccahn and i spoke with him before he took office. I said, well, whats the future of the womens advocate and he said, well, id like some things youve done and he said i think we can work things out. He said, i will ask you to send me a Job Description of what youre going to do, what you will be doing and and he said, then lets get back together to talk again. Well, it wasnt but a few days later, once again the media came to speak to me and did you know the new mayor he was in office, did you know the new mayor had just fired you and i said, no, i didnt know. I will have to go find out. I went to his office and had to wait a little while. I said, why did you do that. We were talking. I had sent you a Job Description and we were going to see if we could work things out. If you were going to fire me, that was okay, its your right to do that but why didnt you tell me . He looked at me foolish, oh, im sorry, i should have, but there i was at the downtown rotary, the downtown rotary was an all male club and there arent anymore but there were then. It just seemed like a good time to do. I saw it on the evening news and they all clapped when he said that he was going to fire the womens advocate and i thought, these powerful men and i have no power whatsoever. Why do they care . I just didnt see it. But anyway, he said dont worry about it, nikki, you dont have to rush out, take your time, nobody is going to bother you. I did, i stayed for 3 months. In the meantime we set up Womens Center. We had a real headquarters, a place that was donated to us by a womens a Womens Organization that was, you know, 25 years past its time and so they let us have the building and we got it fixed up with a bunch of volunteers and that became the Womens Center headquarters. We got Prices Program go in. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we had and we were able to purchase a large building for the shelter, so we had done a lot. We were raising money and serving thousands of women each year. What is your pay on the womens rights today . I think weve done a lot and i could really feel it when i was the when i was reaching my course on women politics. Their attitudes were so different. They would they would talk about these issues. They wanted to have careers. They wanted to have the freedom of their life. They thought men should carry half of the responsibility for child care. Their expectations were real high. They were going to be disappointed because it wasnt where they thought it was, but just the fact that they thought that this was they could do. This was a big battle that had been won, and women, of course, have jobs now, we still havent made that big crash in the ceiling to president of the United States. Another year, we are working on it, but women are in management positions now. They certainly dont hold them as they men. A a lot of gubernatorial offices. Theres women in the senate so they are making their way there, its still a lot slower, they still dont have the access to money that men have. We dont have an equal rights amendment on the books, however we have a lot of federal legislation that covers a lot of that and so on whole feeling quite good, we are still fighting over a womens right to choose. I thought that would be gone a long time. I thought we would have an equal rights amendment a long time ago and still that feeling that, oh, gosh, if we dont pin this on women that they are mainly reproducers and do those jobs, that, you know, the whole world is going to come crashing down on us and theres still a lot of adjunct out there and the fact that women expect more and theyll do something about it, not everyone would but a lot of women do will do something about it. Im standing in front of the museum of the american gi where up next we speak with author brian lynn on his book elvis army. Cameras gathered here today than others to visit president eisenhower, the event, the first and only News Conference that the army has permitted its best known sergeant to give just prior to departure for the United States. The remark that an officer made to me and i was saying if you really want an interesting army, an army thats working with social change, technological change, this is the best army that you can study and he got very dismissive and he said that was a terrible army. Elvis presley on it and what kind of army is Elvis Presley and as a historian thats an interesting question. What kind of army has Elvis Presley, what kind of Society Makes Elvis Presley serve. What does the army want from him and what does elvis expect from the army and all those sorts of questions spun out and became part of the book. Well, historically, as today, the United States has always been a small professional force hopefully of lifetime soldiers and theres always been a Strong Division between officers who tended to be educated and enlisted personnel who tended to be trades people, and that was pretty good. It was described in books like from here to eternity and so forth. Where it had changed is in the 1950s with increasingly sophisticated technology, so you could no longer have lifetime private people with sixth grade education who certain societies margins. By the 1950s you need people who are capable of putting together a nike missile, computer, fixing a tank and suddenly you have 500 occupation specialties and that requires skill labor force thats very different than the previous 150 years of the United States army. Elvis was drafted and drafted in many ways the first Peacetime Army the United States has ever had. We had scription and thats very unique and so in many respects it was militarily in effective because of extremely high turnover, on the other hand, it was an enormous social experiment. It was the first peacetime attempt to bring people from all over the United States from all socioeconomic groups, education, religions and so forth, put them all together and create a sort of National Army out of that. The one thing that conscription that people forget its a contract, an individual contract that somebody enlists. Conscription is a social contract. The American Public agrees that their male children between 18 and 25 have an obligation, but they also expect a contract back from the army that they will be better people when they will come in come out and the army needed about 500 moss military occupation specialties and if you volunteered, you had a choice of becoming a mechanic, computer sign, electronics, all the very highskilled jobs, so that was one attraction to provide unskilled people with skills and i have to say that in many respects they are successful. If you look at american productivity in 50s and 60s and even 70s, youre seeing the results of that Technical Education program all over the place. The second was education, to come into the service and earn enough to go back to college and they honored that commitment too. The army had enormous education program. At one time it ran the Biggest Library system in the world. The third was character guidance and this was to take people and turn them into good citizens. Originally run by the chaplains and dealt with very simple ethics, morality, patriotism and so forth. So in all three areas if you think about technical skills, education and character, the army thought to fulfill its contract with the American Public and because of this, the army was very determined and very concerned about attracting good people that it could then make into good soldiers. I didnt expect that it would stay, part was to convince middleclass American Parents that they should send their sons into the army and they shouldnt fight it, you know, they shouldnt be calling up all of the time to make sure that johnny was well fed and johnny was being abused by a sergeant. This was going to be a good experience. Public image of elvis and the public image of the military are intertwined and one of the things the book talks about how important Public Relations were for the army and how they tried to sell the army to american teenagers and to American Parents. Its interesting if you look at Elvis Presleys film career, for example, right before he goes in, he finishes king criole and before that jailhouse rock. If you look at typical teenage rebel, black leather jacket, criminal and so forth and comes out and almost immediate limax gi blues, funloving patriotic american boy and this last scene is him saluting the American Flag or standing in front of giant American Flag saluting his comrades and this transformed elvis. I mean, it turned him from every parents night mare to all american kid. The army, if you read the background materials, they are interested in this. In a way transformation of elvis and i showed the movie to my students because it not only how elvis changed but its important to 1950s culture, all american boy but also because how it reflects how the Service Wanted to be seen by the American Public and and its a very positive image. You know, the thing about having somebody like elvis in the army, it becomes a lot more real. People sort of forget that when president eisenhower in the 50s served his son was in uniform. He didnt have to wear his patriotism in his sleeve and talking about what a patriot he was or how much smarter he was than the generals or all this other stuff and people did, sense of confidence about the service and standing and i think it was very good, realistic about it. They found it they both proudly served and they like telling stories about how dumb it was and i really enjoy talking to people from the 50s because they have a practical realistic view of military service and they are comfortable with their patriotism. They did their part and they dont feel a need to wave the flag all of the time. Maybe we need Something Like that to bring society together again. Im standing on the campus of texas a m university where up next we interview professor on her book demagogue for president. From ocean to ocean, hear these words, you will never be ignored again. [cheers and applause] your voices, your hopes and your dreams will define our american destiny and your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. Together we will make america strong again. We will make america wealthy again. We will make america proud again. We will make america safe again and, yes, together we will make America Great again. Thank you, god bless you and god bless america. [cheers and applause] thank you. A come going demagogue is a leader of a people and ways of understanding how a person can possibly lead. If you look at oxford dictionary it offers two definitions of demagogue, first is a leader of the people who champions the cause of the people against the corrupt other parts of the state. The second definition is a misleader of the people who uses rhetoric and polarizing propaganda for their own gain. Almost immediately when donald trump started running for office in june of 2015, people start today call him a demagogue, Lindsey Graham was the noteworthy person who did. He was also running for president at the time and people really took that seriously as an accusation from Lindsey Graham and i was paying to because i was trying to write an essay and when we accuse people of demagogue and for donald trump the way he ran as a demagogue, at least how i argue it in any book and that he ran both as a dangerous demagogue, someone that was using rhetoric and propaganda for his own gain and also as a heroic demagogue depending on how you understood the campaign whether you were a trump supporter or not, you really saw him very differently. So there are 6 rhetorical strategies that donald trump used consistently throughout his campaign. He used 3 rhetorical strategies to polarize, to demonize and push himself and his good people away and he used 3 rhetorical strategies to bring him closer to his followers. The dangerous or malicious demagoguery that he used, one, treating people as objects. Another one is threats of force or intimidation and the third is insulting opposition by name calling. Those are delegitimizing strategies. They are also very consistent with war rhetoric, so things that president s or other political leaders have done historically or throughout the world to combat or destroy other group of people, very aggressive strategies and delegitimizing strategies in that make it appear as though your opposition isnt qualified or doesnt have standing to actually serve in the role of government. The three strategies that he used to bring himself closer to his audience, first one is ad popolum, he praises his people as wisest americans, he uses he used im not saying, im just saying. He used to ironically say two things at once which allows him to connect with his audience in a way they think they know the real trump and they know what he really thinks and is also sort of funny when he says it. Obama is the founder of isis. [cheers and applause] the founder. And these Dishonest Media people, most dishonest people, they said, oh, did he mean that, didnt he mean that, so i said, the founder of isis, obviously im being sarcastic, then, then but not that sarcastic to be honest with you. And then he used american exceptionalism. So trump always claimed that he was the greatest version of american exceptionalism. That he was such a winner that he would win for america and that his people had been prevented from winning, but if trump became president that he would win for them and it would be easy for them to do. It certainly allowed him to attract attention. He would say things that were outrageous and outraged attracts attention from the media as well as supporters. It allowed him to control the national dialing and allowed him to push out other viable campaigns during the republican primary. Effectively it allowed him to set the nations agenda. He started conversations about policies that he was interested in in implementing that we hadnt talked about prior to him and basically he controlled the National Dialogue for the entirety of the president ial campaign. People tried to push back against that, people tried to criticize him, it didnt seem to matter. The more that people criticized him the more that that play intoed the narrative that he had created, that the establishment was corrupt or that the media was corrupt, that they were as he started to call them enemies of the people. And so you really see a nation struggling with how to control this uncontrollable leader and that really is the hallmark of a dangerous demagogue, someone who we should never give political power, someone who cant be uncontrolled and trump convinced americans that those discourse, those norms of political discourse were themselves fraudulent, that they were corrupt and so he was able to convince his supporters that by breaking those norms he was actually more democratic than the norms were themselves. This is so true and this is is whats been happening, never underestimate the people, never. [cheers and applause] i dont think itll ever happen again. [cheers and applause] and i want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. Its fake. Phoney, fake. [cheers and applause] a few days ago i called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people. [cheers and applause] we have examples of previous demagogues using the strategies but what we dont have someone using them as successfully as donald trump has done, to be able to actually gain as much power as he has gained, so one of the really interesting things about what happened in 2016 election is that, you know, the nation was in crisis already. We had historic levels of distrust for institutions, for established leaders, for the media, we had historic levels of polarization, people reported thinking not only that people of opposite party were, you know, thought differently than them but they were enemies of the state and that their policies were going to destroy america on both sides and we also had historic levels of frustration, people were very angry and frustrated that things werent Getting Better, and frustration is a very energizing emotion and so what donald trump did, you know, strategically and to his credit, i suppose, is that he took advantage of the preexisting distrust and polarization and frustration and he used strategies that were designed to increase all of those things to his advantage. And so it was very asymmetrical, he would just attack them and so that was so unusual that reporters didnt know how to respond. You know, in a typical, they call it image event. In a typical interview situation a reporter asked questions, a politician gives answers, they might try to sidestep the question, they might try to change or refrain or they might avoid, but you dont typically have and i cant think of too many examples in American History that you have a politician attack you for asking the question, youre a dummy, your facts are wrong, sounds good what youre saying but its not true. You would want people to believe that. That really undermined the legitimacy of the whole process and it really rallied his based. Trump supporters loved him when he attacked. So donald Trump Supporters absolutely believe that he is their champion and in some ways he might be, right, he might be implementing policies that they think are effective or that they think are good. The appeals that he used to convince them that he was their champion or themselves antidemocratic. So what i mean by that is that he used rhetoric for compliance gaming, he used gaming not to persuade but as a kind of force, so people might today think that donald trump is on their side, but because they think that, after he has forced them to think that, hes denied them consent. So in effect, the reor the al strategies themselves deny the consent of the governed which to me is the most antidemocratic thing that you could have, so they might hold a position today that they didnt hold before donald trump or they might, you know, find that trump said something that they supported before and now they are happy that someone says it, but its a compliance gaining strategy. Its not democracy. Trump likes to say that hes a truth teller, for example. He likes to say that split call Political Correctness is a terrible thing and he does that to convince you that he tells the truth, but if you factcheck his statements he has told more untruths than anyone in the history of american politics. And so trump gets around that by saying, well, the factchecker are just liers, that they are corrupt, they are part of this failed system and so he has eroded the concept of truth. So if theres no truth except for what donald trump says is true, then how do you know that what hes saying about the economy is true or what hes saying about the danger of immigrants is true or what hes saying about anything that he says is true and so its a very ingenuous strategy in that he has completely eroded truth and made it what he says it is which is a view of truth, hes the alpha and omega of all knowledge but it denies people the ability to decide for themselves because they dont have good information and so what i hope that people will understand when reading the books, these are oral strategies, things studying since ancient greece. Donald trump did not invent this stuff. Its stuff that we have seen before and combated throughout World History but also something that we should be alerted to and that we should understand because if you want to control the uncontrollable leader you have to understand what the tricks are. The cspans city tour is on the road in bryan, college station. Up next we speak with james olson on his book to catch a spy. Ic one of the biggest miscongress depositions that people have about spying is that its over that with the end of the cold war we no longer needed to worry about good strong counterintelligence that our main adversary russia and thats a huge mistake because spying is harder than it ever was than the cold war. One of the reasons that i wrote to catch a spy is i was disturbed by how long it took us to catch of the spies and i believe that u. S. Counterintelligence was at fault in large part for not doing a better job. We simply were not doing a good job of protecting our secrets from traders from within and u. S. Counterintelligence has to be up to the challenge. Right now i question whether or not it is. I think we need to be doing more. The sad reality is that too Many Americans can be bought and over the years weve seen that the primary motivation of these americans who have sold out our country by cooperating with Foreign Intelligence Services did it for money. Sometimes a lot of money. There are some sometimes other motivations that enter in but usually secondary. Could be revenge, it could be sex, it could be coercion, but the overwhelming number of spies who have betrayed the United States have done it for money. We have so Many Americans recently who have been convicted of spying for china, jerry lee, kevin malowrey, candice clayburn. I knew people at the cia including some people i considered friends who betrayed us to russia, most notorious was rick, he gave the russians everything he knew about cia operations in moscow including the identities of many greatest russians who were secretly leaking for us. He in, effect, was signing their death sentence because so many of them were executed or sentenced to life in prison. I cant imagine a lower form of human life that someone would do Something Like that. So rick was not only a trader to our country and to the cia, to all of us who considered him a colleague and friend, also a murder. One of the best examples or the worst examples we have of american who worked for cubans was ana montes. Ana montes the Senior Analyst for cuba at the Defense Intelligence agency. Ana montes passed everything to the cubans, she had a lot of access not only Defense Intelligence agency but the Intelligence Community at large including places like the cia and the fbi. She had some access to all of that and she was giving it to the cubans as quickly as she could get it. Ana montes had access to policy information. U. S. Policy related to cuba and she passed that as well. Just incredible by damaging to our countrys interest. She was an ideological spy. She believed that the United States treatment of cuba was harmful, was unfair, unjustified, she wanted to be a champion of the cuban people, she wanted to do what she could to correct the oppression of our own country as she saw it. She essentially volunteered her services to cuba, i want to help the cuban people she said that was her motivation. She took no money. She was, in fact, pretty outspoken in her procuban views which makes me wonder how she could have stayed working in place as as long as she did. She worked for many years for cubans without getting caught. After the spies were caught i think each agency did a solesearching damage assessment. How could it have happened, how could he have been blind to the fact that we were losing our own secrets . Some of the measures that needed to be corrected were addressed, things like how do we screen incoming employees, dont we need to do a better job of weeding out those that are unsuitable of questionable loyalty and reliability. Second, much better job of supervising them on the job, being alert to changes in behaviors or attitudes or things in their personal lives or professional lives that just seemed to be a departure and picking up signals and another major flaw in counterintelligence was the individual responsibility of employees. Employees, the colleagues, the people sitting next to you working in the same office probably know you better than anybody else, maybe even your supervisors and we rely on them to be kind of a an alarm system. If they see a colleague who is showing behaviors, they need to know who to speak and what kind of things to look for and to go forward. That was the problem, theres a loyalty among colleagues which prevents them from Going Forward even when they see questionable conducts. You dont want to rat out a friend, thats countercultural particularly in closeknit groups like the community. They didnt want to make problems for a colleague or friend, they didnt want to possibly harm their career, so they just stayed silence, too often they said its not my job, its not my job to report questionable behavior by people working around me, so they were silenced and as a result of people continue in place indefinitely and caused many, many years more damage than they should have. I am as guilty as anybody else of not coming forward when i saw behaviors that raised eyebrows. I knew rick was drinking too much. I knew he was a mediocre employee. I knew that he was living a lifestyle, driving a car, was wearing clothes that was different from his career. I blame myself. I should have gone to security. Late 1970s and it may be nothing but i observed some things about rick aimes that you should look into it quietly, discreetly, maybe anonymously, you dont need to use my name and if theres nothing there, great, if they had done that, they would have seen behaviors that might have been able to stop his espionage before it started. The hardest to catch are the ones flying turned radar and really smart spy will not show unexplained income, changes in spending, changes in behavior, will just continue on the job as before. Those kind of people are really, really difficult to catch and if they are ideological spies, they are such true believes as ana montes was that they tend to be the cleverest of spies. They are doing it for something that they believe in. They are just not doing it for money, they are not doing for personal gain, they are doing it because they believe in it and they tend to be really committed to their cause, they follow the instructions of their foreign intelligence handlers more closely. I like spies that are freely, reckless, loud mouth and attracting attention to themselves, those are the ones that, yeah, we can catch them but the ones that are quietly going about their business in the meantime stealing secrets from us are the toughest that we have to crack in counterintelligence. I think counterintelligence is Getting Better in the sense that its more Community Wide now. I think our organizations are cooperating better. I think we are sharing information better than we did in the past, perhaps. I think that there is a growing awareness particularly with regard to china that this is serious and we all need to work together. We all need to raise our guard, we need to be much more attentive to whats going on out there. We need to be more offensive, more aggressive, going out and recruiting chinese intelligence officers, getting in their databases, just taking it to them, running more double agent operations would be a good step in the right direction because i think that they would help us in uncovering a lot of spies. The cspan cities tour in college station. I first learned about hello girls strolling through the internet, looking for women from world war i and i came across a homemade website and somebody put up a picture of their mother. My mom did really important thing and nobody knows about it and so i just got obsessed almost with finding them and then it turned out that they were there and they were there in archival footage of the National Archives and they were there in the records to have army but people had just denied what they had done, the Hidden Figures of 1917 and so it was just a great honor to resurrect them so to speak. The army has different divisions, of course, and one of the divisions is something called the signal course, still is, the part of the army thats responsible for communications. In 1917 the u. S. Declared in world war i and in 1918 when they were gearing to participate, what separated world war i from all wars that proceeded the development of advanced technology and including Mass Communications meaning the telephone and so what that meant that in every french in world trench in world war i they were sent so they can communicate to generals and colonels behind him. The crazy thing about telephones they had no dials, if only way you got telephone to work was by sending signal to the operator and it was the operator who would answer the phone and say number, please. The army decided early on, he tried to make a phone call when he got to france. He could hardly get the dang thing to go through and american telephones, american Telephone Technology was the best in the world and yet he couldnt get it to function and part of the reason, big part was that you had to patch to an operator, well, first of all, the operators in france spoke french and so youre trying to american boys and theres no communication that really works and so they also found that when american men were trained to do this job, it took them on average 60 seconds to connect a call. When they got the women there they found that it took the women on average 10 seconds to connect a call so in wartime the difference between 60 seconds and 10 seconds is your life and so it was interesting in that respect that he recruited women and said i want women over here. I want them in uniform and i want them now. They recruited women from all over the United States, they took white women, you know, there was no specific segregation bar that was written into the regulation but it was the case that they were all white. One difference is that they used immigrant women which previously at t had not done because they wanted women that spoke with a typical american accent, they didnt want any, you know, flavor so to speak of an immigrant voice coming through but they realized they needed women who were bilingual and so they used french canadians, they used french american immigrants and they ended up recruiting a bit over 300 and 233 went to france. There were more waiting on the docks in hoboko, new jersey when the war was declared over. The women arrived in france in march of 1918. Now the vast majority of American Military not yet there because hes been laying the ground work for almost a year. He did not want to trickle american soldiers in british and french lines. He wanted the American Army to come out in massive presence to show what america could do which sounds kind of vain but also strategic and psychological thing. You want the enemy to know that youre here and in a sense get scared. What happens when the women first get there, they arrive in the front lines, okay, we want to start today and the officers, men are rolling their eyes saying, you can clear your jets, they didnt have jets, cool hold off, you can start tomorrow. Okay, we will start tomorrow. Well, the minute they started the men saw the difference and and those who could see it up front were profoundly grateful. The vast majority of the women were well behind the lines. They were in safer parts of france, but there was a group of women who were near the front lines at all times and, in fact, the interesting thing when they got closer to front lines, the army was less willing to use men in some of the shifts. The men served in overnight shifts in safer parts of france because traffic was slower but when you got close to front lines they we wanted to make sure that they had the very best operator at all times and so they served in two 12hour shifts and throughout the war day in and day out until the war was over. Sometimes bombardments, the artillery was close enough that they could feel the concussions, machinery would shake, shift boards would be shaking from the bombs. They were trained on how to use revolvers. As i said, they had gas masks on the back of their chairs so that if they got gassed they could readily put them on. They were trained in using the gas masks and putting them on quickly. At one point their berricks got turned to the ground. But the women were dauntless. The men at one point said you have to get out. The germane fire is too close and the women said we will leave as soon as you do, so they were they felt that they had to share every hazard and were passionate, you know, passionate about helping their country, passionate about doing a good job, passionate about, you know, being a good soldier. The army said if communication goes down for even an hour the whole army will collapse. So these women had the tremendous powerful responsibility to make sure that communications were going 24 7 until the war was over. The american women in the end ended connecting 26 million calls in about 6 months and actually in the report by general george had signal to congress in 1918 after the war was over, he said the women made a tremendous difference in the prosecution of the war. Ironically the biggest challenge they faced is when they got back because they had been told they were soldiers, that they were doing as much as any man to help win the war, although they always deferred to the greater sacrificed being made by soldiers literally under fire, going over the top as they said in world war i, but when they got back home, the army forgot about them. In fact, didnt just forget about them, the army told them no, you werent real soldiers. They were denied discharge papers, kicked out of veterans organizations because they couldnt produce the documentation that other soldiers could. They were denied hospitalization, some had permanent disabilities from, you know, illnesses that they had contracted in france near the front lines. Two had died in france and the army denied them the war Risk Insurance that families got to, you know, help with their bereavement and the biggest challenge was when they came back and in some ways hypothetically it shouldnt matter, you know, what does credit mean . What if we dont get credit for the good things we do, but i think that for some of these women they were horrified first of all that women soldiers who needed help after the war were denied, the hospitalization was a huge deal for disabled soldiers and the stick in your feeling, she was in 90s when she got medal of world war i. I love my country and i want my country be worth loving and idea that she had given her promise and stood up to it and fulfilled her promise and her country needed to do the same and they wrote to countries in the 1930s, they wrote to fdr, john f. Kennedy and Richard Nixon and they wrote to jimmy carter and in the end under jimmy carter the women were finally recognized. Thats moving in itself. The idea that you dont know how its going to turn out and you dont have 4 million men beside you at this point fighting your war. Its just down to 30 women fighting for justice and ultimately they triumphed. This is what it was. It was absurd. The women had done everything and fully documented. They had sworn the army oath and in the end i think it was it really was. They really for unknowable reasons did not want to acknowledge the women. That changed, though, thats the inspiring thing about American History that things do change over time. People push and they change. From the series dropped down at the o a
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