Threat. The chairman of the commission conceded he could not guarantee the election would be fair. Is a seniorow advisor and former director of the United Nations news and media division. Welcome. Me how does he feel about the possibility of a new election . Is he agreeing to that . No. He said he would only participate in the election if some changes were made. What would satisfy him and you . It is him and the kenyan people. Riven withon was fraud and illegalities. They annulled it. Ill he says kenyans want is a fair election. They dont want anything more than that. You talk about this moment, it theelectrified africa when Supreme Court did this. It has been going backwards in kenya. Some say they have gone forward because this was the first electronic voting. You believe it was not done in the right way. The evidence of it is massive. Remember, the last previous two elections were both rigged. Mass violence broke out and took the personal involvement of Condoleezza Rice who travel to kenya to make sure the presidency was coshared. This is a history we have of itction fraud, but this time was greater. Explained to me the importance of kenya to the United States and the United States to kenya. Salim kenya is one of the closest allies of the United States without question. U. S. Embassy and africa. It is fight tilted u. S. Interests because it is key in the economic and security framework. In somalia we have alshabab terrorism. Economic potential and democratic society, and for the region as a whole, if kenya goes, so goes the region. Warsregion has had seven and millions of deaths, ethiopia, sudan. Kenya is the one stable place. The u. S. Takes so much interest. This time around, unlike 20072008, the u. S. Is giving everything to the envoys in nairobi. This is why he was in london them, and addressed that had an impact. Engagement from the u. S. Do you feel like you are getting that engagement . What will trigger greater engagement right now is the last 24 hours. As you said, the commissioner who runs the elections himself said forget about that lady. He himself said i can no longer guarantee a free and fair election. My staff doesnt listen to me, and yet he is saying this is how astonishing kenya can be. What he wants to see specifically to agree to an election . Salim he wants an election that is not rigged. What has to be done . Electronics an election, and there is a server, all the votes cast are copied onto forms which are scanned and placed into a server. , thech voting station forms are signed by all the parties, and that server contains the history of the election. To independent people to the server. Demanded theyurt open that server to scrutiny. Do know the Electoral Commission refused a Supreme Court order. Supporters isfrom you will not support any of election you dont win. Salim every site has its fact, the newd in york times in fact, the New York Times itself after the election was over wrote a scathing him. Rial against they with true editorial when the Supreme Court ruled. We have a situation where inyans who live in fear terms of speaking out openly or uping decisions are taking the cry for freedom and the rule of law, and yet we are not getting the support from the u. S. And the u. K. Is there room for compromise anywhere here . There is always room for compromise. Compromise in terms of not adhering to what the Supreme Court ordered we want a fair election. The situation when it is a little more fair than last time, which was not fair at all. The vote was 54 to 45 . Have you done polling. How much support do you have . Salim we believe we have much more support. At whatou to look happened before the election to show you why this election was rigged. Rate,ons are routinely 2007. This time they tortured and killed a week before the election the key official in charge of making it happen and protecting the vote. He was killed. This has never happened in kenya before. There is so much evidence. Why this determination . They knew they did not have the support. Are you concerned you are inciting more violence or danger by not agreeing to an election . Salim that is what some of our critics say. The person or group that is inciting is the government. Thatthe Supreme Court made decision, president kenyatta excepted it. Warpath and on the began abusing the justices a coupthey conducted detat against him. He began threatening them. He said he would fix them once he was back in office. Incitement that led to mobs surrounding the Supreme Court of kenya and the chief justice called the chief of police for help, and the guy refused. This is on the record. What is the relationship odinga. Kenyatta and salim they have been political rivals. Fore inlry came to the the 2013 election. U. S. At that time took a clear position that they would not be comfortable with those two running kenya, so that was a very rough election and the two had to win it by whatever means, so they rigged it. Since then, they had a reasonable relationship as far there is nogoes, so personal animosity at issue here. The issue is so clear. The rule of law is rapidly unraveling. When the chief justices are prepared to die for their views, death threats, and if this election is held, there will be violence. She said there will be five months if this election is held. There has already been violence before the election . Salim it is nothing compared to what could happen. The violence has been held. Every Single Person who has been killed has been unharmed and killed by the police. Do you believe that mr. Odinga is in mortal danger . I did not sleep last night because he went to visit his very close ally and friend, and an important financier prefer the party come at his home because the home, the police had invaded and prevented people from leaving. This was a court order. He went to that house. When the perspective president , potential precedent, of the country is held against his will , this is a banana republic. We are in a very bad style. Aila has been proved right he has said you are not taking steps to make it free and fair. The chairman of the commission himself is saying i cannot karen t a free and fair election. He cannot guarantee a free and fair election. Do you believe this is a Tipping Point for kenya . Salim this will definitely be a Tipping Point for kenya if they proceed with the election in the situation where everybody is acknowledging that it cannot be free and fair. If they proceed on october 26 despite what you are saying, if raila odinga is not endorsing that come you dont believe the potential for violence and danger is there regardless . Salim the most important thing is this, you cannot expect the be toacy that we are to ask somebody to please participate in an election that will be more rigged than the last one. They introduce new laws which will make it harder. What will you do if they hold the election and kenyatta declares himself the winner . Will protest. It is our right to protest. I cannot see how the International Community you know what happened with the observers. The minute they came out, even before the elections were declared, mr. Kerry took a very hard line. Things,some amazing including that people would vote who were dead, and yet i saw no dead people voting. Can a secretary of state speak like that, that people will vote . It is a terrible situation. Now we have the potential of ,ixing it, of being democratic of restoring rule of law, which is rapidly unraveling. Who can fix this . ,alim only kenyans can fix it but they need the help of the United States and u. K. There is a long history of the u. S. Intervening when there is a crisis. Level. Me it is very low the u. S. Embassy is doing it all. We need a higher level engagement to ensure the government will agree to holding a free and fair election. Under the law, we need 90 days. In those 90 days, the changes can be made. The commissioner resigned said the changes can be made, but as things stand now, they cannot. Mike wallace is the pulitzer prizewinning coauthor of greater gotham a history of new york city from 1898 to 1919. Volume isok, a second called greater gotha greater ga history of new york city from 1898 to 1919. The book traces new yorks transformation into one of the worlds greatest to cities. Mike wallace joins me from chicago. I am pleased to have him on this program. Professor, the first book cover 375 years. This one is only 20. Why were 18981919 so important . York this is when new became the recognizably modern city we are familiar with now, and merged with brooklyn and the to 1919, when it was an established megalopolis. The amount of material available to reckon with in doing this 20 year period was enormous. To donow possible relatively easy Research Online because so many books have been digitized. The choice of 1919 as an end to when new york becomes a corival to london for the status of Financial Capital of the world. Were these years the most important generation in the citys history . Down it is hard to pin importance because it is a moving target. You would have to go back to the 1820s and the 1830s and the erie canal. He. C that ground was connected, capital and labor and ideas flowed in, commodities flowed in , and cotton, wheat and so forth went across the atlantic. That link was established, it would run differently in different periods, but the establishment was the most important. To me about 1898 when all the boroughs came together. Mike correct. To understand what happened at the political level, you have to understand the economic level. Usual and the city were going through a boombustware, and it happens over and over again and continues to happen. The city was coming out of the Great Depression as it was called in 1890s and j. P. Morgan and John Rockefeller decided Free Enterprise capitalism model was for the birds. If you had competition between firms, lower prices and lower profits. Lower profits you scrimp on laver, then unions would form. Unionsabor, then would form. This was madness as far as they were concerned. Their solution was to engineer in first grade Movement History and thousands of Small Companies vanished into hundreds of corporations like u. S. Steel. This was not being robber barons, although they did well, but it was a progressive move. It was going to eliminate competition and allow for longterm planning and smoothing out the Business Cycle and cutting labor in for a share. The idea that consolidation was good was the model they applied to the political sphere. They thought the notion of new york and brooklyn and all the , littlerovincial political jurisdictions, was nuts. And should be looking after common problems, solving problems collectively, taking care of the port, expanding connections to the continent and europe, so they engineered the same kind of colossal merger and the political sphere they had in the economic sphere. Jeff when you say greater gotham, what does that mean . Mike i know it sounds chauvinistic, but in reality, when the merger occurred, people refer to it as greater new york. Occur to people to call it a greater queens. It had semiofficial status for some time, then faded away. The what was it about first couple of the decades of the 1900s that surprised you most and might surprise those who read this . Mike there are two dimensions iod. His per one is the effort to make consolidation real. It was on paper, it yes, but was it a reality . This involved digging the subway systems, digging tunnels to connect and build penn station , skyscrapers erupting out of bed rock. There is an enormous amount being done, and that is relatively easy to narrate. It was not terribly surprising. What was more interesting was the social struggles. You could get the idea that new york after all of this ed, fromuction work the presentation of efficiency, private profitability, that was the case. How about issues of social justice . How about issues of daily life . How does this affect ordinary citizens in the city . To ahat led on examination sense that this was a breakthrough period in several respects, issues of race, gender, class, relations with the rest of the world, europe, they were dramatic transformations accomplished in some senses or clearly set in motion. While the big episodes in each of those was relatively clear in advance, preliminary overview research, each one came up in interesting or heroic or dramatic stories, so you can pick anyone. Today, all we are at of those hard sort of coequal, but you look at today for instance, it has long been the state of affairs that immigrants when they arrived in new york in enormous numbers established enclaves, and irish enclave, a german enclave, kerry has big enough to sustain nativelanguage populations. They had newspapers, their own languages, music. Considered to be divisive and hard to imagine the city coming around us. Was happened in this period a reevaluation of diversity, what we would call multinational or multicultural. They used the word cosmopolitan. You had guidebooks for instant say you must visit the jewish quarter or italian quarter, arguing that new york was more cosmopolitan than rome had been. This was an advantage. Some people took that farther. Dewey and other philosophers argued that what had emerged without being planned on the american strand was a new kind of social ecology , where people from vastly different backgrounds who had not only lived next to one gether, but more or less along, or even better than that, out of the clash and connections between these great enclaves came new possibilities that had not been dreamed of before. So these people argued that any difference,uppress any attempt to impose as there were american eyes ares, who rs were argued for suppressing this and making downbody american, melt and be anglo protestants, the people behind this movement. Some went so far in this period to develop the eugenic theory it was biology and not culture, therefore the answer was to end some cases destroy fertilization possibilities of they could not be produced more to come up with an immigration system that eliminated the wrong kind of people from coming. Jeff how much of your work is research versus the writing . When we worked on the first volume, the rules of the game and said wait only for secondary sources. ,f we started doing Research Trips to the library, digging in microfilm readers, it meant time. Anyone of those errors were already being mind by people who do research, so we waited for the research to be done then incorporated it into the larger narrative. What changed since that first go around was the internet. Spend hours, days, months, years, decades in the allen room, the new york public librarys gift to fighters purchased on this Massive Treasure trove. Then google and others sweep through not only new york, but the whole country and digitize everything inside, particularly not obscure things protected by copyright that not that many people were interested in, but i was devoted to. This meant a whole new range of temptations hard to avoid. For instance, one of the great inventions of this period was by irving bush, something called Bush Terminal which had factories and rail lines all combined so you did not have to take things from one side of the city to the other. They were all assembled in the same place. I wondered what it was bush was thinking about when he was working on this. Havee old days, i would had to go to the library and a days worth of reading, now i go click and the autobiography is , so is the New York Times digitized index. To an amazing degree, there can be differences of opinion about something as when a building opened, and while any newspaper has a frame of reference and ideological perspectives, in fact they sent a reporter on the day that it opened, so we knew when it happened. So that is something that has slowed up the process, but gave because you see things when you are reading a newspaper or magazines, unanticipated its of color or interesting characters. It gives submitted it to the mise en scene. Jeff the research is easier, but you can tell in the first book and this one it is important to you to craft a even thoughoves, both books are more than 1000 pages, it is important to you to craft something engaging. Mike yes. Category. As a long in the late 1970s and early 1980s, i got interested in how history is presented to audiences. The first is called disney world. Narrative assumptions buried in the exhibits. Colonial weems berg, which presented itself as a place where colonial williamsburg. The 50 that were . Laves i worked with museums a lot did a found a lot. , and engaged in the process of making history accessible to general audiences, and how could i not try to do the same thing in my own writing . Academics initten channels. Economic historians, political historians, architectural historians. This is perfectly understandable and reasonable. A collective sensibility that trades information and criticizes and develops. It is a useful organization. In real life it does not happen like that. Real life happens all at once. The people who do this the best of the novelists. My wife is one of mexicos foremost writers and i appreciate the way she and others are able to encapsulate its dimensions simultaneously to the people in theicular, the actors, carriers of the Larger Forces in play. Because i was heartened by the reception of gotham, and clearly people like to these stories, they did not mind the link as much as i thought they would come so i gambled in this fall you on more of the same thing, but always relentlessly keeping in mind that this has to be accessible. It has to be enjoyed. Anybody says about anything i have written is i enjoyed it. Jeff that they enjoyed it first . Mike precisely, absolutely right. If you are reading something because you think it is good for you or somebody recommended it and it is torturous to get through, how can you enjoy it . If something is clear enough that it helps to explain something, something you wondered about, it empowers you and you can understand better how things actually work. And youo