We travel to bryanCollege Station texas. Coming up will feature the citys local authors including Nikki Van Hightower. Then 12 minutes would visit the museum of the american g. I. And about the role Elvis Presley played in the Cold War Army in the 1950s. Later in about 45 minutes the story of the the hello girls of world war i. We begin our special feature with the mayors of bryan and College Station. One of the wonderful thinks about bryanCollege Station come get to cities, one community. The universe you start in the 1870s, the city of brian start a couple years before. Really right after the civil war. There was a railroad from houston that was marching its way here come stop before the civil war and then after the civil war it continued on and brian for the first years after the civil war struggled to get it selfcreated but was able to do that. In 1876 the University Got its first six students and the city of brian was really getting going and airy you see around us today are still some of the first buildings that were being built at that time. 25 years ago this ferry was a ghost town. Because of the growth of the state and the growth of texas a m its critical for manual within the city of bryan. Where only seven football field away from the main campus and the line between the two cities is blurred not just and how we Work Together but its geographically blurred. Texas a m found in 1876 as part of the moral act, one of the landgrant institutions. And over time it grew but it was five miles from the nearest town, brian. Nobody knew about a town called College Station except for the fact in 1938 when some alien and professors and faculty and staff got together and said lets create our own city. So they were able to charter the city and were growing, but were going somewhere between three to five and sometimes look at more percent ever sillier which makes us the 16th 16th Fastest Growing community in the country. We have the greatest disparity of any city in the United States regarding the number of students to the number of nonstudent population. We had just under 160,000 students who are on this campus 60,000. By 2025 there will be 25,000 students just in the college of engineering which would make it one of if not the Largest College of engineering in the country. Agriculture, just as its name implies, that first letter, thats what it was all about. And while yes, bryan is a different town. You can step from one can into the next. Theres a tradeoff year. Its a compatible tradeoff because we both realize it something to bring to the table that for the good of all of our citizens. The histories of the city of bryan and texas a m have been interwoven together from the very beginning and we continue to flourish into the future with our history being intertwined. The cspan cities tour is on the road in bryanCollege Station texas. Up next Nikki Van Hightower on her book that woman. There are almost many people in city council as it were last week and the opinions which is as strong. I will take it as a discovery act against all the women of the city of houston and i will personally do all in my power to organize my own intellect more sensitive and what people. Those women who won all the rights did not need any spokesman for the bigger making themselves heard loud and clear about abortions and homosexuality. Shouting about an flagwaving makes tremendous publicity. But remember, the church and motherhood made this country. What i think . Want . It gives us a chance to do what youre supposed to do, you know, freedom, equal rights. She doesnt represent me. Why not . Well, i dont believe the things that she espouses. You think youre doing just fine without them . Im not saying we dont need she just doesnt represent me. No one knows how this all come out but one thing can be said right now. No one in City Government can remember any single issue that is ever caused so much public response. Whats it like being a feminist in texas in the 1970s . Well, i suppose if you kept her mouth shut it wouldnt be bad. If you met with other 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 and he was elected in 1974. And in 1976 he was elected again. He had 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 there were making decisions about the lives of women. I got the job in 1976, yeah, 76. I was hired by the mayor, and i had a Job Description that was very general, very big. I was supposed to everybody out doing everything, and there was no line about authority i had. There was no authority. In that sense i i say it was a token position. What were some of the issues they would even with . They were not 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 of the highlevel management positions in the city. There was a high degree of sex segregation and that explain part of reason in pay and women were in womens jobs and i was mainly clerical, cleaning jobs, along that line, and men were in all the others, men were in the professional jobs. Also women were put into professional jobs are oftentimes given different titles. To something i ran into. Every given different titles and paid less. So a a man was hired as an acct and paid and i scoured. A woman was hired as a bookkeeper doing exactly the same thing. By this time the 1964 Civil Rights Act title vii of the 1964 civil rights i four Civil Rights Act had been passed. It just wasnt the worst and no one was paying any attention. And so i would send in reports and reports, and i would lobby the mayor and lobby of the authorities, and david listen to be very carefully and sympathetically, and then nothing would happen. Theres really nothing i could do. I have no power, no real power. It was just what it did, however, do was alert not only the women in City Government at the women in the city of houston that there was this thing called a womans 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. We had no shelters. We had no rape crisis hotlines in the city. The city wasnt going to do. It were not interested in it. So i started working with other womens groups in the city that were also knowledgeable and fairly concerned, 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. Shelters for women, information and referral for women. Because all these calls, like where do i go for this . How do i get a lawyer . Who cannot talk to about something . They were come to me and i was sitting there with the phone all my desk and that was about it. 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 scrounging around the city for referrals that they could make to women who needed help. But the new organization of womens groups, the coalition decided they would have a rally to talk about what they were doing 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. So i went out and talked about the difficulties of women employees, the discrimination that they were facing. I talked about the violence against women and how we needed shelters and hotlines for women. I talked about womens reproductive rights and 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, it wasnt a week later that a 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 they reduce my salary to a dollar a year from 18,000. I know they loved that. I mean, they didnt really want to fire me. They wanted to tell me who they thought i was, and what they thought i was was a dollar a year person, a nobody. Nobody told me, the media came to me. I was in a meeting of he walked in and they said did you know your salary has been reduced to a dollar a year . What you think about that . I said, well, im not going to be working for a dollar a year but but i need to go find out about what happened. Thats when i i finally met wih the mayor, and i said what is it . What am i doing that makes i thought that was my job. And he said, in that sense he told me youre just a lightning rod for the. He said you indicate what they dont want to see. Their power is lessening. This business of coming to city council and complaining about what i was doing, because i spoke at a rally, he says this was a setup. They were waiting all along to do Something Like this, and so they had me in their sites. How long did you have that position . I stayed there almost exactly two years. A little over two years because the mayor 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 a hard time as well. So a new mayor was elected. His name was jim macron. I spoke to him right after he was elected but before he took office and i said, well, whats the future of the womens advocate . He said, well, he said, id like something should 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. He said, then lets get back together and talk again. Well, it wasnt but a few days later, once again the media came to speak to me and said did you know that the new mayor, did you know the new mayor had just fired you . And i said no, i didnt know. Ill have to go find out. So i went to his office, 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 youre going to fire me, that was okay, its your right to do that, but why didnt you tell me . He looked at me foolish picky saturday said oh, im sorry, he said. I should have. But there i was at the downtown rotary. Well, the downtown rotary was an allmale club, and the art anymore but they were then. He said, it just seemed like a good time to do it. I saw on the evening news and all clapped and he said he would fire the womens advocate. I thought, these powerful men and i have no power whatsoever. Why do they care . I just didnt see it. But anyway, he said, but dont worry about it, you dont have to rush out. Take your time. Nobody is going to bother you. I did. I stayed for three months. I looked for a new position. In the meantime we had set up the womens center. We had a real headquarters, a place, a lovely place that was donated to us by the Womens Organization that was 50 years past its time because women didnt have tea and do the kinds of things they have done in the past. So to let us have the building, and we got it fixed up with a bunch of volunteers and that became the Womens Centers headquarters. We got the Rape Crisis Program going 24 hours a day seven days a week. 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 state of womens rights today . I think we done a lot. I could really feel it when i was reaching teaching my course of women in politics. Their attitudes were so different. 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 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 what they could do. This was a big battle that had been one. And women, of course, have jobs now. We still havent made that big crash in the ceiling to present at the United States. Another year. Were working on it. But women are in management positions now. They certainly dont hold them as they do with men. They are elected just about all legislative offices, a lot of gubernatorial offices. There is women in the senate, so they are making their way there. Its still a lot slower. They still dont have access to money that men have. We dont have an equal rights amendment on the books. However, we have a lot of good federal legislation that covers a lot of that, and so on the whole i am feeling quite good. We are still fighting over a womens right to choose. I thought that would be gone a long time ago. At that would have an equal rights amendment a long time ago. And still there still that feeling that, oh, gosh, if we dont pin this on women, that they are mainly reproduces and do those jobs that the whole world is going to come crashing down on us, and so theres still a lot of the junk out there but the fact that women expect more and he will do something about it, not everyone would, that a lot of women will do something about it. I i scan it for the museum of the american g. I. Were up next we speak with author brian linn on his book elviss army. More candidates gathered here today then visit president eisenhower westerly. The event, the first and only News Conference that the army has permitted to its bestknown sergeant, Elvis Presley. Just prior to his departure for the United States. I tell the story of elviss army because the remark and ultimately. I was saying if you will do what an interesting and army eventually working change come social trend, military change, technological change this is the best army you can study. He got very dismissive and he said that was a terrible army. It had Elvis Presley in a bit what kind of army is Elvis Presley . As a historic i thought thats a really interesting what kind of army does have Elvis Presley . What kind of Society MakesElvis Presley serve . And what is the army that elvis enters . What does he army want from him . What this is elvis expect frome army . All those questions then spun out and became part of the book. Historically, asked today, the United States has always been a small professional force, hopefully of lifetime soldiers. Theres always been a Strong Division between officers who tended to be educated, and the enlisted personnel who tended to be tradespeople. Soldiering being a trade. That was pretty good. It was described in the play from here to eternity, so forth. Were it changed is in the 1950s with increasingly sophisticated technology. So you could no longer have lifetime privates people with a six great education who, served and societies margins. By the 1950s people that are capable of putting together a missile or a computer affixing a tank, and suddenly you have 500 military occupation specialties, and that requires a Skilled Labor force thats very, very different from the previous 150 years of the United States army. When alice was drafted he was drafted in many ways the first Peacetime Army the United States had ever had. We had conscription made a year before world war ii but elvis was in the first draft the army and thats a very unique and very distinct military force that the nation has never had before or since. In many respects it was militarily ineffective because 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 sorts of socioeconomic groups, from all sorts of education, religions and so forth, with them all together and create a sort of National Army out of that. One thing that conscription people forget is its a contract. Theres an individual contract nowadays so anyone can do this but conscription is a social contract. The American Public agrees that at that time their male children between 1825 have an obligation, but they also expect the contract back from the army that they will be better people when they will come out. So the army needed as i said about 500 m. O. S. S, military occupation specialties. If you volunteered you had a choice, assuming you get past the Qualification Test of becoming a mechanic or Computer Science or electronics, all these very high skilled jobs. That was one attraction, to provide unskilled people with skills. I have to say in many respects it was their successful. If you look at american productivity in the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s you were seeing the results of the Technical Education program all over the place. The second thing was education, to come into the service and earn enough to go back to college. They honored that commitment. The army had an enormous education program. At one time it went the Biggest Library system in the world. The third was what was called character guidance, and this was to take people and turn them into good citizens. Originally run by the chaplains and it dealt with very simple ethics, morality, patriotism and so forth. So in all three areas, if you think about tactical skills, education, and character, the army sought to fill its contract with the American Public. Because of this, the army was very determined and very concerned about attracting good people, that it could then make into good soldiers. It didnt really expect most would stay. It hoped they would but part of the reason was to convince middleclass American Parents that they should send their sons into the army and they shouldnt fight it. They shouldnt be calling up all the time to make sure that johnny was well fed or johnny was being abuse by his sergeant. This is going to be a good experience. Public image of elvis and the public image of the military are intertwined. One of the things the book talks about is 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 Presley film career, for example, that by before he goes and he finishes king creole. By before that he had done jailhouse rock. If you look at those, the arch typical teenage rebel, a black leather jacket, the switchblade, the criminal activity and so forth. It comes at an almost anybody makes g. I. Blues in which he portrays the cleancut wholesome fun loving patriotic american boy. This last seen of g. I. Blues is him saluting the American Flag standing in front of a giant American Flag saluting his comrades. This transfer of elvis here it turned him from every parents nightmare to the allamerican kid. But also the army was very come if you can read the background material, they were very interested in this. They read the scripts. They made a number of suggestions and so in a way the army was part of this transmission of elvis. I showed that movie to my students because it typifies that will help elvis changed which is important in the 1950s culture from a juvenile delinquent to the allamerican boy, but also because have it reflects how the Service Wanted to be seen by the American Public. And its a very positive image. The thing thats interesting about having someone like elvis in the army, it becomes a lot more real. People sort of forget that when president eisenhower during the 50s served, his son was always in uniform. He didnt have to wear his patriotism on his sleeve. He didnt have to go run talk about what a patriarch he was or how much money was and the generals or all this other stuff. The people in the 50s did. They had a sense of confidence about the service and stand in the service that was very good. They were very realistic about it. They found it they both proudly served and the like telling stories about how dumb it was. I really enjoyed talking to people from the 50s because they have such a practical realistic view of military service, and theyre comfortable with her patriotism. They did their part and you dont feel a need to wave the flag all the time. Maybe we need Something Like that to so to bring society together again. Standing on the campus of texas a m university where updates we interview professor Jennifer Mercieca on her book demagogue for president. From ocean to ocean, hear these words. You will never be ignored again. [applause] your voice, your hopes and your dreams will decide 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. Thank you. A demagogue is a leader of the people, and there are different ways of understanding how a person could possibly lead. So if you look at the Oxford English dictionary it offers two definitions for demagogue. The first is a leader of the people who champions the cost of the people against the corrupt of the part of the state. The second definition is unmiss leader 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 to call in a demagogue. Lindsey graham i think was the most 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. It was something i paid attention to because i was trying to write an essay on demagogues and demagoguery and what that means. Also as a heroic demagogue. Depending on how you understood his campaign, whether you were a trump supporter or or not, you really saw him very differently. So there are six rhetorical strategies that donald trump used consistently throughout his campaign. He used three rhetorical strategies to polarize, to demonize and push himself and his good people away, and he usedded three rhetorical strategies to brung himself closer bring himself closer to his followers. The dangerous or malicious demagoguery that he used, one was reunification which is treating people as objects. Another one is threats of force or intimidation. And the third is ad hominem which is insulting your opposition by namecalling. Those are delegitimizing strategies, theyre also very consistent with war rhetoric. So things that president s or other political leaders have done historically throughout history and around the world to prepare a nation to combat or destroy another group of people. So very aggressive strategies and delegitimizing strategies in that they make it appear as though your opposition isnt qualified or is, 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 populum if, trump always praises his people as the best, the wisest, the good americans. He used im not saying, im just saying, reellipses, and he used that to, ironically, say two things at once which allows him to connect with his audience in a way that they they they know the real trump and they know what he thinks. And its also sort of funny when he says it. So i said obama is the founder of isis. [cheers and applause] the founder. And these Dishonest Media people theyre the most dishonest people they said, oh, did he mean that, didnt he mean that . So i said the founder of isis. Obviously, being star cast ig. Sarcastic. Then, then but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you. And then he used american exceptionalism. So trump always claims that he was the apotheosis, 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 , he would win for them, and it would be easy for him to do. It certainly allowed him to attract attention. He would saw say things that were outrageous and outrage attracts attention from the media as well as from supporters. It allowed him to control National Dialogue. It 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 implementing that we with hadnt talked about that we hadnt talked about prior to hum. 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 played into 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 to is someone who cant be controlled, whos unaccountable to the rule of law, to the norms of political discourse. 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. And this is so true, and this is whats been happening, never underestimate the people. Never. [cheers and applause] i dont think itll ever happen again. [applause] and i want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. Falk, phony, fake fake, phony, fake. [cheers and applause] a few days ago i called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are. If they are the enemy of the people. [applause] we have examples of previous demagogues using these strategies, but what we dont have is someone using them as successfully as donald trump has done. To be able to actually deem as much gain as much power as he has gained. So one of the really interesting things about what happened in the 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 that 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 really 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 are 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. Whenever reporters tried to fact check him to say, you know, this isnt true, what youre saying, he would just attack them. And so that was so unusual that reporters didnt know how to respond. You know . In a typical, you know, they call it an image event, right . In a typical interview situation, a Reporter Asks questions, a politician gives answers. They might try to sidestep the question, they might try to change or reframe, they might avoid. But you dont typically have and i cant think of too many examples in American History where with you have had a politician just attack you for asking the question and say youre a dummy. [laughter] your facts are wrong, you know . It sounds good, what youre saying, but its not true. You would like, you know, for people to believe that. And so that really undermined the legitimacy of the whole, you know, process of interviewing a person, and it really rallied his base. Trump supporters loved it 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 are themselves antidemocratic. So what i mean by that is that he used rhetoric for compliance gaining. He used rhetoric not to persuade, but as a kind of force. And 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 rhetorical strategies themselves deny the consent of the governed which, to me, is the most antidemocratic thing that you can have. So they might hold a position today that they didnt hold before donald trump, or they might, you know, find that trump says some things that they supported said some things that they supported before and now theyre happy that someone said it. But its a compliancegaining strategy. Its not democracy. Trump likes to say that hes a truthteller, for example, and he likes to say that Political Correctness is a terrible thing. And he does that to convince you that he tells the truth. But if you fact check his statements, he has told more untruths than anyone in the history of american politics. [laughter] and so trump gets around that by saying, well, the Fact Checkers are just liars, that theyre corrupt, theyre 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 ingenious strategy in that he has completely roded truth and eroded truth and made it what he says it is which is hes the alta and omega of all alpha and to mega of all knowledge. But it denies people to decide for themselves because they dont have good information. And so what i hope that people will understand when they read the book is that these are old strategies, you know . These are things that weve been studying since ancient greece and ancient rome. Donald trump did not invent this stuff. Its stuff that weve seen before and that weve combated throughout world history. But its the 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 cspan cities tour is on the road in bryanCollege Station, texas, featuring its local authors. Up next we speak with james olson on his book, to catch a spy. I think one of the biggest misconceptions 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, had disappeared so we could relax, we could shift resources and priorities somewhere else. Thats a huge mistake because probably the level of spying against the United States now is higher than it ever was even during the cold war. One of the reasons that i wrote to catch a spy is that i was very disturbed by how long it took us to catch some of these 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 traitors 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 sometimes other motivations that enter in, but its 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, for example, kevin mallory, glenn duffy shriver, Candace Claire born. There just have been too Many Americans who who have succumbeo the approaches by chinese intelligence. I knew people at the cia including some people i considered friends who betrayed us to russia. The most notorious was rick gains. I had known rick for many years. He worked for me twice at the cia. He gave the russians everything he knew about cia operations in moscow including the identities of many courageous russians who were secretly working for us. So 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 than someone whod do Something Like that. So rick was not only a traitor to our country and to the cia, to all of us who considered him a colleague and friend, also a murderer. One of the best examples or the worst examples of an american who worked for the cubans was anna montez. Anna montez was the Senior Analyst for cuba at the Defense Intelligence agency. Anna montez passed to the cubans everything she could get her hands on relating to u. S. Intelligence activities against cuba. She had a lot of access not only from the Defense Intelligence agency, but from 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. Anna montez also had somes access to policy information, u. S. Government policy related to cuba, and she passed that as well. Just incredibly damaging to our countrys interests. 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 impression of our own country as he saw it. As she saw it. She essentially volunteered her services in cuba. I want to help the cuban people, she said, and 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 long as she did. She worked for many, many years for cuba without getting caught. After these spies were caught, i think each agency did a soulsearching damage assessment. First of all, how did it happen, how could we 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 e and reliability. Secondly, we discovered we needed to do a 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 from what wed seen before and picking up those signals and then interveeping when intervening when we do see them. Another major flaw in our 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 and we rely on them to be kind of an alarm system. If they see a colleague who is showing anomalous behaviors for whatever reason, they need to know to whom to speak and what kind of things to be looking for and to go forward. And that was the problem. Theres a loyalty among colleagues which prevents them from Going Forward even when they see questionable conduct. You dont want to rat out a friend. Thats count of countercultural particularly in close knit groups like the Intelligence Community. A lot of things were discovered after the fact that people saw but they didnt say anything because they didnt want to make problems for a colleague or friend, they didnt want to possibly harm their career. So they just stayed silent. Besides too often they said its not my job. Its not my job to report questionable behavior by people working around me. So they were silent. And as a result, people continued in place indefinitely and cause many, many years more damage than they should have. I am as guilty as anybody else about not coming forward when i saw behaviors that raised eyebrows from a counterintelligence standpoint. I knew rick was drinking too much. I knew he was a mediocre employee. I knew that he was living a lifestyle, was driving a car, was wearing clothes that were different from what he had been doing earlier in his career. I blame myself. I should have gone to security way back maybe in the late 1970s and said it may be nothing, but ive observed some things about rick gains that i think you should look into quietly, discreetly and maybe even anonymously. You dont need to use my name, and if theres nothing there, great. But if they had done that, they would have seep behaviors seen behaviors. They might have been able to stop his espionage before it started. The hardest spies to catch are the ones who are flying under the radar. Unexplained income, changes in spending, changes in behavior, theyll just continue on the job as before. Those kinds of people are really, really difficult to catch. And if theyre ideological spies, they are such true believers, as anna montez was, that they tend to be the cleverest of spies. Theyre doing it for something they believe in. Theyre just not doing it for money, theyre not doing it for some personal gain. Theyre 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 Service handlers more closely. I like spies who spend money freely, are reckless, who are loud mouths, who are attracting attention to themselves. Those are the one that, yeah, we can catch them. But the ones who are just quietly going about their business in the meantime stealing secrets from us are the toughest nut we have to crack in counterintelligence. I think counterintelligence is Getting Better in the sense that its more communitywide now. I think our organizations are cooperating better. I think were 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 news to raise our guard need to raise our guard, we need to be much more attentive to whats going out there. We need to be more offensive, more aggressive, going out and recruiting chinese intelligence officers, getting into their databases, just talking 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 is in College Station to feature its local no, sir. Up next, we speak with alyssa cobb on her book, hello, girl. How i first learned about the hello girls was just scrolling through the internet looking for women in world war i, and i came across a homemade if web suit. Somebody had put up web site. Somebody had put up a picture of their mother sawing my mom did a really important thing, and nobody knows about it. I got obsessed with finding them. And then it turned out they were there in the archival footage of the National Archives and in the records of the congress and the records of the army, but people had just denied what theyd done. As someone said, they were the Hidden Figures of 1917. And so, you know, it was just a great honor to resurrect them, so to speak. They had different positions, of course. And one of them the signal the department of the army thats responsible for communications. In 1917 the u. S. Declared war in world war i, and then in 1918 the u. S. Was really gearing up to participate. One of the first things they figured out is what separated world war i from all wars that preceded was the development of these mass technologies including mass communications, meaning the telephone. So what that meant is that in every trench in world war i there were telephone lines that were sent into these trenches so that men under fire could communicate with the generals and, you know, colonels behind them. And so the crazy thing about telephones though is that they had to no dials, thaw had no numbers. They had no numbers. The only way you got a telephone to work was by sending a signal to an operator. And it was the operator who would answer the phone and say number, please. The army decided early on, general Jack Pershing who was the commander of u. S. Forces, he tried to make a phone call [laughter] when he got to france. He could hardly get the dang thing to go through, and american Telephone Technology was the best in the world. And yet you couldnt get it to function. And part of the reason, a 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 parle vous, and theres no communication that really works. So to 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 it took the women on average 10 second es to connect a call. So in wartime the difference between 60 seconds and 10 seconds is your life. And so pershing was very 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 regulations, but it was the case that they were all white. One difference though is that they used immigrant women which previously at t had not done because they wanted women who spoke with a kind of 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 some frenchcanadians, some frenchamerican immigrants. They ended up recruiting a bit over 300, and 233 went to france. There were more waiting on the docks in hoboken, new jersey, when the war was sudden lu declared over. The women arrive in france in march of 1918. The vast majority of American Military are not yet there because pershing has been laying the groundwork for the preceding almost a year. He did not want to just trickle american soldiers, he wanted for the American Army to come on in a massive presence to show what america could do which sounds kind of vain, but its not just that. Its also a strategic and psychological thing. You want the enemy to know that youre now here. And in a sense, get scared. So what happens when the women first get there is theyre areaing to go, and they raring to go, and they a arrive on the front lines and ask, okay, we want to start today, and officers, men are rolling their eyes saying, you know, you can cool your jets they didnt have jets yet, but hold on, you can start tomorrow. Okay, well start tomorrow. Well, the minute they started, the men saw the difference. And those who could see it up front were profoundly grateful. The vast majority of women were all 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 as they got closer to the front lines, the army was less willing to use men in some of the ships. The men served in the overnight shifts in safer parts of france because the traffic was slower. But when you got close to the front lines, they wanted to make sure they had the very best operators at all times, and so they served in two 12hour shifts throughout the war day in and day out until the war was over. Sometimes they were under bombardmenting or, lets put it this way, the artillery was close enough that they could feel the concussions. Their machinery would shake, their switchboards would be shaking from the bombs. They were that trained in 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 barracks right in verdunne were burned to the ground when a prisoner kicked over an oil lamp and caught fire. But the women were dauntless. They, the men at one point came in and said youve got to get out, you know, the german fires too close, and the women said we will leave as soon as you do. So they were, they felt they had to share every hazard and were passionate. You know, passionate about helping their country, passionate about doing a a good job, passionate about, you know, being a good soldier. The army said that if communications goes down for even an hour, the whole army will collapse. So these women had this tremendous, powerful responsibility to make sure that communications were going 24 7 until the war was over. The american women in the end ended up connecting 26 million calls in about six months. And, actually, in the report of the u. S. Signal corps by general George Squire to congress in 1919 after the war was over, he said these women made a tremendous difference in the prosecution of the war. Ironically, the biggest challenge they faced was when they got back, because they had been told they were soldiers, that they were doing as much as any man [laughter] to help win the war. Al though they always deferred to the greater sacrifice being made by soldiers literally under fire on, you know, going over the top as they said in world war sr. But when they world war i. But when they got back home, the army just forgot about them. In fact, doesnt just forget about them, they were denied their discharge papers, they were kicked out of veterans organizations because they couldnt produce documentation. 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 so their biggest challenge was when they came back. If and in some ways hypothetically it shouldnt matter, you know . What does credit mean. What if we dont get credit for the good things that we do. But i think for some of these women, they were horrified, first of all, that women soldiers who needed help after the war were denied it. The hospitalization was a huge deal for disabled soldiers. And then there was that just kind of stick in your with craw feeling. As one woman said when she was in her 90s by the time she actually got her victory medal from world war i is, and she said i love my cup, so i want my my country, so i want my country to be worth living. And there was this idea that she had given her promise and had stood up to it, had fulfilled her promise, and her country needed to do the same. And they wrote to congress in the 1930s, they wrote to fdr, to harry truman, they wrote to john f. Kennedy, and they wrote to Richard Nixon and to jimmy carter. And in the end, it was under jimmy carter that the women were finally recognized. And thats moving in itself, the idea that you dont know how its going to turn out, ask you dont have four million beside you at this point fighting your war. Its just down to 30 women, you know, fighting for justice. And ultimately, they triumph. This is just the crazy thing where every now and again youre confronted with the absurdity of sexism or racism, and this is what it was. It was absurd. These women had done everything. It was fully documented. Theyd sworn the army oath. And in the end, i think it really was, they really just for unknowable reasons did not want to acknowledge the women. Lilt area and Historic Sites as we interview local historians, authors and civic leaders. You can watch any of our past interviews and tours online by going to booktv. Org and selecting cspan cities tour from the series dropdown at the top of the page. Or by visiting cspan. Org cities tour. You can also follow the cspan cities tour on twitter, for behind the scenes images and video from our visits. The happen is, cspan cities. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to books and books. Thank you for join us and supporting your local independent book store, books and booked in