Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth With Jeffrey Toobin 20160813

I decided that maybe my life was not going to consist of getting married and having children and oh brain that life should be thinking about. To give my step in expanding my own horizons, i can say thats one book that totally changed my way of thinking about myself here can see that book tv once to know what you are reading this summer. Treatise here answer at book tv or posted on our facebook page. Cspan, crete about americas cabletelevision companies and brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. C1 Jeffrey Toobin, welcome to cspan to indepth. The author of indepth and counting . Host including your most recent book, american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes and trial of patty hearst. I want to begin where you in the book. You wrote this without her cooperation. Guest i did and there were several things different in my other books. This was the first bookk i had written that was really the border of journalism in history. All of the other books i i wrote, i had sort of covered the underlying story in realtime and then wrote about it. This is something i was alive in the 1970s, but i was a kid i was really starting from scratch in terms of my research, and i discovered that there was a tremendous volume of printed material, in particular 150 boxes of material about the Liberation Army and trials and phil harris one of the survivors had and i managed to obtain o access to that homicide had a great deal of material that no one had ever seen before, but obviously to answer your question i would have liked to talk to patty hearst appeared she may clear through intermediaries and then indirectly that she wanted no part of this, but i realize i had so much material from herre and about her, her own book, her own testimony, her fbi interviews, transcripts of interviews that she had given to the fbi and others, i had her perspective. I got to speak to the people who knew her during that. Back and subsequently, so i was able to reportt around her to wait that i think i was able to give a fair impression of her perspective on the events. Host this quote probably further seems we wrote the book. You say the kidnapping foretold much of what happened to American Society in a diverse number of fields including illuminating the future for the media , the culture of celebrity, criminal justice and even sports. Ustice a guest i sometimes thought of the first case when i was writing the book, as a trailer for modernity, like a coming attraction for summary things. It was the first of the great modern celebrity criminal events that of course anticipated the o. J. Simpson case. Hootout the shootout on may 17, 1974, where six of that sla kidnappers died was the first live broadcast of a breaking his event that anticipated so much of how we cover news and even smaller things like participants in the big news story seeking out book deals during the events. Here, you have stephen weed, her former cant say. At jack scott who was one of the people who sheltered the sla trying to get a book written. You had bailey trying to get a book deal well her defense attorney, summary things that became commonplace started or became visible in the hearstt kidnapping saga. Host and of course around often have to hearst, their pictures were newspapers. They were on television and you made reference to the black threat, her mother. Whys that . Guest one of the important back stories of the whole kidnapping and this aftermath was Patricia Hearst difficult relationship with her mother, Catherine Hearst. There was or their was and is let me just take a sip here. Sip here by the way, patty hearst is still alive. Guest very much. Still alive living in the new york suburbs. Shes 62 years old, mostly homemaker, socialites. She has two daughters, a couple of grandchildrenl life. And she raises show dogs thats what she does a lot of the time, but to answer your question about the black dress because i think this is important. Like a lot of 19 b yearolds, patty was 19 when she was kidnapped. 19 she had a contentious relationship with her mother especially in the 70s where people used to talk all the time about the generation gap. Im Catherine Hearst came from a conservative georgia family and patty at the time of her kidnapping was living with her boyfriend, what used to be called with living in sin with stephen weed, her fiance. There was a lot of contention there and when patty was kidnapped and there were all these press conferences that her parents held in front of theirs house in hillsboro, patty said on one of the early communicates, mom, get out of that black dress. Thats not helping anyone. Hat blac it was an interesting signal of how she was bringing her rebellion against her parents intorents io her life with that sla, that part of the reason why she joined the sla was that she was alienated from her parents, not a big deal in ordinary circumstances. And a lot of 19year old young women are alienated from theirar mothers, but under these extraordinary circumstances it turned out to be significant. Host as a way to get her release right following the event was without precedent in American History. No had tried on short notice to see thousands of people i wanted the moment more extraordinary was it took place because of a political kidnapping. This is a program put in place by patty hearst mom and dad. Guest correct peer just to back up a little bit, when patty hearst was kidnapped initially there was no ransom demand. I mean, there were these bizarre communicates from this group that called themselves the Liberation Army, but unlike both kidnappings they did not say give us money and we will give you the person back. Eventually, the sla, which was chaotic and disorganized sort of on the spur of the moment said randy hearst, patricias father has millions of dollars, lets make him feed the poor and that will be our initial ransom demand it really hearst, remarkably actually set up an entire Organization Called people in need run out of a big warehouse in San Francisco and they did, in fact, spend millions of dollars feeding the poor. It didnt go very smoothly and some of the Food Distribution there were riots. So many people one of the food that people were injured seeking it out, but randy hearst who i think is sort of one of the few heroes in the story, randy really wanted to get hisge daughter back and he had less money than the sla that he did, but he spent millions to set up this organization, which did in fact give out a lot of food. Host this is a picture and hearst and stephen weed after the kidnapping. He does not come across as a strong character. Guest no, it is funny one of the things i learned in doing whats of interviews about the story is that the only thing that the fbi, the sla, the Hearst Family and patricia herself had in common was thatel none of them could stand to stephen weed. That was the one point of view. Stephen was eight 23year old i mean, this is not a bad person turkey was a graduate student in philosophy, he was kind of hot tea and arrogant and he thought he sort of knew better than everyone about handle how to handle the situation and he succeeded only in annoying everyone and the Hearst Family and patricia work particularly resentful of the fact that during the kidnapping itself on the night of february 4, 1974, after he was hit by bill harris, one of the kidnappers, he ran off instead of staying to protect patricia. Host we will spend the next three hours with author and lawyer Jeffrey Toobin. Our phone lines are open and you can join us on facebook at facebook. Com. book tv. Send us a tweet apple tvs, boo you can also send this email, book tv at cspan. Org. On average, how long does it take to write a book for you . Guest i have a very simpleminded system for writing books, which is related to the fact that i am a staff writer at the new yorker and my editor there gives me a limited amount of time off. I dont have the bandwidth, the capacity to both right new yorker articles and continue my work as at the new yorker, but what i do is what i am in the writing portion of the book after i have done enough reporting to feel like i have enough material, ite write five pages a day. To write 1250 words a day of that is i finda it is a significant amount, but not an overwhelming amount to write and it really accumulates if you keep up at that pace. 25 pages a week, 100 pages a month and i find that that gets me to appropriate book line is somewhere around six to eight months. Thats just the writing. I view the reporting, the research as equally if not more important than the writing. That is a little harder to measure how long that takes. As i said, in these other books i have written i was sort of reporting in real time, so it wasnt sort of a separate research periodod , but all in at least a year. But, probably somewhat more. Host talk about the kid having that took place in 1974, and have a picture of the house where to place in San Francisco. Guest berkeley. Host berkeley. You also point out how San Francisco has change significantly in the 70s where it is today. Guest it really is remarkable. This to me was one of the real revelations in writing american heiress, how different the 1970s were especially in northernrt california. Way thi from the way things are today, to give you one in the mid 1970s there were a thousand political bombings a year in the United States. Seek about what that would be like today. Most of them didnt cause injuries or death. Although, some did, but this was a time of tremendous Political Violence and the epicenter was the bay area, San Francisco and berkeley. There had been the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967. There had been the Free Speech Movement in berkeley in 1965. But, by the 70s those movements, which began with a good deal of idealism had hurtled into real anger and resentment and San Francisco, in particular , was driven by terrible crime including the zodiac killer, the zebra killer i think people forget everyone remembers dirty harry, went eastwards famous detective. He was a San Francisco detective. Because San Francisco at the time of those movies was the symbol of all that was horrible and dangerous in the United States. Today, course, San Francisco is Silicon Valley and hightech and prosperity and high. Then, it had a completely different reputation, which was interesting to me as someone who is just coming at the story new. Host we want you to join in it on the conversation. We also welcome our listeners on cspan radio. Our conversation as we do the first sunday of every month here on r cspan2 with Jeffrey Toobin. Let it go back to a 1997 interview on nbcs dateline with Patricia Hearst. Patricia, how are we to understand the socalled missing your beer life after mels sporting good, after the shoot out at sla members are killed. You couldve left in any number of points. I think its not true that i could have left at any point. Couldnt do anything at any point anymore. I couldnt even think thoughts for myself anymore because i had been so programmed that the fbi was looking for the f the sla and i should not even try to think about rescue because they wereecause t calling sexy psychics to find me enough a kind of thing that i believed host so, what letter to basically stay with them . Guest because it she joined in. I mean, she was part of the group. Host her name was tonya. Guest she called herself tonya. She took the name tonya becausee a fellow revolutionary in bolivia was tonya and an east german woman. One of the things i try to stay away from in writing american heiress was the jargon associated with the story, brainwashing, stockholm syndrome. All of which are journalistic terms. They are not scientific terms. I try to look at the facts of the story and what actually happened and when you see what the choice is was like during that year between may of 74 and september of 75 when shes arrested, you see these tremendous these repeated opportunities for her to leave that she accounted police officers. She went hospitals. Ship poison a look and needed to get treated. She gave a fake name. She traveled across the country with the jack scott and his elderly parents who basically begged her to go back to her family and i simpleminded view and i think its good to look at things sometimes in a simpleminded way is that she did uncle back because she did not want to go back. She had joined the sla like a lot of young people did in the 70s. They joined in with revolutionary groups that they later rolled their eyes and thought how in the world could i have been involved with this crazy people. I have no doubt that she wouldnt do it todayt of t like most of those people wouldnt do it w today, but then she did. Host youre very descriptive and the conditions she was in. It here someone who grew up in wealth and privilege and she was in an apartment house that was pretty squalid, that was dirty and she took the name tonya. She met with who she called her comrades in the sla. Very different lifestyle to say the least. Guest to call the way they live a lifestyle, almost in place in plate in place what was. They were desperados on the run and had the money. Sometimes people ask, where than drugs and the answer is, no. The the reason is at least in part is they had no money to buy drugs even if they were inclined in that direction. They robbed banks. They robbed three banks for the very simple reason that as Willie Sutton said thats for the money was. They needed money and n they were living on enormous 20pound bags of chicken park parts. At one point they ate horsemeat. They bought enormous containers of black beans and blackeyedntains o peas, the cheapest food they could have picked thats the life she was living for much of this time it was very tough. Host you have a picture and take a look at this from one of the Bank Robberies that became one of the iconic photographs of the mid 1970s. Where was she . What was she doing and why did this becomesh synonymous with her situation . Guest this video is from the first bank robbery, the most famous one. Remember, she was kidnapped february 4, 1974. On march 31, 6 or soso weeks later she issues that communicate and says she is tonya. Two weeks later on april 15, this robberye we are looking at now is the bank in the veryer quiet section of San Francisco. They go in as a group and remember just how weird and shocking this was bank robbery as scary as it is is usually committed by one or two people. This was this, you know, basically all six of the eight, kidnappedd this this Liberation Army members were involved in some way in this bank robbery and they had scouted the location of this bank robbery and noticed a relatively new innovation, security camera. Stationed p they stationed patricia as you can see right now , she was told to stand where they knew she would be photographed by the security cameras as in fact she was because the sla believed in guerrilla theater. Several of them came from the Indiana University Theatre Program and they wanted to show off that their prize recruit and so thats why they put her at that part that part of the bank so that you so the camera would take her picture. Host another book, the nine inside the secret world of the court. Are they doing now with a . Guest the Supreme Court canan clearly function with eight people. It is not designed to function with eight people and i think most people dont realize historically the constitution does not set a number of justices and until just after the civil war the number, the fluctuated, actuallyuated because congress can raise or lower the number of justices at any time. Number of but, to state the obvious there is a reason why theres an t audit number of justices on the court because tie votes is not an effective way for the court to operate. This is not ideal, but it is certainly it doesnt mean the Supreme Court is not functioning , but it is just indicative of the political dysfunction that we live with that no boat has taken place. Host is the chief Justice John Roberts up on par that he said he wanted to be . Guest well, you know, chief Justice Roberts is an extremely impressive person and he is a very good symbol and custodian of the courts public persona. He is, i think, someone who takes very seriously the court, how the court is perceived in the country and i think does his best and is a very good job to make sure the court is seen as the best possible light. He is also a serious judicial conservative. He is someone who like the other eight justices was appointed by president who wanted him to represent a certain ideological perspective on the court and robert has done just that. He now faces a very unusual and extraordinary situation where he chief justice may be in the minority in a great number of cases Going Forward if in fact, barack obama or if Hillary Clinton winss repr her appointees represent a majority of the court. Host one final question before we get to call speared do you suspect the senate will go back on its pledge not to have a hearing on Merrick Garlandif hillary is elected and if it appears she will announce her plymouth after she becomes president in january of next year . Guest no, i think when mitchk oconnell says that the next president should fill this seat, i mean, i think he means the next president should fill the seat. By no means does that mean if Hillary Clinton wins she will have an easy guide path to confirm whoever she appoints, but i dont see any real possibilities that this senate, which is so politically polarized it includes people like ted cruz and tom cotton who will not stand for any sort of vote on an obama know me and can come up the works given the very tight time frame. Am i just think the idea that there will be a lameduck confirmation possibl is out of the park out of the question. Is possible Hillary Clinton might renominate Merrick Garland and that would be an entirely different situation, but in terms of obama nomination of merrickom garland getting a hearing about identicalg a happen. Host lets go to david from. Tulsa, oklahoma. Guest thank you for taking my call. First, quickly go to think cspan, you mr. Scully and mr. Swain and your coverage both of the convention. It was outstanding. Host thank you. Guest me to. Sorry to interrupt, but might as well add my voice of praise. Caller there you go. My question for Jeffrey Toobin, is there precedents for what associate Justice Ginsburg did in speaking out on the president ial campaign in such a way that became a controversial . Viously she obviously apologized, but i think in your book is refreshing to get to know the justices a little bit more and i applaud you for that. I would like to know more about the justices, so i would like i like the fact that she spoke out. Guest the answer is in the modern era there is noin precedence for an explicit endorsement or not endorsement by Supreme Court justice in the middle of the president ial race. Interestingly, in the 40s and 50s William O Douglas was considered as a possible Vice President ial candidate for harry truman andtr others, so i dont i think people can be took shocked that Supreme Court justices have political opinions. They are very smartt savvy people. They live in washington. They were appointed by president s in a very aware and interested in president ial elections and also i think we can have a sort of about the apolitical nature of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is in a deeply ideological body and there is not i did that they are entirely separate from politics is, i think, unduly naive. However, do think there is a good tradition of justices staying out of direct electoral policies and thats why Ruth Ginsburg was criticized across the ideological spectrum where this statement, even from people who are ordinarily fans of hers and i would certainly include myself in that group. I think she recognized that she had made a mistake. I know she recognized she made a mistake here she apologized and moved o on and i dont think we will hear anymore comments about herzealanon moving to new zealand if donald trump winsti election. Host not only questions about whether or not barack obama was born in the us during the 2008 campaign, but then came january 20, 2009, senator barack obama take an oath of office from the chief justice of the United States which have read john roberts moment ago. Cures out it unfolded heres how it unfolded. [cheers and applause] cynic are you prepareded to dpl, senator imac im. I barack obama suddenly swear solemnly swear that i will execute the office of the president of United States faithfullyffice president of United States faithfully and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. O help so help you god . So help you god. Congratulations, mr. President. Guest what a mess. Host watch the president s body language because he had memorized the oath of office. Guest gosh, just to refreshod not everyone knows this who is washing, i wrote a book the sequel to the nine which was called the oath and in the beginning of the opening chapter is about why the oath was botched between the two of them there and i watched it many times when i was writing the book, but i have not watch it or number of years and it is startling again just to see how badly it was botched and the real reason it was botched with a classic bureaucratic snafu, which is about chief Justice Roberts, his assistance sent a copy of the oath with the causes marked off for how he was going to divided up, divide up the words. A senate to not grow o committee, but not to obamas office. That document, which i actually have a copy of, was never forwarded to obamas transition office, so obama didnt know how roberts wasf going to divide up the words and if you see what happens there is that roberts thinks hess going to say, i brought cause obamas do solemnly swear and obama interrupt him after his name and then roberts gets flustered and the whole thing goes to hell , but its all because neither one of them knew how the other was going to break up the word. Host whats interesting is the in the book is that you talk about the next first bolded the Obama White House the number one issue was he legitimate in taking the oath of office and was he legitimate to president which created a white house debate. Talk a little bit about that. Newspaper stories about sort of the oath, and david barren, a young Deputy Assistant attorney general hardly anyone was in their offices at that point had a conversation with greg craig, the white House Counsel at the time, and said, remember, this is a president who some people think wasnt even born in the United States so we have to be sure of his legitimacy. We have to be sure there nor shadows on his legitimacy. So they, on the morning of the 21st, have all these sort of not panicked but serious conversations about, what should we do about that . And in short order, they decide, you know, just to be sure, belt and suspenders, lets redo it, and they call the chief justices chambers, greg craig, the white house council, calls and says wed like to do this, and roberts, true to his sort of midwestern graciousness, says, subtly. And in the afternoon comes over to the white house and they reenact the oath. A bizarre post script. When obama is reelected on in 2012, inauguration day, falls on a sunday, and on by tradition, the public ceremony is never on a sunday, so roberts came to the white house and administered the oath privately on sunday, and then publicly and successfully on in front of the capitol. So barack obama is the only president , except Franklin Roosevelt to take the oath of office four times. Host what is interesting is there is know video the moment we had the picture from the white house of the chief justice giving him the oath of office, january 21, 2009, but the white house did not allow reporters they allowed a pool photographer, a print photographer, but no video of that ceremony. Guest right, robert gibbs, the Incoming White House press secretary at the time, this was something that was happening very much on the fly, and he was given short notice, and he decided, in effect to heck with a video pool of this, well just have still photographers, but i think in retrospect it was a mistake not to have a video record of that. There were a handful of witnesses. There was a pool of reporters who were present, and some of them have just pulled their tape recorders out and i had a chance to listen to the audio, but there is no video of the of what happened. Host next is jim from california. Youre on with Jeffrey Toobin who is a write are for the the new yorker and a contributor to cnn. Caller thank you very much for having me and thank you for the show you do and for cspan in general. Which is a wonderful network, one of the great ones. Didnt Franklin Roosevelt take the oath in one take the first the first inaugural . Host in the become guest when i was writing the oath i got into oath minutiae, oath history, and youre right that Franklin Roosevelt is the only president of the modern era we dont have tape recordings how it went much before him but who just recited it outright without the chief justice telling him what to say. Another sort of peculiarity of the oath story is that the last line that were so familiar with so help me god, is associated with George Washington. He George Washington supposedly said it after being sworn in as the first president , but even that is subject to a little bit of historical debate. The fact that he supposedly said it wasnt disclosed until about 20 or 30 years later, and the question arises, why did no one talk about if that what he said, for another 20 for years . So theres a bit of mystery how the oath evolved the way it did. Host jim, still there . Was there your only question. Caller i wanted to ask also about the appointments to the court, beginning with bork, where i thought he was unfairly treated, and i think thats where the politicalization of the court began and since then we have had what i would call blind appoint; not because theyre not very good lawyers or dont have the background or the skills, but we used to hey law professors, my constitutional law professor at northwestern many years ago was nath thannal nathan, want of brandeis law clerks. Brandeis was not a judge. Goldberg and stephens came out move law school, northwestern, but lately its just been harvard and yale. We dont have that the scope and the diversity that we i believe we should have on the court with everybody going to the same school, getting the same education, all being Supreme Court clerks, and so on. I just like your comments on that. Guest diversity i think you make an excellent point about diversity. We think about diversity in terms of race and gender and obviously that is important but there are other kinds of diversity. Think about this. The Supreme Court that decided brown v. Board of education in 1954, not one of the justices had been a fulltime judge before going on the Supreme Court. Earl warren was governor of california, hugh go black was senator, an attorney general. These were people who had big, complicated, public lives. N the modern era youre right to point out the bork nomination as the turning point there has been a tendency to move towards only Appeals Court judges. When samuel aleta replaced sandra day oconnor, all nine justices were former federal Appeals Court judges and i think the court does miss something without people who had run for elective office, for example. Sandra day oconnor was the last justice who would run for office. She had been a state senator in in arizona. Its terrible loss for the court they dont have that kind of diversity of experience, but i do think that i think the caller is right that the bork experience led president s to pick people with relatively bland public records, that even though people on the inside might know their actual political views, they are seen as safe choices because they cant be pinned down with controversial opinions. Host let me follow up on that. Youve write temperment allie chief justice rein quest never left the nixon justice department. Justice odon for never stopped being a politician. Antonin scalia, bryan, remained the law professors, and john roberts was a litigator whose primary responsible was to figure out ways to win. Guest thats right. And that is i think illustrates why diversity is a real value. Sandra day oconnor wanted the court to stay towards the center of american politics. Nat was the kind of politician and the kind of judge she turned out to be. Antonin sal ya scalia was someone who had very definite views, born in the academy, of what the constitution meant and he spent two plus decades trying to push that agenda. I think these justices are the people they always were. I just wish that the talent pool was different, that it wasnt just Appeals Court judges and law professors. Host this is a tweet from one of our view disagreeing with your sale of pa trish that hearst saying i disaglee that miss hertz join the sla. Very was a victim. Mr. Toobin does not understand brain washing. Guest this is an argument i take very seriously, and also someone who has covered criminal law as a former prosecutor. I am very aware that crime victims are people who need to be treated fairly and with dignity, and there is no question that patty hereto was a crime victim. She was kidnapped. It was a terrible thing are. She was put in a car trunk, and then put in a closet, and she had no role, no agency no participation in that. There were have been rumors she had some role in staging her own kidnapping. Thats all total nonsense. She was a pure crime victim. However, there comes a point when people do change, and you look at what happened from february of 74 to september of 75, and you look at her behavior, and the only conclusion i can draw is not that she was brain washed, which is a concept that i think is murky at best. What i believe happened is this was a restless and vulnerable woman, who was appealed to by people who were treating her by and large well, by match march and april. She fill in love with run of her cappers, willy wolf no doubt. And then he joined in with them and spent the next year on the run. Willy wolf was killed in the big shootout with the Los Angeles Police department in may. She meets up then with steve sole and falls in love with him. Yes, she was a crime victim, and, yes, crime victims definitely deserve our sympathy and respect, but in this circumstance, my conclusion was she joined the sla. Host why and how did she got the pardon by president carter. Guest she got a commutation from president carter and a pardon by president clinton. Thats significant. Just to bring people up to date on the story, she is tried after she is arrested for the first of the three Bank Robberies she is involved in. Again, keep in mind, this isnt Just One Bank robbery. She did three, club one where a woman was killed. She was tried for the Hibernia Bank robbery, the first one, the one we saw the Surveillance Video from, on april 15, 1974, in San Francisco. She made the defense that the caller was talking about and people were talking about, i was brain washed, coerced, and the jury rejected that defenses she was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. Following the failure of her appeal, the Hearst Family organized this tremendous drive for president carter to commute her sentence. Ronald reagan, close friend of the Hearst Family, joined in this effort. Her local congressman, leo ryan, joined in this effort, and something happened on the eve of the decision carters decision about whether to commute her sentence, that really tipped the balance. That was people who were alive in the 70s will remember this the reverend jim jones followers who was also from San Francisco, in guyana, committed mass suicide. They all drank the this expression miami hear this expression but dont know where it came from they drank the koolaid and committed mass suicide. That created enormous interest in the United States in the subject of brainwashing. How can you get people to do Something Like this, and carter in the immediate aftermath, commuted her sentence and she only served 22 months. Host congressman ryan was killed in the shootout at the same time. Guest exactly. What killed in guyana visiting his constituents. Two decades laid later, bill clinton is about to leave office, and jimmy carter and Roslyn Carter urge his strongly to pardon patty hearst and on the same day he issued pardons for his brother, roger clinton, his the pardon for mark rich, the fugitive financier, he pardoned patty hearst and my view of the commutation and the pardon is the purest example of how wealth helped patty hearst. Our prinze are full of people who fall in with bad people and make bad decisions and wind up locked up for a very long time. There are lots of people like that. Our system does not have much room for forgiveness of those people. Patty hearst becomes the only person, the only person in all of American History, to receive a commutation from one president and a pardon from another. And that to me is a story about wealth and privilege. Host and the relationship with her mom post commutation . Guest you know, like so many teenagers who find their parents intolerable and unfair and annoying, she not only become develops a loving relationship with her mother, as i see it, she very much becomes her mother, like a lot of us become our parents. Host go to roger in decatur, georgia, with Jeffrey Toobin. Caller thank you for cspan. Jeffrey, let me say first, i find your work too journalistic, its not really thoughtful enough for someone who is not write only deadline. Id like to get some of your experiences, observers of the Supreme Court. Do you think the justices have a Juris Prudence when they come to the court . Is this something that is sort of created by law professors, that they write about, and then the justices try and follow it . Is it something theyre trying to just be consistent with opinions they have written and find themselves booked into a place where they cant change . In other words, guest i get your question. Let me try to give you a thoughtful answer that youll find satisfactory. The constitution is a document that does not interpret itself. It is subject to many, many interpretations. And the it is a political document, and interpretation of the political a political document is a political act, and the reason justices are picked for the court is that president s think they will be able to extend their own political and ideological legacy through their appointments, and you know what . They do a pretty good job of it. Thats why we see the four democratic appointees voting one way and the four republican appointees voting the other in most not all but in most cases when you look at questions does the constitution protect 0 womans right to choose borings. Does the constitution require that every state allow gay people to get married . The constitution doesnt answer those questions. You need an ideological approach to the constitution, to answer those questions. And there are differences and they are largely based on politics, and thats why it matters whether democratic or republican president s make appointments. Host send us a tweet, book tv and send us an email at booktv cspan forth organize. Lauren asks whatever happened to stephen weed . Did you interview him. Guest i did. He was a graduate student in philosophy when he was living with patty hearst, and he didnt become a philosopher. He became a Real Estate Broker in Silicon Valley and he has led a very nice life in largely obscurity, the way most people do, and he is a nice guy, and he remains somewhat bewildered, as anyone would be, by this crazy experience but he is a now in his mid60s and married, kids. Host in the interest of full disclosure, were obviously interested in this tweet from a viewer saying i read all your books signed by him. Can jeffrey comment on the future of video in the Supreme Court. Guest oh. Cspan2 has a real axe to grind on this one. Host not an axe to grind with want to open the process. Guest look. I used to say that the reason there were no cameras in the Supreme Court could be answered in two words. And those two words were, jon stewart. Because the justices didnt want to be made fun of on the daily show. Jon stewart is gone but the concept is the same, and we talk about stockholm syndrome in the context of the patty heart case. How about in the case of Sonia Sotomayor and elena kagan, both said during the confirmation hearing said i think cameras in the courtroom would be a great idea. Now you ask them, i dont know, im worried about the effect on the deliberations. To me, the arguments against cameras in the Supreme Court are terrible arguments. There are no witnesses to be intimidated. This is just lawyers arguing. The importance of the subject matter is unquestioned. Its their candy store. They dont want open themselves up to much scrutiny. One thing that will happen is i do believe the justices will eventually allow Live Streaming of the audio of Supreme Court arguments because theyre already microphones, already are they release the audio at the end of the week when they have arguments. I think that will be their concession to the modern world, and i think they will recognize correctly that takes the heat off. Video would be different in fairness to the justices you would have to put in cameras, have to change the lighting, and i think they should, but it would be a significant change. The Live Streaming the audio would offer no change at all. Host from the fine outsiders tend to be surprised by how rarely Supreme Court justices supreme to each other one union ones. Under Justice Rhenquist they spent a good deal together as a group. What change snead it hasnt changed that much. John robert wad as law clerk to rhenquist and i think temper. Ally and terms of interpersonal dynamics roberts has rep mix indicated the rhenquist court. Rhenquist serve under chief Justice Burger who was generally unpopular because they his colleague thought burger tried to have too much of a heavy hand in the courts deliberations and rhenquist said, look, we are going to disagree, thats inevitable, but we are not going obother each other, so rhenquist, who didnt have a lot of patience inen, tried to move things along, and the courts conferences, theyre secret nine when shape meet with each other to discuss the cases that, i would go around the table and vote. They wouldnt discuss the cases very much. And that is expandedded a little under roberts but a basically a similar scenario. Rhenquists philosophy about the justices was good, fences make good neighbors. We leave each other alone, well get along better, and it remains mostly that way. They do enter act somewhat but this is really nine separate law firms and they vote and they exchange memos but thats mostly it. Host nancy, youre next from brooklyn, new york. Caller i have two questions. One is what this dear vacation of the symbionese Liberation Army name, and is im mystified a person who is 70 years old would not be able to acknowledge that they were a different person 50 years ago from the one they are today . Im kind of mystified and puzzled and wonder if you could comment on that. I know you dont know her motivations, but it just seems bizarre to me as an elderly person myself. Thanks. Host she is in her early 60s. Guest as far as im concerned the early 60s are not elderly. It backs d bill bill becomes moe foreseeable future. Dont want to think of that as elderly. But its a good point. I think people become locked in with their stories. People try to justify their behavior. People try to explain. Its a lot easier to say, you were a victim, than to say you actually participated in some very bad acts, and there were some very bad acts during that lost year that patty hearst was on the run with the remnants of the sla two more Bank Robberies, including one where a woman was killed. There were bombings. She shot up a street in los angeles. This was a serious crime wave by patty hearst and others which renders her commutation and pardon all the more incredible. To answer your first question, donald defreeh was the leader of the sla. A lot of people today think, the sla they were one of those black revolutionary groups donald defrees was the only black person in the sla and he collected recruits about him that were mostly middle class kids, berkeley students, berkeley dropouts, students who migrated from indiana, and he came up with the word symbionese, which is sort of a corruption of symbiosis. He thought people working together in symbiosis he made up the word symbionese. He called himself, some people may remember, general field marshal sinq, which is an absurd inflated concept that they had about their own importance, and thats why he called them an army. And liberators. But as i point out in american heiress, symbionese is not a word. They did not liberate anything or anyone, and they certainly were not army because they were about a dozen of them tops. But thats the derivation of the name. Host you have a relatively recent photograph of patty hereto. Guest i do. She is now best known for raising show dogs. She raises stizu and had a victory at the Westminster Kennel Club in one of the divisions. So one of the Amazing Things about Patty Hearsts story is that for all the tumult and crisis of these events and going to prison, she has let the life for which she was destined. A wealthy homemaker, socialite, and this shows we are who we are. Host richard, ventura, california. You are next. Caller thank you. I love booktv, and as a former prosecutor, im reading your book on the hearst case with great interest. You noted in the book that patty hearst was live agent 2603 ben view avenue in berkeley, the scene of the kidnapping. Guest correct. Caller in 1970 i lived at 2606 ben view avenue, the two story Apartment Building across the street. Guest indeed. Caller and that where you said some of the students witnessed part of the thing and were fired upon by two of the kidnappers. Guest actually not. They were the students who were studying for the biochemistry exam, they were not across the street. They were next door. And they were standing on the porch. One of the incredible things when you think about the kidnapping and the whole saga of the sla, is and donald defrees and Nancy Lynn Perry opened up and fired on these kids who were who came out on to the porch to see what was going on. Its a miracle that they didnt kill more people considering how many rounds of ammunition they fired, both at the kidnapping, the bank robbery, at the shootout in los angeles. And patty hearst herself at mels sporting goods. We can only be grateful the sla war horrible shots. Host richmond, are you still there . Guest im sire. Caller you noted how radical the area was at the time but you failed to mention another famous female resident of ben view avenue. Hillary rodham clinton. Lived on ben view avenue in the summer of 1971. She came across the country from yale to work for a radical law firm, which represented many of the revolutionaries at the time, like the pa black panthers. Guest news to me. Caller well, its true story. Its you can look it up on the internet. Hope youll urge people not only to read your book but Bryan Burroughs book, days overarm, which is in your bibliography. An excellent book on the era. Guest can i just second that motion enthusiastically. The book, days of rage is about all many of the radical movements of the 1970s. Mostly focuses on the Weather Underground but also talks about the puerto rican faln. Theres stuff below the symbionese Liberation Army. Its a terrific book and im delighted you mentioned and you happy to endorse your recommendation. Host we have seven books to go through. So another one too close to call i want to read a quote. Guest its about the recount in 2000. Host you say. In all the Supreme Courts performance in the election cases, bush v. Gore, vein indicated the famous observation offer by Justice Robert jackson in 1953. He said were not final because we are in infallible but a we are infallible only because we are final. Let me ask you about that point and also what al gore did not do that might have changed history. Guest oh, boy. Well, of all my books, too close to call is my favorite stepchild because do. Host you lived through it. Guest i lift in florida for the whole time, except i came up to washington for both of the Supreme Court arguments. But that book came out in october of 2001. There was a brett pretty big news event in september of 2001. So, it came out in the immediate aftermath of 9 11. And people did not want to hear about bush v. Gore after 9 11, especially a few weeks afterwards. So, that was a tough sell, and that book was not, im pleased to say, unlike the others, not a commercial success, and i guess i have a special fondness for it for just that reason. I have a lot of respect for the Supreme Court. Disagree with many decisions but i certainly understand why they came out the way they did. Bush v. Gore, i think, is a very dark moment in the history of the Supreme Court. It think it is a bad and nearly indefensible decision. It was badly reasoned. It was badly written, it was inappropriately they took the case inappropriately to start with. So i have no i really still have a very critical view of that decision. But that Robert Jackson quote says, we have to stop somewhere. Somebody has to have the last word in american political and legal life, and we have decided to have the Supreme Court do it, for better or worse. And that is why our election ended the way it did in 2000, but that doesnt mean we have to be happy. Host you had four very different people who are central to this. George w. Bush and his approach, al gore, the sitting Vice President , warned christopher, the former secretary of state in the clinton administration, and jim baker, longtime friend, confident day and in the george h. W. Bush administration and they had a different approach. Al gore chose warren christopher, very distinguished diplomat who saw this dispute over the very close outcome in florida was going to be handled in a highminded way, people would reason together and figure out a way to come to adjust and fair resolution. Jim baker knew this would be a knife fight and this would be something that required all his resources, legal, political, media, and the difference in approach. The difference between democrats in florida, was one of the key factors in why this came out the way it did. And there might have been a different outcome. And the claim that he was the young leader of the Democratic Forces did enormous labor under difficult circumstances. Labor under very difficult circumstances and almost still one. The amount of effort and resources was tremendously out of balance and that was the result of different approaches. Host you quote the Firm Executives at theater at the miami herald did this is from a q a interview with brien lamb. It runs about 90 seconds to cspan remind us what the miami herald concluded about the florida election. About the miami election. There would be no fullscale count in florida. We determined for history at stake what were the real results so we did our own recount, all of the 67 counties in florida and obtained all the balance. We did that under the expensive Court Records law of florida which is wonderful so we obtained the ballots, went with an accounting firm, they did their count and we did our counts with journalists and went to every single ballot, the supervisor of elections held the ballot and recorded how the ballot was voted. s in some instances the ballots could not possibly be counted. There were different standards so the question is how do we judge the hanging chads. If ballots were punctured in some way or little piece of paper was hanging on do you count that or not count that. We looked at the vote under various standards and determined george bush actually won that election in florida. Cspan the National Opinion Research Center at the university of chicago did a different even more comprehensive recount sponsored by a consortium of news media organizations including the New York Times and Washington Post that reached a different conclusion, that said if the whole state had been recounted al gore would have won. If only the 4 counties or started recounted bush would have won. Guest that was a tactical mistake by al gore. Certainly a tactical mistake to call for only four counties of recounts but the broader issue is this. What we know for sure is the Supreme Courts decision and did the recount. There was no more recount after december, no more official recount and i remember being in tallahassee where the recount was ongoing when the peoples primitive cell phones and cell phones were pretty primitive in those days started ringing and people said the Supreme Court has issued a stay, stop counting the ballots and they did. They stopped counting right in the middle. The what the miami herald recount tells us was the Broader Media recount tells us we will never know, we will never know who won the election, who would have been designated the winner of the election if the recount had been allowed to proceed. It doesnt matter because bush would have won anyway. Respectfully that is not the last word. The last word is we cannot tell who would have won the recount and recreate them. They can only happen in real time. Host where did Jeffrey Toobin go to college . Did that time in college significantly affect your future . I went to harvard college, majored in American History and literature. I wrote my senior thesis about samuel adams and just want to say since we are on television now that if someone wants to make a musical about samuel adams im happy to help, i am ready to help. In fairness i think hamiltons life is a little more suited. Host did that have an impact . Guest i spent most of my time in college at the student newspaper. That was much more my major than my academic interests. I liked my classes and did well and i was happy to study early American History but that was when i caught the journalism bug even though i did go from there to law school and i still still have a great fondness for history and early American History and writing american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes, and trial of patty hearst was a return to those College Roots in one very specific way. My last two books were about the Supreme Court and the supreme the Supreme Court, virtually everything about it is on pdf, it is very easy to manipulate the research material. Studying this event from the 1970s where i received hundreds of boxes of paper, was really startling and difficult for me to deal with actual paper again in a Research Context and im very anxious to have these boxes out of my life. Other viewers saying what do you like to do in your free time and what was your Favorite Book to write . What do i do with my free time . I have i love an interesting story and i love to cover and go places and i have a story coming out in the new yorker which required spending a lot of time in alabama which i just love because it is very far from my home. I like interesting things in the world. My own life is not terribly interesting or complicated. I am sort of a homebody. I love to take off with my wife, workout at the gym, read books, there is nothing interesting or colorful about what i do in my daytoday life but i like to see the interesting things other people do. Host gary joining us from miami, florida. Caller i would like to ask american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes, and trial of patty hearst Jeffrey Toobin something about the current president. I am a former resident of hyde park in chicago and i was very familiar with reverend wright in the church. My question is the president attended that church for more than 20 years. He says in his book that reverend wright was his mentor. He married him and michelle. He placed his home, baptized his children. He knew that reverend wright had been a muslim and had accompanied Louis Farrakhan to libya. My question is does american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes, and trial of patty hearst believe the president did not know any of this or does he come to the conclusion as many of us do that the president was either lying or isnt as smart as he has claimed to be. Guest like it is to thousand 8 all over again. This is an issue that was exhaustively examined in the 2008 election. Barack obama was a parishioner of reverend wrights church. I dont think that means the president endorsed everything Jeremiah Wright ever said. I dont think it means he knew everything Jeremiah Wright ever said. Barack obama has been president for 71 2 years and i think there is a lot of basis on which to judge whether he has been a good president or not based on what he did as president , what he did or did not think about Jeremiah Wright at this late date seems to me utterly irrelevant. I say that host the run of his life the people v. O. J. Simpson. Guest the book became dramatically into my life. Host what is going through his mind right now . I got a raw deal, people are unfair to me, i would like to tell you about all the unfairness. One of the things about oj is he is a compulsive talker. He undoubtedly has a great deal to say about what has gone on in his life both recently and in the distant past. A lot of people have asked me over the years do you think oj has admitted to himself that he killed on goldman and his exwife, nicole brown simpson. Let me lay my cards on the table. I certainly do believe that he did. I think he doesnt really focus on that question in his thoughts. I think he feels the legal system has been unfair to him. Like a lot of people who have been involved in the criminal Justice System, they focus on what they think are the unfairness is of the system and not the underlying conduct that got him into trouble in the first place. That is how i think he thinks about it. Host one of the underlying questions for those who follow the case, he had everything going for him. He had celebrity, he had an exwife who was beautiful, two children, terrific home, by all accounts a pretty successful career as a football player, actor and celebrity. So why . Guest Domestic Violence is a real thing. It is easy to make complicated arguments about the o. J. Simpson case. It was a complicated story but why oj killed nicole . Husband kill their wives. Men kill women. That is what happened here. It is not that complicated. Look, there i am. Host this is from cnn coverage of the verdict and you were in the court room. Guest i sure was. There is ron goldmans father in front of me. There i am with no gray hair at all, 32 years old, looking pretty young and even then, i knew that it was an amazing thing to be in the courtroom at that moment. This was like a piece of history that was unfolding. I didnt even though at that redhot moment about the racially polarized reaction we would soon see which vaulted the story even more into the public conscience. Host you say racism in Law Enforcement has persisted through many decades in American Life, black citizens and black jurors have stored too many insults too long, the police in general and the lapd in particular reap what they so. Guest that is right. In the immediate aftermath, 20 years later, brad simpson and anita jacobson, we want to make a miniseries with ryan murphy, they made this magnificent series that was broadcast earlier this year and it just shows how a great story is timely forever. The miniseries came out in the immediate aftermath of ferguson and eric garners death in new york and all these incidents that gave rise to the black lives matter movement. The story the way i wrote it, it was about race in america and how jurors, africanamerican jurors saw the relationship between the Los Angeles Police department and africanamericans and it turned out in my view that o. J. Simpson became the utterly undeserving beneficiary of that poisonous history. This year which had so much attention in the o. J. Simpson case just showed how timely that story was because the relationship between africanamericans and police remain a story at the center of American Life. Host did the verdict surprise you . Guest yes it did. As my wife and others reminded me many times if you recall what happened the jury announced they reached the verdict on the previous day and then we had to wait until 11 00 in the morning the next day i was on television all through that, what do you think is going to happen . I predicted o. J. Simpson would be convicted based on how brief the jury deliberations were and i freely admit this, having sat in the courtroom throughout the trial i was convinced, i thought the jury would see the same way. Much ready to say i was wrong. Host nancy in florida, you are next, welcome to booktv. Caller thank you, cspan. The Supreme Court and bush v gore, have you seen the betrayal of america about that decision based on a novel in the nation, i read that book like i was a scholar and would love to hear your comments on that. Guest i am an admirer he was as many remember one of the prosecutors in the Charles Manson case, in helterskelter, about the manson case as far as i am concerned is one of the great crime books ever written. This is critical of the decision in which i was very critical of the decision in bush v gore. I think the criticism as much as i disagree with the decision was a little overthetop. The apocalyptic sense how bad it was. We found that book somewhat overstated. Host how gore saw it as a logic puzzle. And they hunched over their calculators, the republicans were breaking bar tools over there head. November and december, in florida, in tallahassee. One thing you couldnt help notice, the only protesters in the street, they were out in front of the president ial mansion in washington, getting out of cheneys house, the more didnt want protesters on the streets, he wanted this to be an orderly apolitical process and one of the main differences between the two parties between jim baker, and this was a bar fight as well as a legal fight. That was one factor in the outcome. I am your cspan cartoonist of yesteryear you may remember. Host of course caller it is good to see you and jeffrey both. Cspan is wonderful, and host thanks for your help on the tocqueville series. We appreciate that. Caller i hope mister lamb is all right and it sounds to me like i have your other books by library, i insist on buying books nowadays, and i love the way you end books, and first of all, i think i have to when i was teaching criminal justice instead of practicing law, when i did that anthony lewiss book, and you know what it must be the obverse of that case talking about patty hearst and her brushes with the law. We might be interested, i appreciate particularly as a former teacher of constitutional law what you said, i think it was between 9, the explanations of the major cases, it was civic education. Guest imagine the sales of every citizen read it. Host thanks very much for the call. Caller if you can come up with an idea how many more people we can put on the Supreme Court maybe we will get better decisions. Roosevelt tried to pack the court with more than 9. Now we cant even get to 9. Lets just get to 9. That would be a first step. Host opening arguments, quote, what oliver north did deserves imprisonment, he allotted the ideas you learned your mothers knee, he lied, cheated and one count of each. Guest pleased to hear you ask that question is if people know who oliver north is. He is on fox, but i feel obligated in answering that question to explain a little of the background because the iran contra scandal is not at the top of peoples minds at the moment. Oliver north was a Lieutenant Colonel in the marine corps assigned to the reagan white house. With the assistance of his superiors he managed to provide assistance to the contras who were fighting the leftwing government in nicaragua which was part of the cold war and sold missiles to iran in order to free hostages and used the money he got from iran to fund the contras which they prohibited. Host one of the headlines with the 400 million today. Guest remarkable how iran in particular of all the countries in the world manages to confuse, mess up the american government. There is a uniquely bad relationship between iran and the United States that seems to recur decade after decade. There was an independent counsel appointed named lawrence walsh. I was Junior Member of the team that prosecuted oliver north for lying to congress for taking the security fence inappropriately. He was convicted but the court of appeals overturned his conviction. He has been out and about, he is a military analyst on fox. I wrote a piece about him in the new yorker a few years ago and im pleased to think anyone who remembers the saga at all. Host one more call before short break, linda joining us from minneapolis. Caller i have a not very significant question about the patty hearst book. In the present, Jeffrey Toobin, you mention she is a homemaker, lives in greenwich, didnt you marry her bodyguard or her chauffeur, is she a married . Guest this is not a material question at all in the book. She did marry her bodyguard. After she was released on bail, they hired bodyguards for her, and the two of them fell in love and married in the late 70s and moved to the east coast, not to greenwich and it is fair not to disclose where she lived, two daughters, died of cancer in 2013. Perhaps not surprisingly, bernie shah became head of security, and many friends who worked at hearst magazine at cosmopolitan, he took my employee photo id and there is a whole generation of journalists with pleasant memories of bernie shah taking their employee id photographs. Host we are at the midpoint of our conversation. A lot more to talk about. What is your next project . Guest i find the effort so allencompassing, the last thing i want to think about is what our next book will be about. I do know happily i will write more books but they tend to emerge organically in my work for the new yorker and i dont know it all, what it would be about. Host Jeffrey Toobin on in depth as we continue with more calls and emails, you are on booktv. Host author, columnist, lawyer, cnn contributor Jeffrey Toobin, his book a vast consspiracy the real story of the sex scandal that nearly brought down the president , you say the following. When president clinton was caught in a shade of dilemmas, a menopausal man having an affair with a young woman from the office he reacted not with candor and grace but dishonesty and selfpity that are among the touchstones of his career and his character. Guest that i write that . That is a little harsh. That is startling to me. Bill clinton to state the obvious should not have been involved with Monica Lewinsky. But i thought the hero of the story, to the extent there was one, was the American People, who thought, not everyone, but we get this. This guy had an affair with a woman at the office but we dont fire people in this country especially from the presidency for doing that. I thought the maturity and good humor of most americans was really a contrast to the way most politicians and much of the news media viewed the story. A story about very ordinary human flaws that was inflated into a ridiculous constitutional crisis. Host among the players, there were no heroes. Guest it was not a great moment for American Public life. I do not depend bill clinton for his underlying conduct or his lying about it which he clearly did but when you look at his opponent, the star investigator who spent year after year pursuing him on nonsense and finally fastened on to this, not only wasted an enormous amount of time on it but also botched the investigation by not giving her immunity at the beginning and just getting this thing over with, bill clinton was very fortunate in his adversaries in this ridiculous drama. Host what is up with the tie on Monica Lewinsky . Guest when i was coming here i wanted if you would ask me stuff i did not remember because i wrote this a long time ago but i do remember the tie. One of the gifts Monica Lewinsky gave bill clinton during their relationship was a beautiful thai and he wore that tie during his grand jury testimony which was ultimately televised and there were those who thought that this was a sign, a signal to Monica Lewinsky that im still thinking of you, hold tight to your story defending me. That strikes me as a little farfetched. I devoted an unseemly amount of time trying to locate a copy of the tie and had a lot of dealings with people, then you rotates their ties and once they move on they move on and dont have any. So a great souvenir of covering that story i couldnt get because i couldnt get one of the ties. Host from the book a vast consspiracy the real story of the sex scandal that nearly brought down the president when Hillary Clinton had responsible is like healthcare she quickly became one of the least popular first ladies in memory. Her defense of her husband during the Monica Lewinsky scandal drove her to great heights of popularity. She and her husband try to capitalize on good feelings toward her. Seems like a long time ago. Our sense of who Hillary Clinton is has gone through quite a number of iterations but it is just a demonstration of how long she has been a major public figure she became the first lady in 1993 which is 23 years ago and she was the focus of public attention as the leader of the healthcare case, but i think this was an example how the clintons were fortunate in their adversaries, what happened here is bill clinton had an inappropriate relationship with this woman and lied about it, but it was essentially a private matter between him and his family and his wife. The fact that his opponents tried to turn it into a constitutional crisis and she managed to deal with it on a personal, private level generated a lot of sympathy for her. Think about the pattern of Hillary Clintons career, she tends to be least popular when she is involved in partisan controversy. That was true in healthcare and it is true now that she is running for president. She is not as popular as she was when she was secretary of state which was a largely apolitical position. She is likely to be more popular as a president if she becomes president than she is as a candidate. She is not a great candidate, not a great campaigner, but she is any good at being in office. She was a popular senator in new york, a popular secretary of state. That is one of the patterns of her life. Of the 19 how do you structure and organize your research how are you able to handle your new yorker obligations and do you have Research Assistance . Guest i have never been able to hire Research Assistance in the sense that people go out and do leg work for me, do interviews for me. I dont begrudge the writers who do, but that is too much a part of the research itself. I could never send that work out to others. I have had people who help me with discrete topics and i am pleased that my neighbor in sherman, connecticut, was someone i hired to create 150 boxes of material that i got which was indispensable for trying to figure out how to use it. That is the kind of thing i have had discrete topics and assignments by creating an index of those boxes. To me the reporting is the most important part, going out and talking to people, interviewing people, getting the documents, reading primary source material that came out on the time. Once i start writing as i mentioned earlier i am fastidious about my 5 pages a day quota. I have to get that done every day because that is how i complete a book in a reasonable amount of time. While i am writing im still reporting is one of the things you learn in my experience when you do sit down to write, you learn about the holes in your research. One reason i write 1250 words is it leaves me time every day to continue my reporting, calling people on the phone, looking up documents so i never stop reporting until the book is done. Host massachusetts, your next. Caller good afternoon on the east coast. Your interest in American History, recently the subject of Ruth Bader Ginsburgs involvement in political discourse comes up. It strikes me as significant that in the study of American History you should well know the john jay, the first Supreme Court chief justice was a candidate for the governorship of new york, ran for the republican nomination for the presidency from the Supreme Court, he got the nomination, subsequently was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court and William Douglas tried to get the democratic nomination for Vice President in the 1940s so there is a long consistent history of justices involvement in political activity and for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to make a few comments about the Political Campaign strikes me as small potatoes compared to the history of such involvement. I havent seen people who criticize ginsburg acknowledge the historical record and take that into account in setting her statements in historical context. As a factual matter you are correct about Charles Evans hughes and i mentioned douglas when this came up, times have changed. The place of the Supreme Court in modern life is as the justices all acknowledge when they are nominated or confirmed, they try to be more cut off from day today political events. I dont bring any great naivete to the subject. I recognize Supreme Court decisions are often deeply political in their nature but there is a tradition many decades standing, many decades now that justices should try to stay out of the daytoday electoral politics of the country. That is an appropriate line to draw. Ruth Peter Ginsburg crossed that line, she recognized it and that is why she apologized and is not doing it again. I agree this isnt world war iii, not an impeachment level crisis but it was an in a cup. Comment and she appropriately apologized. Host three emails on this. Fdrs first inauguration there is so Much Movement behind him that looks like it took the oath of office from a subway stop, please comment. Guest beats me. When i was writing the oath and the history of the oath i went on youtube and you can see most president ial us in the era where there is video i dont remember people walking around, i do remember he recites the oath from memory without help from the chief justice but it is worth remembering that a lot of what goes on now is choreographed for television. That includes president ial inaugurations which are in meticulous detail choreographed. In 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt took the oath for the first time there wasnt the kind of image management. Newsreels were in rather primitive form. The fact that people were not aware that they were on camera is not as surprising as all that. Host thank you for being on booktv. Caller i love your work. Did you graduate from overbrook . Guest my dad was a proud graduate of Overbrook High School in philadelphia. Will chamberlain also graduated. My dad was a proud philadelphian. Caller a couple statement in end with a question. Tell me whether statements are correct. Your question that iran and the relationship comes down to two words, roosevelt, next point is i dont understand, i am confused about the Supreme Court. What i was taught in civics is they are neutral, not political, there is not a person on the court, the last aside from Allegra Kagan Elena kagan the last with trial spirits was thurgood marshall. I dont know if im correct but if you could check me out. I dont understand why tween 9 of the best and brightest cant agree on a 5page document. Guest if i may explain a somewhat cryptic statement, Kermit Roosevelt was a cia official in the United States who helped initiate a coup detat in a ran in the 1950s which has led to a lot of bitterness towards the United States and iran. I dont pretend to be an expert but that is the reference. As for why the Supreme Court justices cant agree i have a lot of sympathy for the justices because this is a question i often get about the Supreme Court. Why disagree so much . Why cant they be judges, not politicians . Why cant they put politics aside and reach legal decisions . If you look at the controversial issues before the Supreme Court, if you look at affirmative action, samesex marriage, all these divisive issues, there are not apolitical answers to these questions. These are questions that are as much political and legal. You cant expect people to put aside their political views to answer their questions because the questions themselves are so bound up in politics as much as law and this is why i always say in president ial elections, people should understand that when they are voting in a president ial election they are voting for the future of the Supreme Court and it will be very different if donald trump is president or Hillary Clinton as president especially because of how old the justices are. By a year into the next presidency Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy will all be in their 80s. The 80s are not as old as they once were but they are still 80s and we can certainly expect there will not just be the Antonin Scalia vacancy but multiple vacancies over the next four to eight years. Host followup on twitter at booktv and you can like us, join us on facebook, facebook booktv. Go ahead please. Caller a few years ago cspan featured a reporter named matt iab who was speaking about the divide. Have you read that book . I am one of these people who struggles with inequality in the Justice System and since cnn is doing a lot of documentaries these days is there anyway you can take a look at that book and see if you can work with cnn to do a documentary about the inequalities in the Correction System especially for poor people and people that are minorities. Guest i am not familiar with that book but im familiar with his work. He writes for Rolling Stone now. You dont always have to have a winning candidate to have influence in the United States. Barry goldwater lost in 1964. A catastrophic landslide to Lyndon Johnson but if you look at the goldwater campaign, you see the roots of the Reagan Campaign for the countrys right turn in subsequent years. If anyone is interested in that subject in particular, the books of Rick Pearlstein identify in the loss of 1964, the future of the Republican Party is revealed. I say that because the callers question is related to the Bernie Sanders campaign. The Bernie Sanders campaign was a real phenomenon of the 2016 campaign. He got a lot of votes. He won a lot of states. Hillary clintons positions on the issues changed and moved to the left, undoubtedly because of Bernie Sanders, starting with her position on the Transpacific Partnership trade agreement. The Democratic Party of 2016 is dramatically more liberal than it was in 1992 when Hillary Clintons husband was very intentionally moving the party to the right. I think the callers concern about any quality inequality is shared by a lot of people and Bernie Sanderss campaign and the enormous success of illustrates that. How or whether that will translate into actual action if Hillary Clinton is elected president i dont know. It will be difficult because we live in a very polarized moment. The Democratic Party is more liberal, the Republican Party is more conservative, seems likely to control the house of representatives if not the senate as well. How Hillary Clinton can maneuver between her leftward direction she has taken and the congress that is unlikely to improve much that is one of the challenges of her presidency. Host 32 years from the cbs archives, 1984, get your reaction. Good evening from cbs news this is newsbreak. Nicaraguas president elect Daniel Ortega called for president reagan to ease tensions. He said us pressure was behind nicaraguas efforts to obtain weapons from the soviets. 2000 mourners attended a Memorial Service for baby faye, the infant who made medical history when she received a baboon trant transplant. Skeletal remains is another victim of the green river serial killer bringing the number of known victims to 28. Tampa, florida, robert long is charged with the murder of 9 young women in that state. Now this. Host Jeffrey Toobin, your mother. Guest that is my mom. My mother was one of the pioneering women on television news, she was at abc for many years, cbs when she was doing newsbreak, she died last summer in july 2015. So interesting to watch her on television because she was so good at it. She had a great voice, terrific presence on television, looked great. Itinerant constant preset provider cocontent provider. Host well go to rick from red center lakes, colorado . Caller it is colorado. Northern colorado. Okay. I have a general constitutional question. Im not a scholar and im not an expert, but i have read the constitution a few times, and as i see it, just as a citizen reading it, what strikes me is that first article, the longest article, the most specific article, is ab the first article, longest article, about the legislative branch, two short articles. That would indicate to me the legislative branch was perceived by the founders as the Central Branch of government. When the president had a 40 Approval Rating but the government has a 70 disApproval Rating it strikes me, that is not difficult to explain if you can agree the running of the country is primarily the job of the legislature, they are the ones who can fire the president , they can make taxes, make war. What is your thought about the evolution of the three branches of government . Guest if i could answer your question, you pinpoint something that is so important. It is why it is a really good idea for people to pick up and read the constitution occasionally. Every time i read it my reaction is like the callers which is article i describing legislative powers is much longer than article ii and even longer again than article iii which describes judiciary powers. We live in a system where since marbury versus madison the courts can invalidate anything the other two branches do. The turning point came in term of the balance of power between the executive branch and legislative branch came with the nuclear bomb. By 1945 once it became clear that the president could essentially end the world with the push of a button, metaphorically, the power in this country would go in direction of the executive branch. And with the existential threat, there are Still Nuclear weapons pointed. That led to a tremendous shift from the legislative branch to the executive branch. Hard to move in the other direction, particularly hard to move when congress is so dysfunctional, you have a filibuster system that requires 60 votes to get anything done, that gets done. The fact that you have an executive who can actually get things done, a legislature that chooses not to or cant is another explanation for why power has shifted that way. Host would you like to write a book on Justice Ginsburg . Guest one thing i know from my involvement in the Publishing Business is there are a lot of books in the works about Justice Ginsburg even as we speak. A wonderful book called notorious are bg, sort of a paperback original, wonderful book. I am going to leave it to other authors because there are plenty circling around her at the moment. Host another tweet saying Jeffrey Toobins mom was a pioneer in tv, things you learn at booktv. From cleveland, ohio, thank you for waiting, your questions or comments. A native of cleveland, ohio. Caller my question has to do with the importance of the legal background of congressman. More congressman lawyers than any other profession. Can you say whether having congressman being of legal background is in any way significant for the way this country is run . I dont think it matters that much. Throughout the history of the Supreme Court the law school that sent both justices to the Supreme Court, none. For decades most Supreme Court justices didnt go to law school at all. Only in the mid20th century law school became a common route to being a lawyer. Most lawyers became lawyers by clerking with an older lawyer the way Abraham Lincoln did. I dont think the fact that many members of congress are lawyers has much to do with problems and issues. I think congress reflects where the country is at this point, a deeply polarized country and when you combine that with partisan redistricting, they have been crafted by state legislatures to be overwhelmingly democratic or overwhelmingly republican you see many more, many fewer moderates who are interested in cooperating in the house that that is a much more Significant Development in congress than the fact there are a lot of lawyers. Host you say, quote, i spent my frantic first weeks trying to pretend i was having less fun than i was, playing chicken with the white house, battling oliver north, having the time of my life. Guest i was a kid. Only an old person can talk about, i was 29 years old, just out of my clerkship, it was heavy stuff. One of the lessons i learned in opening arguments that i learned in the iran contra experience, i went into that process thinking we had a mandate to show how terrible the Reagan Administration was. I learned from my colleagues, from the world that those ambitions are unhealthy for prosecutors. Prosecutors have Political Goals and ambitions, that is a bad thing, not a good thing. A narrow role for prosecutors who should be concerned with prosecuting actual crimes and only prosecuting actual crimes, not trying to change political direction or affect elections, that is what prosecutors should do. One reason i wrote opening arguments a Young Lawyers first caseUnited States v. Oliver north was the story of my understanding that my initial impression was flawed and it is better for prosecutors to have more limited conception of what they should do. Host what is the connection between thurgood marshall, the naacp and special prosecutors . You wrote how that led to the creation of the special prosecutor. Guest the Public Interest lawyers filing lawsuits at the Naacp Legal Defense Fund to end segregation, that is an explicitly partisan political agenda just has evan wilson and the other lawyers trying to end the ban on samesex marriage in the United States had an explicit political agenda, that is perfectly appropriate. Our system is designed for people to use the legal system in that way. It is not designed in my opinion for prosecutors who have the power of government behind them, not independent actors, government lawyers to try to use that power for political change is a bad idea. Host from the run of his life the people v. O. J. Simpson, the central fact in this case, o. J. Simpson murdered his exwife and her friend on june 12th. Any rational analysis of the events and analysis in question leads to that conclusion. Guest that is what i think and i have not been shy about that, i think o. J. Simpson killed those people and got away with it and that is a real stain on the court system. The fx series based on my book did not take an explicit position on the guilt or innocence of oj. They lay out a lot of evidence and the evidence clearly points only in one direction but i think ryan murphy and the other filmmakers made a smart decision not to have an explicit conclusion in the series, they didnt show a reenactment of oj committing the crime. It was more about how the Legal Process worked and explain how the acquittal came about. Host from too close to call he 36day battle to decide the 2000 election if the recount had preceded it might not have gone out gores way but he did not do everything he could to secure his victory so the nation can never know whether a more determined effort might have succeeded. You go on to say when votes were counted the result was the same, gore won. The margin was tiny but under the scenario from the most liberal to the most conservative gore emerged the victor. Guest this is from the recount conducted by the Media Consortium which was different than the recount conducted by the miami herald which we heard about earlier in the program. The full state recount favored gore under all those scenarios, and i dont pretend we can know with certainty who would have won the election if the Supreme Court had allowed the recount to continue but that is my point. By ending the recount, the Supreme Court guaranteed that we will never know. Host despite the rhetoric of the communiques, in american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes, and trial of patty hearst, it was not a vehicle for social and political change. It was an instrument for getting attention for its own sake. Guest is strictly an important part of the sla, there was general field marshal, the nominal leader, the brains of the operation such as it was came out of Indiana University Theater Department and this time in the early 70s was a time of guerrilla theater and Performance Art and people making spectacles of themselves for political change and if you look at the theatrical nature of how it operated, putting cyanide in their bullets and putting patty hearst in front of the camera during a bank robbery, it was designed to create a public spectacle. No spectacle about how to foment change. The american counterpart for the revolutionary movement around the world. In germany, even more than those groups these people were clueless how to recruit anything more than the tiny band they started. Host this picture from e. 54th st. Guest may 17, 1974, patty hearst, two of the sla members went shopping and got into a shootout and had to leave. The other six members of the sla were caught in this house that is on the screen now and this was the subject of what is still to this day the Biggest Police shootout in history, 5000 rounds of ammunition. You see video of it, went into that house, 3000 rounds of ammunition came out and all six sla members where insiders were killed. The lapd thought Patricia Hearst was inside the house at the time of the shootout. She understood her life was in danger in a direct way which was one reason why over the next year she went on the run with remnants of the sla because she saw this fate might await her if she was caught. Guest this is a new technology. Another example how the hearst case previews the modern world. The cbs affiliate in los angeles now known as kcbs, they had a new technology which was the ability to put a satellite transmitter on the roof of the truck, make a live breaking news event to their viewers, before the invention of the many cam the only way to do a live broadcast was lay cable that a political connection, but there they were able to take a many cam to the shootout. The other local affiliates in los angeles said we want your feed. Can we broadcast it as well . Nationally it was picked up around the country because the many cam had just been invented, that was the first live breaking news event broadcast around the country which we take for granted can be anywhere at any time. Caller i noticed during the break cspan had, one of the most influential people you had was robert caro. Do you know how he is doing . He is very meticulous as far as his work and the progress on the last book. Guest a year ago he was plowing ahead. One of the weird things in the way he has done the book is if he puts everything into this, it will be a long volume because the johnson presidency still to go, he has virtually all of vietnam ahead of him and the four years he lived after he left the white house and here is a Supreme Court fact that involves Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon johnson died january 23, 1973, which is the day roe v wade was decided. It was not the lead story in the newspaper. Host did jeffrey meet or interview Johnny Cochran. If so what was he like . Guest i disagreed with Johnny Cochran about the o. J. Simpson case, disapproved of some of the tactics he used in the court room but i can say this now that he is gone. I loved Johnny Cochran. I thought he was one of the most delightful, intelligent, appealing, charismatic people i ever met. In terms of pure charisma the people i would put in a category different from everywhere else are oprah winfrey, bill clinton and Johnny Cochran. The phrase lit up the room is something johnny did wherever he went. Yes, he defended o. J. Simpson and in my opinion o. J. Simpson was guilty as hell but johnny defended a lot of people who were not prominent and did a lot of good in the world especially when it came to the story of race in los angeles. It is a heartbreaking thing johnny died so young. I was a big fan. Host if it does not fit guest you must acquit. He had a charisma and a way with words that was undeniable. That came through the jury. In this case and every other. Host lets go to jim in to, washington. Caller i have been reading you going on 25 years starting with your first book and two more after that and a lot of your new yorker pieces. I want to get the patty hearst book. I was going to college and the memories are vivid to me. I found myself living in brentwood and the killings occur. A piece of yours in the new yorker said they would target mark farman, sure enough that is how the case unfolded. When they came up with those tapes that kind of blows him out of the water completely. When the case was over, if there is any one person you could attribute this to it would be mark farman. How did you rehabilitate a fellow who at best might be described as a racist perjure at top. And arthur shows up on television. I dont understand how people think that trial was wrongly decided are embracing this clown who did more sabotage than anybody. Guest you make an interesting point and it is worth remembering where he is now a prominent animal, fox news, a conservative news outlet. He is a figure who has become a prominent defender of police against black lives matter accusations. He is a prominent someone who is part of the backlash against the movement Johnny Cochran reflected. He has become a conservative hero of sorts, not because he lied. I think people gloss over that. But because he is seen as someone who was the adversary of people playing the race card during the o. J. Simpson case. His political place in American Life reflected his role at fox, is worth remembering now. Host in american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes, and trial of patty hearst you say rarely has wealth, power and renown as in the aftermath of the conviction. If you could have asked her one question, you say in the epilogue she did not cooperate but a lot of material you did go through, what would you have asked her . Guest i dont have the arrogance to think one question could turn the tables. I talk about one incident. I would ask her to explain one thing. It is emblematic how much she did switch sides and that was on may 16, 1974. Just robbed the bank in San Francisco and moved to los angeles. They were going stir crazy and three of them decided to go shopping. Bill harris goes into sportinggoods and genius he is decided to shoplift, the clerk was Aspiring Police officer who knew the crime of shoplifting did not take place until the person left the store. He waited until bill left the store and tackled him on the street. Patricia hearst is across the street in a van with the key in the ignition. What does she do . Does she walk away . Driveway . Ask for help . She sees bill harris being tackled, picks up a machine gun and fires across the street, not hitting anyone but trying to free bill, does that and get another guy and shoots up the street some more, miraculously not hurting anyone but successfully freeing bill from the clutches of his pursuer and they get in the car and a three of them head off. When people say patricia was forced to do everything or was a victim forever, think about the incident, i want her to explain how her behavior shooting that street to free bill harris, how is that consistent with someone who is not a member. Host next, las vegas. Caller back to Monica Lewinsky and president clinton. President clinton did not ask monica to lie in her deposition, he asked her to lie in a different position, thank you. Dont forget to tip your waitress. Host ronald, randall, washington. Caller yes. I take an interest in psychology and psychiatry and i recently read that there is a syndrome now, about people like patty hearst that might answer your reason for why she was the way she was carrying that sportinggoods example you gave. Guest stockholm syndrome. Let me tell you about stockholm syndrome, the reason it is called stockholm syndrome is there was a robbery of a bank in stockholm, sweden november 1973, just a few months before patricia was kidnapped. It had not seeped into Popular Culture yet, during her trial it was not mentioned, only subsequently has it become famous that stockholm syndrome is associated with her case. The idea is people who are held captive can come to identify with their captors and support their captors even though they are technically prisoners. It is important to remember about stockholm syndrome and brainwashing that these are journalistic terms, not medical terms. I try to stay away from that jargon and concentrate on the actual facts of what went on. There were three psychiatrists who testified for the prosecution and three for the defense, they disagree. All due respect to psychiatry it is an imperfect science. I think it is a more helpful way, what i tried to do is view it through the facts of the case rather than what i regard mostly as psychobabble. Host january 29, 1979, pardon the after her sentence was commuted by jimmy carter and you make a point that Ronald Reagan played a role with an eye on 1980. Guest by the time of the pardon it was quite clear Ronald Reagan was likely to be jimmy carters opponent in the 1980 election. Ronald reagan was a friend of the Hearst Family, appointed Catherine Hearst, patricias mother to be on the board of regents at the university of california. Very conservative and the fact that reagan and john wayne, very conservative actor supported the part gave jimmy carter political cover to issue the commutation he did because he knew his main opponent was not going to criticize him and carter who was a religious man who believed in the concept of redemption was interested in this case and sympathetic but carter knew that by granting the pardon he was not exposing himself to criticism from reagan. In researching the justices what did you find and what did you learn . Back up. When i worked on the 9, how will i get information about what the justices are like behindthescenes because i knew i could talk to some of them but not all of them. The richness of the story is what went on behind the scenes, not what went on in public and i remember what my editor said to me. The Supreme Court in particular, started with this book went out in 2007, i started using the internet which the justices appeared on cspan with regularity. This is on the web. Your colleagues told me if i went to indiana where they cspan archives were, the just disappearing to my hearts content, why West Lafayette indiana, your founder and leader at Purdue University in West Lafayette led to archives being there. When this was still the case, pool Automated Systems for getting dvds. A machine that pulled them off of a storage system. I got dvds, and when they talk offthecuff, it is a little more candid than they might expect. West lafayette was a goldline. Cspan put all its archives online. Going back to West Lafayette, i still use this. Host susan in cambridge. In responding to many viewers who said why the Supreme Court decision is right and wrong, you have done an admirable job explaining politics is necessarily a part of this but you have on too far. My law professors, told me many years ago that a lot of american law can be explained by the railroad always wins. So many years of our existence but that is not the interesting question and doesnt make it law but they have to give reasons the railroad wins. Once you give reasons you stand by those reasons and occasionally the railroad doesnt win or the republicans have to vote liberal or democrat have to vote with republicans or you lose all legitimacy. I think what is wrong with bush v gore is the court said forget what reasoning is, we dont care. You can never use this again. You pinpoint a lot of the points of what you said. I dont want to overstate my view that everything the Supreme Court does is political. Half of their decisions are unanimous every year. Or close to unanimous. Of what they do is just being a legal technician, and you are right, too, that the obligation to write down the ropes for the reasons for what they do does suggest that they have to maintain at least some ideological and intellectual integrity in what they do, and you are right further that bush v. Gore is such a disastrous example of the Supreme Court in action, in part because the conservatives who were in the majority, betrayed their usual principle, equal protection should be narrowly construed. States should be allowed to maintain their own procedures for running elections. And most notoriously of all i and most notoriously of all it has that sense in it which said, this case is not a precedent for further citation, which, again undermines the idea that the justices are acting in a consistent way, but if i can sort of go back to where i started from, the famous Robert Jackson, theyre are not final because there is fallible, they are infallible, because their final pic that was the worst last working as we got. Host this is a fun question for you, who would be your Mount Rushmore of Supreme Court justices . To conservatives, to liberals see to okay. Certain i would put Robert Jackson among the conservatives. Robert jackson is the period he was on the court in the 40s and 50s it was not as politically polarized as today, but i would say he was probably on the more conservative side or cry and a great Robert Jackson fan as he was i am certain to say the best writer ever to appear ever to serve on the Supreme Court and if someone wants to see a great piece of american writing they should look up his opinion in barnett versus West Virginia school board about whether children can be required to salute the flag. Its a brilliant piece of writing. Ceit hes one conservative. Another conservative, i think, John Marshall harlan the younger who served on the court in the 1950s. And eisenhower and pointy, sort of an oldfashioned east coast moderate republican. Another conservative who i admire a great deal. In terms of the liberals , leading off the justices who are on the court now you have to pick William Brennan because he was architect of so many of the liberal decisions of the 60s and i think the other you would have to take is work Google Warren because even though he was not a great legal scholar, he was someone who has had tremendous political sense and understood in the middle of the cold war when we were trying to create an alternative model to the sovietie union we could not have segregation in this country anymore, so whether it was brown beat board of education, which he wrote overall of the subsequent integration cases i think warrens political sense as much as his legal made him an epic figure. Tu host an earlier point from tom hynes is setting us an email from las vegas and under the constitution, could the senate refused to consent any Supreme Court nominee by a potential eight years of president Hillary Clinton . Guest absolutely. The constitution does not impose any sort of time limits on the requirement the only thing the constitution says is that the power to appoint is with the president with the advice and consent of the senate, but did does not set a time limit or say that the senate has to can send. They can keep voting down her opponent. They cannot hold hearings on her opponent i mean, this is again one of the many areas where law yields to policy and the only remedy for this sort of recalcitrant on the part of senators comes on election day. Where voters can say if you are not core to consider Supreme Court appointment i will pull you out of office, but thats the only remedy. President obama or if there is a president clinton can go to courts force the senate to act. This is a political act, which will be resolved by political means. Host bruce, wilmington, delaware. Our next car with Jeffrey Toobin. Caller i have a couple ofons. Questions about president ial pardons. Of the constitution gives the president virtually Unlimited Power to grant pardons except in the case of impeachment, impeachment cases per now, there have been preemptory pardons. Probably in the most famous, of course, is fords pardoning of nixon. Guest correct. Caller before he was indicted or committed any crime and then we have another example of a sort of a group of parting of dodgers by carter. Guest correct to. Aller caller what prevents the president s from pardoning illegal aliens . If he wants to parting one, if he wants to m pardon 5 million, one would seem to think he had the tort authority to do this according to the constitution. Guest i think youre probably right. Although, i would have to think that through. He could certainly pardon them from any criminal prosecution. Im not sure he could pardon them fromom deportation. Im not sure if the pardon power extends to the his control over immigration. One of the issues in the Supreme Court case where 4 the court deadlocked fourfour at the end of last term was the president saying i can set my enforcement priority. Its quite clear. I think everyone acknowledges that the federal government doesnt have the resources to deport all 11 billion people in this country illegally. The president is saying i can establish priority that gives some people the security that i will not deport them. That position was notnot vind vindicated in the fifth circuit in the supremein court divided forfour, so the fifth circuit is the law at least about circuit. Could the president pardon all 5 million . He could certainly pardon as many as he wants of actual crime. Im less certain whether he could the pardon power extended to the issue of deportation. I mean, so we are clear knowing is suggesting he will do that, but its an interesting questionould o of whether he could are not. Host we only we could go another three hours. Guest im ready, man. Host lets go back to one of the points about american heiress because despite the discontent, summarize what,in lt assassination of robert f kennedy, president kennedy, luther king, you say the 60s was the sense of the possibility that blacks and whites could live in harmony and on that to the 70s and part because of vietnam and the resignation of Richard Nixon. Guest this is one of the real revelations to me in working on it american heiress, the distinction between the 60s and 70s in terms of sort of how Americas Society was as a whole. I sort of thought the 60s was a time of in the 70s turmoil and things chilled out a 70s. It is true there was terrible pommel in the 60s with assassinations, right after Martin Luther kings assassination, the watts riots, detroit having the la riots, the watts riots in 1965. But, it is true also that in the 60s there was this tremendous assents that the reason people were so agitated is that they expected better of america and they wanted to believe america could be a better place. What happened in the 70s was this real souring that you had the summer of love in 1967, in San Francisco. The Free Speech Movement5 in ber in 1965 in berkeley, both which were characterized by significant degree of idealism. By the 70s, it had allll curdled and when ritual Richard Nixon ended the draft in the early 70s, that really took out a large part of the middle class kids from the counterculture and protest and they sort of realized they were no longer at risk of went about their lives and the people who remained were the really hardcore. And t they were angry and they were violent and i keep coming back to this statistic that he is just so it astonishing number which is in the early and mid 1970s there were a thousand political bombings a year in the United States. Try to imagine what it would be like to live in a country with a thousand bombings a year with our Current Media culture. Reading this was an angry, depressed place. S the economy was also an lousy shape you had the energy crisis. You had water great destroy faith and political institutions. It was just a dark time and the hearst kidnapping was both a reflection and a symptomct of just how bad things were in america. Do you host one quick question about the Hearst Family. Do you have a sense of what they were worth at its peak and what theyre worth today . Guest whats interesting is that William Randolph hearst, the patriarch who died before patricia was born new that his fourth son will basically drunken and he did know his son to control the business, so he set up a trust so that outsidere would always control nine of the 13 seats on the hearst trust, so the Hearst Family had a lot of assets. You know, they had interest in these trust, but they did not have a lot of access cash for control of the trust. In fact, randy hearst had to come up withh 2 million and it was very difficult for him even though he hadim access theoretically he had access to more than that, but he didnt really. In terms of today, theres one key factor about the Hearst Corporation. It is still privately held, so we never know exactly how much money the hearst, but in the late 1970s, professional managers of the Hearst Corporation made a decision to invest in 20 of something called the entertainment and sports programming network. Do you know the initialsthe ia host espn. Guest espn and the Hearst Corporation still owns 20 of espn and that has been an incredible cash cow, so even though the hearst are still sort of a Newspaper Company and sort of a magazine company, both businesses that have not thrived in the recent decades. The fact that they own a big piece of espn has meant that the company is still flourishing. Host from strawberry plants, tennessee, dennis next. Caller hello. Im a big admirer, sir, and its an honor to talk to you. Guest thank you. Caller had three quick questions and i walking up and listen. If the secretary clinton is elected, do you think she will submit eric garland as the nomineepick som or pick someone else . Host dennis, we will take one at a time. Guest thats a really interesting question and at the short answer is i dont know, polemical your bit about the political collations i think are involved. Lets assume, as i can correctly that the garland nomination will expire without action from the senate come january 20, of next year. Hillary clinton can say to Mitch Mcconnell coming of a choice. You can give me a quick vote on Merrick Garland and get this 63year old moderate confirmed or i will nominate a 45year old liberal and we can fight that one out. Now, Hillary Clinton will face a lot of pressure from her more liberal supporters not to nominate garland, but she has a problem also because if she nominate a real liberal the First Six Months of her tenure are swept up in this one issue and she cant get immigration through Immigration Reform through, Infrastructure Spending to the senate, so she will have an interesting trying to get at least this first vacancy on the table. So, i actually think there is a reasonably good possibility she will renominate Merrick Garland in the hope and expectation and perhapsif with an actual deal with the senate that the republicans will figure, lets take this 63year old moderate as opposed to someone who might serve longer. Host dennis, your followup question . Lolo guest did we lose him . Host dennis, are you still there . Goahead. Caller okay. Do you believe in term limits for our Supreme Court justices . Guest absolutely. Ou i think it would be a big improvement. Term limits and or mandatory retirement and i say that with full confidence that it will absolutely never happen. Amending the constitution is very difficult and theres just no constituency for it, but i think the situation is really out of whack. We dont believe in 30year year 10 years for president s. We shouldnt have it with Supreme Court justices took it places the age of the justiceso much so much as a factor. Stephen breyer just ask this question and he said something interesting, which i agree with. He said i dont have a problem with term limits are mandatory you hav requirements, but you have to set up a system where being a Supreme Court justices your last job. You dont want Supreme Court justices and goingce for Something Else and i think thats a good point. I think term limits are good idea. It aint going to happen. Host we welcome our listeners on cspan radio. Follow us on twitter at the tv person if ever every month. Jeffrey toobin who has written seven books and counting. A lot of tweets having fun with the Mount Rushmore question. Viewer this is from a viewer in philadelphia. Which include John Marshall rushmore . Guest goodness, so they would. I guess i didnt include him because first i forgot and also, i dont know you asked me for two liberals into conservatives and i dont know where you would counter John Marshall in that. Is his the world was a different in the early 19th century. You know, the man who created judicial review, who helped define the o wers of the federal government, its just hard for me to place him in our current political position. Host we have a call from San Francisco. You don, your next. Ler h caller hello, jeffrey and thank you for your all your good work which i enjoy. Guest s thank you. Caller the one time i was unhappy of about an article about one my favorite people,ha. The stewart when i cut your kind of harsh. Is there anything you can say no to make me less unhappy . You sa host what did you say about Martha Stewart . Guest i said she was guilty as hell about wide about her Insider Trading situation. The crazy thing about Martha Stewart whole scenario was that if from day one she had simply said, you know, i made a mistake. Was thi i was thinking about a lot of Different Things and i sold my stock after hearing this news from my friend. This whole saga wouldd have been just a minor footnote. You know, Martha Stewart is an extraordinary archery or. She created not just this business, but an industry and shes just an enormously talented and forceful person. Unfortunately, thats forceful personality led her to deny the completely obvious fact that she had engaged in Insider Trading in this scenario and she wounden up getting him so muchro more trouble than she should have if should just said yeah, i didnt let me pay a fine. None of us would even remember it here today, but frankly, out offr arrogance she stuck with this ridiculous story and wound up in worse trouble, but that does not diminish the fact that Martha Stewart is an enormous force of nature and really one of the great business women of this era. Host graduated from harvard law school, and internet new republic. Guest i was never an intern. I freelanced there. Host you clerk for us court of appeals judge. Guest i did, j edward lombard, eisenhower appointee. Host worked for independent counsel. Started out as a staff writer for the newst yorker, worked at abc for a number of yearsleft o now cnn. Guest you left out a very important part. Assistant us attorney in. Rn brooklyn, which was a very happy and proud part of my career. Host which taught you what about the law . Guest so much. Its all about people and how they react and that you can read all of that appellate decisions you want, but until you look them in the eye and i try to persuade them that something happened or did not happen you dont really understand how the law works and what i love about being a trial lawyer and i had 11 trials in three years, which i felt so lucky to have, that you have to speak in english. They dont want to hear more over and wherefore. You have to speak to jurors in normal english spew them. Host to them and not at them. Guest to them and not at them, and its just a great great education in real life and also just i really appreciated the spectacle of like what goes on in an american courtroom and this is why i think i was muchs more apt for journalism than law because what i really like about being a assistant us attorney was something a lot of my colleagues like to avoid which was arraignment duty. Was whe that is when you got people when they were first arrested and you learn who they were and like where they came from and what their backgrounds were when then they are trying to get out on bail so they would tell you their story. It was so amazing, i mean, the people who would swallow condoms full of cocaine or heroin and try to smuggle it into kennedyour ju airport, which was part of our jurisdiction. Ted for the people who got arrested for food stamp fraud. The people in the fraud in various communities ponzi schemes. I just loved the spectacle of it all and so many of my colleges were like im going to do justice and it went to like get the bad guys and i wanted to get the bad guys fine, but id liketh host you sound like terry mason. Eone w guest i wasnt like to read mason because someone who is like a wanted to win i mean obviously wanted to win, but perry mason was all about the lastsecond victory in a courtroom and i was like check this out. This is all crazy. I love this and thats a different attitude and a lot of other prosecutors. Host i then from texas. Goahead, please. Caller i love america, man. This is one flag country and i see other flags flying in america andam its not right. On by texas and up for the border, but im for the people coming in, but make them legal so they pay their taxes and stuff because they arehe taking from our health care, money back through w walmart to mexico and makes our dollar weaker. Its okay as long as you are a legal american speak american. This is one country and god bless all of us. We have to stand that. We lost our morals. When a policeman arrested you you are supposed to stand there and not run off and fight the man and thats why we have summary problems. In irving, texas, they took a clock to school and they thought it wasrv a bomb and now they are going to be sued. They can barely afford their police department. Th host thank you for the call. You can hear his voice issues in this campaign. Guest absolutely and i think we are going to spend a long time in this country thinking about how donald trump became a Major Party Nominee. remember, it is worth noting that the only president elected in modern American History who is not an elected official was Dwight Eisenhower who did a little thing called running world war ii in europe, so he was not a public official, but he sure was a public servant. How we got to someone like donald trump with no record of all of Public Service to be a Major Party Nominee is a really interesting complex story that i dont pretend to understand, but i think this caller unhappiness about immigration, not just as immigration per se as a problem in and of itself, but as a symbol as a metaphor for disorder and the whole country and for the loss of what america used to be. I dont think you can understate the importance of Donald Trumps slogan, make America Great again, like to go back in time. Never specified exactly when america was better than it is now. Different, calmer, more orderly place. Thats a real concern of a lot of people and dont think its enough people to get him elected president , but its a lot of people and their concerns have to h be heard also. Host why do you enjoy writing . Guest because i like to tell stories are coming i like telling i recognize that people have a lot on theirhe plates in their lives. They are distracted that their phones and if i can tell them a story that gets them to sit down and read for anm to sit hour for several nights in a row, and say this is unbelievable this is amazing the way i do and i am a reader. I write what i want to read. I love to read. I love a good story, especially nonfiction story and i viewed as a challenge and a tremendous privilege to be paid to tell Great Stories that are also true. I dont have the imagination to make them up, but im very good at finding things that actually did happen. Host your purse but back in 1992, opening arguments Young Lawyers first taste. Then, the run of his life, people versus o. J. Simpson. Too cl too close to call, 36 they battle to decide that 2000 election whichch cannot does one. Than nine, inside the secret world of the Supreme Court in 2007. The oath, the Obama White House and Supreme Court 2012. Your latest book american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes and trial of patty hearst. Jeffrey toobin, thank you for spending three hours here as he spentew to book tv. Guest what a treat and thank you to all the terrific cars anl email. Host comeback anytime. Thank you very much. Cspan, created by americas cabletelevision companies and brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. Heres a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. On saturday august 22, look to the islamic the Second Annual mississippi book festival held at the State Capitol in jacksonville featuring former Senate Majority leader trent lott and biographer john meacham. Coming up on september 18, the Brooklyn Park book festival. Later in the month, the annual baltimore book festival will take place at the citys harbor and on saturday september 24, for the 16th year in a row book tv will be live with author from the National Book festival hosted by the library of congress at the Washington Convention center. For more information about the book fair festivals, that look to the will cover into watch previous festival coverage but for the book fair tab at her website, book tv. Org. The book is really about what happens in the realm of National Security and there have been people who have proposed National Sick courts, but i wanted to see what goes on inside the courtroom because that is where the issues of guilt and innocence, the issues of the power of the law are most clearly shown in them straight up. It is actually fascinating to watch the difficulty that courts have when with National Security cases. There is all this talk about can our courts try terrace. We cant try the 911 terrace. Years ago i just start going to court to see what does a terrorism prosecution look like and i have been too many states in many different districts to see how and what the narrative of the prosecution is, how it changed over time and i think its important for the American People to understand that there are nuances to these cases and not all terrorism cases are the same. Like the subway bomber in new york to those who are really just aspirational and i wanted to see how those cases played out differently and if there was a way in which justice could be described as not rogue. You can watch this and other programs on my netbook tv. Org. Youre watching the tv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend cookbook tv, television for serious readers. On book tv afterwards this weekend they know argues that United States is splintered into two countries, coastal and fiber nations. Linda greenhouse looks back at the decisions of the spring court under chief Justice Warren burger. Journalist Monique Morris discusses how some School Policies have a negative impact on the lies of black funeral students. Also, elaine kumar on why americans have lost faith in their political leaders. A look at the life of cosmopolitan Magazine Editor and her impact on the womens movement. A recount of the social and political upheavals that took place in the us from 1969 to 1970. Thats just a few of the programs you will see him book weekend. For complete television schedule, boutique book tv. Org. Book tv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]