Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20140118

They if theres no explanation, we drop them. Its post setting. All the books, we think, on the, are good. Some every bit as good as harry potter, gone with the wind, or kill a mocking bird, but those people deserve to have a voice, and we are helping them find it. As they help writers find their voice, the selfpublishing book expo helps them find each other. Writing, as we know, is a fairly solitary endeavor; right . When you are a writer, and youre traditionally published, you have an agent, an editor, and then youre a Marketing Team and a publicity team. For what its worth, whether they do everything they say they will do, they dont, you have is a team. When youre a selfpublished author, you have none of that. I think one thing that the show affords these people is a chance to if they selfpublish, lets say, everything is done online. They never get to see a face. Two things this affords particular authors. One is to meet the people behind the companies, to actually look at the faces of the people at nook or create space, and go out eyetoeye with the people. Thats number of one. Number two, to go iotoeye with each other. They never get to network or say i tried this and it was awful. I tried this, and i had great success. You know, so a show like this puts them under one roof to talk with each other, and that was a goal for us, to the be able to have these People Network and talk to each other. They could learn from each other. So, what is the future of the Publishing Industry . The authors who write good books and maybe five or ten years ago would have been picked up by a traditional publisher dont have the opportunity anymore so they do it on their own. I think that thats sad, and with the rise of selfpublishing, if people continue to do it right, what we see now is traditional publishers, now, a lot have armings a they recognize the talent out there, when you selfpublish, you build an audience, and they dont want to im not alone that way. I think it did that to many americanmuslims. It sort of forces do you grapple with the notion of what it means to be americaislam after 9 11 was on trial. And the talking pun daunt on tv an expert suddenly. You were told that you couldnt be a woman and be a muslim. You needed to be liberated from it. The violence of islam was inherit to the theologies of islam. There was a lot coming at me. And as a mother after a toddler at the time and two children, one my daughter was starting cinder i was worried about their future. If being muslim is just a label or something that we are as a family because of sort of ancestral loyalty, why put them through that challenge. It had to be more. Hence of the beginning of this journey. So the terrorist blow up two beautiful buildings in our city, our state, our country, what is the impact on a fern person like you, who is a living a comfortable life in manhattan. What impact does it have on you . What do you think about those people . The audience that is listening. How do you think they have affected your life . Well, first and foremost effected the life they took away so sanchly that day. From my perspective coming at it from muslims, the pain of those lost to the terror that day. The morning that we were all doing together mourning we were doing together is come powbed by another challenge many of by vur chew of we were guilty by association. That was difficult. As a mother, even more so as you grapple with trying to make sense of it all for two very innocent children. Yeah. Your son was, what, he was only three and my daughter was just beginning school. I remember, sadly, that her first day at school was the morning of 9 11. The First Official day of school, and i read about it in the book where i packed a tiny miniature as a spiritual kind of protect my daughter thing. Like christians carrying a cross. Yes. It was a big oversized backpack. As i watch the images, the horror of that day, the buildings going up in flames, and thinking that very same miniature packed so lovingly in my daughters backpack was used to wreef havoc and the hate and destruction. And the juxtaposition of those two realities was mind numbing and confusing at the parenting level. So the journey, has been for, for me, a journey of learning and owning my religion. Understanding the issues and we can teach our children to disassociate and disengage. Im told this is also true to the we have stereo types throughout. You are trying to develop your identity. You can say im not quite muslim or not quite changing names right now there is a lot of, you know, people are shying away from celebrating or doing rahm in the office. Its a natural reaction. Its a difficult journal any. Of what it means to be Truly American and muslim and interests have changed for a better world. Watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. This list is a strategy for following some of our wellknown southern talent. And were look at some of the legends of the area. We begin with an exploration of the writing of the general war in chattanooga. Welcome to the university of tennessee in chattanooga. The john c. Wilder papers we have here at the university, a collection that we acquired around 1960 from one of general wilders daughter who was stiff still alive at the time, donated these collections of military documents and letters that her father wrote to her mother in indiana during the war. After the war, there was a lot of Union Officers did, they moved to chattanooga from indiana or from the midwest, and it became a prominent businessman in town and industrialist throughout the south opening a series of mines throughout tennessee and the North Carolina and he was an entrepreneur opening up hotels. He was always working, new, ventures, moneymaking opportunities, and he would get them roming and stay with them for two or three years and sell and start something else. He was the mayor of chattanooga in 187 0 and postmaster as well. He was a prominent citizen in the late 1800s for chattanooga. Its appropriate that we get this collection of letters that he had during the war that he wrote to his witch. One thing i find very interesting is a lot of letters start off like letters that we used to write, starting off by asking the person, why havent you written more, letters to his wife, i have not received a letter from you, always complaining about that, but i think back in the civil war, they were not as detailed in writing letters. In world war ii, especially, soldiers letters had to be acceptability by their superiors. This gives indication of what they are planning to do and gives information about the forging missions that his troops went on, the battles, and one thats interesting that he wrote, his division missed out on the battle by a day, got there a day late, but writes home on april 16, 1862 from the battlefield, writing to his wife what he sees just a day after the battle, and he says, i will not attempt to tell you of the awful destruction on the battleground which covered his face of about 25 square miles. The dead lay on every acre of it. When we came here, there was just about two rebels for each one of ours, probably about 3,000 in all, dead. Hundreds of trees slivered with splintedders, gun carriages, dead horses, heads, arms, legs, and mangled bodies combine to make up a picture of horror that it would be well for our infernal political leaders to look on, and if they did not, then learn to mind their own business to be made of part of it. He was one of the first officers on either side of the war to equip soldiers with the repeating rifle giving his troops a real big advantage over the single shot rifles that most of the soldiers use. The guns fired seven shots versus the shoot and reload, shoot and reload so he really gained the upper hands on confederate troops in the war. Because of them getting the repeating rifles, they were just a lethal division to encounter, and it was because of that they were known as the white men brigade. Prior to that, they were the hatchet brigade because all the men carried hatchets, not for warfare, but camp necessities. He also was very instrumental in the battle just across the bodder into georgia here. One of the last troops to lead union troops to lead the battlefield, protecting general george thomas, who later became known as the rock, and he protected his troops later in the last part of the war. Later in the summer of 1863, he was done with the war. He was sick. He went home for the remainder of the year. When he rejoinedded the outfit in early 1864, he was reduced, and i believe half way through the war through 1864 he was pretty much done, and then he did receive a promotion to the ranks of Brigadier General at that time, but most of what he accomplished during the war, he did as a colonel. This letter he writes from the camp in kentucky in january 18, 1862, and he writes, my dear wife, i have not written you for some time as i have been plight sick with pneumonia, but taken new years day and not yet quite able to be duet, expect to be by monday to resume work. We are lying still here, and no prospect for an advance on the enemy. Our men are half fit for duty, this is the unhealthiest camp ive seen. West virginia, no comparison to it. When you see a soldier and officer writing home during the war and the war that he enlisted in, he was not drafted, but it just gives a good historical account of the things that they face, the obstacles and triumphs they have. It was a hard life. Allot of people dont realize that the casualties in the civil war were not battle wounds. It was illness and sickness and while wiltedder experienced that, and writes im not feeling well. At one point, they carried him by ambulance, and its obvious in some of these that when he was in the middle of some of the hardest fighting, he was sick. He was able to still leave his men, and as soon as the battle was over, apparently, he would collapse and was taken to the hospital where he was recovering or go home to recover. One thing i think is significant in his career in the fall of 1862, he was sent when he was home in indiana gathering troops, he was taking them back to the battlefield, and he was diverted to a little town in western kentucky because the confederate general braxton brag was headed north, and he had to wait for the full union troops that was going to be there for a pretty big battle. He went there with a couple hundred troops and got completely surrounded by the Confederate Army of 50,000. He held them off for several days waiting for the union troops that never came, the union armies never came, and eventually negotiated a surrender by, and i dont know if this has been done in warfare before, but we went in under a plight of troops to the confederate camp and fought out a confederate officer he understand was a gentleman and asked his advice. He pled im not a militarily trainedded, what can an officer do in this situation where im pretty much told not to surrender, but you surrounded me with 50,000 men to my 500, can i see proof that your army is big as it is . His officer said, sir, this is not how wars are fought. Later in his memoirs, he wrote, but i took an instant liking to the man and wouldnt have, you know, led him astray for anything, so they gave him a tour of the Confederate Army and saw, you know, he was outnumbered, and at that point, wilder then negotiated a surrender or negotiated men were not in prison, but sent home, and like i said earlier, he was sent home and two or three months later, the union army worked out an exchange to come back in, and im sure the confederates got somebody to exchange for him. I thought it was a very unique approach to a very desperate situation when he was left hanging out to dry, and he was able to hold off army that out numbered his probably 101 if not a thousand to one. This book is mud slinging, scandals, and disaster, and, actually, i edited together with David Bueller of the university in abu dhabi. Sensationalism is an interesting thing that exists to sell newspapers, has all kinds of forms, but it goes only to a certain limit because its as much entertainment as it is shock. Well, the interesting part of this starts with a chapter by joe campbell who is very good historian and has written about yellow journalism of the late 19th century, 1890s of new york, and he finds a lot positive about it,ments us to take another look at yellow journalism, and as a positive in the muck raking aspects and the telling the truth about whats going on kinds of aspects, and the other thing we have to remember is what was said who came to america in 1830s, on a mission from the french government ended up writing democracy in america and at a very good look at america at that time. What he said was the scandal mannerring is essential to american democracy. He said its interesting also, and the interesting thing, the book, the book does not make a negative just, and sensationalism is fundamental, with every story, the most famous picture that ever appeared in a newspaper was skipping centuries to 1927 which was a picture of somebody in an electric chamber that was a camera snuck in that appeared on the front page of the daily news, actually, shot by chicago tribune, a camera on his ankle, and so this is been going on a long time, and it is essential, especially in political terms, to our democracy. Do you feel that it has changed . It changed throughout the 19th century, so sensationalism has been around a long time. We start in the book, and the beginnings of sensationalism in the American Press had to do with politics, and the mud slinging and scandal mongering of the late 1700s and the early 1800s and jefferson and accused, turns out correctly, of sleeping with his slaves, the press went after them horribly, and that is the same at this moment, but this is going through different periods in different times. For example, when i first got into this business, back in the 60s and 70s, i had a friend, rivers, my professor at stanford who talked about the kennedy era when he was a reporter, and during the kennedy era, everybody knew, and everybody kept a list of who they thought jack kennedy was sleeping with, but nobody ran the story, so in different periods and in different situations, we either as a culture run the story and run with the story as i think we would today, but im not sure, or we wouldnt, and no one ran with the eisenhower questions. No one ran with kennedy while he was alive. As a matter of fact, the kennedy story didnt come out until the 70s when revealed one of his exlovers was the lover of a mafia god, and when that broke, that broke the wall, and suddenly, there was stories. From the 60s to the 70s its changed, and this changed all through at the 19th century. The press where it started was lots and lots of political newspapers in every town, and with the coming of the steam engine and press, it was possible to sl big mass circulation of newspapers in cities, and so from being a political press, we went to being a press for everybody, and as a press for everybody, crime stories came on and became a big thing. Newspapers ran phone yi stories on purpose for the entertainment value, and then conflicting newspaper would say, oh, no, thats a hoax, and the first one would say, no, it isnt, and this went on throughout the 19th century. Very much the intertapement function as well as disasters then and now, ships sinking or buildings falling down was front page news of the mass circulation newspapers. Now, the newspaper business became more and more a mass circulation business going from 30 and 40,000 in beginning mass circulation to hundreds of thousands at the end of the century. Sensationalism takes three forms. Either or. Either the topic is sensational, a war, an explosion, a death, or the treatment is sensational, or the degree of the treatment is sensational, so you can have a war, or you can add horrible adjectives; right . Which would be in the tone, or you can do the horrible adjectives 50 times. Horrible adjectives fit the times; right . What they say about president obama on news shows is if it were about a private citizen would be libel all day long; right . Every possible negative thing, and the worst imaginable language. We dont pull punches today, but in the 50s and 60s, that was unheard of for a Network Commentator to make a negative comment on the president of the United States. Is there some particular thing as you put the book together that youre hoping that people would get from the book, what would it be . I do believe that the only way we understand ourselves today is by understanding our history. He supposedly said that harris not only is a war governor, but a fighting governor. He was born in franklin, tennessee, couple counties west of chattanooga, in 1818, he was the son of a fairly prosperous farmer in the last of his big family. He had a brother who was an attorney who moved to west tennessee, just opening up west tennessee in that time period, was acquired from the indians, became a politician, jacksonian democrat, certainly west tennessee was slave territory, became a slave owner himself, quite a successful warrior in his time and became involved in democratic politics, elected a state senator, and his initial saying as a politician was to dispute the proviso, a suggestion by an orderman congressman in 1847 that the properties or the territories acquired as a result of the mexican war are organized as post states opposed to slave states or along the line, and that created excitement in the south, and he spoke sought clearly on that at that time. He later became a congressman from his district in west tennessee, and then later became the governor of tennessee, elected in 1857, and ironically succeeding Andrew Johnson, tennessees most prominent unionist, and governors most prominent successionist. They invoked the power to have tennessee declare its independence in may of 1861. Tennessee never seceded. As a matter of fact, the declaration of independence, as it were that tennessee enacted, said were not expressing opinion on the abstract doctrine of succession, but invoking our ancient right to a revolution, and so harris invoked that right on behalf of the state of tennessee, but in doing so, he really trampled on aspects of the tennessee constitution because the tennessee constitution had several references to its relation to states relation with the United States, and governor harris basically amended the constitution in a way that violated the amendment provision of the tennessee constitution. Ironically, he felt like he was vipped kateing the souths rights under the United States institution, but by doing so, he perfectly trampled on the tepees constitution. In a positive sense, tennessee was bound up in a terrible controversy in the late 1870 s in the early 1880s over the state debt. The state ran up millions and millions of dollars of debt to build railroads. There was Mail Administration immediately after the civil war, and it was a political controversy of extraordinarily bitter nature. Tennesseeians today dont have any idea that that went on, and thankfully so, and he brokered the compromise, so to speak, to take tennessee out of that controversy over the dead, lingered on, but he was the moving force in 1882 that removed that as a source of controversy. That really was a service styte, and in a positiveceps opposed to the negative sense. He also, i think, ably represented the state pretty well in the senate as far as patrons and things of that nature, which is why the senators did then, and not now, then, too. He never lost an election, although on occasion, he bowed out before he had the opportunity to lose the election. He was elect a state senator in 1847 and died in 1897. In that interval of being a state senator, he was, again, a congressman. He was elected governor, and he fore went a run at governor in the 1850s because Andrew Johnson who was stronger politically than he was. After the civil war, he had a price on his head as confederate governor, and he went to mexico, lingered in mexico for a couple years, came back, laid low, and the conservative element in tennessee, as is true across the south and that time period, regained dependency, and he had connections, and he had influence, and he had prestige as having been the ultimate conservative governor because he led tennessee out of the union, and in those days, the United States senator were elected by the state legislature. There were not directly elected how they are todaying, and he had politics in order and elected by the state legislature as the United States senator in 1876 to take office in 1877. The thing hes most known for in tennessee history now 1 the very famous quote he issued or very famous response that he issued to call for federal troops after fort sumpter, and the federal government called on tennessee for two regimens of volunteers to suppress the rebellion in the south, and governor harris replied tennessee will not lend any troops for the purposes of coercion, but 50,000 if necessary to vindicate her rights and those of her southern brethren. He saw the constitution in a certain way, and he was willing to, on the battlefield, put his life on the line to vipped kate that. On the retrospect, he was wrong, and tennessee would have been better off staying in the union, but he was he followed what he thought was the right thing, even though in retrospect it was not so right. Partly as my own journey to come to the south, and also for others making that journey whether they are nationals or transplants in the United States. The south is an interesting culture, and its not easy to navigate. In the first chapter, why i take this journey, going southern, i talk about why ive made the journey. I felt that it would be very comfortable for me to come to the south after having lived in van meter, a British Colonial island and the south, and i felt that the south was coming into its own. There are lots of International Companies who have been with lots of opportunities, vendors, new businesses started up in the south at a rather rapid pace, and i was wanting to be a part of that, so i tell people that this is a good reason for them also to come to the south and experience a rather unique piece of American Culture in the making. One of the things that we see sometimes in the internationals who come in woo are used to traveling, used to different cultures, and they end up, perhaps, here for a few years say to me, and could you please also train the americans coming into the south because i think they are expectations that of what they experience. Some of them are based on this, and people dont understand that in the south, thats part of the etiquette, part of saying hello. That doesnt mean they want you to come to their house or that is extenning an invitation. That takes more doing. Its confusing for people who first arrive, who are the real southerners . When i ask this question when i give presentations, i said, how many generations do you ever to be here to be considered a real southerner . True southerner. The minimum is three. Its more likely its four, and occasionally five, and i have had a few people explain that it needs to be ten. You can see that in the south, theres a situation where our younger generations have not chosen to move away, have stayed, and part of the culture for a long time meaning there is a sense of real southerners, and its up like anything ive seen in the rest of the country. This list is a strategy for following our wellknown talent. I put it in the book because in many ways these people, musicians, are some of the best, wellknown southerners worldwide for example, pick a southern musician or two to follow. Personalities are key conversation pieces in the south. A good tool for making friends. If you find that you really, really love the music of the band skinnard, listen to, go for it, and find company if the fan base for sure. Then then we come to the southern music genera to follow and get familiar with the musicians, and so theres so many. Theres gospel, rockability, rhythm blues, country, theres something for everybody, and theres so many festivals, festivals, concerts found in most locations in the south particularly in the warm weather months. Any day of the week. Oh, this one. If you sing or play an instrument, learn some southern songs. The experience will give you a feel for southern culture and give you something to share with others. So, can i tell you a story about this . A few weeks ago, i was in huntingville, alabama at the university there, asking to do a workshop for a group of full bright scholars. Because i have such anacinestment in the arts as a way to get used to culture, i brought along with me some videos to show. I showed a video of skinnard, the band performing sweet home alabama, and now in the room, they were scholars and the professors and local leaders working with them, and you could tell who was who. The scholars thought, well, thats interesting. The locals singing along. Them, the flip side of that, i showed a video of sweet home alabama sung by the grad, with backup singers. P and that was stunning to everyone in the room that that would be sung to a russian audience with russian version of punk rockers, describing that, to understand the power of southern music as an export, and Television Great fun, but it was a featuring moment so you could see what is happening to southern culture. In the south, words have a life of their own, and they are colorful, abundant, can be exaggerations and metaphors abound. Its a wonderful experience. It also means that theres a lot of southernisms that are very typical to the south and do not translate here if youre not from around here thats a southernism. Some of the things like unless you really, really want to ask that question, you might get the old southern response, yonder. Oh they could give you directions. Some people say if you need directions, its probably best not to ask because youre going to get a real southerner base youll get something, like as you do in small towns, but seems to be more colorful. You go down three blocks past that light, and then you are going to turn, where that old house is where the shutters used to be, and you go past the wrinkle building, you know where that is, before it burned down, and then youre going to go down a couple miles, and you see that on the right hand side, and they are, like, you cant miss it. Theres two kinds of big picture people coming into the south. One, interestingly enough are real southerners with work or study and have returned to their hometown and families, always to find it considerably different and he, too, has changed, and they bring you something special, a perspective on boast sides, and they are great bridges between the old and the new, theres great additions, including myself, coming from elsewhere in the states and from overseas and usually for our jobs, and add a different set of skills to the south, and as people look at the 10 u9, again, i urge that, historically after the civil war, there was a lack of investment actually in the south, and there was more removal of investments, so you didnt have corporations building Head Quarters and creating the manager class leer, and thats changing, and thats what the new people are bringing, and they are doing an amazing job, but its like taking an isolated culture, culture anthropology speaking again, and introducing it to vast changing virtually overnight. It is a bit messy, innovative, and it is an experience i wouldnt miss for the world. You know one thing about chattanooga is we make the moon pie, the world Head Quarters right now, ben here since 1917 about to hit our hundredyear anniversary. Economics contributed a lot to chattanooga employing 150 people, buying so much of the packaging and Raw Materials here locally theres a Ripple Effect as well. We love chattanooga, great labor, place to live, and staying here forever. We make a million moon pies a day, 300 million a year times 97 years, we have a lot of moon pies made here. The moon pie came out of a conversation between a coal miner and a bakery salesman in kentucky looking for something new and cool to make. Make it big, chocolate, gram, and marshmellow, a good coming bow, and the coal miner said make it this big and framed the moon as it was rising that night, and the rest is history. We made it ever since. To make this, we start by making our own cookies, gramlike cookies, make them, shape them, bake them, and basically flip the bottom one because its a marshmellow sandwich, cap it with the another cookty. If its a double decker, theres another cookie, and then from there, it goes through what we call the rover where we dunk it in whatever coating we are using, goes through a cold tunnel to flash freeze, comes out dry, goes into a wrapper, wrapper into a carton, car into the case, and case out the door. Im john wheeler and wrote the chronicleses of cadillac days, used jackson alias as a pen name, but, frankly, its my story, and im happy to take responsibility for it. I put that subtitle, true confessions of a drug kingpin, it was a tongueincheek facetious thing because the dea and the fbi and lots of the enforcement agents, in every local agentses. I mean, they wanted to portray me as a big, huge kingpin character, and when i look add heist in the context of all the people i knew rein what i really knew was really going on, you know, i was a pretty strong cock, but it was more topingincheek to say kingpin, but theres people who still argue thats what i was. It was an interesting thing. I was always an athlete in high school. I never even smoked a cigarette or drank a beer until i graduated from high school. That summer, i started drinking some with some friends of mine, and, actually, at that time, sniffing glue was a big thing, and thats kind of what we were doing. We were mixing up a bunch of mixed drinks in a blender and sniffing glue, this is before marijuana came along. This was the late 60s, and in chattanooga, at least, nobody knew what marijuana was. It was a couple years later when i was in college before i ever got introduced to marijuana, and thats when i started smoking pot. I was in with the little antiwar hippy folk singer group, and, you know, it was kind of cool, go to the coffee houses and sit out in the parking lot and smoke a joint, just, like, the greatest thing in the world, and thats how it all started. Someone said the key to success is to sell what you love to do, and so in the beginning, that was marijuana, and that was kind of it was kind of a in my mind at least, and in the people around me, i mean, this was like a righteous adventure, you know . Nobody had this stuff. Everybody wanted it. It was the fuel of the counterculture, and when i discovered how i cold go and get it and bring it back, you know, i was like the hero, you know, and so it always resented that stereotype of the shift to drug dealer over in the shadows, you know, sneaking Little Things to kids coming out of schools. It was not like that at all. It was people my age or older than me who wanted marijuana and it was being suppressed, and nobody could get it, and i brought it. Later on, after i discovered cocaine, i really loved cocaine, and i got into that. I was actually sentenced to a term three times, and the first time was not related to drugs. It had to do with burglary where, you know, i was running with the older guys, breaking in places, saying, hey, johnny, you have more nerves than jesse james, you go, and i got caught. Anyway, i was in the work house when i was 18. The first time, got out when i was 19, the next time it was drugs where i had sold some marijuana to the first undercover agent in chattanooga, and it was a pure setup entrapment deal, but they got me, and i was out there, and i had been there three months, and i had a job, no daring jailbreak, had a trusting job in the the hog lot, and i found out there were things happening that were pretty upsetting. My partner stole my money. My lady was running off with somebody, and i got mad, and one day, i left, and i was escaped for three years, and thats when a lot of these adventures happened while i was an escaped fugitive, flew under the radar, went to tucson where i started plotting and taking it back to atlanta and found connections down in mexico, and i started smuggling, and it was very difficult back then. I mean, mexico is the same in some ways, but its much more violent and murderous now then it was then. I would walk over carrying a cracker box full of money, you know, and just a hippy going across the bridge and then id go down the alley, and theres carlos place, and, you know, he had his wife, little kids, and, you know, it was just destitute type of place, and i really felt great because, you know, you could see how much good it was doing them to be able to sell this marijuana to me, and then back home, everybody loved it, and so that is how it was. Personally, in terms of smuggling, oh, probably only about a thousand pounds. It was really a hippy amateur hour thing. You know, you had an old beatup pickup truck, mexican teenagers with duffel bags, and every bag had 6 o80 pounds of pot in bricks, and they, on the mexican side, went off to pay the farmers and open the fences, let them through down to the border, and theyd jump out and carry the bags through the desert across the dry river bed over to the arizona side, and when it was dawn, we would swoop down in a truck, pick it up there behind the market right on the main highway outside, and, you know, we had little radio shack walk kytakeis we communicated with, and this was our smuggling deal, you know, 500, 600, a thousand pounds is what we did. I was arrested at the Executive Park hotel on january 31st, 75. Almost three years to the day from the time i escaped, and they promised me, the dea people came in, u. S. Marshalls came in, took my jewelry, wont be needing this, you know, but i had really good lawyers, and as it turned out, through just a variety of brilliantly brilliant maneuvers all detailed book, i went to prison in georgia, but only for a brief time, and it was about 22 and a half months later that i was out again which was the last time that i was in prison. I cant detait everything that happened during those years, but sufficive to say there was a lot of a cultism. There was a voodoo connection to cocaine smuggling that i never knew about, that i describe in the book, you know, i mean, the plane couldnt come if the chicken lady didnt give it clearance, and, i mean, i thought, you got to be kidding me. I didnt believe in that stuff, but it was going on all around me, and eventually, it had an effect, and i had some pretty surrealistic experiences which i cant detail for you on this camera, you know, it was hard enough to write it in the book, but i ended up in a Mental Hospital for about six weeks, and they wanted me to stay longer, you know, but i didnt, and all that led to a process of searching what happened . What happens to my mind . That led me to begin to search for god. That led to a dramatic conversion, experience down in miami in march of 81. That totally transformed my life. From that point on, there was no more drugs. There was no more anything. To me, everything about the drug dealing, the smuggling, the parties in atlanta, the rock bands, all that, yeah, i mean, that is interesting. Thats enticing. People want to read it because of that, and thats fine, but its really the back story. Its just what brought this particular individual to this point in time where i had this satanic supernatural encounter that almost destroyed me and forced me to call on god, which i had rejected to that point in time, and how my life change after that. Next from booktvs recent trip to tennessee, bill hall talks about a few fairway famous people from chattanooga. Theres a lot of new blood coming into town, and they were reading about the people, kecking the names around town to their story and who they were rather than a list of dates, and it was just a deferent approach, and it gave me a chance to tell a little bit about the story of who they were. Benjamin frank lip thomas is a great story, an interesting story. In 1898, he enlisted and went to cuba in the spanishamerican war, and while he was there, he encountered a bottle drink, and i think the name of it was promountainoused well, it was a pineapple drink, cold pineapple, and he was impressed with that, and so when he came back, he talked to friends about that. At this time, cocacola was on the ascendenc yerks. It was administered by a from who patented it, and it was bought from him, and just started to grow it year by year all over atlanta. If the drinks because that was fountain drinks, that was a popular place, especially for young folks. Thomas, and a friend of his, started thinking they might go to atlanta and see if they couldnt meet mr. Candler. They took the train in july of 1899 and met with him, and according to some of the things i read, it seems like they probably went a couple times, and their idea to him was we would like to bottle your drink and, you know, get it sold around the country. He was a tough nut to crack. He was skeptical about the possibility of this becoming a reality for two reasons. He was worried about the quality of the product, bottling there were problems with bottling and keeping things fresh in bottles. This was a carbonated drink, of course, and he was also worried about these two men. They were in their 30s yeah, that makes sense, in his 30s then, not convinced the men had the ability to pull it off, and he didnt want a failure on the part of the company. At any rate, he relented and gave thomas and whitehead exclusive rights to bottle and sell cocacola in the u. S. Actually, there was a couple states they couldnt, but, basically, they got the entire United States to do it. They signed the contract, allegedly for a dollar, supposedly which he never collected. Thats the legend. Evidently, they were so broke they wired home for money just to get the train back for the last time. When they came back, this was july, they had to enlist one to help get a little more money to buy the equipment, tables, washing gear, that stuff, and in three months, they set up a facility, and they bottled it and distributed it, and within a year they were just cooking. They determined between themselves what theyd do is they would become parent bottlers, and they would divide the United States into territories, so this was would be a franchise system. Itas a parent bottler, sell a franchise to someone, in tennessee, dayton, ohio, wherever, people were just knocking at the door to get this, and then hed get profits from the operations, but the killer was he had he and the other two had exclusive rights to get the sir run from atlanta, so not only they got the syrup and sold that to the bahter bottlers, so that was his story, and its a, you know, its a golden story of american entrepreneurship. The son of jewish imgrants. He went to work at 11, when he was 11, for a newspaper, he continued off and on working as long as he was going to school. He worked in a drugstore, in the grocery store, loved going back to the newspaper. He was a printers devil, and the printers devil is the guy who cleans up around the shop, does the ink, the dirty work, often as a kid, but one person described him as a human interrogation point, that is he asked questions all the time. He loved to learn how to do things. There was a chance to buy the chattanooga times. Chattanooga times was a struggle newspaper with all kinds of debt. In 1878, i think july 1878, he bought that paper, and i believe the cost of the paper was 800 bucks. He was 1500 dollars in debt. I think he had, like, two or three percent capital. He had just a little bit of money, and the story goes, according to his granddaughter, he went to the bank to ask for a loan for 300 to secure his interest in the paper, the chai chattanooga times, and the banker said, who have you got to cosign for it, you know, and youre a minor, and he looked at the banker, and he said, you. The banker evidently went with it and signed it, and, actually, his dad came down from knoxville to help sign the final papers. In 1878, he took it over. He was very social, loved people, energetic, and, obviously, really focused. He took the paper over in 1878, and within two years, he had gotten a subscription up, debt was way down, he was able to pay it off by the 80s, and own it, so it was, i mean, he had most of the interest, but he made a huge success out of it, and in the late 90s, he got word from a friend in new york, a lawyer, who said the New York Times was a newspaper having major financial difficulty, and this might be an opportunity for him to jump into a, you know, into new york and have control or interest in a major daily, so he went to new york and met with a group of people that were trying to buy the newspaper to save it. The newspaper, evidently, was printing 1920,000 copies a day, selling eight or 9,000, and they were losing a thousand dollars a day. They were running against a lot of yellow journalism newspapers that sold for a penny or two where they sold theirs for three. It was a losing cause. Talks, from what i read, was really wanting to do this, really uncertain whether he was the man. I think he felt probably, you know, like he was a small town fellow, and going against some big time, he met with some of the prince. S. They were interested in him. He had had very little money, very little money to put up front, and essentially, called on his contacts, people he made, its not who you know, not what you know, who you know, including president Grover Cleveland to sign letters of recommendation or, you know, backing, to see if he could borrow enough money to purchase a controlling interest in the paper. Thats what he wanted. He want the ownership. He wanted control. He did it. It was just in a few years he upped circulation and began to bring down the debt and show his organizational sue superiority. This was, obviously, something he was very gifted with. It didnt take years to turn the New York Times around and make it a republicked newspaper, and a very profitable one. I mean, he did things on the 60th birthday, he started a, you know, pension fun for employees, employees did well, paper doing well, and the paper tried to do good, and, you know, sounds more corny today, but he elevated the quality of the writing and what was being sprented to the public. He had a public vision. Her older brother had joined a menstrual show. She volunteered trieded out for the show, accepted as a dancer again, not as a singer, and in traveling with the show, a blues singer namedded rainy who proceeds her as a womans singer of of the blues, was on e show, and she gradually became really wellknown, and betsy was schooled by her, and betsy superseded her in terms of popularity, but she traveled with the sthoa. She did a lot of shows in atlanta at theater, at the 81 theater. There was the early version of the circuit, played with a lot of, met with a lot of courthouses and so this is before the era of the race records, and just garnered a great following. She had a big voice. Shes got that kind of bigger, kind of husky style of singing as was typical of the teens and the 20s. She never cut a record until she was 30 years old, so in a way, you know, her young, wild golden voice was never captured on record. Nevertheless, as soon as she released her first record, i mean, they were wildly popular, selling in the tens of thousands, some over a hundred thousand, and she became very wealthy, and by this time, she had moved from atlanta to philadelphia. She dieded on a road trip to while she was in mississippi, she died because she couldnt get medical help. Her funeral was held in philadelphia was attended by as much as 1020,000 people. Thats how, you know, wildly popular and how she connected with peopleth. That at indicating her great popularity. One thing about betsy smith in chattanooga that interests me is that Everybody Knows the name betsy smith, and i venture about 98 of the people in chattanooga could probably name one or two of her songs. I dont think many people have probably ever really heard it. You know, you hear a little clip on it, so for what that is worth, its an interesting way to think of it. For more information on booktvs recent visit to chattanooga, tennessee and many other cities visited by our local content vehicles go to cspan. Org localcontent. On this Holiday Weekend cspan2 brings you three days of booktv. Until 8 00 a. M. On tuesday watch nonfiction authors and discuss their books. Here are some programs to look out for on this three day weekend. At 5 00 eastern Glenn Reynolds takes a look at how changing technologies affect the state of education. Tomorrow a 1 00 eastern from booktvs College Series we speak with a couple professors from Georgetown University law center and at 10 00 p. M. Robert gates talks about his memoir, duty, memoirs of a secretary at war. Monday recognition of Martin Luther king jr. Day, Martin Luther king programs about the civil rights leader. 8 30 a. M. Eastern gary young provides a behindthescenes look at the famous i have a dream speech followed by Taylor Branch at kennecott discussing the king years. Watch these programs and more all weekend on booktv. For complete schedules visit booktv. Org. The purpose of the book is to not only talk about how to revive the constitution and restore the republic but to inform people what the republic is supposed to look like, how the constitution is supposed to function and to move the decisionmaking it away from the centralized Government Back to the state legislatures acting collectively as the framers intended. You write in the liberty amendments about the seventeenth amendment. The seventeenth amendment search now the Public Interest but the interest of the governing masterminds and their disciples. Its early proponents advance not because they championed democracy or the individual but because they knew it would be one of several important mechanisms for and powering the federal government in unravelling constitutional republic. The framers didnt create fewer democracy. That would be an absolute nonsense and crazy. If you look at the constitution, it is very complex what they created. As Central Government with limited enumerated powers, three branches each of which is supposed to be working with each other, checking each other and of course you have the states where hall the plenary power is supposed to exist and the individual where all the individual sovereignty obviously exists. So this idea that direct elections is what the framers intended is not correct. They intended for a house of representatives. They debated this that were linked but the senate was supposed to look like, they went back and forth with different models, but when it came to the senate, madison and the others made quite clear it did you could not have the direct election of senators without creating an all powerful centralized national government. They wanted a federal republic, not an all powerful centralized government. They even made this case to the states when it went to the states for ratification of the constitution. They said look, the senate is made up of individuals chosen by the state legislature so you have the federal lawmaking process among other things the the federalists used the senate among other things, the nature of the senate to persuade the anti federalists to support the constitution and if we had direct election of senators in the original constitution there would not be an original constitution. The state would not have ratified it. Furthermore, who exactly do the senators represent . It is the most bizarre body man has ever created. There are two from every state, we get that, that was to balance large state and small states that the direct election of senators, you have situations where senators voted for obamacare in states where the governor and attorney general of obamacare in court and the state legislatures are trying to protect their citizens from obamacare when the senators voted for it. It is very bizarre. The senate today really is an odd construct. The purpose of the senate was to empower the state legislatures and federal lawmaking process, not just have another vote. For this months booktv book club joined other readers to discuss the liberty amendments, restoring the american republic. Simply go to booktv. Org and click on book club to enter the jet for. You can log in as a guest or 3 or facebook or twitter account to post your thoughts on the book. Tell me essentially what part you played . I was an observer traveling in india with kathy and southeast asia, 18, 20 years and then as a Foreign Correspondent to the guardian, now we make documentary films in that part of the world and we have been passing through mumbai two days before the attacks happened in 2008 when the whole city was basically held hostage by the government and unlike 9 11 like greek writers, it didnt really see the first the some the that hundred. And determined to see justice in 2018 and put together what we hope is a tribute to the heroes of mumbai and explanation for what that kind of terror really means. Did you return, or did you come back several weeks later . How did you coverages . We wait the last people to the story. And the hotel, close to the family, and also to the organization that planned the attack. Why the attack had been planned, the reason for it, what they were trying to achieve and to get the human stories. What were the key findings . The key findings were like many recent terrorist attacks like 9 11 and 77 in the u. K. To intervene before the attack happened, warnings that they happened, several locations that it was in pakistan coming over, holding the hotels 8 and others in mumbai, trying to increase. And in india they kind of have been set out, too feigned an idea. And on the streets of mumbai. It is not going to happen. Did you come to any conclusions about preventative measures or determine ahead of time . The reason we are particularly interested in between indiana and pakistan, and the power vacuum, interests still live in fall lines in the region. Extraordinary stories, for us having worked in the region for 18 or 20 years we are interested actually planning real stories, all of these people, many of them are pakistani and indian. Who we hope we would realize what they did and they are in extreme danger, very poorly paid white employes 4 grand hotels in the establishment. One of the great the humblest people i became. Was there anything about this that played a part in anything . It kind of did a baseline for everything. We began at the height of the insurgency and the endunless disputes provide a very often but for example the attack on mumbai left the appeal for funding by the Pakistani Intelligence Service in 1990s particularly india and chechnya at least to send over an army to trigger a war, they then publicly after 9 11 and elements was in disagreement to be more like al qaeda attacking american targets, not simply that is why mumbai throughout the headlines. Everyone in south asia, and the Organization Planning this operation have to get back for that, getting on the headlines and they got that. Nearly everything. It is quite shocking. When you come back to let the continuing grinding in a rights abuses which outfit the interchange, for any reason. There are three times the number that disappeared. Of boards of 8 to 10,000 people who vanished in the services. 3,400 corpses none of which for any one agency and you feel that lack of familiarity. It is part of what lies behind. That is what we tried to write about the prospective that we make contact with. What originally sparks your interest in this area of the world . Around. 25 years. A couple times. And across the world in both countries, pakistan and india. And continue working at that. Particularly in india, recreating itself every day, thousands of years of history before stories like this but there is a tremendous feeling of energy. Stunning filmmakers, cartoonists and artists and you get the feeling of triumph. Sometimes i go back to london with kathy, we were working for a while and this complacency is staggering, and india, making opportunities in everything and tremendous privilege to travel freely cant make films in pakistan. It has been 20 years of the present giving to us. We had the opportunity to do that any how. Have you lined up your next project . Yes. The same possibility. And returned to the same area. And influence for public journalists when poland had no money and by boston. All the years to come by boston. Then we will stay until the end. And we come quickly and dont leave quickly and it is worth always doing the last interview and going the last kilometer. There has been an awful lot. Here is a look at the top ten adult nonfiction books checked out of the New York Public Library in 2013. At the top of the list is facebooks chief operating officer Cheryl Sandburg with her book lean in. She shares her experiences in the corporate world. Second is a collection of narrative essays, lets explore diabetes with towels. Followed by the memoir who live below the world by the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice Sonia sotomayor. Walter isaacson is fourth with his authorized biography of steve jobs, and the york times best seller. Business reporter charles do we wrote about why had it exists and why they can be changed in the fifth most checked out books power of habit, why we do what we do in life and business. 6 is thinking fast and slow, an exploration into how the mind works by daniel konnamin. The rise of the processed Food Industry to the evergrowing obesity epidemic in salt sugar fact, how the food giants hooked as. Booktv covered michael moss and you can discuss his book online at booktv. Org. Followed by comedian tina fays book bossypants. The ninth was checked out books in 2013 was dr. Alexanders recounting of his medical experience in proof of heaven, a neurosurgeons journey into the afterlife. Finally number 10, cheryl stray, wild, from lost to found on the Pacific Crest trail. To see more of these books and other available books go to n l nypl. Org. Joseph cirincione talks about the possibility of Nuclear Weapons being used today. He says the decline in the number of Nuclear Weapons since the 1960s leaves him hopeful they can be eliminated entirely in the future. This is a little under an hour. Thank you very much for that very kind and generous introduction. It is a pleasure to be with you today. I have to say i am honored to serve john kerrys International Security advisory board. The comments i give a purely my own and do not represent the views of that board of the state department or the u. S. Government. I am delighted to see so many students here, maybe some of you have read some of my articles. I would guess very few of you other than students have seen my video clips on the colbert report. When i speak at schools that is primarily how they know me. I have given hundreds of interviews in my life and the one with Steven Colbert was the most difficult. I have never met anybody as smart as he is who can think as quickly. As a result if you google Steven Colbert nuclear you get me, i show up on the google site. As lin mentioned time the president of a foundation that focuses solely on Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Weapons policy. For 32 years now we have been raising funds and finding best people with the smartest ideas around world on how to reduce the Nuclear Threat. We are a public foundation, we rely on the donations of generous donors. If any of you either have money or need money please see me after this talk. I am here today because i have written a new book called Nuclear Nightmares. We built a special web site called nuclearnightersebook. Com which gives you an idea what the book is about and helps explore the main themes of the book. You can go to that website and track the other events around the country and see their articles i have written. I would like to give you a brief overview of what this book is about, the threats we face today and i want to particularly focus, spend half of the talk on the subject of iran. It is something all of us want to talk about, is in the news and is the most pressing Nuclear Challenge that we face. I would guess that very few of you woke up this morning thinking about Nuclear Weapons. Why would you . Most people think of nuclearweapons as a leftover from the cold war, these weapons that dont have much to do with our current security challenges. If you think of them at all probably in terms of iran and you may believe the threat they represented are things of the past or that we have programs in place that can deal with these threats. You would be dead wrong. It is understandable that we dont think about these weapons any more. We are confronted every day with formidable challenges in our personal lives, in our families, in our schools, in our community or state. Of all the threats and problems we face every day, there are only two that threatened the station on a planetary scale. That is Global Warming and Nuclear Weapons. Both of these can affect our lives in unprecedented ways, both of these foreign a dramatic change if the worst should happen in the way we live, in the very question of whether we can continue to live. Both of these are caused by machines that we invented. Both of these threats are presentable, even reversible, but they require new ways of thinking and new bold government leaders to put policy in place. I will talk today about the Nuclear Threat that we face. We ignore these threats at our peril. If you think someone else is taking care of this or that we dont have to worry about this, think again. Think again. The risk of a nuclear accident, the use of a Nuclear Weapon is low, but should nuclearweapons be used again in the world it would have a devastating physical, financial and political impact. There are generally three categories of threats that we worry about. The National Security strategy of the United States says that the greatest threat the United States faces today is from Nuclear Weapons, specifically the risk that a terrorist group might get a Nuclear Weapon and use it on a u. S. City, a nuclear 9 11. Theres also the risk of new states acquiring these weapons, perhaps states that have less restraint on the use of these weapons and might use them in a regional conflict or to threaten the United States. In this case we often think of iran which does not yet have a Nuclear Weapon but is building the technological capability to develop a weapon should they choose to do so in north korea which in the past ten years has conducted three Nuclear Tests and is on the verge of consolidating in nuclearweapons state. For this reason the National Security strategy of the United States says this has to be a top priority. The policies of the United States have not matched that strategic analysis. The United States does not focus that much attention on these three threats. The president of the United States tried to change that when he came into office. President obama came into office having worked on the senate on Nuclear Policy. One of the first things he did was see that republican senator Richard Lugar from indiana and ask him to take him along when he went to the former state of the soviet union to watch how Government Programs will help to control and contain and eliminate the threat of a leftover Nuclear Weapon, left over Nuclear Material that resulted when the soviet union collapsed. Obama was deeply affected by that and started to adopt this in the senate as one of his primary causes. You worked with republican senator chuck hegel to fashion some of the most comprehensive nonproliferation legislation ever presented to the u. S. Senate and that relationship continues today with secretary hegel being secretary, senator hegel being secretary of defense and Richard Lugar still a close confidant and professor. In fact president obama focused on Nuclear Policy in his very first National Security threat in prague in april of 2009. And a World Without Nuclear Weapons. The idea that we should move step by step to a lemonade these weapons and he married that vision with practical measures to address the various aspects of the Nuclear Threat. The first for the two i mentioned. He said we have to redouble our efforts to secure all Nuclear Materials around the world. The really good news is a terrorist cant build a Nuclear Weapon from scratch, they dont have the infrastructure to build the material, highly enriched uranium, cakes and industrial facility, with gigawatts of energy to make that material. It should be Hillary Clintons next book, takes a nation to build Nuclear Material. In National Enterprise but if a terrorist can get that material, it is then a relatively easier step to construct it into a crude nuclear device, the easier still to smuggle it into a country and there is no shortage of suicide bombers ready to detonate it. President obama pledged to bring together World Leaders to tighten up the security around the no stockpiles of these materials and eliminate that wherever possible, this developed into Nuclear Security summits which continue to this day, a new pillar in our nonproliferation efforts, a new level of unified International Efforts to secure Nuclear Material to prevent the nuclear terrorism. In addition the president laid out new efforts to prevent new states from getting these weapons. He specifically focused on north america and iran, and the actions that he then took, build on the efforts of the Bush Administration to build International Sanctions and restrictions on iran and as a result we have the toughest sanctions on iran imposed on any country in peace times. As a result of this International Cooperation, patient work and diplomacy tightened the noose on iran that brought iran to the bargaining table in geneva. The third platform, the third element of the president s agenda was reducing our existing Nuclear Arsenal. This is something we dont think that much about. We use to have 30,000 Nuclear Weapons in the u. S. Arsenal back in the height of the cold war in the 1980s. That is reduced to 8,000, 5,000 the active stockpile and we normally dont think of these weapons as part of the threat but they are and they are a threat in two ways. As long as we maintain huge arsenals of Nuclear Weapons we are giving an incentive to other countries to build up their own arsenals, the other eight states that have weapons or perhaps to acquire them if they are so valuable, so essentials for u. S. National security, they must have security value for other weaker nations. The relationship long recognized between existing arsenals and the spread of these weapons but theres another danger they represent, the danger of accidental use or miscalculation. Let me give you two quick examples. In 2007, a b52 bomber was on a routine mission flying from north dakota carrying six cruise missiles on its wings, cruise missiles that were flying to louisiana destruction to eliminate these missiles that were being put out of commission. They accidentally loaded not conventional cruise missiles on the bomber but nucleararmed cruise missiles on the bomber. There were seven safety checks that should have prevented this, they were all broken. The crew didnt know they were loaded on. The pilot didnt know they were there. The plane flew down to Barksdale Air force base and spend the night on the tarmac guarded by the normal security, guard and barbwire fence. Wasnt until the next day that a crew member looking out notice on the cone, the nose cone of the cruise missiles that there was a red dot signifying there was a nuclear warhead, not a conventional warhead. He went to his commander and told him, the commander didnt believe him. Finally realized what a serious mistake had been made and theyre really bad news is they never knew they were missing until they got the call from foxdale. Colleague of mine, general commander of Strategic Air command said that if you asked him before whether this was possible he would have said absolutely not. This is the kind of accident that can happen with Nuclear Weapons and if this kind of thing can happen in the United States where we have the best command and control section in the world what is happening in russia . What is happening in pakistani . A country with a hundred nuclearweapons, an unstable government, collapsing economy, strong islamic fundamentalist influence in its military and intelligence apparatus, al qaeda operating inside its National Territory and an ongoing conflict with its Nuclear Armed neighbor india. The risk of an accident or miscalculation or collapse of security that could allow terrorists to get these weapons is a real present danger. It gets even worse. In 1995, the government of norway was firing off a weather rocket just to take atmospheric testing, but when Russian Military forces detected this rocket, it looked to them like it was a u. S. Launched submarine based Nuclear Armed missile and they interpreted it as the first wave of an attack and under some attacks in areas that exactly how it would start, a single missile coming the cross, detonating a Nuclear Weapon to blind rushs radar, followed by a salvo of u. S. Missiles. They alerted president Boris Yeltsin, leader of russia at that time and for the first time in history, opened up the nuclear football, that suitcase that followed the president of the United States and the president of russia roundels on with the command and control button, to launch the Nuclear Arsenal of either country. They told Boris Yeltsin that russia was under attack and he should launch a nuclear missile. Fortunately, yeltsin wasnt drunk, he didnt believe what he was being told, he waited for more information, as they waited and waited and it became clear it was not an attack, closed the football, we dodged a nuclear bullet. A very Large Nuclear a bullet. This kind of misunderstanding happened at a time of excellent relations between the u. S. And russia. What would happen now . Or in some future scenario when things are tense . When there is another failure of the Early Warning system in russia . This risk of accident, miscalculation, madness that we still live with, the nuclear damocles that john f. Kennedy warned about still hangs over our head. We have to take action to reduce these arsenals to the lowest level possible to secure all the Nuclear Materials to the greatest extent possible and to take the strongest possible action to stop new countries from getting these weapons. You have to do this all together. You cant just do one. If you think you can stop new countries and keep your own you are sadly mistaken. You cant go around planned nuclear whack a mole knocking down the next guy who wants a new. You got to do this all together. Reducing our Nuclear Weapons builds up the International Cooperation you need to secure Nuclear Material and prevent new countries from getting them and securing and preventing builds up the security conditions that you need to give countries the confidence they can reduce. I personally believe we can eliminate nuclearweapons, these are obsolete weapons from the last century the no longer serve a valid military purpose. I cant think of any military mission that now requires us to use a Nuclear Weapon. There hasnt been for 68 years. No one has used a Nuclear Weapon in 68 years despite being involved in ferocious wars some of which we lost, having our National Interests at stake, having our allies at risk, not once have we relied on a Nuclear Weapon to solve the problem. You dont have to believe me. You dont have to believe me that we can safely eliminate nuclearweapons. Maybe i am wrong. Lets keep one weapon or ten or 50. Wait. Lets keep 500 Nuclear Weapons just in case. We have 5,000 in our active arsenal. It is wildly out of proportion to our needs. You may think that is a margin of safety i would like to have, but there is a cost to this if. Not just the cost of what other countries thing or whether we can get other countries to cooperate. I mean a cost. Nuclearweapons are not cheap. United states today spends 55 billion a year on all Nuclear Weapons and related programs that include operating, maintaining, building, developing the antimissile system to clean up the non head nonproliferation, environmental consequences, nuclearweapons cost us 55 billion a year but that is not the bad news but you have to start considering what the future costs are. We have a nuclear financial tsunami headed it our way. We are about to make decisions on whether to replace the existing triad that we have of submarines, bombers and missiles, they are reaching an end of their operational life. The contractors in charge of this, the services in charge of this are doing their job, building a replacement programs. To make sure nuclearweapons are the best possible weapons, safest possible conditions and can do the missions we assign them through the president so now we have proposals for replacing these systems and they are working their way through congress. In the budget that congress is considering this month on the Defense Authorization act almost a billion dollars for development of a new submarine that will launch nuclear with missiles well into the middle of the next century. The Current System of 14 trident boats is due to retire in the late 2020s. If you want to have a replacement you have to start replacing it. Chris something this big you have to start working on it now so that in 20292030 the new boat can slip into the water and theres a plan for 12 new nuclear arms submarines. The navy estimates the total cost of the lifetime of operating those 12 subs is 355 billion. If you include all the programs being considered for new cruise missiles, new bombers, and new icbms we will spend 1 trillion on the triad over the next 40 to 50 years, 1 trillion. Is that where you want the money to go . Is that our most urgent defense needs or are there other conventional military needs that could be better serviced by those funds . I believe there are. I believe these are choices we have to make. Former vice chairman of the joint chiefs something i said . The former chairman of the joint chiefs, james card right, vice chairman of the joint chiefs, for head of the Strategic Command said over the next two four years we will make 50 year decisions meaning congress will decide on these programs and once you lock the man, Everybody Knows they build a constituency, build up contract, build a union job, it is hard to turn these programs offer. For no other reason than your own financial consideration Pay Attention to this. Tell your members of congress if you want to build these Nuclear Weapons or agree with me that we can do with fewer and want to slow this down. You want a policy to catch up to the procurement, close this gap, get a policy in place that gives us the Nuclear Weapons we need and no more than we need. This is a big consideration, a big budget buster that i am worried about. Another kind of threat we face with these Nuclear Weapons. Let me turn to iran, let me talk about iran because it is clearly the most pressing issue we face. These other issues that i have discussed lurk in the background. We fund a group called leethink media and they did a survey for us and of all the stories over the last several years that are on Nuclear Policy, 70 of them are on iran so if you think iran is our greatest threat you have a reason to think that. Most of what you read on Nuclear Policy i dont think that but i am much more worried about pakistani than iran. A country that has 100 Nuclear Weapons. Theres a chapter in Nuclear Nightmares called the most dangerous country on earth and it is not about iran, is about pakistan but iran is the most pressing issue, and it becomes now a critical policy point. If we get this right there are enormous benefits that can play out and go beyond resolving the iran Nuclear Program, strategic opening that could develop in the middle east. Openings on other Nuclear Policy issues but the point itself is can we stop iran from getting a Nuclear Weapon . If we dont we risk destabilizing the middle east and that other countries will follow iran and develop Nuclear Weapons of their own. If we do we can solve a problem that the best american president on the Nuclear Scale last ten years and the best american president since jimmy carter first tried to make a deal with the iranians. Every president has wanted to make a deal with the iranians. This president is the first who has been able to do it but it is this temporary deal. It is fragile, just included in geneva two weeks ago and here is what it does. Iran agreed in consultations with the five permanent members of the u. N. Security council that the u. S. United kingdom, france, china, germany, five plus one, in negotiations, and the Nuclear Program. And it is not like the manhattan project, not like the north korean project to build a Nuclear Weapon. They have been fooling around since the time of the shot and. We believe in the past according to u. S. Intelligence estimates they did do dedicated work on nuclearweapons, warhead design, fabrication of uranium into a metal which has no civilian applications, uranium metal will use in warheads and this is a repressive regime guilty of numerous vicious acts over its tenure. The u. S. Intelligence concludes with the dedicated Weapons Program ended in 2003 and has not been restarted but what iran has is a program that allows it to require the technology to build the material that could go into a Nuclear Weapon should decide to build one later on. Is an open program. They tried to hide the facilities periodically and had a long history of trying to hide facilities and we have a long history of finding them and so they have several sites in iran . Important to understand what have you cant really use it in a Nuclear Power reactors because there isnt enough of the special isotope, the rare isotope of uranium called uranium 1935. Less than 1 of natural uranium, it is the base setup, the atom that goes pot. Hit that with the neutron it splits in half, shoots as a neutron, and it reduces nuclear energy. Trillions of adams is what you are after so you have got to get more uranium 235, got to get those uranium235 adams closer together. You do that by taking iranian out of the ground and mixed up with fluoride, turn it into a gas and put that in a centrifuge. The centrifuge spins it around and heavier elements go to the outside like every Good Chemistry student knows and the lighter 235 element stays in the middle, you siphon out the middle gap and you have gas that is a slightly higher ratio of 235, slightly enriched 235 but only slightly so you have to feed it into another centrifuge and another and another and another and you line up a few thousand centrifuges and do this for three four months, now at the end of that process you can take the gas out and have gas that is three to 5 uranium235, and rich 3 to 5 . You can stop right there. You can take out the gas, turn it into power form, put it in appellates, put appellates in the fuel rod, put the fuel rods into a nuclear reactor, they start undergoing fission, they get hot, they get real hot, they turned the water around them into steam that turns the turbine, electricity, 20 of electricity in the United States comes from Nuclear Power. Iran says that is all it is doing, just making fuel. It just wants Nuclear Power like the big boys have. Doesnt want to burn it to oil and gas, it can sell that, it wants Nuclear Power, what is wrong with that . The problem is if you keep those same centrifuges going you can enrich 20 , that forms a reactor fuel for a different kind of reactor. Iran is doing that as well but you can keep going all the way to 90 and if you stop there and take that fuel sent you can pounded into a metal and form its size of a grapefruit and you have the core of a nuclear bomb, same machine, same facility, same process, fuel or bomb. Do you trust iran . The question obviously is we dont. Why would you trust iran. Look at their track record. This is not a question of trust. This is a question of finding a way to stop them from doing that. One way to stop them is to get rid of all the enrichment facilities, the socalled zero option would be ideal. The cartridge approach, raise it to the ground, make sure they can never do it again. We could have had that deal in 2003 when iran first came to was when they werent operating in the centrifuges, could have had that in 2005 with only a few hundred, a test facility. They propose talks in the United States. We were not interested in that point. The view in the United States government under the Bush Administration was as dick cheney said we dont negotiate with evil, we defeat it. The view is you are going to topple these oppressive regimes in the middle east one after the other. That strategy didnt work out so well. We didnt talk with iran, building centrifuges by the end of the Bush Administration, zero to 8,000 so that is why we have the problem, no politician in iran could possibly agreed to give up this facility they spend may be 100 billion on and this has become a huge source of National Pride supported across the political spectrum in iran. You have to find a way to back and down, give them a facesaving way out, to shrink this facility and make sure they only use it for enrichment for fuel and never for can you do that . That is the diplomatic challenge. That is what is going on in geneva. And it is off to a good start. This interim agreement freezes the program in place. While we continue to negotiate for a final solution which is to be completed in six months we make sure the iranians are not dealing with a march on us so they are not advancing while we are talking. It freezes the program in place. They are prohibited from making any more centrifuges, from installing any more centrifuges, from turning on any of the thousands of centrifuges they have put in place that are not yet operational. They also have agreed that any further low enriched uranium they produce stable turn into this power, this oxide so it cant be used later. Much more difficult but other areas, to stop any reactor. Heavy water reactor that can make plutonium, another component for the bomb, stopped any major work on that facility, most importantly they opened up a more facility for international inspectors, International Atomic Energy Agency and agreed to delete inspection so instead of these guys going around every week or two, they go every day or will be able to go once the deal begins at the beginning of 2014 so daily inspections so we can make sure they do what they say they do and the really good news is apart of the program they rolled back. You all remember is really Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu going to the un podium in september of 2012 and he had a cartoon drawn of bomb, very dramatic, very skilled gesture on the front page of every paper around world and in that cartoon drawings he had a red line he drew on top and warned that iran was building up stockpile of 20 enriched uranium, and if they build up a certain amount they would have been a to quickly convert into material for a bomb within weeks or months. That was the urgent threat. That is what we had to stop. This deal stocks that threat. This deal drains Benjamin Netanyahus bond. Iran agreed to get rid of the 20 enrichment they had by diluting it down or converting it into something that cant be used for a bomb and pledged not to make any more and the way we verify that is by inspectors going there every day making sure they are not doing it. What that does is it lankans en the fuse, makes it harder if they wanted to put it in the centrifuge and make enough for one bomb they could do that in a matter of three or four months but now we know we are doing it, we would see him doing it and we would have time to take appropriate action. That is the benefit of the deal. It doesnt eliminate irans capability. It casts it, rolls it back, opens it up to greater transparency. In exchange, we have unfrozen, members of the Security Council in germany and the United States havent frozen some of irans assets in foreign banks that have been frozen as a result of sanctions at the United Nations and the United States and European Union have imposed on iran since 2006. We have given them 7 billion of their own money. That is a lot of money but not that much. It is not that much. If iran wants hmmm be 100 billion still frozen, if it wants to get rid of the sanctions that have blocked iran from doing any international business, frozen from out of the International Banking system so that you can transfer money from the checkin counter with savings account online iran cant do that, cant transfer money from a bank in paris to a bank in tehran, they are cut off, crippled their international economy. If they want relief from the sanctions on their oil sales, sanctions that have resulted in irans daily sale of oil going from 2. 5 Million Barrels a day to 1 Million Barrels a day, lost almost 60 of the revenue from oil over the last few years, if they want to get that back they have to have a comprehensive deal. The al gore line of the deal is they would be left with some enrichment capability but substantially smaller, substantially contained, some facilities will have to close. We have to deal with that issue of the reactor preferably closing that reactor and choosing inspections, much tougher than any nation, that is what theyre working on. This is going to be very tough. I think we will get that deal. Sanctions brought iran to the deal. They worked. They did their job but sanctions cant solve the problem with the dont think you can crush a country by sanctions alone. It has never happened, never happened. No country has ever been coerced into compliance by sanctions. Sanctions are a tool, liver, brought them to the table. Now use the lever to make a deal. They cripple their economy, oil sales plummeted, value of their currency has dropped by 60 , unemployment is up 35 , 60 of irans population is under 35, 50 are unemployed. Remember those numbers. 603550. No regime can survive with 50 of its youth not working. That is a regime threat. They have got to do something about this. There Economic Growth was negative5 . That is why iran, the iranian people elected as their president hassan rahani. It is not a totalitarian state, it is not like Saddam Hussein. This is a certain amount of democracy, some of that happens in these elections. The regime didnt pick him to be its president. The iranian people did. They elected him over the other five candidates that were much closer to the hardline views of irans supreme leader, he was the most moderate candidate up for office and went over 50 . He trounced his opponent 21. Now i have met him. I had dinner with him in new york in september, a small group of 30 or 40 of us gathered and we met the president when he was here. I met him previously in tehran. I would not call him a moderate. I would not call him a reformer. I call him a pragmatist. He is a cleric, he is a regime man, he has the confidence of the supreme leader. He is not like mike wood on it in a shot, holocaust denier ideologue who is really an outsider trying to develop a power base to challenge the clerics. He is a regime of man, he understands the mandate he has been given, he has that narrow window to fix the economy and also knows there is a consensus among irans elite to fix the economy. In other words i believe there has been a strategic shift in iran that recognizes that the regimes survival depends on fixing the economy and reintegrated with the west, not on pursuit of a Nuclear Program. That is why they are willing to deal, for their own Strategic Interests they are willing to deal on this program in order to gain what they believe is a more sound basis for continuing the regime. I look at that strategic driver as the main reason i think we will get a deal. It is also, i believe, because the people who are negotiating for iran, president of the ronny rouhani they understand the limits of what we can give and arent going to make unrealistic demand. On our side john kerry has proved to be a remarkable secretary of state cackling very tough missions and accomplishing a series of things people thought were impossible for example getting rid of syrias chemical weapons stockpile, something people considered impossible in the beginning of september is going to happen by the end of this month. One of the largest remaining stockpiles in the world of chemical weapons is being boxed and shipped out of syria by december 31st. And amazing deal. John kerry is in charge of negotiation, and able state Department Team driving a good bargain. I also believe this will happen because that is what the other nations of the world want and you see a United Nations that is united, a u. N. Security council that has unity and sense of purpose. When the u. N. Security council united, very few countries can block it. Only when the Security Council splinters as it did in the run up to the 2003 iraq war when Saddam Hussein used divisions among the Security Council to splinter it, only then will sanctions dissolve and that is why it is important to maintain that unity and important that we not wreck that unity by imposing new sanctions now. Here is another thing i would like you to Pay Attention to. The debate in congress whether we should pile on new sanctions. There are some very wellmeaning senators who believe now is the time to squeeze iran more. I am telling you if you pile on new sanctions you will not only break the interim agreement, no new sanctions would be put on until we negotiate a final agreement, you will break the unity of the u. N. Security council. We will be seen as wrecking a deal that iran wants and if the deal falls apart because we are seen as wrecking kids and the sanctions regime you hoped to strangle iran with will rapidly unravel. Remember what sanctions are. We are penalizing other countries who are trading with iran, buying irans will. That is what our sanctions do. If you by irans will we say you are not allowed to do business with the United States, not allowed to do business with our financial institutions. If we pile on more sanctions and the deal falls apart, we put sanctions on south korea, japan, europe, china, that is not going to go down. When you think this out what sounds like a good idea, sanctions broadened to the table lets pile more on until they get the deal we want, is actually a selfdefeating strategy didnt kill the chance of the deal, it unravels the sanction regime and youll see iran choose not to make a deal with the west, choose not to increase their Nuclear Program but shift the other way and go back to the other hardline position that a good part of the Iranian Regime wants to pursue any way so that is what is in balance. That is what is going on in the next few months. If you are a student can you are following these issues, if you care about National Security i congratulate you on your timing. There is rarely a moment in American History or World History that is this exciting when you can see the hinges of history moving. We are now in such a moment. If this deal goes through, if something goes on with iran that ends the Nuclear Program and opens up not a friendship but a way to manage our differences and a way to cooperate on the Strategic Interests that iran and the u. S. Share, stabilizing afghanistan, preventing a return of the taliban, stabilizing iraq, stabilizing control in the situation in syria, maybe even is really Palestinian Peace this could transform the geopolitics of the region, it transformed the geopolitics of the world. Those of the kind of thing parrot play