Transcripts For CSPAN3 Mary 20240703

From low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for everything. Comcast. Along with these Television Companies supports cspan two as a Public Service. Speakers chief, the wall street journal and host of the podcast 2022 politics war room, and the author. And the author of e the book Mary Llewellyn mcneil. More about them later. Since the book has not been released before tonight presenters asked i give you a very brief bit of background. Who was wallace carol and why should we care about him . Wallace carol, although largely unknown today, was one of the most respected and influential journalists editors and publishers of the 20th century. A reporter for the united press in europe during the 1930s and early 1940s carol covered some of the most significant events leading up to and during world war ii. He then went on to work for the u. S. Office and undertook two states of editor and later publisher of the winstonsalem journal and served as number two in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times. Again, more details to come. Carroll was much more than a globetrotting turtle list and even your runofthemill editor. Carroll was a mentor and an example to a generation of journalists who even today still remember and try to follow his penance of the journalism. These include an absolute commitment to accuracy and the truth, extraordinary attention to detail, total independence and as david tried been recently wrote in his long street journal review of the book elegance and balance reporting. While the world of journalism is different today many working journalists as well as all of us who cherish and read the news would do well to read this book. Centuries witness at long last shines a light on Wallace Carrolls remarkable life. We are looking forward to learning more about both the man and witnessed tonight. A little more about our speaker. As mentioned, it writes a weekly column for the hill and cohosts the 2022 politics war room podcast with james carville. Previously he was a Bloomberg Opinion and New York Times columnist covering politics and Public Policy and the executive washington editor of bloomberg news. Before joining bloomberg, hunt spent four decades at the wall street journal as a reporter, bureau chief and executive washington editor and read the weekly column politics and people. Mr. Hunt new Wallace Carroll and credits him with getting him to take his first job at the wall street journal. Something we will learn more about. Mary mcneil is a former editor and writer for Congressional Quarterly and the primary author of Environmental Health reagans first year and the nuclear age. She has worked as an editor at the Smithsonian Institute and National Academy of sciences and as a journalist at the winstonsalem journal. During a 28 year career at the world bank she launched two global publications and led efforts on Civil Society strengthening, Community Driven development and government accountability. This is her first fulllength biography. If you could all please join me in welcoming them. Thank you very much. Can you hear me . Im going to turn this over to the star in a minute. I want to say that i revered mr. Carroll. I could never call him wallace. It was so nice to have his daughter here and granddaughter here today. There is no one that deserves recognition as much as he does. Youve done a fabulous job. Let me ask you, you got a way for us in 1978. You were a child. You had a wonderful career in journalism. Why . In 2017 or 18 did you decide to do a book on your constitutional profession . Good question. Youre very lucky when youre young and of a certain age. You run into people that stay with you and that you look at and for some reason you want to emulate and you just respect. I was 20 years old and i took a course on the First Amendment from Wallace Carroll. There was something about him then that you just wanted to do well for this person. He didnt talk about himself. He wasnt loquacious. He didnt tell you everything he had done in his life. You just knew. He stayed with me and i went in to do work in journalism and left journalism for a while to work at the world bank. About 5 1 2 years ago i was in london and i came across a book called citizens of london which is a wonderful book. Its about three americans who were in london right before the war basically trying to convince the u. S. To come in to the war. I was reading the book and Wallace Carrolls name kept popping up all over the place. I thought is this my old professor . What was he doing in london . I had no idea. Find out he was the bureau chief in london beginning in 1939 and was in charge of all the coverage of the coming war. I thought wow. Mr. Carroll never talked about the things he had done. I started to research this and it was like peeling an onion. The more i looked into this mans life the more interesting and fascinating it became. It was a adventurous story in terms of his correspondent. He went to europe in 1929 as a 22yearold and covered rights in london and paris. Went to cover the league of nations and saw the rise of fascism then at the age of 33 the chief of united press of london. Covered the battle of britain. Then he was one of the first correspondence to go into the soviet union when the invaded in 1941 and after going to the front and saying that on his weight to get out of the soviet union he landed in pearl harbor about four days after the destruction of the bombing. This guy was everywhere. That was sort of the beginning of the story. To answer your question that was why i got intrigued. Why i wanted to write about him in the first place and why the more i learned about him the more i thought it was a great story to tell. It is. Lets stay with that european experience. The london blitz and spanish war with the rickety planes. Great peril. He very strongly believed that the west had to counter hitler. He understood the menace well before some others did. He was frustrated by his country back then. Is that fair to say . I think it is. In the 1930s he went to geneva in 1934 and was the diplomatic reporter for united press. He witnessed all the deliberation surrounding the rise of hitler and mussolini in the league of nations. Theres some interesting parts of the book where he talks about this. Including one instance where he listened to the emperor of ethiopia and the italians invaded ethiopia. Ill never forget this quote. He said that mussolinis son had described the bombing of ethiopians as a wonderful thing because if the bomb fell down people exploded like red flames. I remember reading that and thinking, oh my god, he knew all of this was going on but was frustrated because he was right these stories back at the United States and there was low interest at that time and what was going on in europe and very little understanding of the dangers that were rising on the continent. This all fed into his belief that hitler really was something we should be paying attention to and fight against. He went to the soviet union in 1940 . I guess before i forget, was it geneva that he met his wife . Your mother was as formidable as your father. One thing about the book and we will get back to the historics, its really a love story. I had written the book and i know about peggy carroll. She was very well educated, articulate, smart, well traveled. Her father had been the head of the Rockefeller Institute and was one of the founders of the first yellow fever vaccine. She had grown up living all over the world. Australia, traveled in the east , was an economics major. When they met they were a perfect pair because their intellects matched but she was outgoing, effervescent. He tended to be much more introverted and shy. Together they were fermentable and they were married for 63 years. What i wanted to say but the book is i had almost finished the book and i got a note from pat and it said we found letters that my mother wrote to her mother back in the United States and also following the blitz and into North Carolina. Do you want this box of letters . I mean, i was like yeah. Oh yeah. So this box arrived on my door and my husband confessed to this. I was reading these letters and i kept saying oh my god. They were so vivid and so brilliant into themselves because she wrote almost every day. It was really something. I was able to weave this into the story. It not only contained her impressions but it to about how she felt about him. There were letters about how he felt about her when he was going to the spanish civil war he wrote a letter to her saying leaving you was the hardest thing ive ever had to do in my life. They had been married for three months. She said but youve got to go. A little bit of a side story but its really a story of both wallace and peggy carroll. We have so much to cover and so little time. One more. The soviet union. He was there right before the germans invaded. You can describe by his conversations for that incredible harrowing trip he took back to meet his wife and new daughter in new york. It was 116 days . 2 1 2 months. Maybe i exaggerate a little bit. It was by rickety plane, a desert where you had to pay off the camel driver and a fine across the pacific and landing in pearl harbor. He literally used everything he had in terms of his ability to get across the asian continent at a time when that was a rough thing to do. He did travel by train, by plane , at one point they flew 100 meters or yards above and he took a taxi across the desert and the nomads came and he managed to get out of that. Its an adventure tale. I mean, i really think when you look at the map you get scared. You cant believe he was negotiating to get visas and at one point he pretended he was a highlevel british Civil Servant and he went in and made a name for himself and he said this is who i am and i need a visa and the guy said okay. It was the use of all his skills. Its a great story. Why i have that story is later in his life he gave a series of lectures to the winstonsalem community where he lived and he told these stories. Margaret carroll , wallaces oldest daughter, kept these tapes and she sent them to me. I was able to listen to them and transcribe them and he was a wonderful storyteller and all the details of this i was able to capture and get in the book. Im going to skip over the role he played working in the government during the war. Its a fascinating chapter but we dont have as much time. He comes back after the war and gordon greg was secretary of the army then . He was secretary of the army. Another highlevel contact. He was introduced to mr. Carroll. He will always be mr. Carroll to me. He offered him a job. Right. This was 1949. Wallace carroll had spent the last couple years writing a book of his time in the soviet union. He needed a job. He had three young children. This gentleman who was an heir to the fortune invited him to come down with peggy to Winston Salem to see if he would take this job. They decided it would be a good place to raise their children. I think after all they have been through in europe and london it was a peaceful, nice place to be. He went to work for the Winston Salem journal. Am going to combine the two stents he had. We will talk about the in between with the New York Times. Both from 49 to 55 and 63 to 77. He made it the best newspaper in North Carolina. He hired some Extraordinary People who went on to do great things. He did not count out the establishment. Whether it was tobacco, immigration or other issues and environment talk about some of the courage he displayed. I think one recent like winstonsalem is gordon gray who owned the paper really saw the paper as a Public Service. He was willing to let carroll run the paper and not interfere. I think that independence was something he really wanted and appreciated. He did make a wonderful paper. I was researching and would go back into this. Its amazing the coverage of that paper and investigative reporting and everything. Nowadays its hard to find. When he went back as editor and publisher in 1963 it was right at the cusp of the demise of the tobacco industry. Surgeon general report came out saying tobacco is bad for your help. Here he is in winstonsalem with a town thats basically run by the tobacco folks and lots of people hired by r. J. Reynolds but he didnt hold back. He wrote all about the Surgeon Generals report. He put it out there that it was dangerous and he took a lot of heat for that but he said i feel the people of this town need to know. They need to know of these dangers and so on and so forth. Similarly, with other issues in the 60s that came up, desegregation and schools, i mean, it was pretty clear that both he and peggy were very much in favor of the desegregation of schools. Theres things i said they had previously talked about. Particularly peggy how distressing it was the segregation in North Carolina at the time. Instead of being a flamethrower he managed the coverage of that to push desegregation but to not inflame it more. There were riots in salem and he would go down to the office and spend the night to make sure things didnt get out of control. He was very careful of the coverage. He pushed the agenda. He was able because he was so respected to push the desegregation agenda forward. Issue after issue during that time he did that. He had a major influence on the town, but the south two. He was the leading newspaper person in the south at the time. I was in North Carolina in the early 60s. North carolina had its problems and they had riots and demonstrations but it fared better in those turbulent times. It did better than any other southern state. Certainly much better than the neighboring states of virginia or South Carolina. Some of it had to do with stanford. He made a big difference down there but a lot had to do with newspapers. There were a number of other good newspapers in North Carolina, but mr. Carrolls winstonsalem journal had a huge influence. Im going to come back to one or two things. He worked for eight years in the New York Times although i think. I can call him scotty now cant i . I did fairly well. He told me one time he had never known a newspaperman that had better judgment then wally carroll. If you havent read that wall street journal review you really ought to. He went to work for the New York Times in 1981. I was 18 years after mr. Carroll had left. He said they would still ask questions of what would wally do . It was a huge impact he had there. He wrote in 1968 one of the landmark influential editorials in the winstonsalem journal on the vietnam war. Mr. Carroll was a cold warrior. He grew up with the atchinsons and the george canons and for those of you who were not around it really did split the country. The democrats were split two. The cold warriors and the others were back to the stone age and he wrote this editorial that came not from the left but basically argued it was not an american issue. You can describe it but what was so influential was his good friend showed it to Lyndon Johnson and two weeks later Lyndon Johnson announced he was not going to run for re election and try to focus on ending the war. Can you tell us more about that . Its true. I think it was the thing he was most famous for because when he wrote editorial in 1968 it not only appeared in the Winston Salem journal. It was picked up all over the country. The timing was perfect because johnson was under a lot of pressure. There had been some significant military deceit in vietnam and the head offensive and other things. I think this was part of his why he was so great. His timing and understanding of World Affairs was so great that i think you produced this at the right time. It laid out point by point white it was not in the interest of the United States to stay in vietnam and it was very rational. Very clear. It was a very convincing document for johnson. I think this is one of the things he is most remembered for. People at that age remember that editorial. I talked to people who say i remember reading that and it was really significant. Carroll never went into tv or radio because he had a real belief in the power of words. It sounds a little archaic now given the world we live in but i think where we go from here is the single example of the power of words to influence policy at least in carrolls life because it really did have that kind of influence. You wonder if any reporter writing today would be able to have the same kind of influence because he was so well respected and people would say this is a great article but only on par for Wallace Carroll. This was not you know, i think you could write the same editorial today about afghanistan or iraq but i doubt it would have that kind of influence as it did back then. Lets stay with it. He also won a Pulitzer Prize because he was a devoted conservationist and environmentalist. Later in his career both he and peggy had bought a piece of land up in the mountains. I think they became very interested in environmental causes and preserving the environment. There was strip mining in western North Carolina that was being developed. One of his reporters, a woman who was not an Investigative Reporter but he put her on the case anyway he had more women reporters than most back then. It was one of the great things. He was much better than his dear friend scotty on that particular issue. I think you are right. He put this woman onto the story. She said i started to call the Mining Companies and they lied to me. As soon as they lied to me i said we are going to get them. Wallace carroll said lets go after this. For about four or five months almost every day they had something about the stripmining that was going on and why it was dangerous for the environment and so on and so forth. Finally, the company said we are going to stop this. The company pulled out and there has been no stripmining in western North Carolina which is a beautiful part of the country ever since then. In 1971 he was a member of the Pulitzer Board for several years. In 1971 the paper submitted their submission to the board for the Pulitzer Prize. Carroll had to leave. He couldnt be involved in the negotiation. They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their environmental reporting. For a paper there that was a huge wonderful thing for a local paper and regional paper to get that kind of a claim. I think it was welldeserved. I will tell one story about it. Scotty who i got to know we would have lunch periodically he would tell me the job we are doing covering in washington and he was one of my idols. He said let me ask a question. Why do you do this Silly Television shows . I said its changing. You reach a different audience. You expand. He said i see. Midlife crisis. That was as good answer. When mr. Carroll retired he didnt exactly retire. Among other things he taught people like you constitutional offers and was engaged in a lot of other endeavors. The challenge of fighting is this mans life. He lived until he was 95. He had a long and wonderful life. He also was very involved in the preservation of the new river. He and peggy both together took this on as a cause. At the time the river was to be. The Power Company had, for many years, been working to get the river in several places. They started an effort to stop the and keep the river preserved. I think this was her thing in a big way too. One thing he did was he wrote every editor he knew in the country. That was a lot of editors. It was like 150 editors from smalltown to the wall street journal and washington post. He said we need to really write something. You need to write something in your papers that says this is a national issue. We cannot let these rivers be. The People Living on their banks need to be safe and this is one of the countrys National Treasures and we cannot have it damaged. What happened is all these editors and in the book i have some quotes. They didnt know him personally but they knew who Wallace Carroll was and they just ran an editorial all over the country calling to preserve the river and it turned it from a local regional issue into a national issue. I think that was his big contribution to that. In 1976 the river was taken into the National Scenic rivers act so it was preserved. Peggy and Wallace Carroll were at the white house when gary ford signed that bill. It has now become, as many know, the new river in the valley is now the countrys latest National Park protected forever which happened in 2020. This was sort of their legacy, i think, among other things that they really worked on. Its a big deal. It was not easy to get that to congress. I dont know if they couldve done it without mr. Carroll. Tell me any other story you want to tell. You can do it in 60 seconds cant you . We are going to go to your questions. I dont want to leave out anything that i skipped over if you want to touch on and we will probably get better questions out there. I think there is something about Wallace Carroll going back to your original question of why i wrote it. When i wrote the book i sent it out to people who didnt know me from anybody you. [ laughter ] and really high up. Continental magazine. People like that. I would say, i mary mcneil and i just wrote this book and i thought if i heard anything back it would be a miracle. It was the most gratifying thing because every last person, because of Wallace Carroll, and hes been gone now he passed away in 2022. They will be back and said you need to get this out. We need to remember what Wallace Carroll was and the lessons he taught us and influence he made in a very quiet way on a generation of journalists. Thats one story i wanted to get out. The last is it goes to when you are a College Student and you dont really know what youre doing and you are nervous and anxious. I was working at an intern sorry at the winstonsalem journal. I never made it to the wall street journal. Not [ laughter ] even close. I was sitting in the corner and i was really nervous not knowing what i was doing. I was in the newsroom and it was very busy and noisy and people were running deadlines. All of a sudden everything got quiet. I looked around and everybody in the newsroom had stood up. I looked down and Wallace Carroll had walked in the back door. As soon as he walked in he didnt say anything. Everybody stopped working and stood up and was just like this. I told the story to donald who is wonderful. He knew Wallace Carroll and helped a lot with the books. He was an intern there. He loved this because he said newsroom is pretty scared. One thing. There was when he wrote in the 60s i guess about journalism and the tyranny of objectivity thinking about the mccarthy era. Its something that is applicable today as it is back then. No one would argue that you ought to get equal treatment to mothers who are drunk driving. I think we get so caught up in this ridiculous term of objectivity. I think mr. Carroll totally understood that. Its another brilliant piece of journalism. I would open up to everyone. I am going to tell my story. When i worked my last year of college at the winstonsalem journal parttime was a joyful newsroom. It was fun and a great newsroom. It was my last year and i wrote to a number of places to see if they would hire me. Ive been offered a job at the winstonsalem journal. It was a good place to be. The wall street journal i accepted it. I told them and they were nice about it. The weekend or three weekends before school was ending the Charlotte Observer had north and South Carolina contest and i won some things and went down there. They pulled me aside and said we would like to offer you a job and i said ive accepted a job at the wall street journal and he said biggest mistake. They are taking people up to new york and you never hear from them again. Here i am in my career is over before its begun. I came back and monday morning i went and asked if i could see mr. Carroll. I went in and told him the story. I said i dont know if its possible if your job offers still there. He didnt get angry but he said that man doesnt know what hes talking about. He said there is no paper in the country that is better in its objectives in the wall street journal. Whether you stay for one year or 10 years you will be a better journalist. I stayed for 40. Lets throw this open. Whos got some good questions . Wheres nicole . That cant make their way. That cant we have some people coming up. Do we have some people , coming up . I cant read my own writing. I took notes and i have no idea what i was saying. The relationship was an extraordinary one. I saw tom reston the other day and he said theres no one my dad had greater respect or professional admiration or fondness for. That was very special. Please come on out. Are you ready . Ill continue later. Tell us who you are. My name is smith, richard smith. Im an ordinary citizen now. As he went through the early part, the really exciting and daring part of Wallace Carrolls story it struck me. This happens at book talks here from time to time with exciting things like this and you say this would make a great movie. This is really cinematic material. I dont know whether youve addressed to that. It also occurred to me that as you go on in the story it gets less daring to do and more intellectual and more newsroom he and so forth. So, just your comments on the movie worthiness of the book and whether you would want any movie to cover the entire life rather than just a piece of it or whatever. Who is going to play pat . Well, sure. [ laughter ] it would be wonderful if that happened. I do think that there is an adventure story there. If i were to do the book over again i might focus on one part of his life because it really had so many things that were substantial and interesting. When i listen to these takes about his adventure and this trip he took i think it very much is something that could be turned into something that would be very interesting as a movie. Every author hoped that. You know. Well, you could actually take different parts of it. You could take different parts of it and make it into something because it was such a rich life. I appreciate your point. Standing up for immigration in the south in the 60s and taking on the Tobacco Companies or at least being honest reporting about Tobacco Companies and r. J. Reynolds coming out against the vietnam war it was very courageous. My point was the character in the movie would change. Maybe thats a great thing. It would be something that reviewers would take note of and if done well it would be great. One thing to add. If you had met Wallace Carroll this was part of the fun of researching. You would never have thought he was the kind of guy who would be doing these kinds of risk taking adventure travels here and there because he was very quiet, dignified. That was part of the fun of it. It was. He had incredible, daring when he was in the spanish war and other places he really risked a lot. He barely survived. Thats part of the interesting thing about him. Someone else is here . Hi. Oh. Yeah. Hi. Im frank. Im a friend of marys and michael. A big fan of the book. Mary, i wonder if you can talk a little bit about the book you wrote about russia and the soviet union. Its impact on the u. S. Thinking about the views of the soviet union after world war ii and how he thought about the soviet union from his experiences there with stalin and others and about the aftermath of that and how it affected him. Also, if i can get one more question in, a little further on about when he did land in hawaii at pearl harbor i think he wrote some articles or editorials regarding japanese americans and the role they mightve played in the attack or whatever. I think those are things he mightve regretted later. Im wondering how some of those events and articles he wrote and that book might have influenced him later in some things he wrote or thought about. Thats a good question because we sort of painted him as saintlike. He did make mistakes and i think he admitted it. He did regret it. You could call them mistakes, but first the soviet union. When he was in the league of nations in the 1930s he actually watched, at that time, the delegate to the league of nations from the soviet union and he was very impressed by him because he basically thought that the soviet union was the only real country that was a sort of looking for peace in the league of nations. I think he had a little bit of a predilection to be sympathetic to the soviet union. When he went in in 1941 he was there for 3 1 2 months. He went to the front lines. He was there for the sole purpose i will tell you why to find out could the soviets stand up to the . We knew very little because stalin would not let anybody in. He encouraged the senior staff of the soviet army and in the book i found that george marshall, when soviets invaded when the invaded the soviet union called in a bunch of reporters and executive editors and said we dont know whats going on there. Can you help us find out . One of them was Wallace Carrolls boss who said the u. S. Government intelligence needs to know what the status is of the soviet army and if they are going to be able to hold off this onslaught. Marshall himself thought only for a couple months. The thought was they are going to be overrun. When he went into the soviet union that was his purpose. Therefore, when he went to the front line he observed and said i only have my eyes to observe and the people i can contact. He came back and said, yes. His feeling was the soviet union was going to be able to hold off the and they were committed and behind it. Then he wrote a book in 1942 very quickly in which he said that. The book is called where in this with russia. He said he felt he would do that. He did not go into the issues with stalin which we have now come to know in terms of what stalin was doing to its people and how horrible stalin was. He had met him and interviewed him and i think later in 1945 when all of this came about he regretted he had written such a glowing report on the soviet union and i think that is one reason. The more he found out about what was really going on in the soviet union the more he recognized. In his book in 1942 he said i dont think the soviet union after the war is going to want to invade Eastern Europe or do any of that. They have too many internal problems. He was wrong. He was wrong about that and he felt bad about that. You know, as time went on he joined and he was very much recognized that the russians were a problem. He was honest about that. In 1949 he actually wrote an article for life magazine in which he said that if the germans, when they invaded ukraine, if they had accepted the help of ukrainians who hated the soviets than the germans couldve really gone in. Hitler would not do that. Instead of accepting the help of the ukrainians who hated the soviet union he shipped them off in cattle cars and so on and so forth are you thats the first part of he was wrong but i think he learned and changed. You have to put into context of the time. You could hardly come back and report out that we shouldnt be working with the soviets for hitler because that was the main goal. On the japanese thing, and this is really interesting, he did write an article which said there were japanese spies in hawaii around pearl harbor that helped and aided in the attack. Because he was wellknown and basically the only reporter on the ground at the time the story ran over the country. It did leave an impact that was unfortunate. At the time, the u. S. Was led by republicans in the congress were very in their hatred for the japanese. This would set into that feeling that we had to round up american japanese and we had to put them in camps and they were a danger and so on. This is also something i think he deeply regretted moving head because i dont think he recognized the impact that it had. He did get the story confirmed by knox, the military officer at the time. He did go down in the field, he did talk to a lot of people who told him this. You know, he got it wrong but he wasnt the kind of reporter that would just do it without having sources and getting it okayed. It was unfortunate. In the context of the times, one of the great proponents of the camps was later the Supreme Court justice. Im not defending. I think it was wrong. He just had a pretty good track record. My name is rebecca cooper. I was a former journalist and now work for a nonprofit. My generation of journalists read whatever books tells us to read. Im excited to read your book. Right now im rereading captain grams autobiography and we forget with all the fame of watergate so many of the crises that she faced during her tenure not only on the editorial side but on the business and publishing side. I just wonder what you think is his biggest crises or a couple biggest crises that he faced in the newsroom during his tenure. Thats a good question. I will jump in. Everybody faces crises. Theres a question about that. He wouldve faced a lot more crises if he had been there 20 years later. The local journalists in America Today is dying. Its one of the great sad stories. The wall street journal, washington post, New York Times doing great. Local papers are not. I think having a great editor like mr. Carroll wouldve made a difference but the Business Model doesnt work anymore. Mary, jumping if you think he faced a crisis like captain graham faced. I do think he lived in a time where you had owners like his owner in North Carolina, gordon gray, who had the means and they let him do what he wanted to do. They saw the newspaper as a Public Service and every prophet was put back in the paper. Thats a different world than what we live in today. In terms of a specific crisis, when he was in the New York Times there was a change of management at the time. He and scotty had a lot of independence. They did what they wanted. It got to be that the times are starting to come a little too often to washington editing their copy, max franco said at one point a famous reporter who was there that said reading their copy after new york it was hard to keep down your lunch. They had changed it so much. Carroll didnt like this. He wrote an article about john f. Kennedy. New york wanted him to put a quote in from kennedy that Wallace Carroll had not heard. He said no, i did not hear him say that. The New York Times ran it anyway. Shortly thereafter, Wallace Carroll left. You could see the writing on the wall. This is not the independence i want. I think that was a little bit of a crisis for him in the sense just having to stick to his guns in terms of the kind of reported he wanted to be. Im shocked that there is tension. In new york and washington. I hated it. [ laughter ] i just want to ask a quick question. You were saying he didnt know the impact of the japanese stories they wrote. Did he know that this editorial was going to be a galvanizing piece or did he just write it out of the daily business and it came out . Was he aware this is going to be a massive break and change things . Thats a good question. I have to say im not sure. What i think he did know and i mentioned earlier is his timing was impeccable. He may have thought now is the time to write an article. I think he hoped it would be influential but i dont know that he wrote it knowing it would be as influential as it was. You have to understand he knew everybody in the administration. He was best friends with them and they respected them a lot. They put the editorial right in front of Lyndon Johnson and said youve got to read this. Its hard to predict whether he knew what would happen. In a way, it was the right guy at the right time and the right message. The timing like that doesnt just happen. You have to know whats going on and have a real handle on Public Policy and International Affairs to know the right timing and how to articulate Something Like that. We have time for at least one more. Hi. I am wallaces great granddaughter. Wow. [ laughter ] so, i did hear a ton about him growing up and had read the book yet but i heard a lot about my moms dad john carroll and his experience in newspaper. I was wondering if you knew whether wallaces career had influence on johns and whether or not you talk about that in the book at all . I do talk about it somewhat in the book but i think the fruit doesnt fall far from the tree. I think the more i learned about john carroll the more i learned they were very similar in the way they approached the profession and integrity in their courage. I do think this is an understated family. Im looking at pat. They are not people that go around and say im great. I do think that the messages of Wallace Carroll really, really fulfilled and played out through john carroll. Way they approached journalism and also i can say in the way were beloved. I mean you know ive talked to many journalists now who who worked with john and they they, you know, they really respected and really learned and thought very very, very highly of him. You i would just add that youre that your your grandfather and your great grandfather. Well, they were so strikingly similar in so many ways. They were just they were both they were so strikingly similar in so many ways. They were both softspoken, but with a well of iron. Tremendous integrity. Courage. And as i said they just commanded such respect. When he took on the university of kentucky in sports in kentucky. So, i think he didnt really drop very far from the tree. Lets take one more. What a role. Im rick college. Im actually a classmate from wake forest. And theres another classmate here too. I did not have the benefit of having as a professor. In fact, mary probably wouldnt have liked me to be in the class anyway. But, i would be really interested in hearing what was carol the professor . Just react however you want. It is true that my old friend meg walsh is here, and she did have wallace carol as a professor. I say in the book that he was very quiet, and he would stand in the corner. And he would listen to what you had to say. Every now, and then he would ask a question. You just didnt want to appear stupid. Lets put it that way. Am i right . Not that he ever said anything threatening or was trying to be intimidating in any way. But, there was something about his presence that you just kind of knew. And i also included in the book i interviewed a couple of former students. They all said the same thing. That you just wanted to do well for the guy. Even as a student. You just wanted to write the best paper you could, and he didnt want to screw up in any way. Even though he was sort of quiet, and dignified he was also very welcoming. He took us up to his farm in the country. We would have picnics with peggy, and him. So, like i said you are lucky if you run across somebody like that when you were young, and impressionable. And i think he gave a lot to those students for 10 years that he taught. But, he only taught one class. One of his students i talked to. Everything wallace carol said seemed relevant to the real world outside. I could sense everything we learned would be important. I remember how regally he stood. How elegantly he dressed, and how regularly he strolled across the campus for his swim sessions. Right. This particular commentator went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes. This has been terrific. I dont want to cut it off. Nicole said shes going to give me the hug if i dont. Are you going to try to cheat, and get one in . Go ahead. Anyway, we will leave the book. He was an extraordinary man. He changed so many lives including mine. My only regret in reading the book is that i wish i had known more about him before, because he really was the centuries witness. Thats right. So, thank you all very much. If you are enjoying American History tv then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency, and more. Sign up for the American History tv newsletter today, and be sure to watch American History tv every saturday or anytime online at cspan. Org history. 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