Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20170510

Rose welcome to the program. We begin tonight with the firing of f. B. I. Director james comey. Joining me Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News and phil rucker of the washington post. The context in which were looking at this comes just after director comeys most recent testimony before congress and several weeks after he did confirm publicly that there are active criminal investigations into possible collusion between Trump Associates from during the Campaign Time and the russians. Rose and we continue this evening with the chief Technology Officer of Facebook Mike schroepfer. A. I. Is underpinning all these things and a. I. Is being advanced because our computers are becoming faster and were training on larger data sets. The science is advancing to quite a fastics tent, so we need smart computer scientists to build better algorithms. Rose and we conclude with Sally Bedell Smith whos written a biography of Prince Charles. To me, he is such a fascinating combination of modern and traditional, and people in england find him confounding. They cant put him in a box. He is i think theres a good way of putting it. Hes a prophet without honor in his own land. Rose the firing of james comey, facebook looks to the future, and a biography of Prince Charles, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin this evening with latebreak news from the white house. In a remarkable development, President Trump has fired f. B. I. Director james comey. The white house said in a statement that the president ated ope on the clear recommendations of both the Deputy Attorney general and attorney general Jeff Sessions. The sudden firing raise as host of questions including whether the firing is an attempt by President Trump to influence the russian probe. It also brings to an end what has been a turbulent year for the f. B. I. Chief and onetime career prosecutor. Heres a report from cbs news evening news with scott pelley. This evening, President Trump fired the director of the f. B. I. James comey was leading the investigation into whether associates of mr. Trump colluded with the russian government to influence the u. S. President ial election. Late today, in an oddlyworded letter in which the president declares his own innocence, mr. Trump told comey that he has concluded that comey is not able to effectively lead the pure o. Comey, well known for geeing integty, was appointed by president obama and had about another six years to go on a tenyear appointment. Recently, he has been controversial with both democrats and republicans, leading the investigation of Hillary Clintons emails and the Russian Election tampering probe. Rose joining me from warrants is Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News and phil rucker of the washington post. I am pleased to have both of them to join me for this remarkable story. Margaret, i begin with you. Tell me what you know, where is this going and whats the context we look at this . The context in which were looking at this comes just after director comeys most recent testimony before congress and several weeks after he did confirm publicly that there are active criminal investigations into possible collusion between Trump Associates from during the Campaign Time and the russians, and this was a very big deal, not only because he said more in that public venue than folks expected him, to but because it was widely believed that after he put that on the record, President Trump would not be able to make director comey go away until the conclusion of that investigation if he were so inclined. It also comes about two weeks after the senate did confirm Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney general who ended up writing the lengthy letter ex pli kateing why he believed director comey should be forced to leave his position is that before i go to phil, let me read the two letters we know about, this is from the attorney general and the Deputy Attorney general. As attorney general we commit to the high level of discipline, integrity and rule of law in the department of justice. Based on my evaluation and the reason expressed by the Deputy Attorney general in the attached memorandum, i have concluded a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the f. B. I. It is essential this department of justice clearly reafirearm its commitment of longstanding principles that ensure fair investigations and the prosecution must be someone who sets the right example for Law Enforcement officials and others in the department, therefore i must recommend that you remove director james comey and identify an experienced and qualified individual to lead the great men and women of the f. B. I. That from the attorney general and depp to you attorney general. The president writes, ive received the attached letters recommending your dismissal. Ive accepted the recommendations and you are hereby terminated and removed from Office Effective immediately. Phil, what do you make of this . You know, charlie, its a pretty explosive development. There are a ouple of things that stand out. One is the explanation provided by Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein is almost entirely based on comeys handling of the clinton email investigation and things that happened last year. The july fifth 2016 press conference where comey had that long run of come tear about clintons use of the private email server and his subsequent letter to congress in october. So it leaves open the question of why President Trump has decided to terminate comey at this point today. Theres no connection with the email clinton email investigation today and it raises a lot of questions about whether trump was influenced to make this decision not because of comeys handling of the clinton email probe but rather because of comeys continued probe at the f. B. I. Of the connections between Trump Associates and Campaign Officials and the russians. Rose lets assume that the president wanted somehow to camp down that investigation and not knowing exactly where its leading. Would the firing of the f. B. I. Director be the right way to go . It certainly could. You know, i dont know if thats what the president was intending to do, but certainly its in his interest to do that and firing the f. B. I. Director, we dont know now whether this investigation is going to continue, who will be leading it, will the replacement for comey be some sort of trump loyalist like sai rudy giuliani, the former new york mayor, or will trump attack somebody whos been at the f. B. I. A long time, credibility across the aisle who could continue the russia probe . We dont know and do not have answers from this white house. Rose margaret . Thats right. For now we know the Deputy Director to have the f. B. I. Andrew mccabe is able to fill in that position but is not expected to remain there long term. Phils right. Certainly, internally, it matters who the f. B. I. Director is, but there are a couple of other factors to consider. One is the reaction on capitol hill, overwhelming outcry from democrats, both in the house and the senate likening this to the saturday night massacre, forking out rose watergate. Thats right, renewed calls for a special prosecutor, representative Eric Swalwell of california, democrats on the House Intelligence Committee saying this is not what an innocent person would do. This is an abusive power. Shows consciousness of guilt. Pat lahey, senator from vermont, says its nothing less than nixonian. Most republicans weve heard so far in the early hour or two since this has begun unfolding have stood by the decision for comey to go saying he had been a lightning rod and contention figure. One notable exception, senator john mccain, saying while trump has the power to do this, hes disappointed in President Trump and that this just underscores the need for a special congressional committee. So while this certainly affects internally how the administration moves forward, it is like throwing gas on the fire in terms of the congressional reaction. Rose one point which you just referred to, the president does have the authority to fire the f. B. I. Director for any reason. There is also this comment from Richard Durbin who is a ranking democrat in the United States senate. He said any attempt to stop or undermine the f. B. I. Investigation would raise grave constitutional issues. Are we being thrown into some kind of constitutional crisis this evening by this action . Phil . Potentially, we may be. Certainly, there are a few democrats including senator durbin, as you noted, who have alluded to that in their reaction statements. I think at this point were still in the fact gathering mode. Rose exactly. Were trying to figure out what happened. Why tid the president decide to make this decision today. What is he going to do to backfill comey . What happens to this investigation . Is there going to be a special prosecutor . Do the congressional investigations continue as planned . There are just a lot of unknowns now and were trying to navigate through that. And, charlie, there are two other timeline points i would note. One is the most recent testimony by comey, the one where he felt mildly nauseous thinking he might have impacted the outcome of the election, but also saying if he had to do it again he would make the exact same choice again. That seemed to be the point that the attorney general and Deputy Attorney general and perhaps the president himself have latched on to in terms to have the finality of their decisionmaking. The other is President Trumps treatment of comey, all of these months since his inauguration, i was in the blue room on january 22, two days after his inauguration as President Trump gathered all these Law Enforcement folks who had been part of the security procedures for the inauguration to thank them, and he infamously called james comey forward, asked him to step forward and gave him this sort of bro hug is what we called him at the time and seemed to be praising him, seemed to be with the hug showing a sense of confidence in him. Up until really only a couple of days ago has consistently asked or when his aides have been asked says he continues to have confidence in james comey. So at least in terms of public signaling, its really only been in the very immediate couple of days that weve seen signs that he might be moving this direction. Rose the next step is one well learn all the facts we can and see what further the president has to say about this. One intriguing question for me is the real of the Deputy Attorney general. Jeff sessions, the attorney general, had removed himself from the investigation into what happened on the transition because he had been involved in the political campaign. But here we have the Deputy Attorney general. Why is that significant and what does that say . I think, charlie, its significant that Rod Rosenstein was the person to write this letter in part because rosenstein the Deputy Attorney general has such credibility across the aisle in washington. He had been the u. S. Attorney in maryland, widely respected by democrats and republicans alike. He is not considered a trump lackey or campaign loyalist in the same way Jeff Sessions is and therefore can speak with a little more credibility in making this argument about comey. Have no doubt, this is a personal decision by President Trump to fire jim comey. This is not a normal step for a president , and i think one thing today that underscored that is that President Trump dispatched Keith Schiller who is his former longtime body guard and head of personal security at trump tower. He now is white house director of oval operations. He is the person who hand delivered trumps firing letter to the comey office today at f. B. I. Headquarters in washington. Rose that suggested to you what . A situation trump is taking personally and keeping close to the vest. He did not deploy Reince Priebus or don mcghan, instead turned to a trusted loyalist. Keith schiewler is almost like a Family Member to President Trump and the fact he hand delivered the letter is telling. Comey was out of town and not at his office to receive the letter but apparently it was read to him over the phone. Rose margaret and phil, thank you so much. Extraordinary story. Well be reporting on it tomorrow. Back in a moment. Rose Mike Schroepfer is here, chief Technology Officer at facebook, the social networking giant used by nearly 2 billion people globally. Its am p bigs is to one day connect the entire world. Last month c. E. O. Mark zuckerberg and other top executives underscored the road map for facebook over the next ten years. Along with connectivity, the company reiterated it continues to invest heavily in Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality to expand existing platform and explore new frontiers. Pleased to have Mike Schroepfer at this table for the first time. Welcome. Thank you, charlie. Rose what does it mean to be chief Technology Officer . Youre in charge of all the technology at facebook . Two jobs. One, to make sure the teams have what they need to deliver products, and other foot is in the future trying to build the tenyear mission, connect the world, build a. I. And build Virtual Reality systems. Rose when you look at theres a mantra around facebook, i think it says move fast, break things. Yeah. Rose what does that mean . You know, it means dont be afraid to try to bring the future forward. In order to do that, some things may break, you may make mistakes. If you try to do everything perfect you will never make forward progress. We try to encourage everyone in the company not to care too much about how we did it in the past but figure out whats the right thing to do. Rose define these terms for me. You said over that tenyear plan, it was Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and connectivity. Yeah. Rose Artificial Intelligence . A. I. , Artificial Intelligence is trying to make machines smarter, make computers see the world like we do, to be able to learn from reading and listening like we do as humans and take that information and make judgments and make reasoned decisions about them so they can help us with lots of tasks around the world. Rose Virtual Reality . V. R. Is a technology that makes it feel as if you are somewhere else. You put a headset on, a pair of goggles and looks like you have been transported to maybe an alien world or maybe to visit your Family Member whos thousands of miles away. Rose and connectivity . Connectivity is an easy one. Its 4. 1 billion people around the world dont have access to the internet. Most people dont have access to the internet. Rose its stunning when you think about it. Crazy. Rose its a central part of our lives. Can you imagine living without the internet . Hard to believe. Rose part of the push is how to get it to the people. This is a place where technology can help. We say how can we radically reduce the cost of internet . We fly a carbon fiber plane powered by the sun to provide Internet Access instead of cables. Instead of tearing up streets in the city, we use wireless Access Points that can be attached to power polls, could take the cost of delivering internet down by 5 or 10x to deliver it across the world. Rose give anyone power to share anything they want with anyone else. Thats the goal. Yeah, to give people ability to be who they are and connect with others. Rose what will the world look like in 2027 . What we hope is a lot more people are connected to the internet. We hope technologies like v. R. Do you have Family Members who live far away . Yes, north carolina. There you go. Wouldnt it be great if i gave you this technology and you would feel like you are at home with your family. Rose yeah. Everyone wants that. Hopefully v. R. In ten years will take us there. A. I. Has the power to transform our world in so many ways. It starts basic things like helping me communicate in different languages. We transmit 2 billion posts on facebook a day in 45 languages. In ten years i hope i will be able to go to a foreign country, put on a pair of glasses and instantly read the street sign and strike up a conversation on the street as if i was a native. Those are the sort of things within our reach in a. I. Rose its within your availability because you have to find the technology to do that or enhance the technology you have to do that. Cant do it yet but it looks like we can get there. Rose what is it you need to get there . You know, these things are built on such a foundation, so, you know, a. I. Is really underpinning all of these things, and a. I. Is being advanced because our computers are getting faster, were able to train on larger data sets. The really exciting thing is the algorithms, the way these things work are advancing to quite a fastics tent. We need smart computer scientists to build better algorithms and more data on the a. I. Side. When you think of Virtual Reality, you think of having glasses with superpowers, there is a lot of hardware problems to solve there, getting light into my eyes and making it comfortable enough to wear all day long. Rose people talk about the figure five facebook, google, apple, amazon, microsoft is that your competition or is your competition snapchat . Our competition is everything because our products are free. You can download a new app at anypoint and switch. This is one of the things we talk about to everyone in the company. Our whole discussion is about culture. Move fast break things you asked about earlier, its about realizing we have to change and adapt because the world does and if we dont people will use Something Else. Rose i remember a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg and also other people as well. It is the power that or the revenue that facebook got when you found out there was going to be advertising on mobiles, correct . Yeah. Rose there was a big question about that. Well, prior to that, no one had a big advertising business on mobile. People would say things like you dont buy things on your phone, too hard to type in the credit card. This was one of the examples where we jumped in with both feet and said people are using mobile phones, we have to build a business but that starts with building a great experience. We put our company towards mobile and figured out how to make an ad business work on mobile and now a vast majority of our advertising is mobile. Rose where is 3d . The world is 3d. This glass is here, this table is here. One of the magic of v. R. , you put it on and youre in a 3d environment. Watching people sculpt in v. R. Is amazing. Weve seen medical professionals train and understand Human Anatomy using v. R. The human heart is a complex item and its very three dimensional. Having Healthcare Professionals being able to understand exactly how it works is easier done in 3d than on a piece of paper or a model opt table so it has the power to transform a lot of things. Rose a lot of things you thought previously had to be carried out in the cloud can be carried out on your iphone. And whats amazing is even in the last year the a. I. Algorithms advancing so quickly are run on big servers that use a lot of power and are were powerful. Figuring out how to crunch and e phone. To run information on instead of havin the cloud, havo your phone. So people are diagnosing skin cancer with a. I. And you can imagine a future where you can do it without Internet Access. A cell phone app takes a picture and gives th the doctor anywhern the world the power to diagnose diseases. The combination of a. I. And advances in putting it on your smartphone have been something we have been surprised about. Rose Silicon Valley is where everybody is in everybodys business, but you havent developed a phone. No. Rose is that a not yet question . Our products are used by almost 2 billion people and theyre used by all sorts of different phones all over the world. We want to bring them to where people are. We are happy to bring the service there. A lot of what i spend my time on is whats next after the phone . Rose so tell me. Its not going to be a little rectangle in your pocket. Rose think aloud for me. Its an amazing idea. Youre starting to see the beginnings of it today. Ill tell you the aspects im most excited about. When you think about if youve used, you know, amazon alexei or something in your home and youve spoken to it to ask it to play music. Rose personal assistance or agents. Yeah, whats amazing most people miss is its starting to get technology to be in the background rather than the foreground. If i want to play music, i pull out my phone, stare at it, ive dropped out of the world to do this. With this i can say, hey, play Red Hot Chili Peppers and im done. Thats today. It can turn on your lights and play music. So fast forward, you have an agent that accomplish tasks. Maybe i have glasses that displays information. I have notes i want to say, appointments next, a cheery message from my wife showing on my screen all without having to pull my phone out and remove myself from this conversation. Rose who has the competitive advantages in Something Like that . I think its a new field. Rose amazons there in a big way. Yeah. Rose google coming in. Theres so Much Technology to develop there. So much of what im talking about doesnt exist and thats why its exciting because youve got to build it and thats why were investing. Augmented reality . The ability to take reality, us here today, and augment it. I can decorate this glass, i can have an overlay of information signature next to you. I can do anything i want. I can make my house look like a Harry Potter Castle if thats what my kids are into. Thats what were excited about, too, is taking the digital and the power of being able to rose the ease of putting you in another world. Doing it wherever you are. Rose what happened to google glass . I think it was early. It was just too early in the morning, the technology wasnt ready. Rose how do you know when the right time is . You know, i think its hard to tell sometimes and the you only really know once you get a product on market and see how people react to it. Thats the real challenge. I was talking to ron in our lab and he was too early. He had ideas in the late 80s and light 90s. These ideas are underpinning the ideas were having. Rose too early because the components were not ready . Yes. In that case you didnt have the competitionle power or the data to take advantage of his ideas but the same ideas 20 years later are like magic. Rose is social media ripe for transformation from all of this because of a. I. , Machine Learning and a whole range of things . If you think about the basis of what were trying to do with social media is connect you to the people you care about and the information you want to see. The challenge we have is too much information online, way too much to consume. Rose too many things to do, not enough hours. If i said i had this Magic Technology and it made sure it knew exactly what you wanted to see, its like a friend who stayed up all night drinking red bull, knows you independently and the preparing, charlie, this is what you need to see, make sure you dont miss this update from your friend and family and news article and you had access to this, thats the sort of thing a. I. Can do that i dont know any other technology can do is make sure every moment we spend rose is it taking command of our lives . No, its a tool. We control it. It gives control back to us. I want to go hike and be online. Great, when i get back i want to see exactly what i missed in order. I want to make sure i never lose touch with key friends. A friends having a hard miss it . How far away at that . Years away. Rose whats the limitation there . You know, now were starting to talk about things that start to understand people a lot better than any of our a. I. Systems do today thaimplet pretty good at understanding basic things. I can tell you this is a glass and this is a table but understanding whats important to me requires a much more nuanced understanding. Rose how much time do you and mark spend thinking about how people are misusing technology, whether fake news or Something Else . Yeah, i mean, we care a lot about how people use the platform and mark has talked about this extensively about this with his community letter. We want to make sure that people get access to what they want, but they have, you know, Accurate Information and the tools they need to understand kind of what theyre reading and, you know, this is a big part of what we do and what we work on every single day. Rose so how are you going to correct the problems weve seen . Well, you know, i think it starts in a couple different ways. First of all, you know, false news is something thats the whole triis challenged with it. There is different forms. There is people trying to make money off this. Thats the first easy thing to do is disrupt that. Its not right for people to make money trying to do this and we can disrupt it the way theyre trying to monetize it with ads and things like that and i think we can give better tools to people to understand what third parties may say about this article or understand a wider variety of views on thistomic than the one theyre seeing to make sure people are better informed. This is a long problem that we in the whole industry i think will be working on for a while. Rose lets do something we call moon shooting, which is thinking about big ideas. Sure. Rose what are the big ideas for facebook, other than weve talked about connectivity and the Virtual Reality . Tell me where youre really thinking about blue sky stuff. Yeah, i think its rose deliver language through skin, from the brain going directly to text. Yeah. I mean, i think all of this fits into the category of unlocking human potential. You and i are talking today. The speed at which were talking is hundreds or thousands of times slower than your brain is operating now. This is a slow rose it slows down when we communicate. Ever use a dialup modem back in the day . Rose yea. Were talking about the speed of a dialup modem. Our brain is going through the speed of rose so the more we learn about the brain, the more well be able to enhance the velocity of change by machines . I think so. I think be able to build machines that are smarter and can better do what we want and then building ways for us to communicate without the type or in some cases talk, you know, directly through thoughts at some point in the future, and that will unlock a whole new set of applications. Weve talked about Virtual Reality a lot. I mean, the whole idea of filmmakers using Virtual Reality to tell their stories. A remarkable concept in the sense that youre there on stage with the actors. Yeah. I mean, the goal of film has always been emersion, right, get lost in the show. You know, Virtual Reality is so powerful, i think you may have done the demo where you look like youre standing on the edge of the building. Ive given that hundreds of times and its my favorite thing to get people to walk off the ledge. Barely anyone can do it. Rose they forget for the moment that in fact this is our Virtual Reality. Thats right, they get lost in the story, in the scene, and, so, imagine what you can do that with. Rose whats amazing is some of our best news organizations are beginning to use it extensively. Yeah. You talk about ever any, right . Rose yeah. This is the ultimate empathy device. Whats it actually like to live in this part of the world, to be in a refugee camp, to be in a war zone, to be going through the elections . And v. R. Is one of those technologies that can transport you there and get you as close as you can to actually being there. Rose and from a technical standpoint, were just beginning to figure out how we can do this . Were in a floppy disk and computer phase of v. R. , as far as im concerned. Its starting to work but were just at the beginning, there is a lot more to go. Rose what have you been caught offguard by . What has surprised you . Were you surprised how people were Live Streaming violence and pornography and putting cameras in their bedroom and all that stuff . Obviously thats terrible and the events themselves are terrible and the fact theyre being broadcast is also terrible, so i think thats something you know, mark talked recently about hiring another 3,000 people to help us respond to that. So, ive also been surprised the positive ways people use live. Mark posted about us working on this problem, a bunch of people commented and said, you know what . My brother was able to see someones graduation overseas even though hes in the military, or i was able to take a class i didnt miss because i didnt have childcare because a friend streamed it online. You have to look at the other uses and hope there are a lot more of these happening every single day than these terrible things. Rose how far are we from the day some moviemaker will want to premiere his movie, not at movie theaters but facebook . You know, i dont know. Rose 2 billion available viewers. Yeah, i think were going to see lots of creative stuff. This is, you know, im working on the future, but its sometimes hard to tell where this is all going to go. Thats kind to have the fun part. You build these Technology Platforms and it unlocks the creativity of others who thought of things i never thought of. Thats what were trying to do is get the technology out and get the creativity of people around the world to use it. Rose that makes a difference. When youre tapping into the possibilities of innovation and creativity of a worldwide population, the capacity of one person to Say Something that causes another person to do something and then someone else whos not thought about either a or b sees the possibility of putting them together and making c. Absolutely. Rose i mean, thats the excitement of what were doing. Thats what makes it so fun. Thats what gets me to work every day. Rose yeah. Thats why, when we work on things like a. I. , one of the things we do, we open source our code and we accomplish our results because its such a foundational technology, its going to be useful for us for lots of things, but that same tellingology is useful in lots of other applications and its great to see people build on it. Rose i think mark has the big interest on this, the ways you can introduce wifi around the world, whether balloons or working on all sorts of different things, so weve got a crazy idea for a solar powered carbon aircraft that can fly for three months at a time to fly over an area and basically be a giant internet hot spot over a 50mile region. We have a tether drone you can deploy in a disaster area, so when disaster strikes the infrastructure goes down, the connectivity is often the first thing. Weve got a drone you can fly up and have an instant cell phone tower to wifi Access Points that entrepreneurs across the world can set up a local hot spot, make money and provide Internet Access for everyone in their to in. Rose youre at 2 billion now. Almost. Rose what are you 1. 94. Rose when will you reach 2 billion . I cant tell you. Rose what do you think the potential in the next ten years is . In terms of where were going to grow . Rose in terms of number of users . Well, you know, i think the challenge is at some point there is not enough people connected on the internet. There are billions of people yet to be connected. Thats one of the goals we talked about is to get those people connected ton internet. Its hard to know where the cap is. I think the reason why the products are so popular is they fit a very basic thing people want. Everyone wants to stay in touch with friends and family, its just a matter of how they do it. Rose obviously, amazon, obviously apple beginning to get a lot of interest in the entertainment world in terms of being able to make or buy content. Does that interest facebook . Well, you know, i think all of that stems from, you know, people people are watch ago lot of video and watch ago lot of video on phones. Were seeing this huge transformation from the tv to the device you have with you all the time. So weve had a lot of success with live video and people producing their own videos and things like that. Well see where it goes. But its an area where were making sure people have interesting things to interact have on facebook. Rose great to have you here. Thank you. Rose back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose Sally Bedell Smith is here. The biographer has written books of queen elizabeth, princess diana, the kennedys, and the clintons. Her new book is called Prince Charles the passions and paradoxes of an improbable life. Prince charles is the longest serving heir to the prichett throne. Hes been first in line for off5 years. The book offers an inside look into his childhood, his marriages and life as a king in waiting. I am pleased to have Sally Bedell Smith back at this table. Welcome. Thank you. Its wonderful to be back. Rose why is it an improbable life . Well, you would think when he was born nearly 70 years ago in Buckingham Palace in 19t 19th century style i even have an eyewitness account of when he was three hours old and was presented to the kings court in the ballroom. Rose an heir is here. An heir is here. This is give ton me by a friend whose father was a private secretary to the king. Rose yeah. So there he was with his nurse with the wimple, and it was like out of the 19t 19th century and here was somebody who was supposed to walk a Straight Line and was supposed to end up on the throne wearing a crown and little did he know how long he would have to wait or create a role for himself different than any prince of wales in history and that he would really well, first of all, he would have an elevenyear marriage, really, or spend 16 years of his life, given the end of his marriage, and the final divorce, that he would spend that in the most tell me pest chouse and mortifiesing, in many ways, period his life. Rose and embarrassing, too. Embarrassing, and also he would adopt so many fascinating causes and would be so outspoken in so many ways. Rose like architecture. Architecture, agriculture, against big agriculture, against gmos, against using chemicals, you know, on agriculture, using, you know, the healthcare. Hes taken on all these establishments agriculture, architecture, medicine for not treating the whole patient. To me, he is such a fascinating combination of modern and traditional, and people in england find him confounding. They cant put him in a box. He is i think theres a good way of putting it. Hes a prophet without honor in his own land, but he rose without honor because hes not become king or hes embarrassed himself because people have tried to pigeon hole him as one thing or another and they havent you know, they really havent recognized all the things that hes done. I mean, he had to hes had a very ad hoc life. Hes had to create his role as hes gone along. That in itself is highly improbable. If you were a basic traditional prince of wales, you would spend a lot of time unveiling plaques and unveiling statutes rose prekingdom jobs. Yeah, and maybe being a playboy. So the fact he has created a substantive job that stretches all the way from kabul in afghanistan to the carpathian forest in romania, to the galapagos, to jamaica where hes tried to build model towns. Rose is he close to his siblings . Not terribly, i would a. He was close to ann when he was growing up who was two years younger and they were sort of a dynamic duo. She got married and they went in two different directions. Its fascinating, really. Also his two younger siblings, one is 12 years younger and one is 16 years younger so theyre almost like two separate families and hes never been terribly close to either of his younger brothers partly because of the age gap and partly because he is in such a separate category. You know, as the prince of wales, he is the heir to the thrown. He also is the duke of cornwall, and he has access to this vast fortune that was set up in the 14th century for the heir to the throne. So its now worth over a billion dollars, and he gets, you know, 30 million a year to support his household and some of his charities and his children. So he rose almost as lucrative as writing books. Yeah, we wish. So he has a singular position. Rose yeah. But i also was so surprised. He is such an original character. You know, i once asked one of his cousins, lady pamela hicks, which of his parents he most resemble, and she sort of hesitated and joarkd he may be a foundling, not discernibly like either one. Rose is he closer to one or the other . Look, he had a quite lonely childhood. He had a mother who became queen when she was 25. She was surrounded by all those forbidding courtiers passing judgment on her, she had to prove herself through her dutiy. Winston churchill said the first quality that came to mind when he met her was she was incredibly conscientious. So she was applying herself to proving herself in that job. Rose how old is he now . Just turned 91 and riding on horseback three days earlier. Prince philip became head of the household. He saw in his son a very sensitive child and took it upon himself to toughen him up. Sent him to a boarding school at 8. A really tough boarding school at 18, gordonstone where phillip had gone and thrived because hes such an alpha male, athletic and inherent leadership quawments. Charles was much more introverted and it was a school where the older boys routinely bullied the younger boys and he was bullied especially because he was the heir to the thrown and all of these titles that affixed to his name and he had ears that stuck out and they made fun of him, so he had a tough time as a child. Be but he has a kind of softness about him when you see him, but hes as one of his cousins said, he has a really sort of strong, hard, moral core to him. So one of the many paradoxes about him. Rose most people know him because of his marriages, certainly to princess diana. Yes. Rose what impact did her death have on him . Well, he had to rebuild his life, basically. He had had, in a letter that he wrote to one of his friends who showed it to me, he said, the marriage itself was 11 years of hell. Thats a pretty puff thing. Tough thing. Rose why was t . Well because they were such a miss match. Rose she wasnt mean to him or anything like that . Or was she . Well, things turned pretty shower. Rose early. Pretty early. Rose was that because she didnt feel like she was getting the proper attention or she simply was too young to be in that place . She was emotionally very fragile and had a history of emotional instability, really, going back to the time when she was six years old and her parents had a very traumatic divorce, and she was kind of altered by that. Rose why did he marry her . He married her because he was under a great deal of pressure. He was 31 years old, he had been an action man during his 20s. He promised everybody he was going to get married by 30 and went through a series of brief flings with lots of supposedly suitable women, daughters of noblemen, even dianas older sister. By the time he was 31, he was under pressure from the media, his parents to get on with it and settle down with somebody and produce the next in line to the throne. Diana was you know, they had a 12year age gap and the most sort of the one thing that really took me aback was when i discovered that they had only been together 12 times before he proposed to her, and only a few of them, you know, when they were together alone. So he just didnt really know her, and she didnt really know him, and he was very ambivalent about it in his conversations are friends. Several friends came to him and said, this is a mismatch, you shouldnt do it. But she was under a lot of pressure because the press was writing really damaging things about her, and his father this sort of is emblematic of one of the issues that shows how he was almost constrained by formality. His father wrote him a letter. H he didnt sit down with him with a glass of whiskey in front of the fire and say, okay, youve met this woman, what shall you do . He wrote him a letter and said this woman is being ruined by the press, you either release her or marry her, and charles felt he was driven. And diana i mean, he made mistakes. He took a sixweek trip after they got engaged, and she was left alone in Buckingham Palace rose well, see there, that seems to be his problem not her problem. No, no, it was definitely his problem. He later regretted having done it because she was left supposedly with people to take care of her, but they were totally unsuitable. They were very nice men and one woman, but they were way older than she was. They didnt understand her. They didnt understand what she needed. So she was left to her own devices to sort of stew, and she was also with the other x factor in all this is Camilla Parker bowles, who most people dont realize charles met back in 1972 and fell in love with immediately. Rose he was in love with her when he married princess diana. He was. But he gave her up for the first five years of his marriage to diana. Hes knutsenicle man, charlie. He really believed he could learn to love diana. Lets face it, we all know she was beautiful, she had incredible charisma. Rose evidently, correct me on this, this is my expression, shows you how you can be misled by a Public Perception she was a good mother. She was a good mother. That was one of the things in her life that helped to stabilize her, but it didnt stabilize her quite enough because she wanted she needed somebody to take care of her, basically, and he needed somebody to take care of him, and neither of them was capable of taking care of the other in a way that they required. Rose so bowles camilla. Rose ms. Camilla bowles could take care of him. Yes, when she first met him, shehouse a very warm, effervescent personality, a terrific sense of humor. One of her good friends says when she walks in the room you know youre going to have a laugh. Charles by nature is a glass half empty kind of person. Some of his friends nicknamed his eeyore after the sad donkey in winnie the pooh. And he needs somebody to bring him up and camilla has that capacity. One of her friends said shes a warm, laughing, maternal creature with a lot of sex appeal, and thats the way she was certainly when he met her. But even though he was powerfully attracted to her, he wasnt ready to get married, he was just starting in the navy, and she was actually, at that time, madly in love with Andrew Parker bowles who was this big, strapping, handsome cavalry officer and she ended up marrying him not long after charles went off to sea in h royal navy for his first assignment, but they got back together toward the end of the decade. Rose the queen is the star of the royal family. Always has been. Rose and beyond the fact she is the queen, it is the way she has handled that awesome job. Yes. As the saying goes, she hasnt put a foot wrong. The only time rose is that what they say . She mas not put a foot wrong . Yeah. The only time she really ran into heavy weather was after dianas death, and she rose tony blair had to suggest to her she needed to be more sensitive . He did. She was getting reports on what was happening in london, which was really kind of unthinkable that there were people from all over the world who were flooding the parks and putting flowers in front of Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace where charles and diana lived. Rose what was it about her that made her death so i always felt diana resonated with people not only because she was so beautiful and because she had a kind of informality about her. I mean, her informality and her accessibility did change the way the royal family operated after her death. But there was something about her where she was a vulnerable and sensitive and as times volatile creature. Rose and she also became a star in the world of fashion and yeah, and charles couldnt begin to compete with her. When she was going out in some fantastic new dress in a given day, and he was going out to give an earnest speech on the future of architecture, who was going to end up on page one . Rose not him. Not him. And i think that really, really bothered him because he felt and he was doing a lot of worthy things. Rose so after this and after her terrible death. Right. Rose he found well, he had to remake his life, really. He put the sign up in his dressing room that said be patient and endure, and he had to show the world he was a good father to william and harry, and he succeeded in doing that. Its not that he hadnt been before, its just that diana so overshadowed and outshown him. She was publicly much more physically demonstrative than he was. Rose how would he be different than the queen . Well, i think he has a very different style. , he at times, ha has expressede view he could be more outspoken in the way he has been as the prince of wales, but he seems now to recognize that, really, as the monarch, according to walter badget who wrote the definitive book on the english constitution back in the 19t 19th century, the role of the monarch is to be to encourage and to warn and but not to give advice. So its to be consulted. Theres a different, to be consulted, to encourage and to warn. And charles has spent his whole life giving advice because he has had the freedom to do so. Not necessarily true the people have taken his advice. So when he becomes king, hell have to make a major attitude adjustment, really. And the queen, to her credit, since 2008, which ive learned when i was writing this book, she has assigned her senior most advisor, christopher geist, who is her principal private secretary, to start working with charles to assistum him to to accustom him to how he will have to purport himself when he becomes king, that he will be heeding the advice of people around him and in the government and that he wont have that kind of freedom to speak out. He has actually in the last five years spoken out a lot less emphatically than he used to. He went through a whole naming and shame aing period, particularly on architecture. Rose i was thinking about this as you were talking. There is hardly a family in the world you can name the grandmother and grandfather, the children, the grandchildren yeah. But it was interesting to me that one of william and harry and kates senior advisors said to me that william and harry were like two guys on a raft who escaped the ship wreck of their family and made it to the other shore, and they realized they would need to work as a team, and thats what theyve done, which is very different rose the two brothers. The two brothers. When kate came along, she slid in. You notice when they had this campaign in recent months to promote mental health, destigmatize it, its always the three of them, and its very, very effective, and its helped to lift the royal family, and there are now you know, the queen now has in direct succession, she has charles, she has william and she has george. I mean, theres a wonderful picture that was taken of them around her 90th birthday where Little George was standing on a stack of books so he could be lined up next to everybody else. But one of her cousins told me, having that succession in place has changed the queens life, has given her great comfort because she knows that there is a successor. Rose two quick final points. One you did not get to talk to him . I did not. In fact, it was okay because he has written to many and said to many millions of words over the years. Rose right. That i had more than enough. Plus, he was good enough to allow me access to a lot of his top people who could really explain the thinking behind a lot of his initiatives. Rose finally this what is the chi to the biographers art . Well, persistence. Rose persistence. Listening. Rose yes. Preparing really, really preparing. I mean, every time i went to interview anybody, say, who had written a book, i would read that book completely and make notes and figure out all the unanswered questions. Rose right. And id go to that person and i what you have to do is you get them to go beyond what theyve dope, what theyve said. Rose congratulations. Thank you. Rose thank you, sally. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Youre watching pbs