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I produce hundreds of our events, we will be taking questions from the audience so be sure to make your question as a comment and follow us on facebook to be notified about our fantastic Virtual Events. From the bestselling author lawrence of arabia, gripping history of the early years of the cold war, the cias covert volume against communism and the tragic consequences that affect america today. The end of world war ii the United States dominate the world militarily, economically and in moral standing. Seen as a victory over tierney and a champion of freedom it was clear to some the soviet union is already executing a plan to expand, implement revolution around the world. The American Governments strategy relied on the secret effort of the newly formed cia. The quiet americans 4 cia spies at the dawn of the cold wara tragedy in 3 acts chronicles the exploits of Michael Burke, a charming but former football star fallen on hard times, frank lightner, psion of a wealthy family, a sophisticated german jew who escaped the nazis and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. Trying to out with the ruthless kgb in berlin, parachuting into Eastern Europe, plotting cools and directing mores against communist insurgents in asia but time and again their efforts went awry, for it by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government and more profoundly the decision to abandon american ideals. By the mid1950s the soviet union had a straight a hold on Eastern Europe, the us had become disastrous intervention in vietnam and america, the beacon of democracy was overthrown, democratically elected government and earning the hatred of much of the world. This, native act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the cold war into place for decades to come. Anderson brings the telling of the story all the narrative research, skeptical eye and lively probe that made lawrence of arabia a Major International bestseller. The intertwined lines of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom from the ravages of the cold war, led them to different fates. Two quick the cia in despair, one became the archetype of the duplicitous and restrictive anyone would be so heartbroken he would take his own life. The quiet americans 4 cia spies at the dawn of the cold wara tragedy in 3 acts is the story of these four men and how the United States at the pinnacle of its power managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world and the author of say nothing says in this sweeping, vivid, beautifully observed book Scott Anderson on earth devastating secret history of how the United States lost the plot during the cold war. By focusing on this twisting Colorful Life of four legendary spies anderson distills the larger geopolitical saga into an intimate story of flawed but talented men, the disease of empire and the inescapable moral howard hazard, and the unintended consequences of espionage and interventionism that still resonates powerfully today. Scott anderson is author of two novels and four works of nonfiction including lawrence of arabia, international that so that was the finalist for the National Book critics circle award and New York Times notable book, veteran war correspondent, he is a corresponding writer for the New York Times magazine and tonight he will be in conversation with juilian sancton, a senior features editor at departures magazine and has worked on publications including vanity fair, esquire and bloomberg business. He is the author of the upcoming Nonfiction Book the house at the end of the world about an illfated 19thcentury antarctic expedition providing a link to that as well so if you want to preorder that you can. I am so happy and thrilled to welcome Scott Anderson and juilian sancton. Today is the publication day which is a great day for authors when they get to see their book in the aisles for the first time. If everyone would help celebrate that by giving scott and julian a hearty round of applause wherever you are loud enough that we can all hear it, thank you so much. Thanks so much for everything and having us and for everybody tuning in. This is such a critical period of history, a sprawling story in terms of geography and time even though a couple decades that you converse so much goes on in that period. You dealt with this by focusing on four people, rather extremely influential, not household names, how did you settle on this approach and how do you settle on these four guys . The product of the cold war, i grew up in east asia, the front lines so these are heavily militarized zones, dictatorships that a remotely anticommunist, the success of cold war is a real thing, i grew up with that. I always wanted to explore that in writing and starting to do a little bit of research, i came to the conclusion so much to come almost 50 years, so much was set into place between world war ii and the mid1950s. 1944 fdr was talking about world war ii being the end of empire, dismantling the french empire and america was going to be this harold of democracy and 12 years on, 1956 and now the United States is paying around the world and they are not bringing democracy, they are overturning it. We want to study how did that happen . It also occurred to me people on the front lines, generals or statesmen or men and women on the front lines and when it comes to the cold war, they were spotters. The ones who infiltrated each side and helped fuel the arms race, i thought great, i get to write about that and the process of finding these four, in the time frame i am writing about, the field operatives, Edward Lansdale were wellknown in the other two were not at all so it took a lot. I wanted to find people who big stuff had happened to them during this timeframe who then were also changed by it and left a paper trail showing that change and after looking at 25 different potential people to focus on i ended up with these four. Kind of the proverbial chest of letters in the attic. Peterson shell was still alive, 97 years old, the last surviving member of the cia of the cold war period and completely lose it and agreed to a series of interviews. One challenge im sure you faces you are writing a history of an agency dedicated to secrecy and deception so i assume first of all it must have been very hard to find people writing reliable stories and second of all how the cia must have had a hand read acting what they were able to put out, the first one was redacted and can you tell us about that . Yes. There is censorship but in the United States the censorship tends to be very uncomplicated. Theres a page redacted was redacted, sometimes i could pick up the name through a black chart they could use or accounting letters of the name they redacted. You can triangulate information, it happens all the time, two minutes of topsecret meetings and memorandums of that meeting, go to one of their memorandums and it will be almost all blacks out and the other one would be fairly untouched. Michael burke actually wrote about a biography and because he was in the cia and had to go in front of the cia review board they completely gutted the book. It was published but all the best parts had been at sized. But there was a cia official who said i happen to know theres uncensored manuscript at Boston University and so sure enough i went to Boston University and there it was, unredacted manuscript so i could fill in all the details that had been taken out. Host there were a few others that struck me as people that could have made great characters to focus on. Rufus phillips but anyway, i believe you spoke to one other 90yearold. I forget what his name was but to get him to agree to talk about this or was he just waiting for somebody . Probably somewhere in between. Guys who are still around still, they live under a lifelong not a band but to the day they die there are certain things they cant talk about legally but what i wanted to talk about was what was it like. He was the station chief in berlin from the end of world war ii to 1952 so berlin was ground 0 of confrontation between east and west during those years. I wanted him to tell me war stories essentially. What was it like . What were the pressures he faced and he told some Amazing Stories early on. He was very clear how utterly clueless the americans were going up against the soviets who had deception and disinformation down to a fine art and the other thing i should add, a sign of just how out to lunch, when peter showed up in west berlin to become the covert operations chief in 1945 there were tons if not thousands of soviet spies operating. Peter had just turned 24. The soviet monolith. He told the story in 1946 they were running chains of spies and informants all through east germany, eastern germany and all being run by former German Military officers. He talked about german arrogance. They were not concerned how long people were involved and how one night one guy disappeared, and probably 300 people, they had their chains wired at all times. So 67 years later, all these people the kgb had their act together, america sort of winking it where the kgb, the elaborate hoaxes and has that always is that still the case, that they have a ducks in a row and whatever the inheritors of the kgb are . Are we now living through the consequences or the continuation of the period you are talking about . I think so. Two things you still see today but certainly you saw it from the day world war ii ends and even before, the soviets understood the next enemy was the worst specifically the United States, that we were going to be adversaries and we see that from stalin all the way down and americans were slow to understand that. Truman came in in april of 1945 as the war was ending and for some crucial years he kind of imagined the Wartime Alliance might be safe, these were two crucial years in which americans were essentially demilitarized while soviets were taking over Eastern Europe. That is one thing. The second thing is soviets, the things they would do in the field, to the western mind kind of unbelievable. One thing they do quite frequently, theyve done this very recently is dangle across to the west, dangle is a false spectrum. He will come across and say i want to detect and to build up his own edicts, he will that out other russian or soviet agents in the field, these are his colleagues and they will get arrested and thrown in prison and sometimes if it is an important of operation one guy could read out a dozen of his own colleagues on the field under orders from the top so this is a coldblooded miss, not the cia couldnt cope in other ways but this is something no western intelligence agency, we dont sacrifice one of your men let alone 12 to help one. You make the case that mentality stems ultimately from the pathology of one man, stalin. The whole idea of the paranoia it takes to behave that way and to treat human life as expendable. Is that an exaggeration, to say the kgb m o and the ruthlessness of the soviets at the beginning is an extension of his own ruthlessness and paranoia . I think it absolutely, the figure of stalin absolutely added to the paranoia and even panic. Already they had nobody behind the iron curtain reporting what was going on. Well into the 1950s the cia didnt have a mall even in the fifth layer let alone high up, they had nobody. On top of that you have a figure like stalin, a paranoid sociopath and how do you protect what he is capable of doing next . It sounds kind of silly but if anyone has seen the movie fargo the geopolitics reminds me of that. It has been a long time but fargo is the story of a gardenvariety crime where no one is supposed to get her but a sociopath in the middle of it and i really think so much of trying to figure out what was coming next revolved around this unpredictable character. An area where it seems like the cia had some success in the soviets as far as i can tell didnt lag behind is psychological warfare. Is a correct they werent doing it on the level of the americans and second of all tell me about the bread lansdale. Edward lansdale is one of the four follow andys operating in asia almost exclusively, hes an ad executive in San Francisco and he came to asia at a time when a loss of uncertainties were just starting up in the philippines, and the very simple concept, if you want to defeat communists and went over the populace you had to give the local population the government they could believe in and that is where it first went. The country had been for decades by a very corrupt oligarchy, the same thing that is happening there now and his idea was you need to reform the government, put in someone whos not out to rob the country. As far as actual fighting against the communist insurgency you need to get soldiers out of their barracks and in the field, not just fighting communists but to be seen as a force of good among people, rebuild schools, bridges, harvests and lansdale not singlehandedly but had a huge role in defeating the communist insurgency in the philippines. He was so successful that by 1954 that when vietnam was perking up the cia director said just go do the same thing you did in the philippines so he goes out and tries and comes close to being successful like he did in the philippines where he handpicked governance, handpicked a new Prime Minister in vietnam and a whisper of how to defeat communism and reform bureaucracy and it got so big, vietnam, a small settled hearts and minds by ideas that got swept away by the huge military. One thing, in 1960 few for he headed up the First American military mission to South Vietnam and 12 others died. And of course eventually followed by 3 million others. You talk about sort of near intervention and how that might have led, several other things could have defused the cold war, tell us about these moments things could have gone differently and ended the war. I mentioned roosevelt 1944, his ideas what the resolution of world war ii was supposed to bring, spreading democracy. He dies three weeks before the end of the war. Truman is in over his head. He first meets stalin and after his first meeting with stalin that summer says to stalin, he is honest, smart as hell but i can deal with it and those self assurance, he is wrong on all counts. That is where you see fdrs death when it came was kind of a fork in the road. If he had been president longer he would have known how to deal with stalin. Would have reacted to soviet usurping of Eastern Europe in a way where truman to my mind had 0 headlights. The other great turning point, in 1966, spontaneous revolution, people rose up in the streets. The and gary and military joined the revolutionary and there was this moment where khrushchev one night said we have to let hungary go. We cant put this down militarily and the tanks were leaving hungary and the very next day november 1st, 1956, over the course of the late khrushchev changes his mind and thinks if the americans do anything to help the hungarian revolutionaries they would have done it by now, they are not coming and if we let hungary go we are going to let the cancer will spread through Eastern Europe and we will lose Eastern Europe. And the incredibly sad thing, the Eisenhower Administration rolled out against communism and encouraging people in Eastern Europe and all of a sudden we cant do anything. And so a crunch. Host all of the guys you talk about started with great intentions, living up to the idea of america as the morally right upstanding postwar savior and all went pearshaped after a while and they ended up participating in some pretty horrible things, backing up dictators, letting down legitimate movements. Did you end of judging the men you write about . Know. I dont. I dont. I see it as it is easy to do that. It is easy with 70 years of hindsight to stand in judgment of people. I think also what happened to almost all of these men, it is very gradual, a gradual process. Right after the war they start working with military Intelligence Officers because they are the only ones who know what is happening and then it becomes people who are members of the nazi party and you go on and on working with bona fide nazi workers and it doesnt start out that way. It is a gradual process. The other thing is for all of these men they saw the cold war happening every other day, stuff that happens all the time, this was an exit stencil crisis, exit stencil is in the world. Having come at this, world war ii veterans, to come into this new concept, they also the end justified the means and all four of those were very social issues, they all reach a point it would be wonderful but things are crashing so fast we dont have the luxury of time. We have to find the allies that we can. So i try to avoid passing judgment on them. All four of them were pained by the kind of moral decisions they had to make. One thing you talk about is the home front in america, the reaction to the red scare and the perpetual enemy of the cia was jaeger hoover, the fbi, who was assisting mccarthy in his witchhunt to suss out communist, the and that ended up leading nowhere but you do mention that moment was the origin of the schism in American Society that we are still seeing now. You make the case there might have been democrat and republican before but where you stood on this question of for example the voucher this case and the existence of a fifth column of soviet spies, were used on the question determined whether your kids and their kids would be a liberal or conservative. Very true. Basically the way, the first great schism domestically, the red scare, where people, if you bought into this idea of a vast communist conspiracy and the state department was riddled with red spies, your politics went a certain way and if you thought joe mccarthy was cool of it and a puppet of J Edgar Hoover which documentary history shows was the case then your politics went another way. And politics are largely inherited. You tend to be close to your parents in general. From that schism in the 1950s, it wasnt called red and blue back then but you march along in time. The red scare was overblown or the same people whose children were against the vietnam war, his grandchildren were against the iraq war, probably voting democratic in this election and the opposite is true on the other side. This was the great schism in american politics started in this period as it had a direct effect that i wrote about, the two men in the cia, frank lloyd was the grand wizard in charge of operations all over the world. There was a time it looked like he was going to be the next cia director. Right at the moment it looked like he would be the director J Edgar Hoover lost another round of investigations, the relationship he had 7 years earlier and this was a return pattern in his life. He was investigated by the fbi on hoovers instigation virtually his entire life and kind of an amazing story, he had seen so many of these infiltration operations, behind the lines of the iron curtain, almost all of them were disasters, peter reached a point he started scrubbing these operations. The success rate was 0. The more operations he cancels, the more field officers sponsoring a program, the more they got angry with peter and wondering why peter was investigated for being a kgb mall. These guys along with what was happening, theres always the things, looking over their shoulder that they could be investigated as an american. Host despite all that they admit, spies that were certainly operating on our shores. For example the most notorious one the brick that we trusted the most. Tell us about that. Guest time and again, what hoover would do, kind of funny, in 1945 this woman courier came in and confessed and all these names and hoover put 250 special agents. In 1945 there was a dress code. They had a real dress code, suits and ties and short hair, all white, all men, 250 guys tracking soviet spies. They realized they were being tailed and got no convictions at all. Hoover was constantly chasing the wrong people, that is the pattern through 1970s. Host to get back to the failed attempts at nationbuilding and interference and dictators, you mention lansdale and what happened in the philippines. Were there any successful american interventions in politics or nationbuilding around the world . Great question but at the end of the day countries in east asia, south korea today, these were very much like that. That said, during the years i was there, they were not democracies, they were hardcore certifications and i am not sure, they didnt become democracies from any pressure the americans put on. It was very organic. I think there are a few examples around the world where they were successful nationbuilding. It works against that that all the places they infuriated the locals, certainly they didnt do very successful nationbuilding, the crew in 19 25 years after words. Certainly didnt do a great job in iran and we are still living with that today. Host one last question. If you were to see a movie made of one of your characters who would it be about . Guest great question. There is a dramatic story, the one who committed suicide, that is a tragedy. Michael burgess is kind of a comity. This wonderful kind of i describe him as extraordinarily handsome guy, he was running this program of albanian partisans in albania and as his cover, he was hanging out with cafes during the day and would sneak off at night to meet with albanian coconspirators. A tragedy. All those stories, perfectly pitched to get a. I wish Scott Anderson would write the history of the twentieth century. We have world war i, a only eight left. Thanks. Host thanks for writing this. I remind the audience that if you have any questions you can ask close to scott or julian as well possibly. And a reminder the book is available for sale and your support keeps the series going. I want to ask a question about, the continuation where we are now. I wonder if there are any pages in the playbook from that time that shouldnt be in the playbook still but you think are. Do you know anything more about that, the things that were happening that were being encouraged, that might still be tactics the cia are using today . Not summits the cia but the russians, yeah. Watching how much Vladimir Putins government have taken up the playbook of the old kgb, the game of disinformation and deception that america was him bartered with. I dont see that going away. One thing i will say talking with people in the cia, they are bit annoyed with the talk of the Trump Administration about the deep state and everything but they understand that is politics. When we see russia as an adversarial relation, they are not our friend and everyone i have talked to is deeply concerned and suspicious as to why our president refuses to see it. So i kind of answer your question in a roundabout way but that to my mind is what jumps out at me insane parallels from that to the period i was writing about. Host i listened to the interview fresh air today and i if it didnt come up, the story about the woman getting killed. I forget where you were. I was wondering if you could tell that story as well. Guest in el salvador in 1984, by 1984 the socalled dirty war in Central America was going on and in both those countries we had ultra rightwing governments supported by the Reagan Administration and basically these wars, essentially part of the government but the Reagan Administration had to maintain the fiction that somehow the death squad and the government were two separate entities. I was in the capital of el salvador, walking down the boulevard in downtown el salvador and happened a person walked along the sidewalk and asked a body of a young woman was thrown out of the sidewalk. Classic death squad, she had been shot in the head and the body was thrown out, then pulled back into traffic and drives away. I started walking towards this woman and before i got to her, matter of 10 seconds military then pulls next to her body, one points ago that my feet and thursday that, the two read the body and throw it in the van and drive off, just a little sleightofhand, very apparent, the anonymous death squad, drop this body and 10 seconds later the military comes along so this was happening routinely and theres something about that incident that struck me as other things happened and i remember thinking how did it come to this. How is it the American Government can support another government the is murdering its people in broad daylight and how has the idea of anticommunism becomes so squalid that even Something Like this wrapped in the banner of communism, means something that can happen. That was a turning point that got me thinking about whos the American Government has pulled off. My question for both of you then is in that time period would you rather be a spy or a writer . I would rather be one of the many writers, stay in the game long enough to have a lifetime course. Good answer. I cant improve on that. Spy for a while and then yeah. Barbara is asking i wonder if you watched the americans and how realistic you thought it was portraying russian spies living in the us. I actually didnt watch it and so many times i mentioned friends or whatever, they would ask me did you watch the americans. It happened so often i deliberately didnt. When i was writing lawrence of arabia, how many times have you seen the film . I had seen the film once but didnt see it again the whole time i was writing the book. From what i understand of the series it is based on a true story that happened 15 years ago where 10 russian spies detained to the United States and tended to live normal lives, they were all illegals, with fake names, spying in different ways. Having not seen the show i dont know what happens but if there is lots of blood and violence and betrayal and duplicity that is par for the course for the russian secret service. Reporter are there any i movies or tv or anything like that you have seen, even documentaries that you feel accurately portray, i am thinking like argo, do you feel like that, is there anything like that that you feel portrays spy life realistically . I think le carre comes closest to capturing what a spys life was really like. It is not james bond or robert but low most of the time. It is a lonely existence. Everybody i focus on had serious marital problems. Living a double life, your friends, joe mccarthy did it, there is a british series, and i think that is quite brilliant. The spy world is so complicated, so many twisted double twist and quadruple twists in real life it is hard to capture the byzantine nature of it in a single movie. I would recommend that. Barbara recommending i read three lives, saying i lead three lives, tv program in the late 50s early 60s dealing with spies so if we have any other questions from the audience or do you have another question you might want to ask . I went to second the recommendation of Alec Guinness is George Smiley and gary old the man picks up the character, you are right. Sort intentionally inconspicuous wife that he leads is the opposite but contrast that with Michael Burke who was given the budget to spend lavishly, dining and cafes by morning and swatting opinion tos by night, that is what people think spying is. And sometimes it is. It is especially true that it was like that in this early period. The big historical reasons for picking this period aside, what im also fascinated by, i am fascinated by people who are able to affect change, affect history through their own force of personality and the cia, the early cia, largely left to their own devices, they are allowed to experiment and see what worked in a way that was not true by the 1960s. It had changed quite dramatically so that period before things become bureaucracy highest and decisions were made by guys behind desks. That the period i am fascinated by. You mentioned burke. He moved into new york since world war ii. And moved to become a writer, penniless. We heard this story before. At one point he had a little daughter in the store, so he gets this call from this guy who wants to have a conversation, wont identify what agency he is with. This involves covert operations, just the name alone was classified for 25 years, meets with these two guys, and say what do you know about that . Nobody was thinking about albania but communist countries in the Southwest Corner of of greece in southwestern europe. Burkes broke so inside he is thinking where do i sign . He has to come up with a cover story, most refugees from albania and rome, throwing around lots of money, a man of leisure. I got a lot of money and consultant the Film Producer hanging out with this whole italian the scene in rome at a time of the renaissance of italian cinema and at a certain point albanian conspirators. At a certain point, as it turned out, all they want to do is talk about themselves. They were cruising everything. Do your sources clear anything they chose, in the paris event conversation. What you talked about, most of them are retired. It is kind of ridiculous, what you dealt with over the years. It is topsecret on every thing. The collective resistance to discuss, the uncensored manuscript, and the secretary of state. Basically people were protesting the regime, soldiers came in with machine guns slowed down so it was crushed really quickly. He meets with burke and says i would like you to create a disturbance in east berlin and basically what he is asking for is a repeat of what happened the year before and people getting machined and in the streets. In a way, he says, burke is what purpose would this serve . It would embarrass the soviets. In it is fairly coldblooded. That story that burke had in his autobiography when it went to the cia review board took out everything, no mention of that in the published version. So on what grounds of National Security . Basically you are just protecting the reputation of the secretary of state so what is the point . How is that National Security . Dont get me started. Unless anyone has a quick question i want to thank you both for doing this event. Happy birthday to you, hope we get to see you in st. Louis in real person for your book because that would be really exciting. We have a lot of fans of expedition type books. If it comes forth i will be there. It wont be much of an audience. All right, thank you both so much. Congratulations, the book is availableforsale as of today. Thanks so much. Thanks, guys, for having me. Thank you. Have a good night, everyone, we will see you later. You are watching booktv on cspan2 on this holiday weekend, television for serious readers