Last halfcentury of military interventions, partisan politics aside, morality aside what , happens after the party is over . What are the after affects of war and what are the human and financial costs on both sides . Brian when did this idea start . Mr. Gruber my birthday is august 4. Two years ago on august 4, 2014, was the 40th anniversary of the gulf of tonkin incident. At that time isis was marauding across northern iraq. It seemed to me as look ends that was odd that the cost of the vietnam war and the outcome of the vietnam war 50 years after the gulf of tonkin incident, which as you know, president johnson went on National Television that day in 1964 to ask congress to approve his ability to accelerate our intervention in vietnam. It was a claim that north vietnamese patrol boats attacked the uss maddox. Based on that, we escalated the war in vietnam. Years later, secretary mcnamara and many others admitted the attack never happened. Similarly in going to iraq, there were supposed to be weapons of mass destruction. There was supposed to be an imminent threat from iraq. We know what the outcome was there. I was curious again not whether we should or should not have a Strong Military or grow to war, or go to war but what are the , actual outcomes. Living in this country, you get a certain narrative and a certain spectrum of ideas. I thought it would be interesting to strap on the backpack and go around the world and through serendipity and just showing up in places and trying to find out if there are other narratives to have a fresh look at what the real outcomes of these conflicts were. Brian we have something of a list of places where you went. It is not the complete list, but reflects the chapters in your book. Let me just start with the first one. It is guatemala. I want you to just give us some quick reaction. We will go through the list. What do remember most from guatemala . Mr. Gruber serendipity and the idea of six degrees of separation. I did this kickstart her campaign where i raised money through crowdfunding for the project. It was a 10,000 campaign. Once i did, i basically traveled with a backpack, flew from San Francisco airport to Guatemala City with no interviews, no plans, and just arrived there. Guatemala was fascinating, first of all because of the story. It informed most of the covert operations that were to come in the years after. That was a situation in which my airbnb host happened to be a former congressman in guatemala who happened to be there when the cia supported overthrow happened. His friends fled into the jungles to become guerillas. Withs part of a Coalition President serrano am through him , through this whole series of introductions made through him, i ended up sitting for four hours with the former president of guatemala. The idea in guatemala at in that specific country where you can show up and learn just by being in the right place at the right time and pushing for interviews was a fascinating experience. Brian nicaragua . Mr. Gruber an example there, i stayed just a week. There was one day that the three types of interviews happened. One where pedro who was assassinated and really launch the sandinista revolution and the overthrow of the long standing dictatorship. I showed up there and a Security Guard said get out of here. The second time i showed up, this young woman came up and i asked to see an editor to get and interview with someone who might have some interesting information. Finally she came out with a card of the editor in chief. Him him a got in to see the editor in chief. A second interview was through the daughter of the woman of the man who i met and stayed at in guatemala. There was a series of interviews that ended up with a former sandinista and democracy activist. That was completely serendipitous interview. The third interview i got through stephen kinzer. He is probably the most respected broadcaster in nicaragua. That one day was reflective of the different ways that i was able to get into see people, and also to understand the costs of that contra war which i had no idea how widespread the damage was. Brian what was the relationship between the two . Mr. Gruber he is her daughter. Sorry he is her son. He took the other side and actually was part of the Sandinista Group that close them down in favor of the newspaper of the sandinista party. Brian panama. Mr. Gruber panama was fascinating because i have a friend who is a jazz musician. His cousin is a pilot on the panama canal. In panama, through the meeting with the exiled president of guatemala, jose serrano, i met someone at lunch who is a psion of panamanian political families. He has two great grandfathers who were president s of panama. Through repeated attempts, i finally got to get on a Midnight Ride with him down the panama canal. The whole story of panama and our intervention there under president George H W Bush has to do with the canal and with our desire to keep the canal. Actually physically seeing how that canal threads through the country and what means to the country, interviews with the most important way to do that. One interview was with this black panamanian who years before could never have had that job when it was under u. S. Control. A chance to get a physical sense of what the canal meant to panama was valuable. Brian serbia. Mr. Gruber serbia was supposed to be a humanitarian intervention. I think serbia was one place where you can look at both sides of that and come up with your own conclusions. I talked in belgrade to a lot of serbians, all of whom felt that the intervention in 1999 in a major european city was indefensible. Many of the places i went to in virtually every military conflict we have, there is some humanitarian veneer over what our purposes are. Specifically in belgrade, there was genocide that happened there. There was potential additional genocide. In the kosovo area. That was an interesting case of trying to see whether humanitarian interventions are defensible, and what people on the other end of the gun barrel think. Brian pause here for a second. Did you find people did you try to find people in all these places that thought we were terrible with our intervention and people who thought we had done the right thing . Mr. Gruber i went with a completely open mind. First of all, try to get interviews through contacts and making contact. Serendipitously through places i was staying or people i met. And then getting interviews. There was a wide crosssection in all of these places. In serbia, all of the serbians i talked to said milosevic was terrible. And a year after our own invasion he was thrown out of office. And in panama as well, people. Anted noriega out there is a spectrum of opinion whether they welcomed us in order to accelerate that event or if we were infringing on their sovereignty. I went to all these places with an open mind, trying to trying not so much to understand what a partisan point of view might he or be validated, but to look at was the Mission Accomplished . What were the costs on both ends of the gun barrel . Brian we need to tell the audience we know each other rather well. You are now 61 years old and when you walked in this place, you were 28 years old as our first director of marketing. You did some onair work for us. I have never known what you think politically. This is all new to me. So we can share this with the audience, somebody maybe my age or around there might remember your face and you when you are a host here on our callin show. Recently, congressman weiss said private groups are now constantly breaking neutrality laws in Central America and were overlooking it i providing privately funded aid to the contras. Are you violating neutrality laws . It is our view we are not violating neutrality laws. The aid we are providing is primarily humanitarian aid. We are providing not just medical supplies, but we are supplying money to buy food, food items, clothing items, things that they are unable to get with their he limited funding that they have now that congress has cut them off. Brian you interviewed him. I dont know if you even remember that. If you were with him today, what would you tell him that you learned about his premise about humanitarian aid versus what you saw in nicaragua . Mr. Gruber first of all, it is very generous to hire 14yearolds on your network. [laughter] i look very young there. Im sure the congressman was a fine legislator. He was lying. Brian he is a retired general. Mr. Gruber that was not the case. Brian did you feel that way then . Did you know that . Mr. Gruber back during the interview . No, i did not feel that way or know. There was clearly an agenda where jimmy carter was trying before president reagan was elected to support the new government. It was clear they were helping salvador rebels. The sandinistas turned out to be a lot more authoritarian and repressive than they promised. Ultimately it came to be people who did not like the contras, but who actively opposed the sandinista government. It was not a humanitarian mission. It was a mission basically to fight the sandinistas at any cost. From the very beginning, there was military aid given to groups in honduras that were extending that conflict for 10 years. Brian as you did this trip, do you consider yourself a journalist . Mr. Gruber that is interesting. I have had some training in university and i hosted some callin shows. I have done a lot of interviews through products i have done. I was a citizen who was sort of doing an audit of his own government. Trying to get a fresh narrative to see if there were new perspectives i could aim from people who were actively there. The word journalist can describe a number of things. In terms of being a paid professional journalist working for an editorial organization, no. I was there as my own citizen. I do not necessarily like the term citizen journalist. I was trying to understand what happened and whether the mission was accomplished. Brian i read that you raised 10,000 from 62 people. Was that enough money to send you around the world for two years . Mr. Gruber it was a fourmonth trip. That was a little over 2000 a month. That was enough traveling very simply to travel for four months. After that, when i wrote, i did that on my own. Basically for 2000 a month, travel, food, lodging, transport. Brian were you buy yourself all the time . Mr. Gruber i was. I had friends once in a while who met up with me in the cities i was in. It was me and a backpack. Brian how often did you take a bus between countries . Mr. Gruber pretty often. I remember one time i was in guatemala, and i had to get to nicaragua. I got on the bus at about 6 00 in the morning on a monday morning. My ipad that i was going to write and edit on was losing power. I asked right plug it in, and she said they do not have that. I said they have it in your brochure. She said we have it on our brochure, we just dont have it on a bus. That was the longest bus trip i remember. Otherwise i pretty much flew. In southwest asia from vietnam to cambodia to laos, those were bus rides. Flew to serbia, flew to afghanistan. Iraq happened after the initial four months. I wanted to go to erbil as my entry point. That was surrounded by jihadis. They just to go over mosul the. Time. The cost to get it would have been too high. My editor this january said you didnt go to iraq. We talked about going, and i ended up going this january as an extension of the trip. Brian how did you dress . Mr. Gruber i tried to stuff as much of the backpack as i could. When i got to afghanistan, my Winter Clothes i just left behind. I was just like a backpacker, very simply. There were a few rei type travel adventure close that i was wearing. I think i had one dress shirt. Actually, no. That was an rei shirt as well. So i could go into a meeting with an expresident looking respectful, but not even anything like this. I had to explain that to people up front. Brian what was the average cost of nightly lodging . Mr. Gruber cheap. Often in the teens. Average cost, maybe 20 or so. Brian what was it like . Mr. Gruber there were three types of lodging i had. One finding really good discounts on expedia for lodging. The second through airbnb. The third through something called couch surfing. The kindness of strangers was extraordinary. Brian explain couch surfing. Mr. Gruber its a website. When i first use it, the guy was a flake. Couch surfing is a website where tens of thousands of people around the world they if youre traveling through my town stay , in my home for free. Brian why . Mr. Gruber why do people allow that . Sometimes they want to learn english, sometimes they like helping travelers. Sometimes they want to make friends. They can then decide after looking at your profile and seeing you vetted on the site. Why is a good question. It is not as reliable as getting airbnb listed. But in the end i got extraordinary stays the couch surfing. Brian why would you want to take a chance with someone you dont know . Who knows what they are like . Mr. Gruber good question. That could be asked about a lot of things i did. If you look at someone who had been on the site for a long time and there are a lot of reviews about them, you feel a bit more comfortable. If they have no reviews or what or one or two dodgy reviews, you do not stay there. If 11 people have stayed with them the last 18 months, and they stay with a couple people and you read the reviews, then you feel comfortable. When you show up, if you do not like what you see, then you can go. Brian did you ever go . Mr. Gruber i did. In cabo, i could not find a place to stay. After assuring my daughters i have everything set up, two days before going i could not find , lodging. Needless to say, there is not a lot of airbnb lodging in cabo. On couch surfing a fellow who used to do translations for the u. S. Army and whose father was an officer in the army said i cannot give you lodging, but i will take you up at the airport and take you to a guesthouse and will negotiate for you and that i will help you get interviews. Then a second guy based on a second outreach responded. He was the ceo of an i. T. Firm which serviced the Defense Department and the department of the interior. He said we have a villa in downtown cabo. We have converted it into an office, but we kept to en suite rooms. You can stay here if you want to. Love what you are doing. You can have three meals a day here. It is secure. Basically after the initial guesthouse for a week, i stayed for three weeks in this villa for free and went out with them at night and he made all these introductions and served their employees food three times a day. Anytime i wanted a free meal i got it. That was a nice situation. Brian were you surprised by the way people treated you . Mr. Gruber i never felt in danger during my trip. Guessed that people would be kind and generous and supportive. Id involve peoples advice because it was better to provoke people and get honest reactions from people. People would tell me not to tell people that i was american and ill must always did. Brian you say you also told people you were jewish. Mr. Gruber there was a scene as a pool in cabo where this fellow was screaming that americans were murderers and occupiers. And then i walked up to him to engage him. He asked where i am from, and i remember my story that i was born in brazil, but grew up in canada. Then i said i am an american jew. Tell me, what do you think about jews. And then we had a long conversation about religion. I never felt in harms way while i was traveling. People in the end were extraordinarily kind and helpful. Brian did you have anybody that confronted you during this process that were angry . Mr. Gruber i think there were people who were politically angry like the fellow in the pool. When you engage with people sincerely, after the first few seconds it is like who are you . If you say this to someone and, oh that you are writing a book and they ask who you work for and you say you are independent, 100 of them will think you work for the cia or you are not telling the truth. Its outside of their frame of reference to think that you are just there with a backpack traveling through the country. I think on two scores, if you want an interview with someone, at first they may be skeptical. In the first 90 seconds or so, they get a sense you are really there for that reason and you want to hear their story, then people open up and they want to tell their story and that they introduce you to other people who want to tell the story. Similarly, when you meet people, if they oppose u. S. Policy and think the u. S. Should be out. If in a few seconds they come to believe that you are there because you are curious and open and you want to hear their story and they process that and they accept that, then they might still argue with you aggressively but they will want to share their point of view and want to hear what you have to say. Brian you have a picture of you and your two daughters. Where do they live and how old are they . Mr. Gruber older than they were when you saw them last. Jenny is 33 years old and lives in new york. Andrea is 30 years old and she lived in oregon. She is a trained paramedic and emt and works in a medical facility. She moved back to auburn. Shes living close to her mom. Brian as you travel around the world, were you constantly in touch with your daughters . Mr. Gruber all the time. I think that is one of the things about skype and email and all of the apps that you use is you are able to engage and communicate constantly. Once and a while, specifically bbo specifically in ca bo in that situation with , andrea, i excitedly said in communicating with this afghan housewife over facebook and she invited me to her home and went and andrea said you are not going there. And i argued with her, and she said no, you do not understand come youre just not going. So i didnt go. Brian why didnt she want you to go . Mr. Gruber there were some people while i was in cabo who would friend me on facebook, and i would kind of look on their feed and see and ask them how they found out that i existed before i would agree to befriended. At one point, there was a woman called zahra and had a plausible sounding reason as to how she knew what was. We engaged in this two week long conversation over facebook talking about what it is like to be an afghan housewife, to have three children. To have the taliban cut of her education as a young girl. Her husband worked at the Bagram Air Force base. It was fascinating for me. My daughter andrea didnt believe that she was who she said she was. Ultimately, she invited me to her home for dinner, and andrea did not let me go. Brian lets go back to the list of where you have been. Also on this list as you just mentioned is afghanistan. Below that is indochina. Whered you go inside indochina . Mr. Gruber i spent most of my time in vietnam and cambodia, where i wound up living eight. Later i went to laos briefly. I flew