Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth 20240621

At camp david and she said why not bring them here and get them away from the press and the they thought it would be three or four days. That is how the Peace Process was born. What was his view of manhattan megan . An obstinate individual and difficult for carter to deal with but carter to believe he had to make the greatest sacrifice at camp david. Mahnakhan vegans parents were killed in the holocaust. The had the burden of jewish history on his shoulders. He had to expand the safety of the jewish people enlarging the size of israel with his political agenda. For him to surrender sinai, the peninsula that israel had conquered in 1967 was to forfeit this huge strip of land that separated israel from the invading egyptian army. To trust his enemy was really hard for him to do. Host did anwar sadat and manakhan vegan develop a personal l. A. Should . Somewhat. They made history together but they didnt personally like each other very much. It wasnt the kind of relationship carter had with sadat but they respected each other and sadat was assassinated largely because he signed the camp david agreement. Vegan made a show of going to his funeral at a time when not many World Leaders did. Host what was negotiated during those 13 days . Guest there were two parts of it . One was each of and is real it was difficult for vegan to surrender this conquered territory but in the trust of his historic enemy. There was another part of the agreement which was peace between israel and the palestinians. It is a road map, ever since the camp david accords were signed, subsequent attempts to realize the unfulfilled problems of the camp david accords. Host was there any thought to giving the palestinians directly to this summit . Guest a big problem, there were no palestinians present but at the time the only representative was yasser arafat, declared a terrorist by the United States, very difficult for carter to negotiate with him. Remember the u. N. Ambassador and the young met with the palestinians and they got tremendously criticized for saying hello. Host in your book 13 days in september carter, begin, and sadat at camp david, you quote israels founder, vegan is a distinctly hitler like tight. They did not like each other at all. Vegan was seen as an out liar he was a terrorist. It is embarrassing to many people in israel that he had that background and that it played a role in the establishment of the jewish state. He was always a marginal figure decried by many not just bengurion but they used him. For instance the attack on the palestinian village by vegans terrorist organization was actually authorized by bengurion although he claimed deniability after words. And vague and took the blame and except it. Host you write in your book previous to september carter, begin, and sadat at camp david, going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief, National Book award finalist. It is a phrase in scientology. Scientology, postulated we have two separate minds. One is the analytical mind which is perfect like an ideal computer. It forgets nothing. In your rational mind every single detail of your experiences is available for recall and there is the reactive mind which all your fears and neuroses and so on are settled not just in this life but in previous ones so if you can go through your reactive mind and eliminate those traumatic experiences from that part of your mind you will be left with this perfect mind and your iq will be higher you wont get sick, you will be healthy and smarter than anyone else you meet and you will be clear. Host how did he develop this theory . Guest he was a Science Fiction writer. Largely he made them up. You can see a lot of what is in his book dynamics which preceded scientology and his many scientology books. Parenthetically he holds the guinness book of World Records for the number of titles published, more than a thousand books, so you can see the precursors of this philosophy in his sciencefiction. His book dynamics which was a huge New York Times bestseller was a model for all these post world war ii selfhelp books that can a long afterwards, there were clubs the spraying, all over the country like the hula hoop which is kind of contemporary with that but it was a big deal and he wrote it in six weeks and quoting studies that never actually occurred, in the scientific community, look at it with the kind of amused awe but for average people that was cheap therapy, a friend who would help you get through these traumas and get rid of the emotional aspect. This took the country by storm. Not just this country. It was an international phenomenon. Host how many scientologist are there . It depends on whether you believe the churchs official figures which are in the range of 10 million. If you look at the statistics of the United States, less than half the number who call themselves rastafarians if you are up member of the International Association of scientologist which you are strongly urge to be if you are a scientologist worldwide there are 50,000. Host what is their impact . Guest describing a Small Organization the impact has been disproportionately large. A lot of people pass through scientology. The community of former scientologist is quite large and the number of people whose lives are disrupted or impacted, by scientology, is impressively large even to me. I go to speeches and talk like that often times who have been in scientologist or lost family members, no longer talked to their mother or some or Something Like that created a lot of heartache in different families. Host do you consider it a cult . I dont use the word called. It is just a smear word. You can call almost any new religion a cult. I am not after offending scientologist. I do question the abuses that take place inside the church. Religion is all religion they are full of exotic sometimes quite bizarre ones, that is fascinating to me. I have always been intrigued why people are drawn to one religious belief rather than another but i dont criticize them for believing it because a lot of times people attach themselves to religion is not because of the beliefs but the community or personal problems that might be addressed in side that belief organization. Scientology does offered those things to its adherents but inside the church there are a considerable number of abuses that can be addressed and physical abuse and the incarceration of some of the people in the clergy these are the things that i think law enforcement, the irs should take another look at the Tax Exemption which keeps the organization alive. How did they get the Tax Exemption . Guest normally you would think the irs is a pretty fearsome opponent, but the church of scientology sued the irs and individual agents more than 2400 lawsuits, hired private investigators following individual agents went to conventions, have irs employees drinking too much or flirting with people they shouldnt be talking to and they would publish stories in their scientology magazine freedom about this kind of behavior. It was infuriating. A deal was struck. In 1992 and at the time. They didnt have 1 billion and the deal that was struck on what the merits of the scientology case where, it would drop all the lawsuits up 1 billion would be forgiven, the final fine was 12 billion. Tax exemption, the right to d chairman whatever portion of this empire deserves a Tax Exemption, the novels of Pell Ron Hubbard are not taxed. Does the church have 1 billion today . Guest 3 billion would be more like it but 1 billion in cash reserves most of it in offshore accounts according to former executives and that is a lot of money. The Catholic Church would be hardpressed to come up with 1 billion in cash but this rather Small Organization with free labor on the part of its clergy paid 50 a week and they have a lot of rich members in the church that are very generous in their contributions. They have been able to acquire a tremendous amount of money and realestate, impressive battery of lawyers. Host they also have a hollywood connection. From the very beginning when elroy on hubbard decided to establish his church. They chose to set up in los angeles. He doesnt know that americans do worship one thing and that is celebrity. He put out, the church put out a list of potential scientologist including people like walt disney marlena dietrich, howard hughes, some of the most famous people in the world and they didnt get those people but they did get a lot of famous people that came into the church. They typically didnt last very long. Like rock hudson briefly in the church according to legend they lost him because he was in an auditing session and is parking meter had overrun and his scientology auditor wouldnt let him feed the meter. But they were constantly on the lookout for celebrities who could sell the religion of the same way sports star would sell box of wheaties. You put a face on it and the first really notable face was John Travolta at. He was the huge stock, the biggest star in the world at one point. He was superseded by tom cruise who also, the biggest male star in the world, those are very powerful cards to put down when you are trying to track people, especially people in the entertainment industry. Was the reaction from the church of scientology when you started your book . When it came out in your hbo documentary . When i started the book it was started as a magazine story, a profile of the two Time Academy Award winning writer and director and he dropped out of scientology after 34 years. I had been looking for a way to write about scientology because as i said i am interested in religions. Here is the most stigmatized religion in america and yet very notable people who lent their names to it and i dont think they get anything out of it in terms of career advancement. Is like a Public Relations martyrdom but there they are. So why . When had this dropped out a contacted his Business Manager. Ggis dropped out a contacted his Business Manager. The only lead ahead. A want to write about your client leaving scientology, you king . He would never do that get off my phone that was the entire conversation. Except for the expletives. Next day i got pauls personal email address and send him a note saying dear mr. Had this ggis i had a Business Manager said this is not the best time but would be honored to tell your story. 20 minutes later, very flattered, lets have lunch on tuesday. He was in new york cutting a movie, we had lunch, went out on the sidewalk for him to smoke a cigarette. We are going to be talking about your decision to leave the church and his eyes got wide but he forged ahead and months later he admitted it had never occurred to him that it was going to be about scientology. He was so flattered the new yorker was going to do a profile. He didnt want to think about it. He turned out to be at very courageous source on that. As soon as he agreed i called the church and spoke to the international spokesperson, tommy davis, whose mother come and archer, is thercher, is the famous scientologist, wonderful actress who said we dont want to see the church depicted through the eyes of a heretic but he agreed to take me through scientology that was his phrase, we need enough time so we arranged for me to come out over the Labor Day Weekend so i came out thursday, spent thursday night, friday, saturday sunday afternoon his wife and assistant came to the hotel and said that they werent going to take me through scientology, they wanted to have the opportunity to tell me facetoface, thanks a lot, you cost my magazine considerable amount of money, could have done this over the phone but he agreed to enter Fact Checking questions. I am not sure he understood exactly what that meant in the new yorker context because we take Fact Checking very seriously especially when dealing with a vindictive and litigious organizations such as scientology. We had one objector on the article for six months fulltime, we had five including the head of the Fact Checking department, the most carefully vetted story in the new yorkers long proud history of Fact Checking, from ft checker to the church, 968 querys. Elicited a response of four lawyers coming to new york. 47 volumes, responses to 968 querys. They are giving me all of this material and my editor prove me aside, you got a book, my interview with the church. Very productive. After that we received innumerable threats. From the church and individuals who were mentioned in it and that continued through the public publication of the book and a documentary and to this day, there is still legal for righthand other kinds of harassment but the kinds of things that i have been subjected to, the documentarian, they dont compare to what people who cooperated with us have experienced, continual harassment by private detectives people who show up with go pro cameras harassing them at home one of our sources was noticing the bird house across the street, got a ladder and there was a camera in the bird house and our premiere at sundance, a couple of our sources were followed and video taped at the airport in Salt Lake City so it continually goes on. Host Lawrence Wright, another Magazine Article that became a book and a pulitzer prizewinning one was the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11. Where were you on 9 11 . How did that process work for you . I was in spanish class. I used to have breakfast every Tuesday Morning with a group of people, like to keep their language in austin texas. [speaking spanish] we were having our conversation. I got into the car and heard about this airplane had struck a power. By the time i got home the second tower was had just been hit. Bear in mind i had lived in egypt. I used to speak arabic much better than i did after thirtysomething years. I had the experience of living in a Muslim Country in egypt and speaking the language and i had written a movie called the siege with Denzel Washington and it was about what would happen in our country if terror arrived as it already had in some european cities or tel aviv. It prefigured the events of 9 11 and what happened after, the persecution of muslims, the torture all of that was in a creepy way, already imagined in the movie. When 9 11 happened people said it was like a movie. To me it felt like my movie. I have already had a vision of Something Like this happening. So i decided i would have to in some way write about what really happened, what led up to it. You remember the planes were down for several days so i began examining the obituaries that streaming online looking for a story, a way in. I looked normally i look for an individual. It is a useful beast of burden who can carry a lot of information and take a reader to an exotic world it doesnt know about. On the Washington Post site there was an obituary, in the new york division, they were written about in the siege. I had never met oneill. Made him sound like a disgrace. Classified information of of the bureau, because of that he had gotten fired. Instead of getting Osama Bin Laden. I dont know if he is a hero or villain but he is a helluva donkey. He can take the reader into the world of counterterrorism and show why it fails so he was the very first of the characters that i enlisted to try to take this fast tragedy and humanize it, tell it in a series of interweaving and prince Turki Al Faso the head of saudi intelligence. Host you had three days to write the new yorker piece, correct . For on 9 11. Guest yes. That was an amazing time. Because all these flights were on the ground there were in new yorker writers scattered on assignment, where they moved and i had decided i was quitting journalism i was going to become a movie director and writing scripts for me to direct. So 9 11 happened and the email was still working, a lot of phones were down and sent an email to the editor and said put me to work. We had a Conference Call that afternoon at 2 00 and i remember jane mayer and Jeff Goldberg were here on the call in washington and you could hear the sirens in the streets, we had other writers in San Francisco and so on and we were all talking about what can we do about this and davids idea was we had just filed a report and he would leave them together into some kind of narrative. It was hard for me to figure out how to get a purchase on it but i found that there was a young man who had been of reporter for an investment magazine. And he told me when i contacted him that for the first time, he was supposed to have the meeting in windows on the world, the restaurant on top of the World Trade Center and he spoke to me a little after 9 00 he slept through his subway stop first time it ever happened so he was running late, he got on the train coming back and was racing into the World Trade Center and the Elevator Bank was actually up an escalator flight so he was a little confused and got to the Elevator Bank and the elevator operator he remembered him as being a big black guy that must have played fullback or Something Like that in college and he held the door for a very welldressed business woman who was getting on to the elevator and my source was really impatient because he is late and she stepped onto the elevator, he had our rose tattoo on her ankle in the airplane hit comedy to trevino what had happened, nobody knew. As the elevator doors accordioned so he walked out of the elevator and it was a kind of the surreal experience because pieces of concrete were falling. It wasnt clear that they were falling, they just seemed to manifest themselves. Some were small and summer decided an office desk and he couldnt find his way outside because he was disoriented. Finally went out into what he thought was the patio and it looked like there were suitcases and he thought that was puzzling and realize they were torsos, people who had fallen or jumped out of the building. His story of his trying to get home is almost like but ulysses jury getting back to queens, became the spine of what became the famous black issue of the new yorker. Host this is booktv on cspan2 and we are live in chicago with Lawrence Wright and he is our in depth guest this month ended a few minutes we will begin taking your phone calls. 2027488200. In east and central time zone 7488201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. You and send an email or tweet or make a comment via facebook at booktv is our twitter and l. A. Q can make a comment at facebook. Com booktv or send an email to booktv cspan. Org. We are live at the Chicago Tribune printers row that fest in chicago. Lawrence wright has written several books, very quickly beginning with his most recent 13 days in september carter, begin, and sadat at camp david, just came out last year, going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief the book we were talking about on scientology came out in 23 the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11 in 2006, noriega gods favorite is a novel he wrote in 2000, twins and what they tell us about who we are came out in 1999 remembering satan, a tragic case of recovered memory was 94, saints and sinners 1993, autobiography or coming of age story, in the new world growing up in america, 19641984, came out in 87 finally city children, country summer a story of ghetto children among the amish. Was his first book. Lawrence wright, where did that story come from, that first book . An editor reached out to me about writing about this. I guess it is it set me off on this road where i often find myself in communities of different beliefs and here were the amish in central pennsylvania. Wonderful people, we really enjoyed our time with them. They are quite fundamentalist. It is interesting, they have some of the same practices in terms of disconnection. In this particular valley called the kitchen close valley, the white, black and the yellow when did your daughter marys out of the white buggy into the yellow buggy you never speak to her again. Even though you are living in the same community, i think we found that hard to register, hard to understand but on the other hand they were very generous to us, fascinating experience it takes black and latin kids out of the new york king to farm families not just in pennsylvania but in the region so the contrast between the amish and these ghetto kids was really fascinating to write about. Host you have alluded to this but what is it about religion that attracts you . All of your books have religious thought. It is odd. I didnt intend this as the career statement by any means. It has been my observation that strong religious beliefs are far more influential in peoples lives and Strong Political beliefs. You can hold powerful opinions about politics and it may not affect your life at all but if you have strong religious feelings, it is very likely that they guide your life in some profound way and they reshape society. As journalists i dont think we spend enough time examining the true motivators of peoples behavior. If you are going to look at that level you have to get down into the level of believe. Host for those of you in the audience if you have questions for Lawrence Wright, we want to hear from you. The microphone is to the side and the left if you line up we will get to your questions as well. Where did you grow up . Normally when you ask that question is where did you go to high school . I grew up in a lot of places. One in oklahoma city, lived in abilene texas, i graduated from high school in dallas, texas. Host what was your life like in dallas, tx . Guest kind of isolated for me. My dad was a banker. I felt a little i didnt understand why i felt so intellectually stranded. It was very conservative community. There were a lot of paradoxes about dallas at the time. It prided itself on being the most religious community in america. It had the largest baptist and episcopalian, a presbyterian churches in america and one of the largest Catholic Churches, it was a very churchgoing, also had the highest murder rate and highest divorce rate. There were all these trends that were above the surface and below the surface and i was just smart enough to detect there was something going on that wasnt explained. My dad taught sunday school and he was quite a religious man in his way. His faith had been enforced by his experience of seven years in wartime. I think that he was an early example, a beaver that made an impression on me. I was religious when i was an adolescent. I was in a group called young life. Sort of command and control group of that organization and it is pieties it gets you to advance up the ranks and i was pretty high as at that time. I had seen the force of religious life and walk away from it. Dallas when i was there is when kennedy was killed. It was preceded by a number of events that were shocking to us but in some dreadful way characteristic of the nature of the city. Adlai stevenson was the u. N. Ambassador and he had come to dallas on you and day and been spat upon. Some group of women who surrounded him one of the hats sign saying if you seek peace ask jesus and she hit him over the head with the sign. Lyndon johnson was making a speech in dallas. He was greeted by a group of right wing of women. A bird later dubbedwere later dubbed the mink coat mob. A had to walk to thethey were later dubbed the mink coat mob. A had to walk to the baker hotel to talk. Mystery was thronged with well fed women who were friends of my mothers and watched this on tv and these women appeared to be spitting on the johnsons and they later said they were not spitting, they were frothing. The treatment one of them took lady birds glove and threw them in the glitter. Up until then politics had been rather simple and it broke a taboo. I remember my mother just aghast seeing people she knew and had to admire, they were in bridge clubs together and saying shame shame. Made a real impression on me. Host how old were you in 1963 and where were you the day kennedy was assassinated . Guest i was 16 in geometry class. In dallas, that morning there had been all this anticipatory coming into the heart of the enemy stuff. And on that paper, there is a wanted poster for jfk wanted for treason and all these absurd crimes that never happened and. That was a paranoid spirits in the dallas morning news, had this big black ad, welcome mr. Kennedy to dallas. Shouldnt have been so surprising when the three toned came on vp a system there was a pause, a broken voice of the principal saying the president has been shot. I remember the busy looks of surprise on the faces of my classmates, there was the story in one of the magazine said, i think it was look, the Dallas School children laughed when they heard the news and theres some truth to that. I remember these dizzy smiles, can you believe it sort of smiles but this awkwardness of adolescence. I had myself had it ties to see if i had laughed because i wasnt sure. I just remember the shock being so great and i and later determined to my satisfaction that i hadnt laughed but i remember after that, being from dallas was like you were related to a mass murderer somehow. If we were driving out of state to the had an instance where a guy filling the car up with gas looked in, this was in florida looked into our car and three kids in the back seat and said you killed our president. When i was in college the operator wouldnt place my call to dallas. We bring in mexico once on a Family Vacation and a couple sitting next was overheard as talking about dallas and they got up and left their meal. You felt ostracized. I think, it probably change my character in ways that i still dont understand that having been marked out that way certainly shape ceo and it shapes the city. The assassination made dallas a better place. It was the was ennobled and had grown from this tragedy. Host you write that danny had his dark thoughts about kennedy. Guest my father had a sign of him that was the little righteous. He walked out on doctors ava go because it was too 6. We always kidded him, he was a kidable about these things but when he was the young man, rather heroic soldiers great career in world war ii and cory and had a lot degree and as you might expect had some political ambition and he was the head of chamber of commerce in oklahoma when shortly after he went into a debate king career was asked to host at that time senator kennedy and the senator will be a woman. Logistically, i dont know. He was frozen. It curdled his own political dreams because he could kind of see in the assumption of that request that there was a side of that life that he could not embrace. It was a disappointment to him in many ways that he was never able to go on and try it that side of his life. Host before we get to phone calls, a couple questions from the audience, you write we were middleclass. Already that term sounded like that death sentence for the soul. Guest i was an existentialist at the time. Host what does that mean . Guest i was suffering from all the pretense of a budding intellectual from the provinces. When we went to church on sunday, the parking lot was full of cars. Some people were in cadillacs. They were the ones who were really blessed. They got the attention and i could see there was something wrong with this scenario. I had read the bible and thought about the rich man passing through the needle and all this stuff, seemed very contradictory to what we were supposed to be believing. Honestly i should be grateful that we were middleclass because my dad grew up in the dust bowl in kansas. Family was shattered by that. Many of them didnt really do very well. Kansas, those who did not go to california those who remained behind had very little to work with and live very hard lives and my father was the only one who really got out made a life for himself created the kind of situation that allowed me to become an existentialist. Host 2027488200 in the stands and the time zones if you have a question or comment for author Lawrence Wright 7488201 for those out west. Lets begin with this young lady in chicago with a question. Caller i had a question about your book going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief. I know you interviewed over 400 current and former i was wondering, the church typically says of people leaving the organization that theyre better apostates who are liars. I was wondering if during these interviews you found that to ring of little true for individuals . Guest a lot of bitter people left the church. I talked to i talked to current members. Is not accurate that i didnt talk only, that are talked only to former members but after a point of the church cut them off so i didnt have access to some of the people would have liked to have talked to but the bitterness is certainly there and a lot of shame. People who feel like they miss lead their lives, made a big mistake, spent a lot of money, invested themselves, gave away their education especially with people that go into the clergy, they go in as children. A forfeit their educations, they are impoverished by their service, and the middleaged decide i made a mistake, they have no family and if they leave the church they leave their family. All their friends, the entire community, no job skills they can accurately report on and go into a world they are not very familiar with. You can understand not just the bitterness but the anxiety and heartbreak and the shame that are attached to having been a part of an organization that may have hurt you or people you love to. Host this is a tweet from mary. Mary tweets in what has been done to counter harassment by the author or interviewees . Guest only the little that i can do as a writer and documentarian and that is to shed light on it. The fbi when i was starting my investigation the fbi had an investigation the was ongoing at the same time. Part of it had to do with the clergy has a base in southern california. Their International Headquarters and on that base is a pair of double wide trailers married together and in 2006 the leader of the church began incarcerating members of his executive group, a to 100 at some point and took out all the furniture, they slept on sleeping bags and sometimes flop out of a bucket. One of them had to mop the toilet floor with his tongue. There was a lot of physical abuse going on. People ive beaten all the time. This is not for the weekend. People were in there for years, years. One of the telling experiences that i found revelatory about the nature of faith and the power, the grip it has one night miss cavett came in with a boom box and denounced we were going to play musical chairs. He had chairs brought in and said the last person to be seated would get to stay. Everyone else to a you are out of here you are washed out, send you to some farflung posed to give credence to this he had Airline Ticket sprinted up in the travel office, moving vans brought around and this went on for hours at fights broke out, clothes were torn, shares were broken. These people were fighting to stay in the hole as they called the place. This was their chance at liberation. If you can understand that incorporate into your mind that they would rather stay in those quarters can be free to go about their lives you can see the grip that community has on us. Host robert is calling from seattle. You are on the air with author Lawrence Wright. Caller in 1976 i was a geologist, had join scientology previously, she was married and she and her husband were the founders of the church of scientology in honolulu. So through the years she and i went different paths. As time went on i came to respect the teachings of l. Ron hubbard regarding antisocial behavior. A lot of the teachings were really good day and you have the organization itself, seems almost paradoxical to the teaching and that is what i observed, the people involved were very strong about recruiting nonstop unless you became forceful about it. I found it ironic because you might compare it to the people who had taken it beyond i dont know if that is an accurate portrayal but i thought i would get your perspective on it. Host lets hear from Lawrence Wright. Guest hubbard assembled from many different sources his therapy and theology. It is a common criticism inside the church right now that the founders vision has been lost. On the tail of this scientology does help people. I have talked to many people do feel that they have been helped. In addition to the abuses there are things the Church Offers people such as therapy which is called auditing. If you and i are in a recession, and i am the person being audited, and i hold a pair of aluminum cans. They used to be a campbells soup can there are electrical wires going to a meter you are looking at and it does register something. It registers your galvanic skin response sweaty palms. The needle moves a usda question and i answer it, you can see that it is one third of a lie detector. You can imagine of therapeutic situation is altered by having this machine between the two of us. And people go in with problems. If you go in and the auditor says what is going on . I had a fight with my wife. I can see that and he can. The needle is moving. Tell me about it. So you talk about it. You told a story again so you diminish the emotional aspect. This is a common feature of a lot of kinds of therapy. You rob the power of the experience by repeating it and denaturing the itch and the auditor will say can you remember an instance in your earlier life where something similar . You might say yes, my mother scolded me in exactly the same words when i was 5 years old. I have never for gotten it. You see the legal register and the arbiter will say what about earlier . I dont remember anything earlier. With a minute, the needle just moved. What was that . Just had an image, of what . Of a barn. Go back to that image. Open the door of the barn and what do you see . It looks like seventeenth century france. Okay, why out there. What is happening is you are having a memory, they say, of an earlier life. The needle has just proved to you. You lived before and scientology can help you discover those early memories. And you see the inherent s many people give to scientology, very turtle beans ended the tremendous relief. Is expensive to be a scientologist . Guest it can be very expensive. There are many Different Levels of scientology. That is just Like Base Camp and after that there are other levels, operating levels, there are eight of them so to get from where you are to the very top can run you hundreds of thousands of dollars and there are parallel courses for auditing and many other Communications Courses and stuff like that and you are constantly asked to contribute especially to the Legal Defense fund and other forms of charity. That is why scientology has been able to enrich itself on the backs of not that many people. Host next question from our audience in chicago. I finished reading the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11 and i have been talking my friendss years of and good to be talking to you, sort of a surreal moment but i appreciate your time. I was struck by the dichotomy of fundamentalism and modernism particularly the justifications and if you are in a democracy, putting a human before god is blasphemous and that would justify me killing innocent people in a democracy. My question was in research, people you talk to fundamentalist beliefs to more modern thought. It is such a dichotomy, brought up in fundamentalists thought it would be hard to make believe. Before you get an answer, what you do in chicago . Why did you pick up the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11 . I listened to a long form pod cast if this happened heard about it. It was featured on an old archive a few years ago. It is relevant today particularly with isis and living in the modern world. It was great. Guest i had a conversation, the Oldest University in the world in cairo. Shaking in deradicalize asian project in prison. His analysis was people move into radicalism they come through it first big step is liberalism everything is literally true. Then become this increasingly radical fox wants that takes place to the point that you are justifying murder. That is when you become a terrorist. At the center of this circle. If you have people inside that circle, his experience is you could move them may be one concentric circle away from the core maybe two but to get them all the way out was in his experience almost impossible and so did the radicalization project has as its goal to unlock the violent aspect of it and try to move people away from violent jihad into simple matter realismliteralism without taking any actions. I have talked to tons of former terrorists and their very literal minded and believer in the fundamentalist approach to islam but if they are talking to me ethers they are under the control of a Police Agency or they have at least moved one step away from violent jihad. Host in your newest addition of the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11 you have a Osama Bin Laden, did you read the recent peace on this issue and what do you think of what he had to say . Sy hersh is a great reporter and a good friend but i dont agree with all that he assumes to be true. I wish if he were going to make such bold statements that they were more broadly sources. My feeling is it can well be true that there was a walk in. I am not saying that there wasnt. But the idea that Osama Bin Laden was dismembered and parts of his body were thrown out of the helicopter and stuff like that that scenario just seems unlikely to me. I dont think i cant say that the u. S. Was in connivance with the pakistani intelligence as side does because vote reactions have been humiliation and painter and without having more resources it is really hard to say what actually happened. Host nancy in california you have been very patient, you are on with Lawrence Wright. Caller thank you so much. In 1992 i was a Convention Services director at a luxury hotel for l a x and we were going to be handling the meeting for can, cost Awareness Network which probably shouldnt have called themselves that in first place. The leader of the group was patricia ryan, leo ryans are. When i went to pick her up at the airport was in the middle of the rodney king l. A. Riots when i went to pick her up at the airport with the hotel band and i said and went to pick her up and she had this panic look on her face and said the scientologist were following her. Ordinarily i would have thought that was crazy. However they had been harassing me in the weeks prior to the meeting and this wasnt at the meeting, this is she and i getting together to handles logistics fleet in the next couple weeks i took another job but protesters were around the hotel i wonder if you knew about the network, what happened to them and if there is another group that can have that can help family members of people in cults and i will hang up for your answer. Thank you so much. Guest the cult of weariness network, in the 70s, pretty well established all the deep programmers in the 70s, the cult of wariness network if you could call from transition out of an organization that you were afraid to leave. Scientology was one of the groups people complained about and called the cult of wariness network. Scientologist along with other organizations but mainly scientology brought suit against the cult awareness record, bankrupted them and bought the name or assumed the name, if you were calling that network you may well be speaking to a scientologist. Host lets go to another question in chicago. Caller there are many disturbing things in going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief. One disturbed me greatly was something you reference to earlier and that was the successful implementation of the irs in 1992 specifically my question would be is there any way whatsoever that that decision could be reversed, and what is the status of the irs today in terms of how strong it is . Could another scientology be successful under another name by assuming multiple times the irs . Thank you. The director and i have suggested that it is appropriate for the irs to take another look at that exemption. I dont know if the organization, having been so broken by its assault by the church can withstand another confrontation. The church has a lot of money and a lot of lawyers and is willing to devote itself in the way that will occupy the irss full attention as long as this goes on and the irs is perfectly aware of that and i dont know if they want to touch it but on the other hand there are good reasons to think that the kind of abuses going on in the church, for example i talked to 12 people who told me they were personally beaten up by the churchs leader and many of them have witnessed other us oats. The. The leader of the church. Host rogers says scientology made itself on easy target, you could have written a similar book about any number of religious organizations using protections of the first amendment. He said he was a jehovahs witness for 45 years many more people have died from being jehovahs witnesses due to the watch tower societys prohibition of lifesaving blood transfusions and she asks the question of view why does our government permit grants, such benefits to the disorganization this to routinely missed free innocent citizens. Guest the jehovahs witnesses are all over me. I get Facebook Messages from them. They want me to take on their organization, former jehovahs witnesses, it is a good question to ask about Tax Exemptions for any religious organization. The rules have been laid out pretty clearly. If an organization such as scientologist and aside from those rules, they should be called to account and that is true of any other group as well. Host freeland, mich. You are on booktv on cspan2. Caller thank you very much. Since camp david accords, we paid billions of dollars a year to egypt and israel going on close to a quarter of 1 trillion and egypt of course is a brutal military dictatorship, it always has been except for the greek period when they chased out Hosni Mubarak who skimmed billions of dollars when he left office he might have been the richest man in the world and also is real isntrael isnt any kind of liberal democracy, if utah had the same laws as israel has for non jews would violate all our civil rights laws not even getting into the palestine abuse. You were talking about president kennedy before. He said the wind you make peaceful change impossible you make violent change inevitable. Dont you think that spending billions and billions of dollars to help prop up these undemocratic regimes that use torture and abuse to stay in power actually promotes groups like al qaeda and isil and so on better than anything else really . Host thank you. Guest we do give israel and egypt several billion dollars a year 2. 5 billion to egypt and 3 billion to israel and half a billion to the palestinians since camp david. A lot of people feel like we are paying them to be at peace. Honestly lets compare that to the cost of war. We spent 1 trillion in iraq. A few billion dollars every year doesnt register. We dont have much stability in the middle east at all, any stability keeping them at peace is tremendously important strategic goal for this country and those billions of dollars seem like a really inexpensive way to do it if they actually have anything. I dont think if you withdrew those billions that they will immediately go to war but it does help stabilize those countries and that is the most important thing in the middle east right now. Host from in the new world growing up in america, 19641984 which came out in 1987 you write i wonder at times how the country might have been different if nixon had won the election, which fairly counted he probably would have. Guest if votes in chicago had been fairly counted but that is where the election was thrown. It is an interesting thought experiment, may be the time for nixon had to come earlier. The country would have been different and would have given kennedy a little more seasoning in the senate that he might have been able to use. You was pretty green when he came into office and the cuban missile crisis was a real test of that. Host charles from pennsylvania please go ahead with your question or comment for Lawrence Wright. Caller i find your approach and very sobering and peaceful, kind to everyone you are approaching. Growing up in central pennsylvania i am familiar with the amish and mennonite sects and the dynamics they create. I am acquainted with someone who dbase muslims in hyde park in england for the purpose of converting them to christianity, for the purpose of saving their souls and also interested in the a historical approach to islam from tom heartland who did a documentary for bbc. I know you have already got your scientologist after you end may be the irs. Would you consider looking at muhammed and islam and approaching that in a truthful, sober peaceful way that you do . Guest i have written about islam in the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11. You asked if i use the word culture cult. Cult. Al qaeda is a religious cult and a very violent one. I have written about the Orthodox Jews in jerusalem that want to destroy the dome of iraq on the temple mount and bring on a cataclysmic may be apocalyptic religious war. I have written about satanists fundamentalist baptist, jimmy swaggart, mormons, and i havent emptied the category but i am perfectly willing to move on to some other pursuits than religion. Host is there of book you are working on currently that could potentially become a book . Are you a playwright and an actor at this point in your career . Guest i am using real actors now peter. I am working on a story for the new yorker about behindthescenes negotiations to try to free the american hostages that were captured by isis. It is a heart stopping tragic story. That is being fact checked right now. I am working for years and years i have wanted to write about xenophobia. You dont know who she is, very few people do but she was a fascinating warrior queen in the city of palmer. It has now been captured by isis and there are these glorious ruins there. The reason they are ruins is the zenobia took up arms palmer was part of the roman empire and the persian empire. And her husband was murdered. She might have had something to do with that. She became the regent for son. She let her own army and conquered egypt and that was part of the roman empire. The emperor took a roman army to palmeira and sacked it and captured her and took her back to rome and paraded her through the city in gold and chains she is a fascinating figure who has been forgotten. Legacy of palmeira those ruins are likely to be destroyed. This is one of the great examples of that kind of early greco roman architecture and is going to be a tragedy to watch it grow but i thought before that happens if possible i would like to take note of this one extraordinary individual who has been so thoroughly forgotten by history. Host a young man from chicago with the question. Caller i also picked up the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11 and went while i have read lots of other stuff so i am appreciative of what you have done since september 11th, that switch. Maybe i will give up journalism. I was wondering what for you personally and possibly what you would recommend to other people would be the reason to stay with journalism and the true to life stories. Guest i realize i am never going to do it. I do a lot of Different Things. I write movies and plays and now television and i love doing all of those things. Writing is a wonderful profession. May be financially erratic, but as a journalist you have a passport into other peoples live and you cannot go ask pretty much anybody anything. Think how absurd that is. Would you feel you had the right to walk up to people and say why did you leave your wife . It is amazing to think that we are in vested with this kind of authority. We should be given subpoena power. You only talk to people who would be willing to talk to you. I thought about i like writing dramatic stories and narrative stories. That was the door of the movie business but i did not like not having control which was the idea about being a director as well. I still write scripts and occasionally act in my 1man shows but i always come back to the fact that what is interesting to me is what really happened. How did this happen . What events led to this . I am blessed with the fact that i can write for a magazine that can accommodate thousands and thousands of words. I get paid by the word. That is something to consider. The latest article i turned into the new yorker now 24,000 words. I dont know what they will publish it at. It gives me room to go deep on a story. Spend the time, go to a number of places i need to go to and talked to as many people as i can in order to understand it. All of that is very fulfilling to me and if i have a particular personal quality that works to that advantage, i try to be the compassionate listener. Everybody feels that they have a story to tell. Why people talk to reporters is really mysterious. They trust you and i try to be the person that is in the moment nonjudgmental but also not allowing them to escape the questions that i know my reader would when two asked and so i have to put those questions forward in a nonthreatening way but at least try to get them if i can understand why they did is i can write about it and if i cant understand it i find it is very difficult for me to write. Host so 24,000 words for a new yorker article. What is the time frame, i am going to write about this to publication . Wikipedia guest it depends on the story. In going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief it took nine months. In this case i made my first calls in february so for me that is really compressed. I felt under the gun. I didnt have any foreign travel involved which can consume a lot of time. I have a method that i rely on. I know it sounds i have been preaching this freeze years and no one has taken me up on it but i use note cards like a graduate student in 1965. My memory is not that good. If you are interviewing hundreds and hundreds of people and reading countless books and articles and so on there is too much information to try to spontaneously sit down and write it and retrieve it from your own mind. As a young writer i found myself stopped because to said that to me . Where could i find it . I didnt know. All these notebooks with interviews in them. Finally i stopped, went through everything again and put it on note cards and by assembling the subject, like Osama Bin Ladens family wives, his first wife, each of these is a category and when i get down to writing about this 14yearold girl from syria that he married when he was 17, i have all the information i have retrieved from all my interviews, books and articles i had translated. Everything is in this little niche. I get to that, pull it out and i write about her and it is called their and i put it back in the box. It takes a lot of time to assemble all that but but writing process is speeded up so much more and you are not stopped and there is a sense of momentum in the writing process that carries over in the readers experience. Host approximately how many words are in the looming tower al qaeda, and the road to 9 11 . You have 24,000 in a new yorker article . Typical 100,000 . 120, i cant tell you honestly how many words are in there but looking at the size of it probably 220,000. Host next call for Lawrence Wright comes from dave in santa fe, new mexico, thanks for holding, you are on booktv. Caller thank you. I am an archaeologist, very sorry to hear about palmeira and sort of glad we are not seeing similar things happen to the Cultural Resources in our part of the world. My question was about the book going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief and i wanted to get your perspective on the archive facility that has been built in new mexico north of the small town, a modern essentials beside constructed on the ground on some overlapping circles on the order of half a mile wide and with diamonds inside. It is amazing. It is visible from space and i imagine all ron howard created this symbology and wanted his records secured in a secure archived. Your thoughts are appreciated. I will get off the phone. There are several repositories where the works of all ron hubbard is preserved in titanium canisters, argon gas filled cave is, to be there for perpetuity. The site he is talking about, and interlocking circles, if aliens come to the u. S going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief humanity has disappeared from the planet they will be able to locate the works of l. Ron hubbard and it is a thought by some that if El Ron Hubbard comes back and he is expected to he will be able to find it. Every Scientology Office has an office for him and several facilities, homes for him, there is a zane grey novels on the bedside and the table is set for one. And slippers by it the shower. The interlocking circles is someone coverley analyze where that came from. He used to smoke cool cigarettes. It looks exactly like the circles on the cool cigarette. I wonder if that was the inspiration. Host was Elroy Hubbard a true believer . Guest i believe he was. Many people think of him as a con man and a fraud but if he had been at some point he would have taken the money and run. He never did. He spent his whole life especially the latter part of his life when he came upon the e meter much of his day was spent by himself trying to explore the inner recesses of his mind which was a very peculiar mind. Probably no mind has ever been as thoroughly explored in history as that of all ron hubbard by himself. It is fascinating but also dangerous. He was a disturbed individual. He thought that himself. He sought out psychiatric help from the va a but never actually as far as i can tell received it. I think dianetics and later scientology were a form of self therapy. Host david miscarriage, is he a wealthy man . Is the isolated . Guest he is the leader of the church the devised his life from living in el a where he makes it with movie stars and other scientology adherence his wife shelley he exiled years ago to one of the spots in setting california where they have the archive of hubbard works and she has not been seen in public for many years so his personal life is hard to know. He keeps himself on an incredible physical regimen. He works out, very buff his chefs have to count the calories in his coffee every morning. In the book you will have a detailed menu of his daily diet. Host another question here in chicago. Thank you for your conversation and sharing this morning. I was inspired by your comments a few minutes ago how you organize your notes. I am an archivist not for l. Ron hubbard but i do hope you consider donating your Research Notes and papers to an institution or if you are already in conversation with that because the way you describe your organization for writing is beautifully done and i am inspired. It is a lovely aspect to your work that is beneficial for future researchers who use your materials if you chose to do that. Host what kind of archivists are you . I work that Paul University in chicago in the archives department. Guest right now i am using my archive. I hope to continue. At some point we have to get that stuff out of the house. Host have you approached by anybody except dePaul University . Guest lbj library asked me if i was using it. Theres a writers collection at texas state university. I dont know why, renting a locker in one of these rental places. I dont know why i am hanging on to boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. I once offered, i did a story about the sons of jim jones. This was 15 years after jonestown the Branch Davidian episode happened, it happened pretty much on the same anniversary. This is getting around to saying that i offered precious interviews to California State Historical Society and they didnt want them. I had decided my editor at the time tina brown asked me if i would go to waco and write about love Branch Davidians which were under siege. They of there are more reporters in Branch Davidians there. I dont feel i would be useful but i had been removed by the fact that just before this apocalyptic ending, there was a van of children sent out of the compound and they looked so 0 lost. They went through the police lines, the fbi, the anitamedia with all cameras and sell on and theyre leaving everyone they know. I began resulting cults in the past. Jim jones had three sense survived, they were in the capital of the ghana, georgetown in a basketball tournament and never shared their story. I am not sure why they agreed to talk to me but three sons, two of them are adopted. Steven, the natural some looks so much like his father, extraordinarily handsome, tall man, jim jones jr. Who is black and tim jones, another adopted son. And experiences of 15 years since 900 people died never told his wife. There were two conditions, one was the go to a public place and his wife came along. We went to a restaurant and tim is physically formidable guy, he can curl 100 lbs. With either hand but get on an elevator, last time he tried to fly he made it plain turnaround and take him back to the gate. Sitting down, he was sobbing and the waiter was making a big detour staring at plates of food and. Telling the story of going back to jonestown, he is the one who identified the 900 people and they included his wife and children, his natural parents, adoptive parents, his whole world, he had to go identify them. After that, i have been in awe of the power of religious belief to take people like that and plymouth some into such tragic adventures. Host why did you leave the Methodist Church . Guest it wasnt just methodism i left but organized religion in general. It wasnt that i had been particularly offended by the church i grew up in. Also later the minister of the church strangled his wife and got away with it i wrote an article about him for a Texas Monthly and his mistress was the one that played the piano, i have already become a non methodist by that point but i turned away from religious beliefs because i felt i was living life superstitious lee and trying to believe things i wasnt sure where truth was not a healthy way for me to live. Host from in the new world growing up in america, 19641984, i was an unconscious racist, a fact i discovered in dr. Chris wells church. Guest dr. Criswell was leader of the First Baptist church in dallas, texas. He was the largest Baptist Church in the world. He was of very charismatic gentleman with snowy white hair, kind of an angelic vision. Billy graham was a member of this congregation. He spoke out against kennedy for being a tool of the pulp and so on. But i have a date once to that church and she was part the philippine and i was uncomfortable. I had never gone out with a girl, i had gone out with very few girls but she was entirely white and i felt unnerved by at. Later in college i had the experience of getting to be friends with a black person. I had gone through school in dallas tx, brown versus board of education 1954 i graduated 11 years later never having seen not only not a black person but we didnt even have any hispanics in our school. There was a high school for hispanics in north dallas. I was pretty and exposed to other races and i remember i had brought up a black guy for membership in my fraternity. For that and other reasons i was eventually expelled from the fraternity and for good reasons. It was difficult for me and the womens movement, these were movements that actually change the way i was in the world, who i am. I. T. Later wound up writing about civil rights. That was how i got into journalism. I worked for the Race Relations reporter in part because the awkwardness that i felt when i was a young white man around people of different color and i hit know what to make of them. Host washington, you are on booktv on cspan2. Caller i want to talk about the movie the siege very smart, appreciate, great dialogue between Denzel Washington and annette bening. Wondering how that came together and have you got hooked up he did a terrific job with and why you havent done more of that kind of work. Guest there was a time i was going to be a movie director and writing the siege was a great experience in many respects. I have a friend, linda polk a movie producer, she approached , a movie producer, she approached me with a movie idea she wanted me to come up with a plot and the we could sell and it was right after the cold war was over. What is the cia anymore . It seemed irrelevant at the time. Communism is dead for the most part. How do you write a story . I realized the venture will be the cia did have a real life antagonists it was the fbi. Once i realized that, neighbor fighting over who would control terrorism inside the United States. The fbi won that bat or betty was a fiercely fought turf battle, it was a heartbreaker for me in many respects because i had worked with arabamerican organizations and theyre never been a movie where there was an arab American Hero and tony, an arab american played an fbi agent and a heroic one and he had never had the opportunity to play an arab before. I fought all these would be in favor of the movie but when it came out it turns out there was a campaign waiting in the wings for the next movie that had an arab terrorist and mine was the next movie so there were protesters around the theaters. People dont want to go to a movie and cross a picket line. It was the box office disaster. And after 9 11, it was the most rented movie in america. I have often puzzled over in that. It was creepily patient about what might happen. The movie has a good ending. After 911 people were looking for possible good endings. It was a really unfortunate things that happened round that movie that still pains me which is the movie came out in november of 1998. If you remember the first al qaeda attack on america was the Embassy Bombing in east africa in august of that year just before the movie came out and right after that, of the trailers for the siege began to appear and there was a bombing in cape town, south africa in which two people were killed in a little girl lost her leg. This was it was said that the bombers where radical Islamist Group had done it because of the trailers of the siege and they picked planet hollywood, the restaurant because bruce willis who was in the movie was a co owner of it. It was very upsetting to me that i felt in some ways they were attacking my imagination. They had i had written this story and so many people were dead. I dont feel responsible for it but i grieve over it. Host dan in new jersey please go ahead with your question or comment for Lawrence Wright. Caller two sides of the polling. On the one side, the world. On the one side, the worldcoin. On the one side, the worldcoin. On the one side, the World Trade Center was twice attacked i was in there on 9 11 and the other side of the colon in but thats soldiers king elvis a lot, jihadis killed to avenge people so the more we kill the more of vendors we create but we are looking for military solutions to these things. I wonder what you have learned through all these years about this kind of american propensity to go in, regulate what is going on and i will talk about our military adventures in and where it has gotten us. Second war in iraq was the greatest blunder of modern American Life and i was reflecting the other day about vietnam which was the war when i am a young man and i am a Conscientious Objector so no doubt my opinions about military solutions are affected by that. Vietnam 50,000 american soldiers died, cal wasountless number of southeast asians. Wisteria type is they took over convenience stores, we have to pay a price for what we did in vietnam but that is not true in iraq. We will be paying a price for that until the end of this century probably. Not all americas fault. I dont want it to sound like that. We are engaged in trying to manage an incredibly volatile region of the world and the reason we are there is there are resources that the rest of the world depends upon. Trying to keep some kind of control and order in the oilproducing regions is a strategic goal of this country, keeping the sea lanes open nobody else is going to do it or we havent tested that hypothesis. The wars we have been engaged in are not just us. If you study the middle east and look at the history of the wars there they always turn out badly and they always prepare the ground for the next war. Camp david is one example of where diplomacy has succeeded in an extraordinary way of preventing wars. There were four wars in a single generation between egypt and israel and that document could end to it. There hasnt been a single violation of that treaty since then. So if you are going to measure the success of the wars we have been engaged in or others have been engaged in against the triumph of diplomacy is pretty clear which side we ought to be putting our efforts in. Host if you cant get through on the phone lines you can make a comment on twitter, facebook or email, booktv is r. Twitter handel, facebook. Com booktv you can make a comment their, you can see at the top of the page where you can make a comment and sending email to booktv cspan. Org, next call from california. Caller i find most agree entry to important points one the media, politically motivated groups have an agenda exacerbating the situation between both groups. And 2 both have more in common than differences, just giving rise to interfaith groups. My question to you is in your conversations with individuals within religions what do you find most or all agree on . Thank you. Guest what did they agree on . That would be a good place to start. Muslims and jews, their religions are very similar in many respects especially the legalistic qualities of them. One of the things i try to do, to get out a message that the Israeli Palestinian dispute the israelis and palestinians, jews and palestinians are the same people. I am not talking about it figuratively. Dna evidence has shown that these are the same people, both descended from the canaanites, both of lived there in the same region for thousands of years and in fact david bengurion, the first Prime Minister and israels second president wrote a book in 1918 when they were living in new york in which they postulated that the palestinians were actually jews and the evidence they put forward was pretty interesting. The idea was that there was a period in jewish history called the babylonian exile and that is when it did the desert invaded the kingdom round up all the jews with money and talent and took them to babylon where they stayed for 70 years until they were freed by cyrus the great and they came back and there were these people called the samaritans to claimed to be the original jews. Those people, many of them eventually converted to islam or christianity. He used to wander in these palestinian villages and see lights in the windows friday night, jewish names in the cemeteries and so on and began to think we are the same people. Our identity has been broken. I think they are right. Scientific and historical evidence supports this. If we could get this word out that the palestinians and jews are the same, i thought it would make a difference. When i aired this i did a 1man show in tel aviv and fought this will be the big moment and it made no difference at all. The attitude generally was we kind of knew that. Some more people lined up in chicago. Thank you. I have not yet read 13 days in september carter, begin, and sadat at camp david i did read from beirut to jerusalem some my question is related to what you are talking about now. One of the things i came away from after reading that book could be summed up in three words, lack of trust. I am wondering as you did your homework, lack of trust between all these parties and with it there will be middle east peace in our lifetime if you come across with that feeling also, the connection with the problems in that region of the world, thank you . Guest lack of trust is essentials to what is key these parties from making peace with each other. What is really happening now is they dont know each other. I was thinking 25 years ago you could drive from gaza city to a single check that israelis used to have seafood on the gaza beaches. 100,000 were going to work in israel every day and more than that from the west bank many israelis spoke arabic, many arabs spoke hebrew. They knew each other and now volleyballs between these peoples they dont know each other and it is a lot easier to hate each other when you dont know each other and in terms of trying to stab. Trust the first thing is to get acquainted. Host david is calling in from houston. Caller this question involves your book going clear scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief. I myself was involved in scientology in the 1970s, studying psychology and sociology, looking for answers why people do the things they do. I was turned on to is an initial public dianetics on modern science and Mental Health which i felt had many practical issues and tools for psychology majors people like me things involving communication tools, personal interactions, there seemed to be a compelling and seemingly legitimate application for Mental Health type issues and problems. I was also had l. P. Skepticism going in there and i was looking for inconsistencies but papers that constantly came out for students taking classes in scientology and dianetics, i couldnt find any the sheer volume of work he put out dealing with dianetics and scientology was impressive and i found out later he was this very successful sciencefiction writer. Known many ways he was ahead of his time in terms of almost predicting things that were happening involving Nuclear Fusion and nuclear war and things like that. I guess what i am saying is i can understand how people could have gone drawn into it because i certainly was. I felt i learned some very positive things and not until the end of my time when i began to feel that sense of paranoia where not paranoia but where there was a concerted effort to keep people from leaving the classes and so forth but nothing more than some of the hard sell tactics we even have to do with other businesses. Just wanted to give that perspective and get your take. Guest a lot of people read dianetics and felt they were getting the key to their problems or understanding Mental Health. One of the problems, the questioner is referencing these studies that didnt take place, that dont exist and talking about the clear as a phenomenon. There hadnt been a Single Person declared clear. There was no body of people to research. He had at one point he was going to reveal the worlds first clear anti did so in l. A. A young woman, a physics student, she was lying on a couch and he had an audience and talking about the accuracies a clear has in this brilliant young lady is the clear and someone asked hubbards back was to her, what color tie does mr. Hubbard have on because she is supposed to remember everything. One question after another testing her memory and intelligence and she got so flustered she couldnt respond coherently. There was a total disaster, people who did him off the stage. That was the first clear. Along time before they revealed another clear. What was interesting in reading the dianetics is this breezy sense of authority that really cast the spell. The proof that he is enlisting his stuff that he is confabulating at the moment he is writing. Host as we continue to take your calls, emails, Facebook Comments and tweets we have an audience in chicago and a gentleman waiting to ask you a question. Host back to your book 13 days in september carter, begin, and sadat at camp david, a had the you felt begin reneged on the latter part of the potential peace treaty, the second part and if you did, what difference do you think that would have made if they could have fulfilled that at that time and resolved the palestinian issue. Guest carter always felt begin lied to him. It had to do with the settlement building. He thought he had a pledge from begin that they would not do anymore settlement building until the second part of these accords had been realized. Hammers and saws the 4 begins plane landed in tel aviv, carter felt very betrayed by a that. The camp david accord, that part of it is unfortunate, still a huge diplomatic triumph that they made peace between these two nations. I think it turned, you were asking earlier about carters opinion of begin, but neither of these men like teach other. Thes mean liked each other and thought it was going to go on. Can you imagine two weeks . Suppose the president of the United States disappeared for two weeks. Not just one president but the heads of three countries are gone from the world scene and no body knows what is going on. And carter at a time when the shaw was going down the prime rate was 20 younger people wouldnt know what that is like but it is bizarre. Huge gas lines and it was a difficult time in international and domestic politics. So for him to take that time off, it seemed crazy. And egypt and israel were going through stressful times. The agreement, after 13 days carter felt that fina after 13 days carter felt like he finally had it in the can and everything had been initialed. His Communications Director had told the networks theres going to be a president ial address that night. They were going to interrupt in the emmys. They were setting up the east room of the white house and carter had made a side letter. Offer times these International Diplomatic accords are decorated with things we dont agree on. We agree to disagree on. And one of those side letters was about americas position on jerusalem, which has been since it was occupied in 1967, that it is occupied territory. East jerusalem. And this goes back through several administrations and republican and democrat. So he specified that in a letter that we didnt agree on this and he had pledged to sadat he would put the letter forward. Well the letter found its way to begins hands. That sunday morning and he told carter if he didnt with draw it the agreement was off. Carter was astounded. Has nothing to do with the accord and both egypt and israel contributed side letters about jerusalem as well. So he said i cant do that. I cant go back on my promise to sadat. So begin said in that case the signing is off. And this was the lowest moment in jimmy carters life because not only was this a failure it was fiasco, and so he was walking back to his cabin and his secretary gave him some photographs. Begin asked for some pictures to give to his grandchildren of carter begin and sadat and the photograph is of the three men sitting on the porch of aspen lodge, and carter asked his secretary to get the names begins grandchildren and he signed each of them and signed, love, jimmy carter. He had to take the pictures back to begins cabin and he never wanted to see begin again but he felt obligated. So he went back to the cabin and was begin was absolutely icy and, hello mr. President and i just came to say goodbye. Goodbye, mr. President. And he handed him the manila envelope and he said, brought this for your grandchildren, and begin pulled out the pictures and sigh it was signed, one after another and he began to weep and carter said, i hoped this i could write this is where your grandfather and i made peace in the middle east. And he went back to his cabin to call sadat to tell him that the agreement was off and begin called and said he would sign. One human moment after 13 days, made all the difference. This i one of those emails that is entitled life from victor patel. Always a pleasure to listen to you. How do you divide your time between the new yorker, book writing and your other creative endeavors . When do you relax . And what is your favorite restaurant . Guest okay. Thats a lot of questions. I love my work. I love my family. I love my band. Im in a band. So i took up the piano when i was 381 2 in order to play play great balls of fire on my 30th birthday. Im still trying to have the adolescence i had. Its fun. I go to work in the morning try to get started by 9 00 at lease. Your work at home. Guest i work at home. I have a very nice office. And i have a whiteboard where i outline what im working on. I like my wife and i love gardening, and i always when i get up i usually go outside for several times a day just to take it in. And then go back to work. I usually quit around 6 00 and get some exercise, and then play the piano and then we have dinner. So thats i think thats paradise. I just i love the order and i try to keep my life as a reporter i go out and talk to people that have been in great turmoil and have been tear blushing terribly traumatized offer times and often times and i think as a balance to that my own life, i try to keep as even as possible. Host what about restaurants . Guest restaurants. Host in the salt lick . Guest ive been to many of our famous barbecue restaurants. I think the restaurant that my wife and i tend to go to more than any other is called eastside cafe, and its what is nice it has a garden in the back of it and so great vegetables and so i really like that place and its always any please where you can talk anyplace where you can talk and have good food and theres not loud music playing that would register on my favorite list. Host from macedonia in bronzefeld tex. Hey, larry, are you still playing music around austin in has your band found a new venue . Guest well theres somebody that really knows me. Yeah we used to play in a texmex restaurant called hojitas, and re had a we often let young people sit in with us so they get the experience. There was a judge who had a 12yearold daughter that wanted to play. So we let her play. And the next day the fbi closed the place down. They blew the doors off. Using explosives. It was a heroin den and its been and its also embarrassing because im an investigative reporter, and [laughter] guest and so is our harmonica player, with npr. And we have been playing in this club for years and never noticed that we did notice the food wasnt very good, but anyway, 11 people were arrested. And it turned out the opener of the restaurant had served time for three murders and how he got a Liquor License in austin, texas, is a little mysterious so we found a club where we think theres no illegal activity going on. Its called onetoone, great venue on south lamar in austin. Host another question here from the audience in. This is slightly broad bat what this future of politics with religion and vice versa . Guest well theres religion plays a big role in our country, obviously and if you look at the candidates in the primaries, youre going to hear a lot of religious declarations. And i think its unfortunate it gets too mixed up into our political system. Because for one thing i dont believe a lot of it. I think often times theres pandering, and i think thats disgracegraceful and hypocritical. And yet there are parts of the social agenda i mean, one of the reasons i think about the power of religious beliefs in peoples lives if you take the say the liberals and their attitude about helping the poor and empowering people through government policies, which is fine, but when there are poor people on christmas that need turkeys or when theres an earthquake in nicaragua who helps the people . Church people do. Those are the people that are actually putting their hands out there and doing things. So, i think religion has a place in our society and its a valuable place but because its so potent it can easily lead us into dangerous schools shoals and i spent a lot of time in countries where religion is to ewan in our country you can believe anything you want or you can make it up. A lot of countries you can only believe one thing more or less. I think those countries have also terrible problems with religion and its a constant problem in the middle east, where the forces of religion and the forces of Secular Society are in such eternal combat, and you see Something Like country of turkey, where you had a secularizing leader who tried to push religion out of civil life, and now you see it coming back, and the same tide at work right now in egypt. Morsi was elect by the muslim brothers and then the military took control once again. These forces are very, very powerful in all countries but especially in the middle east. Host david is in tulsa oklahoma, and david youre on booktv with Lawrence Wright. Caller thanks for taking my call. I am a middle School Teacher and i believe i was teaching the first generation if not the first or close to first generation who has no conscious memory of 9 11. Now thats the guest if you walked into my classroom and was asked about 9 11, how would you initiate the dialogue, go about teaching these students who have no memory, not to their fault. Not their fault. But no memory of 9 11. Guest thats a good question as you expect from a teacher. I think the thing that was so dramatic for americans is we were so invulnerable in the world. The idea that we could be attacked on our own soil for the First Time Since the british that someone especially a man in a cave in afghanistan could plan something that would result in such horrible devastation and such a tremendous national trauma, and that it would then prod us into these wars, that have lasted ever since then, and cost our country in so many different directions. But the initial trauma that it happened here, it actually came to america where we have our oceans separating us and we have canada and mexico on either side of us. We felt so protected from the worlds ills, and i think that the difference that 9 11 made is he now know were not invulnerable. That we are exposed to the world, and that we will always be so. Host have another gentleman here in chicago with a question. Three comments. One, you spoke of the palestinian and jews being one people. David ben gurion said theyre todding the jewish god was not the god of the anybody else. Not the muslims or christians. That would be one thing that keeps them apart. That kind of thinking in a person like david ben gurion. A second thing you spoke of the camp david accords as being a diplomatic triumph. I regard diplomacy as coming out of the nature of the state the nature of the state being war therefore diplomacy expresses the nature of the state. And so i dont expect peats from diplomacy but from getting rid of the state. Now, one effect of the camp david accord it released israel to agrees in lebanon and so forth. And its not at all deterred their ambitions to take everything from the palestinians. Finally how i would teach 9 11, what i do teach 9 11 as an inside job. Done by muss sad and the bush crime family to get the wars in iraq and so forth for israel. How do you competent. Host if we could start with 9 11 being an inside job led my mussad and the bush crime family. Guest all right. Its nonsense. And ive been followed by truthers. Heres the how the conspiracies begin is with first of all a world view, and i grew up in dallas. So im familiar with conspiracy theories. And spent my whole life talking about these or imagining who really killed kennedy. The evidence is that Lee Harvey Oswald did it by himself. No, he didnt. Guest i had a feeling youd say that. The mind of the conspiracist is that this doesnt correspond to my view of the world. Now, in the case of 9 11, people who think that the United States and israel are the avatars of evil in the world feel we did it to ourselves. But to start to examine the evidence of it, suppose for most of the conspiracy cysts i dont know what thats gentleman believes about the usual take is we knew that we were going to be attacked. And thus the attack would not succeed. It would not be successful unlv. So in order to make it succeed we had to plant explosives inside the World Trade Center to make sure they would fall down because it wouldnt happen that a plane fully loaded jet inliner, running into a skyscraper would cause photo fall down. That experiment has only been performed twice and the evidence is it falls down. But there are these other buildings in the neighborhood that caught fire and also were eventually undermined and destroyed by the tremendous cataclysm that took place. Then theres the part of the theory that says the pentagon was actually ataked bay missile. Well in that case, where is the plane . Where are the passengers . If you start taking apart these things, lodge include, you can see that theres no evidence to support them. Only the firm belief that that wouldnt happen if you rap an airplane into a skyscraper or that the United States is so evil that we had to do something to our own people, and this i think is this is pernicious and it is, i think shameful in our country that we have allowed people in the middle east, for instance to get off the hook culturally. I remember one of my sources in saudi arabia was bin ladens brotherinlaw very useful source to me, and he had been coming to terms with the fact that saudis were the hijackers and they were responsible for 9 11. And it was hard for him because the implications are quite vast. Terrible indictment of his culture. And then the last time i talked to him he said that he no longer believed that. And i he said you did it to yourself. And where did you hear that . And he people like this were like loose change and so on were doing documentaries about how america had done it, and so his feeling was why should i accept the blame. Your own people are saying that you did it yourselves. Host lets move on to larry in centralia washington. Larry, youre on booktv. Hi. Caller hi. Mr. Wright id love to take a history class from you. Its amazing. My question is, i think the end of religious wars is only going to come after we see the end of religion and i go back to the crusades that was 200 years long nine Million People slaughtered and killed, and its been one after another throughout history. I wonder what was the origin of the belief, i think superstition like you said was a lot of it because when the volcano blows if if you dont throw a virgin down it, its going to blow again. I wonder where is the human psyche thinking that they need religion at all . I think a child should not be taught anything during the brainwiring days of his life until he is 21 years old and then decide what religion he wants to be. Thats for every buddhist throughout the world. Id like your comments off the air. Thank you. Guest i dont think were going to see the end of wars in which religion is involved anytime soon. And all the we seem to be steering ourselves into the kind of apocalyptic game in the mideast. What i find very disturbing in the middle east now and not just the middle east but in a number of different religions is apocalyptic thinking, and those who are longing for the apocalypse dont care about victory. They only care about destruction. And its obvious in isis. Its easier to see that their goal is the reason theyre fighting in syria and iraq is iraq is supposed to be the place where the imposters of the muslim religion are put to together and the imposters in the Isis Al Qaeda framework are the shiites and isis and the al qaeda are a sunni organization, and so theyre trying to create the civil war between the sunnies and the shiites, and its going to end with the annihilation of all the shiites, and syria is where the final battle between the muslims and the christians will take place. In a place called dabik the name of the isis online magazine. And so theyre inviting us into a war in which their goal is the end of civilization. And this is we can see this apock lip kick thinking clearly apocalyptic thinking clearly there but theres a strain of it in christianity and judaism that goes back a long way, especially 1967. Thats the year of the sixday war, when before the war israel was not yet 20 years old and it was a very young nation. Holocaust was not a generation away. There was a tremendous amount of anxiety about where they were. Israel is about the size of new jersey. The arab world is the size of the continental United States so if you can imagine new jersey surrounded by the jews and the arabs, you can imagine the anxiety that they felt about where they were, and many jews had come to the conclusion this is just another ghetto, another trap for jews. And they were leaving israel in vast numbers and that summer of 1967 nassar, the egyptian president , threw thekeepers out of the sinai and closed the straits of tehran, blocking israels access to the red sea and these israel considered acts of war. The appearing site in israel was tremendous. Egypt at that time was engauged in a war in yemen using chemical weapons, so gas masks were passed out. There were trenches dug in the city parks for the mass graves they expected they would need. And then israel struck first and within an hour eliminated the egyptian air force. We call it the sixday war but you could call it the 60minute war. It was all over, after they defeated the syrian and jordanian forces. But the psychological effect of this on all three religions was transformative. For jews, there was this tremendous influx of jews who were suddenly coming into israel and israel had been found bid very secular people. So cut the new immigrants were not secular for the most part. They were very religious and they became the backbone of the settler movement, and this ingathering of jews is part of the prophecy towards the end times when the messiah will come and it japanese jews who believed it. Many christians looked a this and thought we are steering into the end times. And for muslims the humiliation of that war was so profound and they asked themselves, why would god turn against us . And the answer for many of them was, were not good enough muslims. Were not fundamental enough. Were not pieos pious enough so thats when radical islam began to awaken. Host that last caller said he would like to take a hoyt class from you. Do you teach at install do you do seminars . Guest no. I would love to teach but my schedule is so erratic that i dont know how i could take a semester off and but ive thought a lot about it. I really enjoy working with students. Host clint potions on our Facebook Page marx wright you mentioned having been hypnotized at one point. Have youunder taken a poly grandfather test and what is your opinion of them. Guest no i never have taken a polygraph test. I was very interested in hypnotism when i was young in the eight grade i read the entire shelf of abnormal psychology in our local library and i started hypnotizing my sister and i actually was lay her out between two chairs and stick pin in here. Host does she still speak with you . Guest yeah. I dont know whyth but i dont think she remembers it. I used to hypnotize my fraternity brothers. I was very falls nateed and i was always grateful to the Dallas Public Library for access to such forbidden knowledge. But poly greaves. One of my books was called remembering satan, about the recovered memory episode late 80s and and early 90s there were thousands of people, mainly young women who were having were diagnosed as having multiple personalities and under in therapy they would often recover forgotten memories of being abused by satanists and i got involved in this because my own therapist told me that they were seeing all these multiple personalities and they wanted to actually i think they were interested in having me write about it. They said that satanists were responsible for 50 murders a month a year in austin. Wed never had 50 murders in a year in austin, by satanists or anyone else. So i started looking into it and there was a Police Workshop where some National Expert on say sat tannic crimes was there and all the cops in the room and see eh said satanists were responsible for 50,000 murders a year in the United States. Far exceeding our Actual National murder rate and these were cops. So i thought this something to this. So i went tina brown was the yesterday for and i said id like to write about multiple personality disorder, oh, okay itch said, well, many of them, when they seem to have these memories of being satanically abused. It was like, thats hot. You go do that story there were thousands of court suits and things of people suing their parents for abuses they had fort forgotten and now remembered and were the cause of all their eating disorders or whatever and but one person was convicted of this crime and he was a man named paul ingram who was Deputy Sheriff in olympia, washington, and his daughters had made these accusations, and he confessed to them and went to prison. And so i thought well, if theres anything to it bear in mind this was a tropo on daytime talk shows and Television Shows and many books like sybil and three faces of eve the whole recovered memory phenomenon swamped pop temperature culture. In austin we have four hospital and there are associative. Disorder wings in each one of them. They only occupied one actual room but their personalities were all over the place. I met one who claimed to have 316 permit permanentities which was an impressive management problem. So i got involved in this, and i went up to olympia washington, and there was turn out other people got arrested, some of paul ingrams friends, clawing guy named james rayby who was also in the Sheriffs Department and had been in the sex crimes division. So he was accused by the daughters of having participated in these satanic rites and the demanded a polygraph. It goss back to poly grandfathers. So he but im going to take a little excursion. In writing there are certain tricks of the trade and one of them a friend taught me, was the rubber band theory, which is if you plant a question in the readers mind, you dont answer it immediately. You stretch it a little bit and so that the reader is, what is going to happen . And you keep pulling on it and reminding the reader. So that is what causes the pages to turn. So jim rany demanded a polygraphed, and this polygraph, and this article big new yorker thing and they asked him if he had ever been a satanist, ever abused these girls, and he failed of every response, and that was the end of the first part of the story. In the now,er the greatest rubber band because is left the reader thinking maybe theres something to this. But it posed a problem to me as a reporter and a writer because i knew they reader would think maybe he tide do it. He failed the polygraph. I dont believe in polygraphs because theyre extremely unreliable and people can master them. But i realized i was going have to arrange for him to have another polygraph and if he failed that, then i dont know exactly where i would be. But i made an arrangement for him to have the head of the poly grandfather in Thurston County come examine him, and that case he passed with flying colors, but had i not been able to do that i think that would have defeated the story and n the mind of a lot of people. Host we have a young lady here in the audience in chicago with a question for you mr. Wright. I wonder if you can help us understand the prospects for diplomacy. Usually diplomacy in my analysis of history has happened between nation states. So there are any possibilities for diplomacy with groups like al qaeda and isis when its not a nation state when a apocalypse goal is and any possibilities for diplomacy and not just war with those with groups like isis and al qaeda . Guest i think we will have to talk to a lot of groups we dont want to talk to. And, for instance, hezbollah. Hezbollah is essentially in control of lebanon and they are very involved in syria and you know we have to coordinate right now our Bombing Campaign with the troops on the ground from iran, and a lot of those are irregular troops. And some kind of coordination is obviously going on between these militias and different militant groups, and the u. S. , in order to keep us from bombing the wrong people. Eventually it could come to a point where we will talk to al nusra, which is an al qaeda offshoot that is in the way of gaining control of the country of syria and i cant envision right now having a conversation with isis at any time in the future but al nusra is actually likely if the assad regime falls and it seems increasingly likely to fall then what will fill the vacuum . The Strongest Force right now is alnusra. If i could just ask a followup. Hasnt the american policy been we dont negotiate with terrorists . Guest you know, thats an unfortunate tropn our diplomacy. Not actually true but its been very damaging in the case of our hostages who were taken by isis. The ore origin of that idea is not providing Material Support to terrorists. So the idea is ransom. Say your child is kidnapped and this actually happened to American Families whose children were kidnapped by isis. And you go to the fbi and the state department, and you say help help. And well, well do what we can but we dont negotiate with terrorists. What they mean is what they should say is we dont provide Material Support to terrorists bus we have hostage negotiation teams with the fbi and for the state department. Well who do you negotiate with if you dont negotiate with terrorists . Who are holding your children. Fresh and then it became we dont even talk to terrorists. So the people that turn to the government for help would find sometimes they were told, we dent talk to terrorists. Well why not . Theyre holding any child and i need help. Im hopeful that after this article comes out and the government is doing a policy review that we will clarify the issue that we do talk to people that we dont agree with. We do negotiate with them. And have done so throughout our history. But maybe we dont pay. Maybe the government doesnt pay, doesnt provide Material Support to terrorists but talking and negotiating are two Different Things from supporting terror. Host Lawrence Wright when will the article be guest scheduled for the double issue at the end of the month. Host dave in washington dc youre on with lawrence right. We have ten minutes left in this program. Caller thank you so much for your work, particularly by going career. Sounds like hubbard had the best version of the rubber band theory. Keep creating new levels, and if you want to make money off of religion feed people mystery sandwich. So keep stretching that rubber band as far as is can go. Two brief questions. First is what been the responsible of mr. Cabbage and the church to the book . Has there been any legal challenges that you might wish to discuss . And secondly, regarding the emeter i understand its one part of a polygraph and that it measures gsr skin conductance but what is it actually measuring, if anything, that at least allows them to tout it as some kind of rely measure to the person sitting across from it. Thank you very much for your work. Guest youre welcome. In terms of the emeter, its it measures essentially your sweaty palms and how you grip the cans so it does measure something. Ive witnessed it. Its interesting. Although its been tried on me and didnt really there was a the experiment was to think of about some very vivid thought and then the needle would move, and now the operator will tell me when im thinking about it next but he never could we always in between. So never sometimes it would pinch you on the neck and then you would remember being pinched and the needle would move, but i didnt have that experience. I forgot the first part of the question. Well go to mike in glendora, then. Caller hello, mr. Wright. Thank you very much for your work. I find your books very, very interesting. Interesting you mention that the associative and multiple personality disorders. I think theres 435 cases of that in congress right now. But i wonder if you ever thought about investigating the financial terrorism and the link to religion with the buffetts and the diamonds and the way we seem to defy the per suit pursuit of money and the way this crowd is above the law when it comes to obviously convictions for fraud and Money Laundering and Wire Transfer fraud. Its crazy the currency manipulation and on and on and on and its just like theyre the Jimmy Swaggert and l. Ron hubbard of the day itch wonder about your take on that and if you ever considered that for your work, thanks again. Guest youre welcome. In the case of scientology i cant say that davin miss gab badge, compared to jim and tammy faye bakker, they didnt he doesnt live that kind of extraordinary life. He has nice things and so on but he doesnt enrich himself at the same degree that i can tell. And i did write about Jimmy Swaggert. At one point his church was taking in half a Million Dollars a day. They had their own postal code. People were sending in their wedding rings and things like that. Unbelievable amount of money. But i wasnt aware that swaggert himself although a lot of these tv preacher live very well mainly what he seemed to be interested in is expanding his empire, and i think thats pretty much the case with scientology as well. Host lawrence right, which of your books has gotten the most attention. Guest i think pie to the looming tower. Its been translated into 25 languages and has probably has had more attention in the world culture, in terms of recently, going clear. People october of it as my last book but it was the one behalf because of the documentary pit it back on the best sellers list. The book, plus the documentary were very impactful and conspicuous and i was surprised by how it was like saturday night live skits in which its presumed you know about the book and the documentary and that never happened before. Host in fact, the looming tower, conservative radio talk show host hugh hewitt brings it up. Guest i have a number of conservative fans, in part because i criticize the Clinton Administration and also do the bushes as well. But of course, bringing attention to the danger that our country faces in terrorism is something that appeals not just to conservatives but maybe sometimes especially to conservatives. Host if david rem nick of the new yorker calls you and says i need you to right about election 2016, where do you start . Guest well me, wife and i decided to throw our support to donald trump. [laughter] guest so i have to tell david that im biased in that direction. Host roger in ohio, please go ahead. Caller finally. I saw the documentary on scientology. For some reason, it reminded me of 1984. L. Ron hubbard is big brother. Is obryan is the thought Police Enforcer the ministry of love and the 5,000 members or the outer party two questions. What percentage of scientologist are in the corg and what it is like for the is it like you go to church and get audited and do you have friends in and out of the church or is the church going to take control of their lives like it is the Party Members . Guest well percentages are really hard to deal with when the truth is you dont have any actual numbers of membership or the corg. When i was working on my the new yorker story i was asking how many members there are and theyre are 5,000 and then a month later of thousand, ten thousand. So its very difficult to and then of course the total number of scientology scientologist is very disputed because the true numbers arent out there. But there are a thousand of corg members and for them, theyre lives are pretty much constrained. There is another level of membership which is just the public and for them you can wander into a Scientology Church and get auditing and that sort of thing. You can take courses and you can leave. And you may be followed by phone calls and mailers that will track you for the rest of your life but you can leave. Theres no problem with that. And then there is the celebrity scientologists and thats a different category because typically you have been your image has been exploited at a scientologist, your label is a scientologist. Youre expected to go to workshops and so on, and endorse the religion, and for a person like that who is in the public eye and has take the example of John Travolta. It would be very difficult for him if he changed his mind to walk away from the church. For one thing in those therapy sessions, which are in some respects like prepen tenant sessions there are a lot of confessions made and they are sometimes videotaped. Sometimes without the knowledge of the person who is being audited. Now, i talked to one scientologist, former scientologist who had been in the corg and there was thought that John Travolta was going to leave so his job was to assemble all the damaging things he had ever said in auditing that would be used against him if he decided to leave the church. Well theres a strong reason not to go. So, i think at the level of the celebrity and at the level included in the celebrity you might include major donors who are welcome into the Celebrity Center in l. A. , and then at the bottom you can talk about the corg members some of whom actually have to physically escaped and offer times they were tracked down and brought back in one case, John Travoltas plane was used to good retrieve a member who had fled. I think for those people its a lot harder to leave. Host Lawrence Wright, if people want to see your work, contact you you have a web site. I do. My son and web master is here, and Lawrence Wright. Com. Pretty much get you whatever you want in the Lawrence Wright category. Host we mention that is roberta, his mother, sitting right next to him from mobile, alabama. Thats lawrence write at tulane university. Guest archaeology 301. Host Lawrence Wright has been our guest. In the new world his story of growing up in america. Saints and sinners 1993. Remembering satan came out in 1994. Twins came out in 1999. Gods favorite, novel 2000. The looming tower pulitzer prices winner, 2006. Going clear, best seller. About scientology. Came out in 2013 and another best seller, 13 days in september. Carter begin and sadat at camp david. Lawrence wright has been our guest on in depth. Thank you. [applause] cspan created by americas Cable Companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Heres some programs to watch for this weekend on booktv. Fox news kurdistan power argues liberals have been intoll rapt of free speech. Former cia Deputy Director mikor morell weighs in on the war on terror and an inside look at daily life in the white house residence. Joseph ellis on the constitutional convention. An examination of the relationship between religion and democracy and a conversation with nigerian author. For a complete television schedule, visit booktv. Org. Book tv, television for serious readers. Heres a look at books being publish evidence this week