thank you for not only supported an afternoon event which is not. , pensive for supporting your local independent bookstore. i'm paula i will be your host. you're welcome to take photos and share with friends and family about how wonderful it is. please remember to silence your phones. if you have about today's feature book, you may do so you know right afterwards. both of the authors will be happy to sign your books. with that, we can get started. 1971, timothy leary the high priest of lsd who ran for governor against ronald reagan. he escaped from prison and set off a dynamic chain of events. that was almost to wild sibley. but, true they were and it is all chronicled in today's featured book. the most dangerous man in america. the authors combined research of previously known events with recently a covered sources which they will tell us about the firsthand interviews. the results are fun, fast, historical thriller that expands time, politics, counterculture america. this is a page turner. as i told them when i first met them, it is begging to be a movie or tv series. i don't think they intended that but it could be. bill is an award-winning author who wrote several books including dallas 1963. he's also written for the washington times -- washington post. with that, hold onto your seats, get ready for the ride. please welcome to the passage, bill and stephen. [applause] >> thank you. i can hear myself so you can hear me too. bill and i got on a plane in austin this morning. i was up at 4:00 o'clock which is three hours earlier than normal. i'll do my best to sound like i know what i'm saying. >> i'm still not technically awake. >> i was just go stay up all night. i slept in next hour. it is great to see you so thanks for coming out today. we don't actually have a moderator to ask us hard probing questions so will do the best we can asking each other questions. the start by asking bill to tell us about meeting timothy leary. >> has anyone here met tim? he spent a lot of time in this part of the world, back to talk to you later, we probably shouldn't interviewed you for the book. if you see mistakes don't to us publicly. i met him in the early 1980s. is a somewhat similar cake are doing now. he wrote a book called flashbacks those his autobiography and he was passing through houston on his tour. it was a slow day at the newspaper is working at the houston chronicle. an editor asked if anybody wanted to interview timothy leary and i said yes, absolutely. it was extraordinarily memorable day. i spent the afternoon with several hours the oldest bar in the city of houston. it was raining outside and we talked for hours and hours. at the end of the conversation he said somewhat mysteriously, let's stay in touch. i did not know if he met telepathically or whatever. but he gave me his phone number to be serious. i had it in my rolodex for a long time. i like just looking at it, so a call him once in a while over the years and he was very gracious to just talk with me. i like to have steve weigh in on this. and the conversations i had he was predicting certain things familiar to us now like the internet my don't know if al gore is still being credited with inventing it but tim talked about how humans would be connected in ways through portable computers and a lot of the things we take for granted tim is very visionary. that's what we're talk about. half of it i didn't understand. but my fascination lingered. when we became friends we work together on a that was mentioned earlier that was a heavyweight book in the sense of it being grinding. it's about the prelude to the assassination of president kennedy should work on something that might have some conic comic absurdity. >> to talk to you about this time in his life and you guys heard a little about this book is about timothy ribbon running against ronald reagan for governor of california. he had a campaign song written for him does anybody know about that? come together, join the party which the beatles later recorded as come together. he got busted for having two joints and got the maximum sentence. he was sent to the california men's colony of to a ten year sentence. is on the cusp of turning 50 years old and decided to break out of prison. our book chronicles this plus the global manhunt plan obsessed richard nixon. tim talked to about that time in his life. >> to was trying to figure out what happened in his life. it wasn't as a consequence of the easy joke he had done too many drugs therefore he couldn't remember. our book takes a look at the fact that he was hunted. richard nixon turned to me to a poster child. your writing 1970 - 1873 nixon's approval ratings were swimming. the war in vietnam was causing consternation we came across what we thought was a cool fine. we're listening to the secret nixon white house tapes civic nixon was the only person who knew these tapes are being made. they had no idea. >> super double secret. in one of nixon comes in and says to haldeman and the other infamous members of the inner circle, what can we do boys i'm not being treated fairly by the media, there's a lot of fake news out there about me and the administration. if you listen to the tape succeed in the book the basically decided what they needed to do was divert attention from the big headline issues, the warren trafton the black panther movement. they declared war on drugs. they thought that might resonate and people will go that's a greater enemy and someone you should be afraid of. the clever thinking was that we need to demonize someone that we need to demonize someone and find someone, americans like it when we find someone who is wearing a black cat, bill and they decided it would be timothy leary. in the opening pages illustrate nixon with his aides began in with great excitement that they have been identified the poster child. they chanted out we have room to the prison for him. that's how our adventure story begins. >> when we set out to write the book where both interested in tim leary. we both read the biography of him but it has a intriguing chapter about this episode in this life we both been around stories to think there's something more that hasn't been told. so beside that point the new york public library had acquired the leary archives. it was 600 plus boxes of material that have been available to researchers so we are able to take advantage of it most of the tapes have been digitized and are available to listen to. i remember when bill had the headphones on and heard the tape and called me up to tell me what he had found. we really wanted to tell larry story about breaking him out of prison to see what we can find on the than his life on the land. what the black panthers in algeria, you may know that the algerian government to not recognize rick richard nixon as a legitimate representative of the american people. instead they as a black panther party. so they were given a very opulent embassy. another set up a government style to plot the revolution so they knew about that time and even about the panthers themselves in algeria during those years. is extraordinary for us to get into. there's even a strange little collection of black panther material at texas a&m. a conservative school in texas that has the archive. what we found in particular was fascinating. gives you window into the time and place where people are living moment to moment. where we found is that his wife at the time was pretty famous icon, kathleen cleaver. the famous photograph wearing a miniskirt and brandishing a rifle. she was seen as a strong feminist. what we found was a different story and how kathleen was treated and how the women in the counterculture were treated at the time. in kathleen's case their discipline her for misbehavior. one of the punishments was to require kathleen to write down what she did every day in the black panther of the sea of file a report with her husband. kathleen was the only panther fluent in french in algeria. she dealt with government ministers, demanding back to payments on rent and things like that. cc this in detail day-to-day accounting of what's going on. they're getting this crazy sense of having -- show up on his doorstep begging for asylum. we really wanted to follow tim leary through this adventure until he got recaptured at wooding law enforcement. hoover said that in ten days were really just stumbled onto it. this nixon component which is extraordinary. >> and i think you section of our book the first line says thank you tim leary for leading an interesting life. that's the height of an understatement. were biased of course but he led an extra ordinary fascinating life, a lot of it self-directed a lot visited upon him when you have the president of the united states to war on you that your life becomes interesting. he was extraordinarily intelligent guy and charismatic guy and influential person. some of this might be lost through the prism of history but he was on the cover of every major magazine and polarizing in a way because some people viewed him as the devil incarnate and other people saw him as a guru or mentor and leader someone who can make the world a better place. i was describing him as a cork in a raging river. he went out into life and things happen to him. you gets emerged a little bit and pop right back up. not to give too much of the book away, we begin with him being brought to heel and brought to prison and then the book marches for chronologically. steve mentioned this in our generous introduction you heard it too. he busted out of prison and he was an unlikely person to bust out of the prison. there were other people there on the short list and he was quite dramatic. he did it with the assistance of the most important people in the underground, the domestic revolutionaries of the time. the black panthers and then a fascinating group as some of you may have heard of called the brotherhood of eternal love for discredited by the nixon administration has been the rig is struck cartel in american history. other synthesis a bunch of southern california super dudes like to bring in the little pot inside their surfboards that are hollowed out. there is a gaggle of people in laguna beach who really believed in tim lear and help fund his escape. they gave some of money to the revolutionaries to help spring tim. i was on the radio talking about tim and i referred to him as a mr. magoo on lsd. i like to reel that back in a sense. people don't remember who mr. magoo is. if mr. magoo was a visionary and enlightened and moving at warp speed in terms of his surroundings and other people around the nude have tim leary. what i met was when tim would open a door and step through it he would open doors out of curiosity. he would jump through that door. other people would walk through tentatively. when i described on the radio as if you plummet goes into the darkness but he would have a trampoline and vault up. plus way his life was led. as steve said, we took a look at team leary essay this is a unique american cultural icon, how can we write about him in a way that is different and relevant? there were few attempts that we thought when he was identified as public enemy number one they were comparing him to el capone at the white house. we decided, let's start from there till he's captured 28 months later. in that time we could understand his personality and the way america was changing the birth of his demonization then also simply as a yard. this adventure guy who is able to stay several feet ahead of richard nixon. it was an amazing feat. he went undercover after getting a out of prison. things that were just not happen today, full disguise, went to algeria. had to flee algeria. he really thought perhaps he would be killed there rather minimum he was being held hostage, he was being held the prisoner again by the black panthers. he escapes and then goes into europe and runs into andy warhol trying to communicate with keith richards. the secret mailbox drops were john one of this sending him $5000 to keep him afloat. he kept beating an interesting life and that culminated with him going to afghanistan which might strike you as an unlikely place to strike refuge back then he thought it would be a safe hideout. i will give away the ending. >> well tim is skipping ahead of nixon during the sears nixon was beginning to lose control of his sanity in the white house. he becomes paranoid and obsessed with enemies. as you mentioned in the age of paranoia nixon ordered that secret white house taping equipment installed in february 1971. also that's when eldridge cleaver ordered secret taping equipment there. it was a crazy time in america and the world. those recapturing that manic spirit. is a wild ride for a lot of people. certainly headed ups and downs. will be found to the more we found the case we sent found amazing levels than exerted on the four governments that were offering asylum. when he talked about falling out of a nine story window, when he fled from the black panthers after their falling out in algeria, a few days later he was in this billionaires house overlooking lake geneva the answer by servants. it's just a big change of circumstances. you could see with the nixon administration was doing. tim was in algeria we did not have diplomatic relations that are secretary of state met with the leading for minister to have a discussion about the u.s. guess what he talked about in this meeting, what are you holding tim leary. his most important priority for nixon in terms of his foreign-policy. when tim is in afghanistan that regime was leaning towards the soviet union. as the frontlines of the cold war. incredibly strategic geopolitical goal to have a good relationship with afghanistan. but the regime there, the king's throne was a little shaky and unstable. we went in hard to get tim out of afghanistan and risk losing what we had invested in that country. another thing about tim that gets back to the brotherhood of eternal love, you see switzerland was a little reluctant to having released and for being arrested for two joints. in switzerland that would be the equivalent of a parking ticket. so they teamed up with prosecutors in the u.s. to make tim leary public enemy number one. then he is tied in with the brotherhood of brotherly love and there is a 5 million-dollar bond put on his head and that's the highest bond ever posted for an american. >> and nixon sent an attorney general to switzerland to lean on the swiss and say give us leary, agricola patterson was on the back. that was a level of obsession that nixon had. the thing that kept amazing us with his ability to encounter interesting people, you mentioned andy warhol and he was writing letters to mick jagger say can you send a boat to algeria to rescue me. he was best friends with alan ginsberg, the great american poet. communicated with him enormously when tim was finally captured and brought back after this unbelievable catch me if you can escapade it does seem like something out of a movie his bought to. prison and he hears his new cellmate whom he can't see trying to communicate with him. i welcoming him. tim finally figures out, said charlie? charlie manson? so right from the beginning and the white house nixon is talking about him. not giving away too much of the plot but it concludes with tim's most unusual conversation with charlie manson about what road to take. charlie basically said, paraphrasing, that i believe in the power of death and tim said i believe in the power of love. there was another concluding scene but i don't avoid too much, but sumac a time about the nixon library here? >> might be relevant to anybody who has visited the nixon library. tim decided that he was at war with nixon they were at war with each other both personally but really for what each other stood for. manson stood for death in some way manson stood for love, i'm not sure what nixon's to four. that's for another discussion. they were defined by each other forever and ever. tim decided late in his life that he needed to perform an exorcism on richard nixon. he arranged to be invited to the next in library, i really don't think they knew who they were allowing him. it is under the guise of a future looking conference sumac they were not attracting a lot of visitors from that time. >> to manage to arrange a giant fiesta on the ground of the nixon library and performed what some people said was an exorcism on richard nixon. all that we know is what we reported in the book that nixon passed away a few months after that. >> is anything else we want? >> i think we just rather take questions. if there are any we could take some more tim leary stories if you wish, curious about what questions you might have sumac you talked about his intelligence and his playfulness and many other qualities. how about his sensitivity. did any of that come through in your research? he was a sensitive person to other people. i found that to be the case. >> i really did have a feeling where speaking with him that he was in the moment. where having a really fun conversation. they also felt he was hovering above the whole thing thinking about who i really was not know if those men paranoia raised as a journalist maybe it was my own healthy skepticism. is probably overthinking things too much. i think it was extremely sensitive to people when talking to people he wanted to know more. he wanted to know something deeper than what you are talking about. for what brought you here and what's the context of where did you come from? is a trained psychologist. people who may be predisposed to dismiss them in some way as a kook or druggie, that's how nixon won the temperature eight. his use into lsd and other psychedelic drugs was based on trying to help people that was the wellspring. he was trying to figure out how to reduce recidivism among prisoners. in california. people would be imprisoned and come out commit the same crimes and get into this cycle. we feel somewhat validated by the fact that a lot of the researchers strained back to establish a better human connection being re-examined. a lot of things people thought that was wacky and weird and illegal is being revisited. there's literature know about the things. >> the other thing is that there are so many different components to his personality. he was many different things to different people depending on the time and place. in a way he seem to transcend personality and that he could be parts of himself behind and continue to move on. it was really seen during his years in prison when he was recaptured. he gave the fbi information that was used to feed the paranoia. >> i hope you going to talk about the coyote trickster. >> you sort of think of tim and get a sense of how he function in our society. he was out there ahead of 70 people in terms of promoting psychedelics and their capabilities that they have a maybe not quite understanding the negative effects that could happen. we came to think of him as his incarnation the mythic figure of cultures around the world. the hero trickster. native americans in the southwest have a coyote trickster in its ridiculous but also does amazing things that no other animal can do because they are dairy. the went to the heavens and still fire to the gods and brought it to earth. the same time the coyote trickster is apt to set his own tail on fire. you could see timothy leary bound up in all of these ways. was larger-than-life kind of person there. this is very sensitive to a lot of things and people. >> in some ways he was very intelligent but in some ways he seemed hapless and things were happening to him because of things happening to him. was that your sense or do you feel like you did something soft or had some control or things just happening to him? >> he was helpless in the world a lot of worries. this gets to it cleaver said about tim larry when he was in algeria. his mind has been blown by acid. what he meant was she was not as security conscious the panthers were raised to be paranoid lived in ghettos and having the cops come after them. tim when he took mushrooms the first time he was 40 years old in mexico and been a psychologist for number of years. he said i learn more about the mind in the previous two years that i have been a lifetime. he thought a positive thing he wasn't paying a lot of attention to security issues this amazing adventure that they undertaken algeria where tim is in danger don't was in his asylum. there are notorious for hijacking planes and tim was supposed to travel incognito to meet the plo. he shows up at the airport and it says tune in, turn on, drop out. he was in the best in people not being prepared for the worst which got them caught up in a lot of trouble. >> people took advantage of that openness. one of the things that emerged was tim was unwilling upon nixon wanted to use it for his own devices and people on the other extreme also thought that tim could help them may be to recruit people. there's a theme called the marriage of dope and dynamite. the ideas the the people that are doing dope, the hippies were not as politically active as some student revolutionaries thought they should be. maybe they could get tim larry to bring them into the revolution so the marriage of the dope and the diamond might would occur. tim didn't know any of this. soon she just wanted to have a lot of fun wanted everyone else to have fun. and hopefully the world to be a more harmonious place. nixon and others were figuring out that tim has a lot of influence. how do we take them down or get his followers to join our revolution. >> is been busted for two joints in the station way, that was crazy. you do not smoke dope lawyer driving around and have the smell of it in your car. smack the funny thing is, and bill has this great line because of tim's reaction was known for busted people approach the station waking timothy leary who hurtled the cosmos and hundreds of acid trips look at the cops prize and scott, is that it? two roaches? that's what you're going to get man? but that's all it took. that slipshod approach to personal security manifested itself in other ways. we mentioned the chief watergate operative was a dedicated pursuer of leary and had been leading these bus. >> you think you'd have better things to do like watergate but is erred in onto. >> he pops up fairly regularly in her book. he was also obsessed in hunting down tim leary. >> it's ironic to think what just happened in san francisco, they got expunged from the record and here's a guy 20 months has the entire u.s. government chasing him all over the world. >> i don't think it's a big leap to connect the dots between tim's work and what he was doing and being busted and becoming a spokesperson for relaxation of drug lost where we are today. >> his platform is a candidate for california governor. let's legalize pot so it's a government controlled stores and have the tax revenue go to the state. other questions? >> a few months ago at talked with an author about a biography of theirs. they that the brotherhood et cetera one of the people i knew made several hundred thousand tablets of acid. he spent time in prison to strike i just saw the documentary, the sunshine makers it's an excellent program he acquired a phd in psychology while he was in prison. the went to work as a computer programmer. >> steve jobs talked about and i think he has, the use of lsd. i think steve had gone and it had an enduring imprint on him. he look at someone's influence but when you do a semi- autobiographical work that we did it's more of a thriller venture story. you see these things and moments in history in time for he's predicting the future changing it by its influence tim is an extraordinarily important person. love coming to greetings, it's really wonderful to be here. we did when houston where took a question from someone and he said, is not really question but i will tell you something. i'm the one who shot tim leary's ashes into outer space. they centerpiece stay afterwards i like to talk to. in fact he was. some of tim's ashes were shot into the earth's orbit along with the ashes of gene roddenberry, the inventor of star trek. i was talking to the guy who did this work, he said yeah when i was talking to tim building up to the building up to his passing away and making preparations the thoughts that tim sessions would eventually reenter earth's atmosphere in some molecular way we would all be ingesting tim and whatever he may have ingested in terms of knowledge. i like to think that was his final bit of comic absurdity. there could be a little bit of tim for and out of the parking lot right here. >> to blow up saturn? >> no, we didn't smack. >> we do talk about going up things in the underground. >> at the time saturn was considered saturn nights and getting rid of it would definitely help the astrological circulation. taking lsd is nothing compared to blowing up planets. i think when tim planned his prison break out he relied heavily on an astrological forecast to help determine the right time to do it you can't win them all. >> it was computerized a huge printout of how the stars would align and what the right moment would be. it did work. >> the great things you find in the leary archives. six post boxes at the new york library. so you're sitting in the new york public library which looks like hogwarts. the burnished word in the dark caverns and dusty tomes. it felt rich with history and we are being given boxes many rich folks had not seen you because they're only recently released to the public. we were just lucky to be there. reaching inside and to have the letters from housley and the cia documents which by the way first began working on the book we filed our foia request with the fbi to get the leary papers and files. four years later we still have not gotten the papers from the government. tim did manage to get those. a good chunk of them are in his archives. thankfully we had those as a resource. >> the survival of his archives is almost a documentary onto itself. can you imagine being in prison on the run in a foreign nation and then in another for nation. your hop skipping your way away around the world. and all the while some really resolute and faithful friends of tim were keeping his papers in all of his correspondence. we dedicated our book from this were based in san francisco. >> they basically were fans and believed to what tim was advocating and set a possible back to keep your papers he read them probably really well in the reserve these things against great odds. the fbi kept trying to find them and now they're in the new york public library. >> i should mention that michael horwitz has a new book, with the archivists. in selected documents from that. >> the scope of his life is rather amazing. it's in the archives again. is pretty cool to me to be sitting there reaching into a box not knowing what's in there. and here's a letter to tim that essentially says here's $5000, back in the day the 1970s to help you stay free. we mentioned come together, heard someone say that's most often played. song, but it was written for tim and inspired by tim. he was close to john lennon. as well i give peace a chance, another pedal song and john gives a big shout out to tim leary in the song if you listen carefully. >> tim is right there clapping. there's some youtube videos if you want to see. he and your close date in bed to protest war tim was there as well. it was always present no seem to show up and have these outrageous adventures. >> is at the center of so much. >> were more question. >> had to collaborate on this? and i did research together? this seems like quite a project a lot of time spent together. how did that work for you? bill and i are both strong-willed people of vision driven. it can be difficult. we've been good friends for a long time. to me the friendship has always been the most important thing. they carried us through the difficult times. bill is always very gracious and generous. for the writing, he's actually literary genius. the words flow out of him book is nonfiction. the play was started as each of us therefore main sections of the book and each would start each would divide it will take two sections and rewrite each other's work constantly. i can pick up those phrases because they're just gorgeous. by the end it was a unified voice in the story. send this is something that we did so we are both relentless researchers tried to find everything we can to talk to that can help with the story. >> i think i said it mysteriously, is just like marriage. i'll just leave it at that. >> steve is a brilliant writer and a great researcher. one of my best friends so we made it easy. it was have to hover above this, when they were trying to figure out what's a booklet to be about really. what's the beating heart of it. >> damages say we had done this book on the far right in dallas and how they created a city of hatred that was notorious for its opposition to jfk. it was a difficult book to write. lots of negative things in basically the typhoid mary. going into this book i have the same mindset. we have all of this tension going on in this great barbecue summit. >> live in different cities. i live in austin and steve wilson in brownsville. >> texas hill country it's really super pretty there. we don't get to see each other a lot. who said let's meet at a barbecue place in texas people go to war over who has the best barbecue. i let steve pick the spot. we went to a very small town in texas a small oil and barbecues with them going on there were just should the reason we had this moment a little bit of enlightenment occur. what would tim do? tim would probably be smiling and laughing at how absurd this was at the end of the day. even the senator all the turmoil of been hunted and charlie manson be my cellmate. and that's how we left there. the weird thing was deep in the heart of texas we're yelling out lst, black panthers. member when they tried to bomb the pentagon. and then we realize we should lower our voices. is sort of a guiding light. i like to think it was can highfalutin here but tim was looking down. try to figure out a way as grave as the circumstances were to interject the comedy. that was the hardest thing of all. how do you find the balance? people would say being underground is a revolutionary and algeria's not funny neither is being in prison. >> makes it when he was president he wasn't funny at all. but later he becomes a perfect comic villain. >> we work together really well. there were times when i was writing things that were not in any known language and steve would say, please come back bill. steve is a really good editor in addition to being a fine writer. he would really back in. sometimes i would say maybe we can step on the gas little bit. it was not that complex. steve would write something in sheridan and i would write something and share it. when you're writing like that there is a point it's not about your ego or what you wrote, the work itself is the object. once you both get close to that vision then it's all about the it becomes easy to work together on the same team. >> it's hard when you're trying to do narrative nonfiction. we wanted people to read the book we went get anybody sitting up here, i want to my kids to read it. have a 25-year-old daughter and 20-year-old son and they don't know who timothy leary is. they barely know who's and was. i kept thinking of that, how can we write this in a real mobile way, literary nonfiction way. we chose to read the book and present tense. things were really scary and intense. the challenge for us is how to find that creative voice that we can both share both find common ground in. after a lot of going back and forth we figured it out you guys have been great. thank you so much. [applause] >> i think very much successful in crossing different genres with your book. the end result is very captivating and thrilling. we have them at every register in the store. feel free to buy several copies if you must. i will get you set up c can comfortably sign. thank you for coming out on a wednesday afternoon. [inaudible] >> monday, presidents' day and c-span networks. at 6:30 p.m. the launch of landmark cases, live in philadelphia where the review of the 12 historic cases. at 7:30 p.m. the portrait unveiling ceremony for barack obama and michelle obama. then slate magazine's panel on comparing watergate to today. at noon eastern the 2018 savanna book festival with authors. at 9:00 p.m. in depth fiction edition with pulitzer prize colson whitehead. on american history to be on c-span three had 2:30 p.m. eastern historians the legacy of woodrow wilson. . . cspan where history unfolds daily. in 1979, cspan was created by a public service by american cable television companies. today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, this report in public policy events in washington d.c. and around the country. cspan is brought to you by your cable or sell it provider. next, on book tv "after words", former u.s. trade negotiator and senior senate staffer argue they have lost their political center. he's interviewed by tom. "after words" is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing non- fiction authors about the latest work. >> i'm thrilled to have an opportunity to talk to you

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