Transcripts For CSPAN2 Dan Ephron On Killing A King And Mike Kelly On The Bus On Jaffa Road 20151226

Good afternoon. [laughter] welcome. Im deborah jacobs, cochair of the 24th edition of the book festival of the mjcca. My cochair and i are pleased to welcome you to the book festivals awardwinning afternoon featuring journalist dan ephron in conversation with nancy updike, producer for this American Life, and our second awardwinning journalist, mike kelly, in conversation with bill [inaudible] Senior Executive producer at georgia public broadcasting. We are also happy to welcome cspans booktv to our book festival programming this amp. This afternoon. On behalf of the book festival, we are truly grateful for the support of barbara exped mining and this years sponsors, wells fargo. In addition, there are over 25 valued sponsors who support our book festival year after year. We are also a proud affiliate of the Jewish Federation of greater atlanta. Please check your playbill for the lineup of our calendar of events the rest of the book festival. Tickets for all book festival events are available three different ways. You can purchase them online at atlantajcc. Org, by telephone or in person at our box office or any of our Customer Service desks here at the mjcca. The format for todays presentation is each author will be in conversation individually with their respective interviewers, then it will be followed by a solo q a. After the final q a, dan ephron will be signing his book, killing a king, and mike kelly will be signing his book, the bus on jaffa road, on main street outside the theater. Both books are available from the official bookseller of the mjcca book fest call, a cappella books. At this time we would like to welcome up to the podium rabbi Michael Bernstein who will offer a prayer for paris. The stories that we gather to hear today are about using violence and cruelty to end what is best in humanity. Friday night another 127 lives were ripped away by this violation of terrorism. Violence of terrorism to join those of the victims that continue to happen in israel, in beirut and throughout the world. In the song of songs, it says set me as a seal upon your heart, for love is stronger than death. [speaking in native tongue] these are stories not of death, but of life; the life that refuses to be snuffed out even at the hands of terror. Paris is a city of love and life. May we learn how to have love triumph over death, to have life triumph over terror. May the people of paris and the people throughout the world be safe, may those who lost their lives be remembered by their loved ones, by all they touched and the entire world, and may we see the day when peace and love truly cop kerr terror conquer terror and death. Thank you, rabbi. And now it gives us great pleasure to welcome our guests more this afternoons program. For this afternoons program. Our first interviewer this afternoon is nancy updike, one of the founding producers of this American Life. She has reported from egypt, israel, gaza, the west bank and the United States. Her iraq reporting won a Scripps Howard award, a National Journalism award and a murrow award. She was executive producer of this American Life Second Television season which won the emmy for outstanding nonfiction series. Dan ephron, our author, was a newsweek reporter for nearly 15 years, serving as National Security correspondent, Deputy Washington Bureau chief and Jerusalem Bureau chief. He has followed the middle east through much of his career and has covered many of the regions major events since the mid 90s. Before joining newsweek, he reported for the boston globe and reuters. His stories have also appeared in esquire, the new republic, the Village Voice and the washington monthly. He lives in new york with his wife, nancy updike. Please welcome them to our stage. [applause] so thanks, everyone, for coming. We are, were married. [laughter] i think that was buried somewhere in the introduction in case we forget to say that and have to say it halfway through. Yeah. And so this is not so much the interview format, its more of like a chaotic, you know, Dinner Party Conversation [laughter] with a lot of gesticulating. [laughter] and were going to talk about the book, about killing a king, and really how i came to write book, how and why. And also the hourlong radio story that nancy and i collaborated on for this American Life, for the show that nancy has worked for since its founding 20 year ago. And the radio story was based on some of the reporting that danny did for the book, and it was, it was an hourlong documentary about the rabin assassination. Just a show of hands, how many people heard it . Okay. And so, yeah, were going to talk a little bit about both things and how they came into existence. So the book preceded the radio show. The book really started, for me, in 2012. I was the Newsweek Bureau chief in israel. We lived in tel aviv together. Nancy newsweek had asked me to move back to israel to be the bureau chief. I had been there in the past for chunks of time, and nancy had to get permission from ira glass. This American Life doesnt usually have American Foreign correspondents. He said yes, she came with me, and we moved to tel aviv. And around 2012, about two years into the posting, i was on deadline on a particular day, i was working on a magazine story, on a story for newsweek, and it was one of those moments where youre on deadline, and you have to be really effective and just get down to business and work. And i did the thing that i often do when i need to be that way,s which is i typed in youtube into the Search Engine in my computer and then spent the afternoon looking at animals and other exotic things. [laughter] and eventually got to this clip of rabin, of yitzhak rabin. And it was a clip really of the aftermath of the shooting, right . Rabin is shot on november 4th, 20 years ago at this peace rally, in the aftermath of this peace rally. And the shooter is this jewish extremist, hes 25 years old. And hes pounced on right at the scene in the parking lot and taken to a Police Station in tel aviv a few blocks away. And the video shows the interrogation of emir. And its a very short clip. I watched it, and well show it to you in a second. Its really the quality is terrible, you know . Its dark, hes kind of in the shadow, he is sitting opposite three or four policemen. Later one of the interrogators told us they brought him to the wrong room. They have a room where the camera is better, and they would have seen him kind of in better quality, but they were so rushed, they just said lets put him in here. The video i found mesmerizing. I found it mesmerizing in part because i had reported in israel in the mid 90s and had been sent to that rally, to that peace rally to write a story. I reported for reuters at the time, its a news agency. And the story was supposed to be a very short three or four paragraphs, it was supposed to tell readers whether rabins Peace Process had the support of israelis or didnt. This was toes low Peace Process that the oslo Peace Process that had begun in 1993, and the support for rabin and the toes low deal waxed and waned. In those moments of hope, many israelis supported it, maybe most, but it also set off violence. And this was the period where the suicide bombings of hamas begin. And when theres a lot of violence, you know, rabins popularity and the popularity of the Peace Process quos down. Goes down. So the whole idea was go to this peace rally, see how many people show up and then write a story that says a lot of people came, and that means one thing for the Peace Process or not very many people showed up. And, of course, a lot of people were there. There were 100,000 people. Its a square in tel aviv about the size of, i dont know, a few football fields. And ark mir wait amir waits and then shoots rabin in the parking lot after the rally and then is taken to this Police Station. So lets see, lets see this first video, and ill show you, ill show you what i mean. Its bad quality, but its not [inaudible] okay, this is amir on the left. [speaking in native tongue] we turn up the volume a little bit . By the way, how many people understand some hebrew . Okay. And then how many people have been to israel . Right, okay. So when i talk about the kings of israel square, the place where rabin was assassinated, most of you probably know where it is. Today its called rabin square. What amirs saying here is the things that i did, i did out of a sense of religious obligation. And, of course, hes talking about having shot rabin. Rabin is not dead yet. This is about 15, 20 minutes after the shooting. It takes about an hour and a half until doctors, surgeons are working on rabin and eventually pronounce him dead. But i think the thing that was most striking for me about the video is just how calm amir is, you know, hes kind of leaning forward, and he says at some point are you taking this down, writing this down, because the interrogator on the right side, and its the guy in the white shirt sort of in the middle of the pack, i think there are four people on the right side, the interrogator is writing down every word by hand. This is the way interrogations were conducted at the time. You know, the interrogator asks a question, and then he tells the suspect to slow down, you know, repeat that x. At some point yigal amir says did you take that down, did you hear what i said. That was striking because what i remember from that night was at the moment of the shooting israel was plunged into a state of trauma. Theres no tradition of assassinations in israel. Certainly, the idea that an israeli leader would ever be killed, i think israelis thought it would be a palestinian or an arab who would assassinate an israeli leader. Pretty quickly after the shooting it becomes clear on the media that the guy who shot rabin is a fellow israeli and a fellow jew. And in some ways this is, you know, people talk about the assassination as the israeli kennedy assassination. In most ways its not like the kennedy assassination. But in this one way, it is. This idea that the country is plunged into trauma and a real state of fear about what this means for the future. And hes very calm because he has sort of defied the odds. He feels like what he has done has been inspired by god. Or god even helped him do it. And well explain a little bit later why he comes to that decision. So the we decided to do a radio story based on some of the reporting in the book partly because of this video and others like it, because this was such a welldocumented event. Theres not only this one, theres hours and hours and hours of other interrogations of yigal amir where he is saying every beat of this is what happened, this is what i did, this is why i did it, this is when i started thinking about it, this is how i started thinking about it. And also besides the fact that these videos exist, theres a video of the assassination itself which well show you later. But this only happened 20 years ago. And a lot of the people who were directly involved in, you know, responding to it, who were there that night are till alive. Still alive. Including this guy in the be white shirt, this Police Interrogator. And when danny started watching the interrogation videos, we didnt know his name. But you cant see it so well in this shot, but in other parts of the video you can see that hes smoking a pipe which we just hadnt really seen any other israeli smoking a pipe. [laughter] never met an israeli who was a pipe smoker. So danny, you know, we started inquiring with people who worked this in security worked in security and the police at the time. There was a guy interrogating amir the night of the assassination smoking a pipe, and everybody said, oh, thats moti. Because they had never met anyone else in israel who smoked a pipe either. [laughter] let me just say, so, i mean, the pipe smoking is not evident on in the video. But what happens is when i watched the video, it occurred to me if theres 20 seconds of it, there must be hours of it. If police are turning on the tape recorder or the video camera in the interrogation room, they probably left it on for hours, for the duration of the interrogation. And my thought was if i could view all of it or if i could view some amount of it, it would tell me something about the psyche of yigal amir, of this guy who killed the israeli leader. And eventually i got my hands on about 10 or 12 hours of it and viewed it all over a long weekend. And it does say a lot. It did tell me quite a lot. And ill talk a little bit about that. But, yeah. So one of the other things is this pipesmoking Police Interrogator, moti. And we found him, and we went to interview him, we wanted to know what it was like to interrogate yigal amir s. And really the question is the country is falling apart all around you. Its in a state of trauma. And how are you managing to compose yourself, and what are the questions youre asking. And when we, when we talked to him about that, he said, well, you know, its funny because when he the first time he saw himself in this video interrogating yigal amir was when he was preparing for the trial of amir, the murder trial which danny also covered. And when he saw the video of himself, he almost started getting mad at himself, you know, how could you be so calm . How could you just sit there, you know . Youre sitting across from the man who just shot the Prime Minister. And, again, this is even before either one of them knows that rabin is dead. They just know that hes been shot. So moti was telling us that and this is in the radio story for those of you who heard it was telling us about how, you know, he was an experienced Police Interrogator by this point. He had done, you know, murder cases and seen really terrible things, and he was used to talking to people who had killed someone. But even so he, like the rest of the country, was in turmoil facing this person who had just shot the Prime Minister. And so he talked to us about how difficult it was for him even an experienced Police Interrogator to be as calm, to keep doing his job, to be polite with this young man who was not only calm during the interrogation, but actually gleeful and triumphant in different parts of the conversation. We have to skip a slide here. And you can hear moti i naftali. One of my police come in and brought me a cup of tea. With a white styrofoam cup. Yeah. And i told to him, would you also like a cup of tea . He says this to amir. I told him, bring another one, please. And he brought him the cup of tea. And he says dont you have cookies . And i told him, oh, you are pushing your luck. [laughter] i remember is the reaction when i told him, when i accuse him and i tell him i, motti naftali, accuse you of shooting the Prime Minister and caused his death. And he was shocked to hear it. What . Did he die . Wow. And he jumped like your team make a goal. Like your team scored a goal in a soccer game, yeah, yeah. Yeah. This moment you want to come and punch him in the face. But you sit down, sit down. Would you like a cup of tea . Lets make [inaudible] he say. Lets make a toast. Lets make a toast. Yeah. And that means to life. T to make a toast to life. Yeah. To life. To life that he took. So thats motti naftali. And one of the things about reporting in israel, its a very informal country. And people dont say no usually to interview requests. And so this event, and nancy mentioned this, it was 20 years ago. People are still alive. It was very easy to get to people who were in the main actors in this event. And i think this was a turning point for us. I think the idea of being able to see a bunch of hours of video of amir and understand things about him and then get access to some of the key characters, for me i started thinking there was maybe not just a magazine story here but, you know, maybe the start of a book. The start of a book with at least one protagonist, the assassin. By the way, naftalis also a wind surfer, and when we first called him up, he said, yeah, come right over. And then he called us back and said, wait, the wind has changed, its good now, so im going to go out, and you come back later in the week . Which we did. Yeah. So what happened that night. Im going to tell you from my perspective, but also from amirs perspective. I lived in tel aviv at the time, i lived a few blocks away. I mentioned it was a reuters story that i was going to write. I left my apartment a few blocks from the square, got to the square and saw in this very large crowd entirely packing the square and people streaming in. And i spent the course of the rally interviewing people on stage and then interviewing people in the square, and then it was over, you know . Rallies in israel are often political speeches and then songs, they bring pop bands to play so its kind of somber speeches and then sort of, you know, very upbeat songs. And then they sing the national anthem, and then people started leaving, and i left as well. I was a few blocks away from the square when i got a beeper message that said shots fired near rabin, head back now. And i ran back, i ran back to the stage, and people pointed to the parking lot. And then at the parking lot i spoke to witnesses who said it looks like rabin has been hit, and he was taken to hospital. Now, amir had been stalking rabin for two years. Amir opposed rabins peace deals with the palestinians, he oppose thed the the oslo Peace Process. He felt, for one thing, it posed a Security Threat to israel. But i think moreover for him, he felt this was a betrayal of israel and a betrayal of judaism. The peace deals involved giving back at least parts of the west bank and gaza to the palestinians, and for amir whos a religious jew the idea of giving back land that was promised to the jews in the torah, in the bible, israels, you know, the jewish birthright, this was a betrayal. And stalking rabin meant looking in the paper for Public Events where rabin might appear and then coming to those events with his gun. He had a baa relate that, the baa relate that, a. 9 mm bret that he carried everywhere he went, and waiting to see if he can get close enough. And on this particular day he makes the decision saturday morning that hes going to go to the rally saturday night. He comes to the rally. He takes off his skull cap and puts it in his pocket. The rally is a leftcenter rally. Israelis on the left tend to be secular, and amir worried that if he wore his hat he would be identified as someone from the right, and it would be suspicious. He takes it off, he puts it in his pocket. He walks by the parking lot, and he sees rabins armored cadillac. Now, rabin had been driven around for the first couple of years of his premiership in a heavy caprice, and he loved the chevy. It was fast, and it did everything it needed to do. But his bodyguards, the secret service in israel, grew more and more concerned about these intelligence assessments that there were threats to rabin, threats against his life from the far right, from people who opposed his Peace Process. And they persuaded him and this was not easy to do they persuaded him to allow them to import this armored cadillac from the United States that was the kind of car that president clinton drove around in at the time, was chauffeured around in. They were not able to persuade them to wear body armor, by the way. Because rabin feels like this is my country, this is the country i was born in. Well talk about his bio, but he was the head of the military for a period of time, and the idea that he would be, he would face threats and threats from fellow jews just felt unacceptable and unfathomable to him. And so he refused to wear body armor. Amir sees the cadillac, and he says to himself, well, if the car is here, this is where rabin will end up at the end of the rally, and he manages to get into the parking lot. Its an openair parking lot, and its supposed to be secured. You know . Police and the secret service are there, theyre supposed to make sure that no one gets in whos not authorized. But, in fact, he manages to get in and so do others. And he waits there for 40 minutes. And no one approaches him. He says at some point in the interrogation if somebody would have approached me, if a policeman would just have come over and asked me for my id, i would have turned around and walked away, but nobody does. And then he watches rabin come down the stairs from the stage. And as rabin gets close, he sees that there are about four or five bodyguards protecting rabin. Rabin passes by amir, and then amir circles behind him, and amir spots this opening, this gap between the two bodyguards who are trailing rabin. And he gets close enough to reach out with his gun, with his baretta that he takes everywhere, and to shoot at rabin from the distance of about a foot. Two bullets hit rabins back, and then another bullet hits the bodyguard who is on rabins right. Hes actually the bodyguard has his left hand draped over rabins shoulder, and that bullet goes into the bodyguards arm. And then amir falls to the ground, and hes tackled, and hes put into a police car and driven off to the Police Station. But so hes very calm because he feels that he has defied the odds to. He has managed to do this thing that, certainly, you know, could not have been easy to do. To get into the parking lot, to spend 40 minutes there without being approached, to find this gap in the security, you know . Think of everything you know about israel and Israeli Security and how well trained and well regarded the intelligence agencies are, the secret service is. And yet hes managed to kill rabin, and hes not dead. Nobody has pulled out a gun and shot him. People pulled out their guns, policemen have, so have secret service people, but nobodys shot amir. And so he is absolutely certain that what he did god had intended for him to do, and god had helped him do it. Do you want to talk about the fingerprints, the slide sure, sure. And just to say one thing before we get to it which is if you, if you go to rabin square anytime in the future, part of the memorial is these small brass circles embedded in the pavement right where the shooting happened. And you can see exactly how close yigal amir was. I think its a part of the memorial that gets overlooked but really is quite shocking to see, to see right there. So this is, this is one of the thousands of pages of documents. Again, we were talking earlier about how well documented this event was. Every time, you know, anybody in the security or services interacted with amir, they took a note, put it in the file. This was part of the investigative file. This was in the aftermath of the murder, and this is one of the documents from that file. And this is from, this is if you, you know, see the date up on the lefthand corner, israelis reverse the month and the day. So this is november 4th. So its on the day that the shooting happened. And this is the lab tech who takes yigal amirs fingerprints. And he, he says, so, you know, yigal amir came to me, and i told him to, you know, put his hands on the ink pads. And as he did, as amir did that, he noticed that his watch was missing. And he said to the lab tech this is the lab tech writing this he said to the lab tech, oh, wow. My watch is missing. I think it i think it fell off when i was assassinating the Prime Minister. [laughter] and, you know, could you maybe radio back to the police who are still there and see if somebody can pick it up, because i like it. Its a good watch. [laughter] so, again, this is part of, you know, evidence of his state of mind, his sort of selfpossession in this moment when the rest of the country is in incredible turmoil at what hes done. Amir plotted the murder along with his brother. Amir is 25. Hes a law student. His brother is 27. They spent a lot of time in their bedroom, this is the bedroom where they grew up. They lived with their parents on the second floor of this home, of their home about a half hour north of tel aviv. A lot of time in that bedroom just talking about how to kill rabin. And they start somewhere after the oslo deal is signed. The two of them watch they have a television in that bedroom, they watch the signing, you know, that scene where clinton is nudging arafat and rabin together. They tell themselves right then that if this plan comes to fruition, if the peace deal goes ahead, there will be a need to stop it by killing rabin if necessary. And the brother is convicted as a coconspirator. He doesnt go to the valley on that night, but he to the rally on that night, but hes convicted as a coconspirator. He spends 16 and a half years in prison. He comes out of prison that nancy and i are talking about this idea, that maybe theres a book to write about the assassination. And so i ask for an interview, he agreed. I spent a lot of time with him and had the cooperation of his family. Hes a very smart guy, so is yigal amir. This surprised me quite a lot. They were smart young men, they were very thoughtful. They were students at some of the best schools, best orthodox or ultraorthodox schools in israel as High Schoolers and later in seminary. And by the way, theyre on that seam between or the docks and ultraorthodox. They grow up with both influences at home. And they both serve in the army. And the brother showed me letters that he wrote in prison, a diary that he kept in prison. He also shared some photographs along with his family. This is yigal amir as a kid. This is the shooter. Yigal amir here is the third man from the left, this is here in the golani brigade, an infantry brigade, this is where he learns to handle a gun. This is another one of him on the right. So thats yigal amir. So i, by now, knew that i wanted to write a book about the assassination, and amir would be one of the two protagonists. And, of course, the other would be rabin. This was not a policy book. I wanted to write about the quest of these two people, of rabin and amir, you know . Rabin is trying to put together these peace deals between israel and the palestinians, but really between israel and its neighbors. And amir is trying to stop rabin. Hes on a quest to stop rabin before rabin succeeds. Now, in some ways writing about a politician whos been a public figure for most of his adult life and thats the case with rabin in some ways its easier because theres a record of his life. Interviews hes given over the years, there are articles hes written and speeches hes made. Rabin wrote a memoir in the late 70s. But in some ways its harder. Its harder because the bar is higher for trying to understand something about this actor, this protagonist that other people dont understand. And thats what you want to do when youre writing a book. You want to get into his mind in a way that others havent. Also, you know, politicians are a little bit hard to penetrate, you know . They will say things sometimes that they mean, but sometimes theyre saying them because its politically spirit efficient to say. And part of the process of coming to understand rabin was getting to know his family members and getting the cooperation of his family members and specifically dahlia rabin who is his daughter and the keeper of the legacy. She runs the rabin center in tel aviv which is a museum and educational center. And i have to say im not a museum guy, but if any of you are in israel, i would recommend it. Its a really terrific museum. So here are some photos of rabin. And rabin is, were going to scroll through this pretty quickly, but rabin is a military man for the first three decades of his adult life. And he rises in the ranks and becomes the chief of staff, the head of the entire army, many time to leave the army in the 1967 war. This is that war where israel captures the west bank and gaza. Its the six day war, also the sinai and the golan heights. And then he becomes a diplomat. He is the ambassador to the United States. This is him on meet the press in 1970. He becomes quite close to nixon and to kissinger. Nixon brings him into the white house quite a lot to consult with him on the vietnam war. And he goes back to israel, and he becomes the Prime Minister in the 70s. And hes Prime Minister for three years, and its not a very successful term as Prime Minister. He says this in his memoir, he says i was young and inexperienced. And he dose into the wilderness he goes into the wilderness for a while and then becomes defense minister in the 80s. Now, the 80s is this period, the late 80s, of the first palestinian uprising. This is the uprising of stone throwing and sitins and mass demonstrations in the west bank. Rabins response to the uprising is very aggressive. Rabin does not see himself as a leftist or a peacenik. Hes a military man in his being, you know . His daughter told me that to the last day of his life he would every morning sit on the corner of his bed and shine his own shoes. But two hinges happened to rabin two things happened to rabin during the course of this first palestinian uprising. One is he comes to realize the pal palestinians are not going to accept this condition of israeli rule in the west bank and gaza, israeli rule over million of palestinians in a situation where palestinians dont have most rights that Israeli Citizens do. That they wont accept it for any long term. And the second conclusion he comes to is that israeli rule over palestinians without giving them rights is toxic for Israeli Society. He doesnt really talk about the idea, you know . He doesnt frame the idea of coming to terms with the palestinians so much in humanitarian terms, he doesnt talk about palestinian rights, doesnt talk a lot about that, but he does talk about the impact of Israeli Military rule in the west bank, the impact it has on israel. So when he becomes Prime Minister, he embraces a plan, this oslo peace plan that he doesnt initiate. Its initiated by his foreign minister, but he embraces it. And it involves the idea of handing back some parts of the west bank and gaza to the palestinians. Do you want to talk sure. About slide . So when this is, obviously, president clinton and rabin, and this is rabins chief of staff. And when clinton and rabin first met, they really did not hit it off, you know . Can you imagine two more different people . Be clinton is this sort of big, tall, gregarious, you know, charming, expansive person, and rabin was rather taciturn, not a back slapper, not a small talk guy. And he just didnt know what to make of clinton at all. But eventually they did become friends and became, in fact, quite close. So this is rabin at a, you know, a political function at the white house that requires black tie. But as danny was saying earlier, israels pretty informal. He did not come in black tie. He, i think, doesnt own a black tie. So when he walked in, clinton looked at one of his bodyguards and said, you, take off your bow tie, im going to give it to the Prime Minister. So he gets the bow tie, but rabin doesnt know how to tie the bow tie, so hes tying rabins bow tie in this photo. Lets go back to the night of the assassination. Were going to show you a video, and then well finish up and take some questions. I talked about how amir came to the rally and made his way into that parking lot. Now, the journalists had all left, as i did. All of my colleagues had left. So theres no television footage or news footage of the assassination itself. But there was an amateur photographer. And keep in mind this is before the period where, you know, everyone who had a cell phone also had a video camera. This is the era of the camcorders. And there was an amateur photographer who stood on kind of a balcony overlooking that parking lot. And liked filming important people. So he stood up there and waited. And, actually, as hes waiting for rabin, captures yigal amir also waiting. So were going to show you the video and then talk a little bit about it. Go straight to that one. Yeah. Okay. [cheers and applause] you see him in the middle of the screen now. Hes got his two bodyguards in front of him. Amir is going to circle around this guy behind rabin in a white shirt [gunfire] thats rabins driver [inaudible] there you know, this is israe you know, the film that was captured of the kennedy assassination. I dont know when was the last time youve seen the sa piewd da film is beautiful. Its very clear, its daytime. You see president kennedy very clearly in the car and getting shot, you see Jackie Kennedy climbing up over the back of the car. This is not a very clear film, its mostly dark. But one point that nancy made as we were watching it one of the first times is that, you know, whats interesting here is you actually see the shooter and the victim in the same frame. Which in the zapruder film you dont. The shot comes out of nowhere, and here, you know, as we said, hes so close. Hes almost touching rah beeps back rabins back with his gun. Let me just finish by explaining why i called the book killing a king. Rabin was an elected leader, he was the Prime Minister of israel, he was not a king. But in the weeks that follow the assassination, the amir brothers are writing letters home. And yigals brother is writing a letter where hes trying to explain to family members why they did this thing, why they killed rabin. And he and yigal are both steeped in scripture, in torah and talmud, they know it very well. And he puts the assassination in the context of this long arc of jewish history, you know, prophets and kings. And he says in his letter according to judaism, killing a king is profoundly significant. It affecteds the entire nation affects the entire nation and alters its destiny. I read this about 17 years later, and it struck me as almost chilling in its press yens. Thank you very much. Thats our talk. [applause] if you have a question, please raise your hand. Well bring the microphone to you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. In the i havent read the book yet, looking forward to it. In your American Life interview, you spoke of two alarming statistics, and id like you to share them with the audience. That is the 30 and the 50; 30 of Israeli Society believes there was another shooter or a conspiracy yeah. 50 of them right wing. Yeah. Can you talk about that . Sure. Yeah, ill and correct me if im getting this wrong. The radio piece, for those who didnt hear it, focuses on the conspiracies around the assassination. I wont keep you in suspension. Its a lot like the kennedy assassination where there are all kinds of theories and a lot of adherents, people who dont believe this is exactly what happened. And the murder, theres just an overwhelming amount of evidence that it happened just the way we know. That amir was one guy who got to the square who killed rabin. For one thing, he confesses right away. And then theres this video and all the forensic evidence lines up. And there are dozens of witnesses in the parking lot who see it. And film. And theres the film. And yet sort of these conspiracy theories have built up over the years, and one of the things we did was we went to pollsters to ask them how many israelis have doubts about the main story, east believe in the conspiracy theories either believe in the conspiracy theories or believe in some alternate version of events. And they told us up to a third of israelis have doubts about what really happened and that among the right wing in israel its up to 50 . And then what we did was we spent a lot of time for the sake of the radio story trying to understand that disconnect. How is it that a crime where the evidence is so clear and so abundant still gets some significant number of doubters . Theres no real tradition in israel of conspiracy theories. Its not much like here where you get conspiracy theories about, you know, every landmark event in the 20th century. Really i can only think of one event, the rabin assassination, where israelis talk about these conspiracy ideas. So thats, those are the numbers. You hear me . Can you hear me . I was also living in israel another the time rabin was assassinated, and in the weeks afterwards when i was riding the bus or taking the train, i would turn to some, you know, religious person sitting beside me, and i would ask them what do you think should happen to yigal amir . And generally, they would either change the subject, or they didnt seem to harbor any ill feelings towards him whatsoever. And i was just wondering, did you get a sense that, you know, that israel could have slipped into a civil war between the secular and the religious as a result of this assassination . So let me say for one thing, i mean, you know, certainly its not the case that all religious israelis or even most religious israelis supported the assassination. I think most of them felt it was a horrific event, including israelis who opposed rabin and opposed his Peace Process. But, you know, some number of them and this shows up in polls some number of them believe that what amir did was right. It was good for the country. And the way they view it, in this Peace Process was fraught with violence, it had the potential to be destructive for israel. And hen this idea of a betrayal and hen this idea of a betrayal, that office a betrayal of judeo cannism. Israel was very polarized at the time. About 50 of the country favored the oslo deal, about 50 were against it. And in the months leading up to the assassination, the protests became very rowdy and ugly, you know . Israelis holding up, rightists holding up posters of rabin dressed in a nazi uniform on occasion shouting rabin is a traitor, rabin is a murderer. T there certainly was a feeling that israel was polarized and that, you know, i dont think there was ever a feeling that in the civil, you know, in terms of the kind of construct of a civil war where one side takes up arms against the other. But the potential for violence was certainly there and was picked up on by the intelligence agencies and was, you know, i think they were right in the end because there was this violent act against the Prime Minister, and it wasnt the only violent act. Certainly others by people on the extreme right designed to undermine the oslo deal. Do we have time for one more . We have one in the back. Talking about changing a countrys destiny, while its unknowable, do you have feelings for where the Peace Process would have been without this act . Yeah. And if wed be in a very different place today or if wed be where we are now. So thats one of the, you know, one of the questions you know, i had some number of questions going into the process of writing the book, some number of questions that i wanted to understand and get to the bottom of. And, you know, we talked a lot about these questions. Even before we collaborated on this radio piece. Because were both journalists, we spend a lot of time talking about our stories and our book. Or projects, lets say. And, you know, the question if rabin had not died, would there be a twostate agreement, was one of them. I have to say i think that what ive come away with is sort of the feeling that to be honest as a journalist and as a historian, we just cant know. We cant know because when an event kicks, you know, history off its course, theres so many variables. The idea of sort of figuring out exactly what would have happened had that event not occurred is really impossible. I will say this, i think, you know, that period and i remember this vividly was a very hopeful time. It was a hopeful time in part because the process itself, the Peace Process hadnt been poisoned yet by just this years and years of violence and settlement expansion, these things that really made both sides lose faith in the possibility of an agreement. It was also a hopeful time because these two leaders were, you know, i would say oslo is not a slam dunk. Oslo was trouble in all kinds of ways. But if oslo could have worked and if the twostate solution could have worked, it was probably then, and it was probably these two leaders the deciders of their generation who could have signed the deal and brought their people of both sides onboard. Ive got a question for you. How could the government be so lax in this protecting their chief executive . It was incredible watching that scene. Him coming almost to the back with nobody there protecting him, firing a bullet at him. I can understand informality, i cant understand negligence. I think this is, this is something that weve also talked about a lot which is weirdly i think this is one of the things that has underpinned some of the conspiracy theories or that comes, comes boo play with some of the comes into play with some of the conspiracy theories about, well, it cant just have happened the way it seems to have happened. Because i think for a lot of israelis, just like for you, its too hard to believe that it was that, that big a screwup. And we actually, we interviewed a guy who was brought in a secret service agent. Officer. Yeah. Brought in, you know, its basically sort of like the u. S. Fbi and the secret Service Rolled into one. He was brought in immediately after the assassination to fix the problems of the secret service, the Close Protection unit. Because clearly, you know, this was a disaster. And when we went to interview him, i asked him, you know, so, hey, when was the last time you watched the video that we just saw of the assassination . And, you know, this is a 20yearold event. Hes moved on in his life. Hes, you know, 20 years on. And i expected him to say, oh, you know, i cant even remember it. He said, i watched it yesterday. I watch it almost every day. And we watched it with him. And as he was watching it and describing and pointing out, you know, heres whats wrong and heres whats wrong and heres whats wrong, he was getting agitated as though, you know, as though hes seeing it for the first time. So so that is not an answer to your question exactly, but i think and i didnt even see where the person was who spoke. Hes down here. I would just add i think the one thing that does some explaining, i think even, i think no one fathomed the or no one internalized the idea that a jew would be the threat. Even though there were intelligence assessments that maybe someone might from the far right might assassinate rabin, and people, you know, circulated these assessments around. Theres a chapter on this in the book about all the intelligence that was out there that should have been gleaned and, you know, things should have been done. I think people just did not internalize this idea. And the face they were looking for when they were out there protecting the Prime Minister was the face of a palestinian. That was the enemy and the guy they were, you know, the guy they were protecting rabin from. Naftali, the policeman who interrogated amir the night of the assassination, he said this exact thing. He was coordinating the security at the event with the secret service, and he said, yeah, no, we never planned in all the weeks of planning the security for the rally, we never talked about the possibility of an israeli assassin or a jewish assassin. Thank you very much. Thank you. [applause] dan ephron, nancy updike. Thank you very much. [applause] the interviewer for our next program is no stranger to atlanta, mr. Bill nye gut. Bills experience as a journalist includes 20 years as the national and state political reporter for wsbtv here in atlanta. In 2003 he left the News Business to become the startup ceo of the Metro Atlanta arts and Culture Coalition and later served as the Southeast Regional director of the antidefamation league. He returned to broadcasting as the Senior Executive producer of georgia public broadcasting. He is also the host of two programs on gpb radio network. Our guest is mr. Mike kelly, a journalist for more than three decades. Mr. Kelly is the author of two books and many prizewinning journalism projects and columns for the bergin record in northern new jersey. His assignments have taken him all over the world, and he has devoted much of his time to covering terrorism. Please welcome mr. Kelly and mr. Nygut to our stage. [applause] hey, everybody. How are yall . Everybody okay without a break . Doesnt matter, were going anyway. [laughter] just while we get settled, mike, im really looking forward to this conversation. I would love it, you heard we do two shows on gpd. On friday afternoonings an hour round table show with some of the best insiders in town, so if youre paying attention to the campaign, i encourage you to listen to political rewind, among the other stuff. Mike kelly, what a pleasure to talk with you. I really enjoyed reading your book. Thank you, thank you so much. Its a pleasure being here with you. Well, thanks. Okay, so lets, if we can, i think the elephant in the room today and its certainly kind of in a chilly way kind of apropos what were going to talk about with the bus on jaffa road, lets talk a bit about paris. You wrote a column that i read this morning, what, filed yesterday . Yep. And i just briefly quote from it. This is for the bergin record where youve worked for 40 years. 40 years. Man, you must have started when you were 12. [laughter] thank you. [laughter] very briefly, one paragraph. For u. S. Counterterrorism officials, the carnage at so many soft targets in the french capital underscores one of the most vexing dilemmas. Its one thing to protect government buildings, but Something Else entirely to protect thousands of cafes, bars and theaters. And then you quote a colonel with the new jersey state police, colonel rick fuentes. In an open society, these things are always a challenge. Correct, sure. So i thought about that because, clearly, thats exactly what happened on the number 18 bus on jaffa road back in 1996. What we saw in paris was the same thing we saw on the number 18 bus. On a sunday morning in downtown jerusalem, and that was innocent people tried to go about their ordinary lives. That bus was filled with people, some trying to go to work in the case of the two protagonists in anying into, matthew and sarah, two lovers trying to get away for the weekend, but there were other people on the bus going out to look for apartments, going to work, et cetera and yet they all died going about their ordinary lives and that, i think, is what is the most difficult aspect of life to protect, when youre talking about counterterrorism, and that is what i was trying to get to in the n the column i wrote about paris. In fact, another parallel between your column of this weekend and the book, early in the book you say that when you did get on that ferry and go across to the World Trade Center site, one thing you started dealing with in your mind think over was, the impact on ordinary people. Whyyn ÷ did their loved ones ho die. That question propelled a good portion of the research you did on this book. Guest sure. So much in journalism heres hour terrorism is covered. A bomb or an attack take place in the world, and then we saw this with the paris attacks. Although i think not as much thankfully, but what happens is a bomb or an attack takes place somewhere in the world. In the next paragraph we describe how many people were killed or wind, then we say what group claims responsibility, and then maybe we get into the diplomatic and political implications of this particular act and forget about something very central, and that is, for the people who lost loved ones, those families, their lives change forever. And what i know what came to me out of 9 11, and maybe many of you as well, there was it was very personal. Particularly in the new york area. So many people knew people who died. And that propelled me really to explore what i think was really the untold story of terrorism, and that is, what do ordinary people do about it and how does it impact their lives . Host youre thinking about this after 9 11. You used to visit the teaneck new Jersey Library frequently, and in your walk back from the library, you would pass routinely a statue near a municipal building. What was the statue some what was it called. Guest called an unfinished life. Sarah duker. Had been killed hope to number 18 bus. She was a resident of teaneck, new jersey, the town i lived in i had written about it when i it happened, and like so many people in my profession i moved on, and that was 1996. After 9 11, and im covering sarah and my newspaper is sending me all over the world, back and forth to the middle east, im talking israel, gaza, west bank. I was in Southeast Asia following the story. I was in and out of guantanamo bay. I was even in iraq. And i think over time it was starting to wear me down. I was feeling frustrated about it. As i said i wasnt getting deep enough into the story. I was writing a lot about terrorism but wasnt getting to the depth and that is how it impacts ordinary people. So one day im talking a walk through town to blow off steam, and i pass this statue again, and i knew it was there, and its a beautiful statue. Its a statue of a young woman leaning over a rose bush to smell it, and its statue to sarah, and al it says is an unfinished life. I said i want to tell the story of that up finished life. Host tell us more about sarah. Guest well, sarah was martin let me put it this way. Martin indick, our ambassador to israel at the time of the killings, when he spoke at the airport when theyre bodies were taken home, and he said these were americas best. Sarah was a graduate of barnard college, the Womens College for columbia university, she wanted to be a research scientist, particularly in environmental sciences. At the time of the death she was work agenting at Hebrew University in water research, clean water research. She was also struggling with something i found very, very interesting. Like so many of us, i think we struggle, where do we fit in with our faith . Im not jewish, but i can relate to this and i wanted to tell that story in the book, this faith journey, not only of sarah and agent of matthew. Where does she as a modern woman fit into her jewish traditions. So, this ills the kind of woman she was at the time. Young woman, early 20s, wrestling with a professional career and also wrestling with what kind of faith traditions where she fits into the faith tradition. Host her boyfriend, matthew i must tell you that im not sure if i interpreted this correctly or is not there. Was talk they might be getting married. You were never able to quite pin down whether they were actually engaged mitchell sense in the way you describe it, he was madly in love, head over heels in love. Guest he was. Host would have married her in the heartbeat. She was still trying to figure out her life. L you came to . Yes. Its meaning philadelphia michael meaningful that michael is here today. He was a friend of sarah and matthew in jerusalem, and in the course of researching this book, when they died, they were portrayed on the front page of the New York Times as engaged to be married, and as im researching this, i could never find any evidence they were, and this is what happens when youre writing nonfiction. If this was a novel, of course theyd be getting married, but when youre writing nonfiction, you cant make it up. So im trying to figure out where they etch gamed or not . I went to the families, and the families said, no, there was no formal engagement. Then im trying to figure out friends were saying but they were heading that way and i had letters matthew had written our he was madly in love with sarah and i had sarahs diary entries. And then michael wrote something on facebook, and talked about how a number of weeks before they were killed, matthew and sarah came to visit michael in and his new wife, tracy, and they wanted to find out matthew and sarah what it was like to be married. That ills what crystallized in my mind how they were walking that journey. I was fascinated by that because these were two young people setting out to explore life, and they wanted to explore marriage. Host so, this isnt in your book but i looked up the front page obituary on the New York Times and heres the lead. Im sure youre familiar with this. Guest sure. Host they were in love with their faith and with each other. And they died together as the victims of hate. Its hard to hear that sentence without getting emotional. Guest it is. It is. In the course of trying to research this book im an oldfashioned reporter. When i cover a crime, like to go to the crime scene, talk to at the detectives that handled it. In this case in israel i went back to jaffa road, i walked jaffa road, i went to the crime scene several times. Went back there with some of the detectives that handled it. I went there with the ambulance drivers that tried to rescue the wounded and pick up the bodies. I went back there also with some of the counterintelligence agents that happened this as well handled this as well to try to understand exactly what happened. But i needed to pinpoint exactly where matthew and sarah were sitting in the bus and i was able to talk to some eye witnesses who survived the bombing, but ailes wanted to get a sense of who was but also i wanted to get a seasons of who was sitting with the window. They were sitting together and who was sitting on the aisle, and to to do that thighed go to the morgue and look how the blast affected them and this kind of work is difficult. It is emotional. Youre talk about the deaths of two young people. But i wanted to just is a wanted to portray their lives as vividly as possible, i felt i needed to really talk about how they died, and they the kind of violence committed that day. Host so, its february 25, 1996. Matt and sarah are headed to jordan. Guest right. Host get up early, as you said already, get to on the number 18 its the first in the bus ride. How many of you have been on the number 18 but . One of the most iconic bus routes in the world. Guest sure. And also takes you through the heart of jerusalem from one side of the city to the other. Host we should say that while your book of course to tell us real story, focuses on the two of them, there were many victims of that bus bombing that day. Guest oh, yes. There was a man who survived the holocaust and yet died on the bus. There was a young couple who had left an infant at home. They were going out to look for a new apartment. They died. And on and on and on. A couple of palestinians on the bus who died. Itself was a crosssection of people going about, as i said earlier, their ordinary lives. Host who did fate bring them in contact with that morning and how did he find himself on the number 18 bus . Guest well, there was a 19yearold palestinian man who was recruited to be a suicide bomber. Now, when i first started covering terrorism, i always thought suicide bombings were the work of maybe one or maybe two deranged individuals. Thats not the case at all. These are highly sophisticated operations, and the way i was able to discover this was in the course of my travels back and forth to the middle east for my newspaper, having no intention of writing a book, decided to revisit this particular bombing, and i got ahold of the state Department Report about the bombing, and it showed that there were about ten palestinian operatives who were involved in this, and one of them had been arrested. The ringleader. His name was has san solomay, the ring leader and was trained to build bombs in iran. The iranians financed the bombing hough were they able to prove that . Right there in the Iranian National budget. But hassan, a ham mass operative, highranking hamas operative, recruited the 19yearold palestinian boy from a community not far from hebron, and this young man gets on the bus with a very, very powerful bomb, and stands up and after the doors close and calls out, allahu akbar, pushes a button and the bomb goes off. It was packed with screws and bottoms and nails and ball bearings and that sort of thing, just shred the bus. Host you interviewed him. Guest not the suicide bomber. Host no, no, hassan, the ringleader. The man behind yes. Guest deeply disturbing interview. Hassan solomay is serving 46 life terms in an israeli prison. When i was in israel on assign independent 2006, having no intention of writing a book, didnt even see this as a book, i wanted to revisit it had been ten years since the bombing and wanted to revisit this particular bombing, and so id heard that the israelis had arrested and put solomay in jail, so i called them up and im condensing you just dont call the israelis up. Im condensing this. This took place over months. Anyway, they said, dom the prison. You entering view solomay, and i described this to in the prologue. A deeply curbing interview because deeply disturbing interview. Ive interviewed met share of criminals and over time criminals often change, and as a writer thats what i look for, how do people change. Do they change . How does that what kind of characteristics does that take on. What found in solo may ten years later was man who had not changed one iota. He was stuck in the warped theology and warped politics that in his mind justified the killing of innocent people. And i came back and wrote the story. This is the man who killed sarah duker of teaneck, new jersey, and then moved on and it was sometime after that, i made a number of other assignments, including to iraq, after that the editor of my first book called me up, we had lunch, and he said what are you working noni said i want to write something about terrorism but i dont know where to go spend told him about solomay, and he said you need to follow that. Host you tell a really interesting story. Its sort of inn keeping with what dan and nancy talked about, a certain its very different to go interview a prisoner. He is serving guest 46 life terms. Host but in this country, for a journalist to try to get into an it mate who is that an inmate who is that toxic, serving such a lengthy sentence, it can be the red tape can be regular rouse, would rigorous, would you agree . Guest oh, yes, quite different in israel. Host you go to the prison and as you describe it in the book, basically the wait it works is, well, theyre willing to let him theres no advance you had to get advance help in getting into the prison but he doesnt know that youre there, and why youre there. Guest yeah. The way if you interview an inmate here in the United States at a local jail or in federal prison, typically what happens is you contact the prison if youre a journalist contact the prison authorities. The authority goes to the inmate and its the inmates choice to say yes or no. Host or the lawyer. Guest he hoes if i come into a federal prison or a state prison and interview an inmate in the United States, he knows what is happening. Host in this case solomay walks into the room and has no idea why youre there you have a very brief time to get permission from him to continue the conversation. Guest right. Host so youre thinking this ills the story that is so compelling youre thinking, ive only got a minute or two here. What die say to him . Guest true. The israelis told me, you have to introduce yourself and he can tell you to get lost if he wants. Host what did you ask him . Guest i said im going to ask him one question and no matter how he answers that question i know ill be able to write a column. So im thinking deadline, right . I do work for a newspaper. So i said to him, do you know the name sarah duker . I said it in english. Drew know the name sarah duker and he responded in perfect english, yes. And i said, you do . And thats so began an hour and a half conversation with this man who refused to budge off the fact that he knew he had killed innocent people, but nonetheless felt it was justified. Host you asked him, i think, why did you kill her . Guest yes. Host he had a fascinating answer. Guest well, it was complicated. He said he talked about he felt that he was a soldier. He felt that he needed to make a statement, but he also felt he was doing gods work, and this let me in the course of my research to taking a hard look at the the ol of suicide martyrdom and suicide bombings itch spent two months studying this the ol. I was a lot of fun to live with. Believe me. Its really a journey into a very, very dark hole, and president obama has talked about if this kind of thing is ever going to change, its going to have to come out of the muslim world, and i understand why he says that, because here in the west, we have a concept of martyr, whether its the judeochristian tradition or buddhism or hinduism, but the concept of Center Suicide bomb s that concept on the head and this theology was embraced by solomay and embraced by the killers in paris, i believe. Host i do want to point out that the the wonderful juxtapositioning of dan and nancy to you here today, among other things, helps us think about the fact that has san solo may ameer and thought they were killing in gods name. Thats chilling. Guest it is chilling, and it really, i think, cuts to the heart of what were trying to understand here or at least comprehend. I think for most of us, the whole concept of terrorism is just completely foreign. Even though we have lived with it for all of most of our lives, right . And yet the idea of standing up in a theater as these guys did in paris, apparently, and shooting people point blank range, or in the case of ameer, walking up to the Prime Minister of israel and putting a gun, basically a foot from his back, and pulling the trigger, or in the case of this 19yearold palestinian boy, stepping on a bus, pressing a button, and blowing up the bus, is very difficult to understand because if they dont know that theyre killing innocent people, certainly theyre either blind on completely clueless. They do know theyre killing innocent people but they turned it around and justified it in name of god. Host was it has san who said the kid who blew himself up, i keep forgetting his name. I apologize. The terrorist. You interviewed his brother, too. Guest no. His father. Host his father. One of. The im sorry. One of. The said, when in answer to this question about why did you kale sarah and matt, well, didnt they werent the reason dish wasnt killing them. Guest this is misch interview with i kept pressing solomay i wanted to get in his face, and in my interview with him and this was not through a glass wall or anything like that. This was literally kneetoknee, and i wanted to give you his physical space when i was interviewing him. Pushed myself up close and try to shake this guy a little bit. And i got be honest with you, didnt lay a glove on this guy. This was a stone cold killer. But in the course of interviewing him, this is solomay, i was saying to him again and again, dont you realize you killed innocent people. Finally he says to me, yes, i know, but she meaning sarah just got in the way. She just got in the way. Host my target was not sarah. My target was the israeli occupation. Guest right. She just got in the way. Host so, the book not only gives what journalists call a ticktock, which is really compelling, the story of sarah and matt coming to the bus stop, getting on the bus, the story of hassan solomay assembling there would be two terrorist bombings on that day. Guest that very day. Host so it tells us that story in a very dramatic fashion but only starts there. You go on and talk about the politics that flowed out of this, both in israel and of course in the United States. Can we talk about that as well . Guest well, yeah. The other piece of this story is what happens next . And i wanted to tell that story. If you have ever been a crime victim or known anybody who has been a crime victim issue find crime victims ask two questions. Doesnt parent if its your bicycle or something worse. The first question is who did this, the second is how can we catch the person or hold that person bring that person to justice and its the same thing with terrorism. Except the difference here is that if you have had a crime committed against you, you know who to call. You call the police. Its not a perfect system but we know that pathway. The terrorism, theres no pathway. Who do you call . Thats what in the families of sarah and matthew faced on that morning when they were called by the state department your son and daughter have been killed in a bus bombing in israel. So what dot we do next . Who do we install that do we do . That where the story takes up with the family is wanting to find out who did this and hold those parties accountable. Host one of the really difficult parts of your book to read is, again, that recreation of sarahs mother lost her husband, hes already pass evidence away some years before getting the call from the state department, and then matts parents also getting the same call, and being given this news. Guest sure. Try to picture this scene in your own life. Matthew and matthews parents, vicki and len len is a physician who deals with critically ill babies so he is used to dealing with latenight phone calls. The phone rings at 5 00 in the morning. He picks it up and its a woman from the state department, katherine riley, who i tracked down. She still remembers having to make these calls. Katherine riley is on the phone and telling them that youre the parents of matthew . Yes. I have some very bad news. Then he said to me something i thought very poignant. He had to pass the phone to his wife, vicki. He said he made a vow to himself, if something ever happened to our churn i never want to be the one who tells my wife. And so thats how that first call took place. Katherine riley calls arlene duker a few hours later in teaneck. Arlenees getting up. Its a sunday morning. Making the bed. She has slept late. She was out the night before at a party at her synagogue, and she gets the same call, and she i think theres a part of us that at bad news we go into kind of a numbness, and then she hangs up the phone and it hilts here. Sarah has been killed and she starts screaming, and that was their first reactions. I felt i needed to really capture that as best i could because so often what we forget, again, we reduce these acts of terrorism to just a number story, story of bodies and we dont realize that there are families at home in homes all over the place, who take these phone calls and then have to figure out, okay, now what do i do . My son or daughter, husband, wife, someone has been killed. Now what . Host and the reason i wanted to to recreate that its from the moment of the phone calls on that this dish call its political process a quest for some form of justice. Guest sure. Host that became entangled deepfully politics and your book goes into that in great detail, and we dont have the time to go over every little piece today but it essentially what happened here is that both families felt they had to find some way to get justice for the deaths of their children. Guest sure. Host there was no way they were going to they hoped there there was at one point hoch maybe there could be a trial of hassan solomay in the United States. Didnt go anywhere. Guest it did not. I described how well, first of all, Foreign Policy is supposed to be handled by the executive branch of the government. If you ever read the constitution, its quite clear. In the mid1990s, congress was getting very upset because there had balloon of acts of terrorism, big ones, pan am 103 had taken place, and the white house and executive branch were really taking a handoff approach. Congress passes a law in 1995 that says that if you have been if youre an american citizen and your family has been a vic of terrorism and you can prove its one of a number of state sponsors of terrorism and at a time it was iran and cuba and iraq and syria, libya. If you can prove that those countries were involved, you can file a lawsuit, a negligent death lawsuit in a u. S. Court. Federal court. And thats what the families ended up doing. But heres the another piece of this story. What about the criminal trial . Whats hassan solomay. The israelis arrested him. Normally when a a criminal is committed, specially Violent Crime in america, police stay in close contact with the victims, we caught the perpetrator, theres going to be a trial, et cetera. We have all followed these. The israelis never called the families and said, we caught the ringleader. They didnt even know who hassan solomay was until he happened to pop up in a six six 60 minutes broadcast of all things. Can you imagine learning this is the guy who killed your son or daughter by watching on tv . The fbi however knew about solomay. So did the Justice Department. There was an enormous amount of pressure at the time there had been a number of american citizen is killed by palestinian terrorists. A lot of pressure at the time to try to have a criminal trial back here in the United States, but the Justice Department sends to prosecutors and the fbi sends to agents to israel to take a look at all of those of cases in which americans had died, and they felt that slowmays case was the strongest. Bring him back, put him on trial, maybe a Death Penalty case, and they decided against it. I they tell the well, the strength of the case i interviewed one of the prosecutors and one of the fbi agents who handled this, and they felt that solo condition solomays case was the strongest because not onlied a he admitted toy the fbi and the severally intelligence service, he admitted to me and 60 minutes and all kinds of people, and they were going to bring solomay book and put him on trial. That ran into a cloud bank and that cloud bank is the diplomacy between the United States and the palestinians and israelis and the fact that a criminal trial would have mucked that up. So that trial never happened. The families filed a lawsuit and winning a massive judgment, and then they ran into another problem, which is host yes. That becomes really fascinating. Guest sure. Host so, do you mind if i walk through it very briefly with you . Guest sure. Host so, there is a determination that iran is the state sponsor of this terror. Guest correct. Host although mike has a fabulous little story about Yassar Arafat in all of this. Yassar arafat, the night before this bombing, is visited by neighbor. Guest not just a neighbor. A fairly consequential figure in middle east politics. His name is larson. Im sure most of you ever heard this name. He is the norwegian diplomat who is one of the key diplomats in the oslo he is stationed in gaza. In the gaza strip and as he often does he is mitessing with Yassar Arafat who is also on the gaza strip. Host you can walk right down the street. They literally lived a few doors from each other. Guest they did. Its saturday night. The night before the boehm only jaffa road, and larson goes down to visit arafat. They talk i interviewed larson twice on this because sometimes when people tell you much dramatic stories you almost dont believe them. So i went back to him months later to confirm confirmed right down the line. The guy who tipped me off to this story was dennis ross. He says talk to larson. Im saying work is that . So he tells me. And ross knew about this story, too. The point ill make in a second. Larson visits arafat and theyre talking about shipments of food and medicine, just ordinary things that a u. N. Representative might be talking to the head of the palestinian authority. And at the end of the conversation, arafat turns to larson and says what are you doing tomorrow . Sunday . The 25th. And larson says, im going up to jerusalem. And arafat stops and says, i wouldnt do that. I wouldnt go there. Host are you convinced that meant he knew . Guest im convinced this way. I think arafat was like an organized crime leader, like gambino, giving a wink and a nod. Didnt know the specifics but i think hell knew something was going to happen, that hamas was going to stage an operation the next day, and this was the dilemma that this was the context that ross, dennis ross, told me the story, and ive talked to some israeli officials about this task. They had a sense that arafat had a feeling that these incidents were taking place and was giving a wink and a nod to them, and a tacit approval and yet they never confronted him with it because they felt that arafat was the key to the Peace Process. Host so, again, we dont want to go into this in great detail took you a little off track there because the story is so interesting. Guest all interrelated. Host the families that filed this massive lawsuit, they want to get, what, 40 million i forget the figure tens of millions of dollars from the iranian government. Guest hundreds of millions of dollars. Almost 250 million. Host so and, clinton is in the white house. Guest correct. Host there are these conflicting signals from the Clinton Administration about this, that put the families in a position where they dont know what is going on. Guest also i said earlier there was a feeling in our country that these acts acts of terrorism were taking place and nothing there was really no response. So Congress Passes this law saying that americans can File Lawsuits. Clinton, who is running for office, reelection and wanting to be tough on terrorism, has a big billsigning ceremony at the white house and has people who lost relatives in lebanon there, he has families from panam 103, the cling haver family there, and the dukers and the a lot of victims of terrorism. Signs this bill. So a number of these families file a lawsuit. Terry anderson filed a lawsuit. The marines who were killed in beirut in 1983, they filed a lawsuit. One mass won massive judgment. So then as many of you know, if file a lawsuit, the next step if you win you go back to court and say, judge, we won, we want to collect. So try to imagine the scene. The duker family and others show up in court in the iranians had never, never tried to defend this lawsuit. They simply ignored and it the judge sid if youre not going to come to court, too bad, im going rule. When they come back to collect, some lawyers show up at the next table. But theyre not from the Islamic Republic of iran. Theyre from the United States Justice Department. The United States Justice Department decided to oppose these American Families in collecting on these lawsuits, claiming, claiming, that to do so would harm u. S. Diplomacy overseas, and so try to imagine the scene. You had Congress Passes a law, president signs it into law, they go to u. S. Court, they file a lawsuit. My by all the rules and win and they come back and their own government is trying to oppose them. Host so i told mike when we get to the part of the story i want to understand youre in stus territory here. A lot of people in this room who are good friends with stu and know him well. We wont go into this in detail because because so many of us know him so well he did have a role. You mentioned him. Guest he did have a key role. Stuart is one of the most complicated and compelling characters in this book because its stuarts job as a member of the Clinton Administration he is handed the task, work out this political mess that bill clinton has found himself in. On one hand, seeming to favor and the efforts by u. S. Families to File Lawsuits against terrorist nations, yet on the other hand, the Clinton Administration opposing the actual collection of judgments in the lawsuits. Stuart, as many youve know, if you dont know lost relatives in the holocaust. He led the countrys efforts to get reparations for Holocaust Victims and did such a great job, the New York Times wrote an editorial about it. Host thats right. Guest this was not a guy this ailes guy who is this is a guy who understood this jewish her taj and was also working as a lawyer, and he was i interviewed stuart about this. He felt the push and pull of this issue very personally but also in very dramatic way in the sense that he understood, i think i think its a legitimate lawsuit. When the families filed lawsuit they at any time think it true. They went ahead for political reasons. When its came down to collecting these judgments it involved individual families filing lawsuits against foreign nations and what they were arguing is this will set off a huge dom know effect for diplomatic relations around the world and could result in retaliation. I dont necessarily agree with that but i think the argument is interesting enough that you really have to embrace it and thats what i tried to do and explain it. It was stuarts job to carry that water for the Clinton Administration. Host i think were ready for questions. We could go. Guest be could go on. Host its a fascinating story and really welltold. While with get ready for questions, you and i agreed after the last question, we agreed about a little paragraph from the book. Guest sure. Host i want to make sure youve got it. Guest i have it. Host lets start with questions and then do this brave reading at the very end. Guest id by happy to. Sure. Hi. I enjoyed your talk. Again, going back to paris, you have made yourself somewhat of an expert or terrorism over the last guest i dont know if im an expert but certainly written enough about it. You have an opinion. Im curious what you thought the west should or should not do in reaction to what just happened in paris in terms on what it can are cannot accomplish. Host give us your best journalistis shot on this can mike. Guest if i was king of the jungle . The first thing i think they have to do is to not excuse it politically. I think one of the things i tried to do with this book was to obviously terrorism has a political dimension but what wanted to do was take that and put it on a shelf somewhere, particularly palestinian terrorists. Obviously that has a political dimension, and im guessing there are people in this room that might feel some sympathy for elements of the palestinian cause and i understand it. What i wanted to do with this book was to take the political dimension, which is too often used as an excuse, of just doing nothing, and put that over here, and really drill down on what terrorism is, and my opinion its murder. Its just flat out murder. And i think what has to be done here is that this has to be handledded a a murder case and investigates as thoroughly as possible and then if it is determined it is the work of isis were still not clear on that. We think it bus at this point in time we dont know for certain. If it is seems likely it is i think they have to Start Talking about dealing with this as an act of war, and that was the problem that the Clinton Administration and, indeed i know i come down hard on the Clinton Administration but the Reagan Administration was doing no better. When almost 250 u. S. Servicemen were killed in beirut in 1983, our country did nothing. When panam 103 went down, and we even found out that libyan operatives were involved, two of them, and not suspecting there were probably more, our country did nothing there. And so to carry it forward now i know i come down hard on the Clinton Administration, but this george w. Bush administration certainly tried to deal with the war on terrorism. We know there were many, many pitfalls. My point is thats have to make some sort of definitive policy statement as to how theyre going to deal with this and deal with it effectively. Host one more over here. I think i heard you mention during the interview that you had interviewed the father of the bomber. Guest sure. I think it was goal golda may ear who said we wont get to the end of this until the palestinianss love their children more than they hate us. Im curious to know about your interview with the father. Guest thank you. That was another disturbing interview. I wanted to track down the family of the bomber so i drove out to the community which is not far from hebron, andt x i figured if i could get there i could find the family, and i did, and i spent a fair amount of time with the father, and we talked at length, and i said, listen, did you not know or suspect that your son might be heading in this kind of direction . He said absolutely not. We had no idea that my son that his son was going to be this kind of murderer, so to speak. His sob was not particularly religious. He was not hanging out with hamas, for example. He didnt appear to have any friends who were hamas operatives and on and on and on. This in general is a very, very difficult subject of research because most suicide bombers die. There are a number of israeli academics that are looking into this subject and some of them have done fairly good work on it but yet we dont comprehend how in this case of this young man, approached on a and committing this kind of operation on a sunday, and so his father tells me, my son was not terribly religious. He was not hanging out with hamas, for example. And his father said to me, if i could have stopped him, i would have. He said i feel ashamed this happened, and i feel terrible that it happened, and i its forever haunted me. Where the interview took on its saddest moment was when i asked him, i said, how do people remember your son . All these years later. And he said, they dont. Nobody talks about my son anymore. They dont remember him. I know theres a lot of talk about these bombers become martyrs and i think that does happen and people honor them in the palestinian communities. How long that goes on for, debatable, but the father said to me, this is just faded into oblivion, and what ive done is you contrast that with the lives of matthew and sarah and other figure in this book, alissa, who is called in another bombing related to this. Their lives have hardly gone into oblivion. If anything, they are celebrated again and again and again by their friends, and written about on facebook and that sort of thing, even to this day. Host were getting a wrap, and i know everybody wants to get books signed. Were not going to get to read that excerpt. But i thought in closing, because it also speaks to the victims in paris this weekend, you have a very moving scene, almost at the end of the book in which the families go to visit the gravesite,] hq and sarah are buried sidebyside. Guest they were. Host and one of the members i think arlene sarahs mom days what would have become of system what does she say what would have become of them . Guest sayre was would have turned 40. Matthew and sarah are buried sidebysaid in graves in a cemetery in connecticut. And around the time of what would have been sarahs 40th 40th birthday, we drive lenny and vicki and arlene, matthews parents, arlene is the mom, and one of sarahs sisters and me. Were in the car and we go to visit the graves, and were standing there, and could i just read the scene. Host read the la guest very short. Now were running long. Im trying to keep us moving but, yes, please. Guest i begin with lenny the card. Len turn to the light and steered the car on a near row road that led through a grove of oaks and manile maples. Everybody fell silent. The august sun starting to sink into the western connecticut hills left wide pools of shadows under the leafy tries. Len parked and we got out and walked up a gentle slope to a headstone that simply said, duker, izenfelt. Arlene laid a rock on the head stone, a jewish custom. Len and vicki followed suit someone mentioned sarah would have turned 40. Everyone nodded. A breeze kicked up and brushed the leaves of a nearby maple. Arlene and vicky and len stood in front of the headstone, and the sidebyside resting places of the daughters and son they once thought would marry. I wonder what they would have become, said are leap. He voice fell off and then she added, wellll never know. Host mike kelly, the book on the road to jaffa. Host thank you to our guests today and thank you for comping and please union us for the book signing. Mike kelly will be signing his book, and dan ephron will be signing his book on mainstreet outside the theater. Youre watching bosh tv on cspan2. Television for serious readers. Heres a look at what is on primetime tonight. We kick off the evening at 7 00 eastern with a panel of political scholars and commentators look back at the new york city Mayoral Campaign of william farm buck lee. Then tj styles talks be the life and military career of general custer. At 10 00, darcy olson sideses down on after words to talk about the restrictions on using medical treatment deemed experimental or not available for terminally ill diseases. And tonight at 11 00, win strom groom profiles the careers of the generals of world war ii. That all happens tonight on cspan 2s booktv. Alyssa katz is next. Her book the influence machine looks at the influence