[inaudible conversations] welcome to the 24th annual texas book festival. I name is katie vine. We are here today to talk to amaryllis box author of the new book life undercover. Encourage everyone to pick up a copy of this. She is going to be signing copies. I will give a quick introduction and then i will ask a few questions in leave the last ten to 15 minutes for audience questions. Please silence your cell phones before we start. Even before she finished studying in oxford before september 11 before her writing mentor was captured in killed they have already invested in International Affairs having taken a great risk when she was just a year out of high school. She eventually got a masters in conflict. She developed an algorithm that could predict terrorist attacks based on 200 years of data. At age 21 she was recruited to the cia where she analyzed classified information. Soon afterwards she was selected for advanced operations and training in the middle east and asia. Its not a huge surprise to hear of a call when they come to life. She and her husband who are also a spy or under surveillance by the chinese so they have to talk in code all the time. The housekeeper was spine, the people in the street were keeping track of the movement. We find out that the cia was spying on the chinese who were spying on them. They already knew what they knew about that. Shed offered her insights to cnn the National Geographic channel. And the bbc and has spoken around the world on the topic of peace keeping. Apple is currently developing this book as a tv series. She is also working on a young adult novel and an upcoming Netflix Documentary series. Ladies and gentlemen amaryllis fox. [applause]. I am wondering if you could start by talking about the way your worldview is brought in. It sounds like it started at a very early age. I think it was a blessing and a curse that i moved every year of my childhood a lot and that time overseas my birthday is in september and i started a brandnew school. It also gave me a sense time and time again of being home in the world. A the differences in wardrobe or accent or Cultural Habits the same humans in art types exist everywhere. I think that was kind of a philosophy that drove me as a young person to be really drawn to journalism into being able to share from those stories in the farflung places with friends that i would see periodically and who had have a chance to run around in the soccer fields with different folks. Thats what led me to that quarter as a teenager. What drew you how did you know to go there. It sounds like he went not really knowing where you are going to land. She didnt really know a lot about it until it was over. I have really fallen in love with a philosopher and theologian writing, houston smith. I heard that he was battling cancer and i skipped a day of high school to go experience him talking in case it was my last opportunity in that day itself i dont regret doing it because it was a very powerful very powerful and they talk about the fact that they studied every one of the major world religions. E they found the notion we were all part of one whole was at the core of all of them. It really stuck with me which is good that it was worth it. When i got to school the next day might name was on the daily list. I also turned up in class and found that the final assignments or papers have been handed out and i got the one nobody chose i had grown up and moving around a lot but i really didnt know anything about this political situation in the more that i learned about it this one unarmed woman against this military regime that was similar to north korea at the time it began to fascinate and inspire me. In thinking about taking a gap year before university before even decided to take the year itself instead of buying a prom dress i went to a travel agent. I bought a ticket to thailand. The idea was thatt i would do a couple of weeks on volunteer at a bermans refuge cant. At the end of those two weeks we went back to the airport in bangkok i was at the gate and everyone was getting ready to board. I think i meant to say i walked back out the doors and headed back up to this camp. And while i was there continuing this volunteer work i meant more and met more and more of the burmese. That were publishing a democratic newspaper and opposition. Ti and they were preparing for protests that were planned. To try to topple the regime. And with the kind of immortality that we only feel as teenagers. You can only get in if you have a distance visa. It was 15 years my senior. I have met himnv at a free burma rally. I said to him this is a longshot but how would you feel about taking a couple of maeks off work and coming to thailand in pretend to be married. To his eternal credit he did exactly that. We got a forged marriage sufficient certificate. If we got film we would have to get it out. G the protest never happened because the security was so tight at the time. We did have the opportunity to in interview. Her words out. If we did that we would probably be detained by the military. And spent for me that really was the beginning of understanding how powerful an hour or two of truth telling can be even in the face of all of the military might and the world. As a woman and a mother would know with no arms available to her and was so threatening to the regime. It was an electrifying idea to meto the truth and append dash mike penn and the word could be so powerful. Mimi start out committed to the idea of continuing to that work in becoming a journalist. When you are finishing your last year in oxford september 11 happened. It sounds like you are very close. E. Oxford starts in october. I was home our neighbor pulled up said to me go turn on the tv. I turned it on but for the second plane hit. My Little Sisters were in the Cathedral School and washington dc at the time and they werent sure whether it was a target. They were evacuated. I remember being with my momat trying to get these two little girls in the school uniform. It brought back for me the first loss of my life which is a dear friend of mine was on the flight that went down. With her sister and her parents. Their whole family. T my mom waited until three days later to tell meti and she told me it was better that they have all been on the plane because there was no one left to grieve. It was the first person who i knew that died and i loved her very much. All of that really came back to me after september 11 and then four months after that the journalist danny pearl who i have only met once and briefly when he have done an evening for inspiring journalists at a bar in Dupont Circle when i was still a student. Ar i admired him immensely. He wrote with such dignity and curiosity about the islamic world. It is a new and different kind of war. That not only threaten the lives with truth and dialogue. I went back to my dads advice after laura died. I really struggled with it. If you understand the forces that took her. You will be overwhelmed by the fear. He introduced me to the newspaper. And as a third grader that was just completely transformative thing for me. I read it with real care. I think having possibly it wasnt super healthy. They seemed remote but the any moment they could kind of jump off the page and take another one of my friends from the air. On and learning to understand what their relationships were with one another and how they gave rise to violence was important to me as a kid. After september 11 and the violence that came after that. I return to that idea. If i wasnt gonna be overwhelmed by this i have to understand it. And the cia approaches you and you take the job and you start looking at tables. There was one in particularr before you are overseas when you realized a man who have been taken and beaten and starved was the wrong man. Im wondering if you can talk about that moment and how the people around you reacted. I wont get into the operational details on that anymore than they are in the book just because they had been elements that are there had been omitted. It was covered heavily in the press. I think it is indicative of one of the great challenges that we all faced after 911 also the sub set that we are serving in government and military intelligence organizations which was the terrible tension between having signed up to serve on behalf the american ideals and llty on a hill and moral leadership that were so important to maintaining americas position in credibility. And then the thing that happened after an attack. Fear and velocity based reaction. Things happen really quickly communication isnt always crystalclear. Its no surprise that mistakes were made. I think what is critical now as a country in the community we are mature enough to learn from them and not repeat them. I think weve done that in some areas better than others. We had been thorough in our examination of whether or not torture has as americans we want or can tolerate and whether it is useful and practical aside im not sure that we had been quite as thorough about things like extrajudicial killings in the drone program. It is a work in progress. I think on all of us to have those conversations as adults in americans i wanted to discuss two controversial issues that have come up in the book. It has raised some questions about the stamp of approval. The second part of that is there was some people that criticized some scenes as being implausible. I want to give you an opportunity to talk. One of the difficult things about going through the review process necessarily is there are operational details that had to be changed. With very good reason. As you set out to share the interactions that had knocked lessons into you over the course of career its about figuring out which interactions even make sense given those changes and admissionsra and leave that entirely. For me it was important to just put up front on the front page that changes have to be made i dont think it was as significant a challenge for me its really about a personal journey. Here has our particular operation has happened. There are important admissions not just coming at age as a it was also the evolution of a perspective when i started giving that background. The killing of the journalist i respected so much. It honestlyy wasnt with a view to peacemaking or finding Common Ground it i was young and i was at war and we were afraid. And it was pretty much the view of wiping the adversary off of the map. Over the course of her career in interaction after interaction i realized that that is just a fiction and doesnt work. It risks creating more adversary than you destroy. There is a more longterm and holistic way to bring an end to this conflict we have just proven time and again that we cannot prevent violence through violence alone. It kind of brings me to my question. I didnt expect a book about the cia to be so deeply spiritual. Does the idea that all human beings want the same thing. Remember the other person is you. The deep down in the targets. Can you talk about your own misgivings at times. Spirituality has been a huge part of my journey. Thatat tradition. And even the non spiritual philosophy really did reinforce what i have heard. As you say the other person is you or we are all connected or part of one. We know that from a scientific point of view. In the school of hard knocks for my 20s. Oftentimes we humans on all sides of the conflict it will take a shortterm short Term Solution because of the illusion that we are isolated. And then find that in the longterm potentially endangers more people than not doing anything to begin with weve seen this in terms of our alliances over and over again. The arming of groups. In the short term. Intolerance on all sides. It is such a fueling of future extremists. In planting at the scene the scene of violence and extremism. For me the simplicity of treating people with dignity even when you disagree with them emerged as a very powerful lesson and sometimes we think we can discount that. In the real world. Mo it is the most pragmatic thing that i discovered. The sounder of the networkov that is responsible for spreading the nuclear precursors. Not just a rogue state. Here it is someone who has done more to endanger global security. And when he talks about where he took that turn off of lifes normal path he tells the story of being a teenager on a trainin crossing the new border. And he saved up for a fountain pen. When the indian guard took the card he said i will also take that pen. He said no i love this pen. In his teenage brain at that moment. And his inability to do anything about it. Im never gonna be powerless again and that morphed into the program that has put so much of the globe in danger on and on. Many people dont walk down that path. We underestimate the power of one moment of humiliation to fuel violence and likewise the power of one moment of treating someone with dignity thats what you usually use. Did you feel like at least in the book did you know at the moment always to take people to that idea. We believe the same things. Did you find that usually it took some talking into. It deftly takes time. It is a slow process in the field but it starts right with your future communication with anyone. I think we are more sensitive to authenticity than we realize and when someone manufactures a reason to connect we feel it the need even when faced with someone who is involved in horrific areas of violence to search for some glimmer of humanity in order to build a relationship over months and years to coax this person to a place where they can actually move to help prevent the talks. Its really soulful work actually. Its often lost in our pulp dash mike pop culture. Because the kind of roof gymnastics. But all of that is just kind of safeguard you would get kicked out of a country immediately. But even the tradecraft that does happen is not the point. Its just there to safe guard the actual core work which is Relationship Building with those who it is hard us in the world to listen to. We will get to the q a. Hootie hope reads this book. Who is the main audience for itn im happy when i talk to young women who are reading it there is a lot in therert for all different walks of life by young women i think see a different kind of National Security picture from the reality and they dont realize how important their contributions are and can be what we see on screen as this either no women involved it is so dismisses of the really subsisted work that they bring to this world and are uniquely wellsuited for. This is an alternative to the Necessary Solutions of the military thats based on Emotional Intelligence in Relationship Building and intuition and multitasking and these are things that feminine e problemsolving often has great strength in. I really do hope that the young women and young people of color. Who dont see themselves unscreened in this work realize that actually they are the ones we both dash mike we most need doing it. I wanted to open it up to the floor. That was quick. Im actually not going to go into the cover and operational details for the same reason i said earlier. Anything around those details has to go through review. I had wondered that a business like that might actually produce revenues. If that were to be the case it certainly would it be the officer involved. The as a one and is granular. I will sayay that one of the real challenges in the shift from that traditional warfare to these asymmetrical sites that have morphed into terror groups and challenging inates. As necessary to be really creative about how to be in the places you need to be in order to do the work that needs to get done. They go around with a Film Organization film company to go in to location scout in iran. And was pretty will produced. But in those cases there definitely would it be anything drawn by ben afflecks character. Think you very much. We appreciate your presentation very much. Ke we really like the traits that you see its most valuable in carrying on this kind of work. A quick question for you just a reflection seen the way things had gone since you had left the agency and where we are in the world today imm sure you were many in your own mind how we would get to a place where we would deal better with the kind of issues that we are confronted with. Ss do you have any kind of prescription or direction to go other than the type of people that you see. Are there some things that we could do more universal late. I think at the state level. I think one of the things that is most important is looking at that precursors of instability in the infrastructure in support that is necessary and much more efficient and cheaper in terms of lives and trevorar dash mike treasure early on. Those are things we talked a little bit about the Academic Work that i did. And that was the clumsy graduate school work of a kid. But one of the things that came up time and time again in c the data has been heavily correlated was the percentage dash mike percentage versus livable wage. There are many such data points that we know are correlated with instability and are not easy to fix but significantly cheaper in both lives and cash. Studying those is very important doubling down on our investment and soft power overseas in general i think is really important. I think its very important for us as americans to know its just about to come up to a trillion dollars in a million Chinese People on the ground and two thirds of the world country to invest in the building of infrastructure not as charity but as a shrewd geopolitical move. Ut and when we take our resources and commit them in military ventures. They are doubling down on south soft power in that way. I worried for that continued moral leadership of our country because a flag on a brandnew train is a very different feeling locally than a flag on rubble even if it was a legitimate target. I would like to see us do more of that. In terms of our own responsibility here at home. The division i is to see play. Dot on the International Stage are starting to crack our own house from inside. The disagreements are an important part of our democracy but our inability to have them respectfully. I think its getting to a point where its undermining our own internal stability every school kid learns the linking quote a house divided cannot stand. Its on us to learn how to disagree with one another without exasperating they would most like to see that there. I have other questions if no one else does. We will keep you waiting waiting for people to come up. It sounds like we were able to transfer to show people how to bring their guard down can you talk about some of the projects that you had been working on. Its an int