Produced, directed and or written many programs for pbs. Spanning a rich variety of subjects, mount rushmore, the irish in america, Transcontinental Railroad, robert e. Lee and jesse james. He has received the dupont columbia award, the writersa™ guild award and many others. In 2007, he was a writer for the four hour pbs history of the United States Supreme Court which was awarded the International Documentary associations award for Outstanding Limited series. In 2007, he was a writer for the four hour pbs history of the United States Supreme Court which was awarded the International Documentary associations award for Outstanding Limited series. In 2008 he was nominated for a prime time emmy in the category of Outstanding Achievement in outstanding filmmaking and achievement in writing for his pbs program on walt whitman. Hes also the author of awill you miss me when im gone the Carter Family and their legacy in american music,a which came out in 2002. It was one of New York Times notable books of the year. It was an American Library Association Editors choice and a finalist for the National Book criticaward. This evening, we will delve into his second book, the statesman and the storyteller, and thats what brings us here tonight and id like to thank you very much for being with us and sharing this book on the day of its release to the public. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. [applause] i would like to start by asking you to give the audience how you came to pair these two individuals, john hay and mark twain together, particularly since your work is so wide ranging. How did you strike on these two individuals and the thought of pairing them together in a book. I will you a long threepart answer on this. The idea for this book happened in stages. The first stage was i was working with joe biden on a separate editorial project in senator biden was the Ranking Member of the Foreign Relations committee. Later the chairman of the Foreign Relations. In the three years i was working with him, he was trying to make a better outcome in iraq. This was 2004 he was hemmed in by history. I was talking to him a little bit about when the country got this idea they could have good outcomes anywhere in the world. It led me back to the period around the spanish american war. I wanted a character just tell character to be able to tell that story in the first one i struck on was john hay. John hay had been lincolns to private one of lincolns two private secretaries when he was a young man. He was the ambassador at the court of st. James in london and later secretary of state to both mckinley and roosevelt. He was at the center of events leading up to and just after the spanish morning spanish american war. The research i did on him, sam clemens as he does, keeps popping up. He was always on the other side of the issue, not always, but often and it may be made me realize i could tell the events from a couple different perspectives. I thought the whole had become bigger than the sum of the part. When i really decided to pair them, was actually when i read about a Birthday Party that mark twain had in 1902. Hay was secretary of state and if you know anything about what sam clemens was talking about in those days, he was very much opposed to what they were doing. He was very antiimperialist. I think there are many people in the audience that thought sam clemens might take the hide off john hay that night. He did not. I was curious about why he didnt do that. Why he held back and why he tempered himself. I think his story has a lot to do with the difficulty. The difficulty of dissent in this country. And a war setting. With the difficulty. Thats a long answer to how i ended up with those two guys together. Theyre not intimate Close Friends but they were good friends that had respect and admiration for each other. That held until the end of their lives. You point out in your book, theres an Important Foundation between them, they come from the same region of the country, central and Mississippi River valley. I was wondering if you could take a minute or two to comment on those influence that may have forged that friendship from that common experience, that cultural heritage. They grew up about 50 miles apart on that river so of course they would have never seen or known each other but they had common experiences. By the time they met in the late 1860s, they were both already Fairly Famous young men. Clemens actually, when clemens moved to buffalo after he got married, he asked hay to be his partner in that in the newspaper he bought. Hay demurred. A few years later, when clemens was doing his research for the trip down the mississippi, he asked hayes to come along. So he was unable to do that at that time. So while they werent together, they had very common experiences and when hay wrote his early poems, clemens was the first out to congratulate him on those poems. He was the first to recognize that hey was in the front, these people had written in the in that way before. He was always quick to credit hay ahead of him as the man who popularized the western. He was the western vernacular. He would give him a little nudge anytime he could. So while clemens, we have the civil war and thats going to change everything for both men, clemens heads out west seeking his fortune in mining, but he cultivates a writing career there. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about what takes him out of his home town and eventually they both converge and meet each other in new york city, postcivil war new york city, the Media Capital of the print revolution in america. If you could just flesh out a little bit about those young bachelor journalists enjoying their days together in new york and how that wouldve contributed to their friendship. John hay had the good fortune of reading law and his uncles law office just down the hall from an attorney named Abraham Lincoln and hay ended up in lincolns white house. He was then briefly in europe as a young diplomat. He came back to the states and landed at the new york tribune about the time clemens came to new york. He was very much on the make. He was really out to make a name for himself and out to make some money. The new york city media was full of young men like john hay and sam clemens. They were all around the city, together having as much fun as they had worked. When booth used to hang as they had worked. Edwin booth used to hang out with them, it was almost a nightly round of fun and good cheer and it was like early networking you would say and they became pretty fast friends. That was probably the most time they ever spent together in the early 1860s and 1870s when he would come into new york and try to dustup a little interest in his own self. So clemens has out and takes his tour of europe and hay does some interesting things as well, but that leads us to marriage for both men and from your book, its clear they both married well in a number of ways, but also those marriages were pretty influential in both of their lives and the relationship between the two of them. Could you talk a little bit about that . They both married up as we all know. Libby clemens came from a welloff family but john hay married a woman, clara stone, whose father was spectacularly wealthy. Hes one of the big cleveland industrialist so by the time, hay made his money and the good oldfashioned american way. He married it. He never had to worry about working for money again. Clemens did well for himself but he was always worried about making more money, and he was always working very hard. After hay married and clemens married, they grew apart a little bit. Part of the reason was that mrs. Hay was a little apprehensive of having sam clemens in the house. He was not the easiest guy to have around the house, and mrs. Hay didnt altogether trust him. I i think it could be saidd that john hay possibly used her as being out for himself also, but through the 1870s and 1880s they wrote to one another and kept contact through mutual friends but they were never much in one anothers company. I think the door gets closed when she catches the two of them in their parlor on a sunday cutting up, up. They were yukking it up on the sabbath and that marked the end game for mrs. Hay. She made it clear. Clemens described the scene and it shut them both up. Talk a little bit more about the two personalities of the men. You talk about how clem twain was always on the make, one of the great lines in your book was unlike sam clemens, he john hay never appeared to be selling and if you talk a little bit about their personas, perhaps privately versus publicly, maybe give the audience a sense for the two mens compatibility but as you say also, a friendship that is going to be conducted at arms length. So in some ways the two men were opposites in personality. John hay, as a young boy was plucked out as the special kid in the family. He had an older brother, but it was john hay that was sent to a special school. He was sent to Brown University by his uncle melton. He never really had to do anything but be himself and show himself, and there were people willing to help push him down stream. He wass an incredibly talented and gifted man. He was great with languages and very funny, he was easy to be around and he never seemed to be making any effort. It came effortlessly to john hay. Sam clemens always seem to be thrashing for the next thing. He had to paddle his own canoe and he paddled very hard. They were in that way very different. There were also different in terms of their politics. Hay was a very old line republican in the sense that he believed the best government was well bred, wellrespected, intelligent men of means leading the nation, and clemens was a little bit more of a small d democrat with a little bit more, a good bit more confidence in the general decency of the wider American People. So the other thing that i found really fascinating is how different they were in terms of how they treated the people who worked for them. I didnt write a lot about this in the book, but in reading almost every letter and diary that both those men wrote in this ten year period, i know john hay never once mentioned to the servant staff that worked there for them. Nobody by name. Occasionally it would pop up in a note to his wife. The best we can expect for a butler is another drunk. Whereas clemens, the people who served him they were basically family. Katie leary, they would be in europe and they would say you have to take katie to switzerland, shes never been there. Katie was libbys maid. George griffin, who worked in the house was obviously a great, great friend of sam clemens and he wrote good bit about him and after he died, especially the loss of george was very difficult for him. An africanamerican butler. That was one of the biggest differences i noticed in them and sort of surprising and interesting. As you develop the characters through the book and the maturation process, they seem to share and maybe in their own personal ways, they seem to share the core value of duty and honor toward everything, their public and private conduct. Their sense of duty, selfless duty and honor come through repeatedly in the book. Could you talk a little bit about that. One of the things that fascinated me as a read more about these two people is that they did talk a lot about, and not not just in their personal lives, but in the life of the nation, they spoke about duty and honor and patriotism and they approached it from different perspectives, but they took it very seriously. I think hay operated his entire public career, what he saw as his chief duty from the time he was serving Abraham Lincoln through ambassadorship and years as secretary of state, his goal was to make the burden on the president a little bit easier. He had seen a president operate at the moment of greatest burden in the country during the civil war, so he understood the enormity of the office and he worked very hard to serve that president. Whatever president he was serving, take a little bit off his plate, but to do it at the same time in a way that was honorable, not only to the administration that he was serving, but to him personally. Thats a pretty tough line to walk. Clemens talked a lot about duty and honor and selflessness, but he was always pretty skeptical that the human being could operate with true selflessness. He always thought theyre working an angle here. I think he used himself as an exhibit a. I recall after his great financial difficulties, that he felt a sense of honor and duty to pay back the debts that he owed, although libby had something to do with that i think, not to accept creditors to discount his debt burden. I think had she not been around , maybe he wouldve accepted that, but thats a theme that, as they explore the later years of each mans life, thats something that weighs on clemens as he is going to want to comment on the issues of the day, the fact that hes trying to dig himself out of a financial hole. That he dug himself. And was determined to do so and i will allude to it and will talk about in a minute about the number of issues of the day held his tongue. Yes, he was in a terrible financial pickle in 1895 when the stories began. They had worked out as they do in bankruptcy court, in his settlement, with about . 50 on the dollar and libby really ught he was on around two he was going to pay back every cent. She pushed him to do that. He sort of made a crusade out of it. He made a public crusade. He said watch me, im going to do it and it turned out to be much more difficult and much more personally costly than he couldve ever expected, but he pushed right through to the end. In a sense, he did end up paying off that debt to the dollar, pretty much. He didnt do it as he wouldve thought, paddling his own canoe and by himself. He had a lot of help from his friend so his idea of being a one bold individual, taking care of himself, that was a hard idea for him to hold onto when he had help clearing those debts. There were many times in the years it took him to clear the debts when he was looking for an easier way out and really wanted an easier way out. He mightve had it, not been in the direct gaze of his wife, libby who throughout their marriage she called him youth, which i found interesting. That was her name for him. He was ungovernable. The subtitle of the book is rise of american imperialism. Its a period in which the United States transitioning from a former colony that establishes its National Identity in a revolution to throw off the control of a colonial overlord and very rapidly after the civil war, becomes the very thing it had revolted against in several instances around the globe, and id like to talk a little bit about that issue because he is on the inside and tween is on the outside in both their sense of duty and honor, compelling them to react to this major transformation in the american character, could you talk a little bit first about hawaii being central to both men for a lot of reasons, but a place that had its own queen, its own government, a strong american presence there for a long time and clemens had been there earlier and that is what establishes a bit of his fame with his lecture, so the annexation of hawaii becomes an early issue of imperialism. Can you talk a little bit about the two men and their thoughts about hawaii and its relationship to the United States. I will actually skip ahead, basically, the u. S. Marines help run a coup and there was a treaty of annexation which they did not get through the senate. It was not until 1898 until the United States was able to grab hawaii. It was only done as a war measure. They never could get the treaty through for the annexation of hawaii. It ended up being a joint resolution, a war measure that because of the philippines, that hawaii was so important to hold the philippines and get to the markets in china, thats really the only reason we ended up with hawaii. So ill jump ahead a little bit to the spanishamerican war, the idea was that we were going to free the cubans and then we were going to free the philippines. John hay was all for it but so was sam clemens. Sam clemens, when the spanishamerican war first happened, he was very excited about this war. It was the war unlike any other. It was a war we were fighting and spending blood and treasure to free another people. At one point, he was so excited about this, he would join up the fight himself if it werent for the danger. That changed over time as it became clear that it wasnt about freeing the cubans and freeing the philippines but we were about controlling those places. Hay was the guy who had to basically execute the plan, clemens was a guy who became angrier and angrier as he saw what happened. The annexation of hawaii and we dont annex cuba, but we establish control with a platt amendment. We will annex the philippine and guam as well. That was the island to be named later. There were proponents in the senate, although the treaty of annexation for hawaii doesnt pass, there were proponents, the rhetoric to justify doing what had been done to us in the revolution might today be recognized in the phrase of american exceptionalism. The notion that there god has bestowed on the United States a duty to christianize and bring civilization to backwards people of the world, could you talk a little bit about john hays thoughts about imperialism as the act of imposing authority on a native people and likewise sam clemens and in particular, that its a charge from god to do it . That rhetoric got hotter and hotter in the aftermath of the spanishamerican war. The idea that this was gods plan, mckinley actually, first he went on a public tour and said he wanted to tap into the wisdom of the American People and after that, he started talking about how this is what god wants. In my observation over the years when politicians and leaders Start Talking about doing things because of Public Opinion and because of god, the rest of the world should hold their wallet and duck. Now hay didnt think of this as imposing authority but imposing civilization, making these places better. He didnt have a lot of doubts about what was happening. Clemens did. Clemens was not a big fan of white civilization. I think clemens thought of american exceptionalism, it was the breadth of people here in the breadth of thoughts and ideas and one idea of basically white man exceptionalism was not his cup of tea. Hay was very comfortable with that. Hay was not comfortable with the idea of god. One reason i really liked writing about these two men is that they seemed very modern to me. They were talking about gods plan of of what god wanted for the American People. They were god didnt really enter the equation much for them. The most john hay would ever talk about was the cosmic tendency, so thats as close as he got to god talk. Clemens was more than skeptical, quite angry about the use of religion and race in our foreign policy. President mckinley was sort of a reluctant imperialist at first, although he comes around to the inspiration of god as well, but hes assassinated. Teddy roosevelt, by some interesting circumstances, some of them selfmade and some of them accidental, he succeeds and becomes president of the United States and again, both twain and hay have interesting relationships with Teddy Roosevelt and what he was doing, particularly with reference to imperialism. Teddy roosevelt has to crush a philippines insurrection, once they figure out that america is not there to help them liberate themselves from spain, but to take over. Then they have to fight sort of a vietnam type of war for several years, guerrilla war against the dogged determined insurgency and committing a lot of things that are also said associated with vietnam in terms of the brutality of war and the atrocities. You talk about your book, moral massacre of muslim filipinos at the hands of the United States Teddy Roosevelt was very enthusiastic about the success of the american military. If you could talk a little bit about mark twain and hay working together about the consequences of the United States now having an empire. Mckinley ended up filing what i would call the filipino war for independence and when mckinley died, i think hay was somewhat terrified of the idea of Theodore Roosevelt coming into office. They had been friends a long time. He had known theodore since he was a child, 5 years old. He actually he actually stayed with the family for a while so he knew roosevelt well. I think what he hoped was that he could sort of keep roosevelt within the bounds of reasonable diplomacy and reasonable behavior and he ended up doing some things on behalf of roosevelt as a duty to the president that i dont think he was altogether comfortable, i think it was maybe the only time in his life or career that he recognized he might have done some things that brought a little dishonor to himself. Boy, clemens was so hot in his rhetoric about roosevelt. He really disliked his public stance, but at the same time, when he wrote about the moral massacre, he didnt publish it at that point. He was past the point of speaking out. He was past the point of beating his chest about this because i think he realized there was not much he was going to change this tendency, the trajectory of this country. He roosevelt personally. He liked being in the same room and they got along when they were together, but in almost every instance, he felt that roosevelt was a disaster, publicly. He calls him the tom sawyer of the political world and he doesnt mean that as a compliment. If you remember tom sawyers character, he was a show off and he said he would go to halifax for half a chance to show off and held for a whole one. And to hell for a whole one. I remember also you pointed out that twain was somewhat disappointed or at least philosophical about hays role in all of that. I actually wrote down that he writes good friend from the church and says im sorry for john hay and ashamed. He wears a collar and he has to pay the penalty. He meant it in terms of moral conscience, which i think also leads us to the acquisition and the building of the panama canal. Can i mention one thing . That letter i had read years ago and read at different times. It sort of, when they lay their lives together, you learn when he wrote that letter. It was in the election of 1904 and roosevelt was begging john hay to go out and politic and make speeches and attack the democrats and hay was saying i cant do that because thats going to really make it much more difficult for me to work with the senate, especially the senate democrats. You shouldnt have a secretary of state wallowing around in politics. Roosevelt basically said look, im going to lose and you need to go to new york and make a speech for me, which he did. Now, it just happened to be at the very moment when sam clemens had come back from italy, where his wife had died and he brought her back home to bury her. This was a few months after and he was quite despondent and he wakes up one morning in new york where hes staying and in the newspaper, is this fairly ugly speech that john hay gave and from that comes that letter. I had the sense that at least mark twain respected him for hanging in there. He wears the collar and has responsibility and he pays the price. Sort of an homage to his duty in his honor and standing by Teddy Roosevelt in one of his several less than savory acts as president. Hayes said he said he didnt want to be secretary of state. He thought the office would kill him in six months. He actually ended up being secretary of state for almost seven years. He suffered great personal loss in that time with family loss, his best friend died, William Mckinley was assassinated, which made it the third president he had known in life to be assassinated. He just kept hanging on and doing the job because he felt it was his duty to do it. I think clemens respected that and i think clemens wanted to believe the of john hay. To sort of put a period at the end of his relationship with roosevelt, roosevelts comments about hay at the end of his life, truly churlish comments. He says the last two years in the state department he has done little or nothing. If anything was done it was because i did it and of course hay was just tireless. I think you also make the point that the state department wasnt up to the new role that it had to take on because of the new status of the United States. It was still a 19th century antique as an organization when it needed a much much larger robust bath and budget because of the the state the United States is now engaged around the world. Thats Something Like 80 people in the state department in washington trying to run the world. Hey had to beg the senate to get an extra secretary at three of the embassies. He had to do that by bribing them and promising a couple senators the other boys would get the job. He was always fighting against the lack of resources. The resources in the country were actually headed toward the military, headed toward building up the navy and building up a bigger standing army. We went in with regular army troops and in the spanishamerican war, there was maybe 27,000 regular army troops and generally one in seven was not even around. A few years later in the philippines, we had a hundred thousand men. That the resources were going. Its not an uncommon thing today to see where those resources go. How do you think john hay assessed his life at the end of his life . Have you think he felt about how he had conducted himself . How do you think he weighed himself . I think he was proud of what he accomplished and what he had done and i think he had a lot to be proud of. We talked a lot about from a clemens point of view about the world, but there was a lot hay accomplished. Among the very important things he did was that he really cemented what we think of today as a special relationship between Great Britain and the United States of america. That was the key thing that he did as ambassador. Intended to do that continue to do as secretary of state. I think he would have said, i think the only time he thought he did anything dishonorable in the office was in the situation of the panama canal and the way he wrote, he essentially wrote a new treaty with the new broken away state of panama. He wrote it with the guy who was not panamanian, but one of the members of the French Company who was building the canal earlier and stood to make the company 40 Million Dollars from this. He wrote a few letters to senators just after they were getting ready to ratify that treaty. He said, do it fast, dont amend it and dont spend a lot of time talking about it because theres a lot in there that maybe we dont want people to think about. I would like to give the audience a chance to ask some questions so i can ask a few more, we have a microphone, so if you like, we have a microphone right here. [inaudible] i picked up initially on your note at the beginning of the figure from john hayes john hays. John hay. If i were to do a rorschach blot , i would saylism it would begin with jeffersons acquisition of the louisiana purchase. The purchase of california, arizona and nevada. And the purchase of cut nevada. Ia, arizona and some of it gave rise to the mexican war because of the definition of the southwestern bound. In jeffersons time, there was a character running around south. Merica he sponsored boulevard. Bolivar. I have a loose impression that jefferson was threatened by that. And took steps, i dont know what they were its sort of an allusion in the biography, but he foresaw the need for americas role to be unchallenged by a south american organized giant. Becausehe background, it identifies the foundation or perspective for more might be called an imperialist base and try to fit your view of hay as the figure to narrate or tie together imperialism. What im talking about is when imperialism jumps the water. Its no longer in the contiguous United States. All of the sudden its cuba, its puerto rico, its hawaii, its the philippines, is the pacific and so thats the rise of what ill call this modern imperialism that im talking about. Hay is not as much of a narrator as much as he is an observer. A person who is seeing these events and recording them day by day by day. Hes at the center of some of them, but watching all the time as they happen. Yes, you can argue the whole sweep of the cherokee nation, sweeping away the cherokee, you can pick different point and speak of american imperialism but i think this is the moment when we jumped the water and so does it make it possible to say we can take care of iraq and , i dont thinkea thats possible without this jumping off the continent moment in time. Another question . I couldnt help but notice one of your liner notes. James mcbride. Just out of curiosity, how well do you know him . Do you know him . Yes, i do admit, i know him. [laughter] i asked because i thought the good lord bird was a wonderful book. Describe what brought you is a great book. Its a very twainian book. An main character is africanamerican boy who dresses in drag. That is huck finn. Theres another book who called mcbride a young mark twain. I said, dont kid yourself, you are not that young. You are older than he was when he wrote huckleberry finn. How did you cross paths . We have known each other over the years. In journalism. And clemens. We are all in this to. In the stew. Describe what brought you to such an eclectic marriott field of interest. The country, the history. Who does a film on Jesse Jackson and jesse james . Who does a book about Country Music and american imperialism . It has just been a fantastic will ride. I think a little bit of i would never compare, but let me say this when i was a kid i grew up in missouri and my parents used to take me around and they used to take me to the birthplace of mark twain. Theres a house in florida, missouri, its a little tworoom shack. And then you know the the kind of life he got to, and for god sakes, 611,000 in his estate when he died in 1910 which is going to be like what 15 million, so im thinking even as a little kid, this writing game, there may be something in it. [laughter] it is now 45 years later and i am just coming around to the realization that maybe this is not the best plan if you want to accrue 611,000 and estate. Its been a joy. I have met people i could not have imagined meeting. Ive met the president and Vice President s, i meet really fascinating interesting people all the time. Some you know, some you dont know. Wonderful professors of history who have helped me out with films. I was explaining to craig earlier. My wife is also a writer. She got tired of me bringing home mark twain and john hay to dinner. So she signed up her own biography and she started bringing to helen gurley brown, and we would all sit around and chat. It has been a great career and the people who have most interested me are the people who have traveled the greatest distances, walt whitman who traveled a great metaphorical distance. And mark twain. He went around the world. It has been nothing but fun. Is there another question in the front row . My question has to do with manifest destiny and imperialism. I think before the civil war, the Movement Toward manifest destiny explains the territorial movements, acquisitions from other president s. However, hay was heavily involved in some which took a leap away from the traditional United States of america. That was when william steward, during, well after lincolns assassination, acquired alaska. I would think that one can make the point that american imperialism, and hay was around all this, might have begun with the purchase of alaska, which was beyond the usual territorial jurisdiction of the United States. Could you comment on those two ideas, manifest destiny, which explains a jefferson to some extent, and the beginning of imperialism under seward. Yes. Seward was a big fan of young john hay. He was sent off to europe after mckinley was assassinated. He was also the kind of guy in the early 1870s, who is talking about this being gods will and this is the only nation, america is the only nation that really, truly has liberty and it is our duty to spread it around the world and god wants us to do that and alaska was a little hop step in that direction. You can still get there by land. The other thing that people dont, you could talk about manifest destiny and imperialism but you could also talk about how driven this was by economic reasons, for instance, when they first started talking about the Transcontinental Railroad and they started talking about this this in the 1840s, the idea about the Transcontinental Railroad was not just to get the east coast with the west coast, but america is going to be the highway to the pacific. The pacific was always the panacea. China, hundreds of millions of people or should i say consumers, that was always a big piece of the u. S. That the subtext of everything. We can talk about what the American Public wants and what god wants, but in fact what we can really talk about is what our Bank Accounts want, and mckinley made it very clear that a statesman had to be aware of the commercial possibilities of places like the philippines. There was a report that francis greene, who is the commanding general in the philippines, did for mckinley just before they signed the treaty of paris and took over the philippines. It basically laid out the resources to be exploited in the philippines. I actually point out the spanish were very worried the filipino revolutionary was going to roar into manila with his men and loot the entire city which he was unlikely to do by the way. But the much more interesting looting expedition was our own. In fact, i dont know if he ever made it to theater roosevelts oyster bay house, but when he renovating i think a trophy room he ordered a special wood from the philippines to be put in there. I do not know that made it or not but i know it was in the plans. Bank account. Ladies and gentlemen, we just scratched the surface of this fascinating book. It was a pleasure for me to read and i encourage you you to pick up a copy. We are going to conclude now by thanking mark for spending time with us and giving us insight into his book. I know you would be anxious to talk to him personally and you can have a chance to do that, but please let him out the door so he can get to the table to sign books that people have purchased. With that, mark, thank you very much for coming here tonight. We appreciate it and please come back again to the mark twain house. [applause]. [no audio] historys book show features the countrys bestknown American History writers of the past decade talking about their books. You can watch our weekly series every saturday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern, here on American History tv on cspan3. This weekend, on well america, testimony of truth, a film detailing civilian injuries at desks caused by your u. S. Bombings in north vietnam. Here is a preview. Many educational facilities have been involved by the United States. More than 120 schools have been destroyed until now. This is all that remains of the middle school. Says aire schoolboys raids have destroyed all of the buildings. We shuddered below the passage, and narrowly escaped death. Wonder woman teacher were killed. A crippled boy speaks. On the morning00 of july the 18th. An air raid began as a came home from school. I rushed out in a hurry. I was running to the farm when down came a bomb and i was knocked to the ground. I fell unconscious. The band on this girls head is a morning band. Homeays i used to come happily with all of my folks. All 13 of them, including a baby have been killed. Only i am left. Are innocentabies victims of these air raids. America has systematically hospitals. In the south in particular, they and bombed all provincial and hospitals. Former the site of the tuberculosis hospital. Some 50 buildings here. All are now destroyed. 30 people, including five doctors, were killed, and many others wounded. You can watch the entire testimony of truth, sunday at 4 p. M. Eastern on reel america. Youre watching American History tv. 1980, president jimmy jimmy signed the refugee act, annual ceiling for refugees allowed in america. The act also created a process for addressing refugee emergencies and established the state Departments Office of refugee resettlement. Next, on American History tv, former government officials who the acto implement discuss challenges they faced with refugee admissions. Of Public Opinion, and Lessons Learned in light of current refugee policy. The jimmy carter president ial library and museum and the assistance organization, hias, hosted this event. [indistinct conversation] welcome. Welcome back, everyone. Introduce the next panel, which is going to focus on the