If you have a question for speakers, thick on the q a button at the bottom of the screen and will get to as many as time allows. In the chat ill be posting a link to donate and support of the sensors and destroy. Your purchases make events like to let possible help ensure the future of a language independent bookstore. Thank you so much for showing up in june in in support of our authors and the triple step of booksellers at Harvard Bookstore. We appreciate your support now and always. Finally as you may have experienced in virtual gatherings, we will do our best to resolve technical issues and we appreciate your understanding. Im so pleased that it is tonight speakers, Nicholson Baker is the bestselling author of ten novels and numerous works of nonfiction including anthologies, the mezzanine, substitute, owing to score with 1 million kids and New York Times bestselling award. He is one the National Critics circle award, the hermit has price and an award for American Academy of arts and letters. He will be joined i chose to host of wbur open source christopher light. They were discussed baseless which was discovered as a colorful engrossing regression of senator history. The Seattle Times called it a genre transforming blend of history and memoir offering behindthescenes glimpses of his home life and his work appears. That makes baseless and essential reading for anyone trying to grapple with the role of the u. S. And Global Affairs since the end of world war ii. We are happy to have them both your tonight. Without further ado the digital podium is yours, christopher and nicholson. Hilary, thank you, and its almost as much but as being in the Harvard Bookstore. Thank you for inviting me. Nicholson baker is a friend and weve had this kind of conversation actually quite a number of times before and its always an education to me. Let me just say i dont really need to introduce Nicholson Baker to this audience that i think of as really he writes the kinds of books. One is what i would call photorealistic pros, minute about small things including shoelaces, his most famous opening book but theres also his childlike dare i say but very grownup and the. But then theres a special category, and this book baseless is ended, of lets say nonfiction sort of political history in a certain way but history has never written i wont say never but its a method of looking at history how to describe the . It is antiimperial, antichurchill, it is not the grand scope of how the englishspeaking nations took over the absolute total universe, all that. Its miniature, its intimate and at the center of it always is this incredibly selfconscious vaguely consciousness, modern consciousness in a nightmarish world. This genre in the Nicholson Baker world is my favorite. A sort of pacifist history of war or to, at incredibly moving book both in substance and in the way he went about it. But having said all that, speak as you have with me before, its a kind of detective story. Its a story, a reporters story but also at the highest levels of writers diary up there with all the great writers most intimate diaries. Yes. Well, first of all i want to say hello to everybody and thank you for tuning in. Its amazing to be, these things can happen and a bunch of people come 60 people are here. I cant see you but im so happy you are here. A big crowd at the Harvard Bookstore. Yes. The Harvard Bookstore is one of those places in my memory. I can remember individual books that i have bought there. I remember buying edmund kosice father and son down in the basement there, and its just a place that has a particular flavor and i love the bookstore and im happy to be part of it even if im not in the bookstore. I was trying to write about something that happened a long time ago in this book, and but it just occurred to me that since i didnt know everything about what happened a long time ago because the documents were being withheld, that i would write about what was happening while i was trying to write about what happened a long time ago. I ended up, instead of having one timeline which is a timeline of the early cold war, harry truman, korea, china, a a gathering sense of suspicion and paranoia. I also wanted to write about my own life as i was trying to make sense of that early. It just happened early period. My wife and i got to rescue dioxins the day before dioxins. Start the scene comes to the book but happened weve gotten two very difficult but very lovable dogs the day before. They kind of accompanied me through it and into the very important to the story. So its a book about trying to write a book about what happened a long time ago. A lot of stuff i did know or i forgotten that george kent of the famous exletters defining the cold war was deep in this story. Allen dulles seems to have put one of the main players, frank wisner senior into the job pick up new weapons. Harry truman was more involved than he suggested later. Who are the main players . A lot of players, including Henry Cabot Lodge later but vannevar bush, huge figure, present at mit. I can see on the cover of time magazine. Must make it or something but this cast of characters postwar we have not postwar entering formerly along cold war with russia. Vannevar bush was one of most famous and fascinating characters at the time, or life for summary said he looked like ichabod crane. He had a shock of hair, a very intense guy. He liked to carve pipes and give them to he gave a carved pipe to allen dulles. To the people he really admired he would give a pipe. He was a tremendously powerful figure at mit and he was in charge of the atom bomb project in world war ii. But he was also in charge of the biological warfare project and thats what all begin was in world war ii. It just so happened that after the war was over he stayed on in the government and he started, because he was deeply, deeply suspicious and unhappy about the russians, he decided what was important to do was to ramp up the Germ Warfare Program in the United States in order to triumph over the numerical superiority of the russian army with germs. That was his solution to the cold war was to make russian plants sicken russian people sick, and it was a really bad idea. Was he ever explicit that we cant beat them on the ground in human force . We have to have Something Else . That was a refrain repeated over and over by the secretaries of defense, by all the people in the pentagon. Where every minute of every day, if we tried to fight, the chinese armies and the russian armies and the east german armies that we are going to lose and, therefore, we had to come up with a smarter solution, a new kind of weapon. Because by 1949 the russians have developed the atomic bomb so that was parity there. So what would be going to do . How would we win this war that seem to be in the offing . Was going happen in 1952 they thought and then they reschedule it for 1954. But it especially became worrisome when the korean war itself started. It was a war that was not called a war by harry truman, but because there had been an artificial line drawn across the country of korea by two functionaries meeting in the pentagon, the north became communist and the south became an ally of the United States and, therefore, there was a sort of politicization. It became, and the United States became involved in the civil war in korea. As soon as it happened it was as if the western electric shock that went through washington. And everything that had been plans and schemes and worries and in a general way about the evil empire of russia suddenly became very specific, especially when the United States started losing. There was a feeling that, well, the russian tanks were better than the american text, for instance, and things, very concrete things, question start of the past. Main question was what do we have and what do have in our arsenal that will win this apocalyptic war that is just around the corner . That are two i would say two very specific questions you ask in the search, and what is did they actually put all these bugs and chemical agents together . We knew they lusted for but did they actually ever have serum or whatever is going to be . And secondly, the final smoking gun question, did they ever use it . They never quite denied they wanted to find something and they were working on it. They were commissioning scientists but the always denied that they ever used it. Chief of the government in north korea, also china eventually, accused the United States of planting smallpox during that war. Get to the fundamental question. Did we or didnt we . Did we have ended we use it . Unfortunately, i think the short answer is yes. The chinese and the north koreans were very serious when they brought these charges. They sent a cable to the united nations. It wasnt something they just did casually one date of the this would be a nice thing to say. It was a very serious set of charges, and what this had initially in november of 1950 when the americans led to the south of korea after a massive defeat after the chinese counter attack, that the americans had left behind diseases. The american said thats ridiculous and silly, and, of course, we didnt do that. Several months later a mysterious new disease appeared in north korea called korea hemorrhagic fever, and had existed in a series the little dots along the belt of korea, along the 38th parallel which mystified the american epidemiologists here that i think actually happen. Then there was a second, a massive propaganda battle between the timeliness and the anticommunists, the americans and the british and the french. And that battle, what hinge on whether the americans had flown over individual airplanes and dropped mysterious insect bombs, if you can believe it, in the snow of the very rural areas of china near the korean border, and that i think is come has a slightly different answer and it hinges on the books title. The books title is baseless. The reason it is called baseless is because operation basis was a name of a topsecret air force program that aimed to perfect biological and chemical weapons at the earliest possible date. It was a project that spring to motion on an emergency basis as the korean war got bigger and became more, well, just everything got worse in korea. So project baseless, what was interesting about the word is it has denial built into it. Because the state department was this is a baseless accusation, these are baseless charges, and the expectation was that these particular weapons, if they were used, one of their advantages was come one of the advantages of dialogical weapons is its very hard to determine whether these things happened spontaneously because they are diseases endemic to a country or whether they happen because some other for an airplane has dropped feathers doped with various diseases. Let me just say, i want to quote your man tom kennedy because i didnt get in the podcast we did on this book but its very striking. Training government of course denied this hemorrhagic fever. No less than New York Times with big story saying there is no evidence at all. But you spoke to an exmarine ee tom kennedy who had been there. You talk to him in manhattan and he said that he had been told, mustve been in the hospital, that he had a new disease, hemorrhagic fever, that was carried by a tick on a rat. And what he said to you was, among other things, there was no history of hemorrhagic fever in korea until its use as a germ weapon. This was in an autobiographical note in 2015. He said i was one of those servicemembers expose to the secret crime against humanity. Thats pretty close to the horses mouth. How do we way that . Well, hes a guy who woke up with a fever one day in korea and he was medevac out in a helicopter and you is put in a mash unit, like in the tv show and they said there three quonset huts. If you go into number 3g will die. Number 22 you have a chance and number one youre okay. He went to hunt three and he worked his way through andy barak survives and he was discharged with completely false diagnosis. Hemorrhagic fever was something that just spontaneously happens. I think hes trying his best to explain to himself something i missed that happened to him as a young man in korea. Ended up into a number of men and there were people, americans who died. Hemorrhagic fever is still a problem in korea and theres a problem that was studied by japanese germ experts during the second world war. It was purified and intensified by them and then the americans hired the same germ warfare expert and miraculously somehow this fever appears. I think theres a strong case to be made that a small and very evil program happened somewhere around november of 1950 in which the americans decided to use japanese know how to, in fact, people along a belt in korea. I do think that is true and i think one of the victims was tom kennedy. Can add just a little bit of the japanese background which i happen to know only because a wonderfully marvelous writer gene gillman, dear friend of open source and of all good people, gene gillman wrote a book about basically about the tokyo war crimes, tokyo trials of war crimes that never really took place. We all know about the nuremberg trials, the germans, sort of a matching pair of trials in tokyo which we were left out of it in some fashion because we would have been called on the carpet about the Nuclear Weapons that we dropped on nagasaki and hiroshima. But there was no question and he documented in a marvelous book that the japanese had dropped all kinds of evil bugs on china in the 30s before pearl harbor, before the world war, but the japanese were the World Leaders in this technology, and part of the story you are revealing or confirm is the United States caught onto this and for using the japanese in some fashion into so project. Have got it right . This is a global monstrous story. Gene gillman really did a beautiful job in hidden atrocities telling the story and its a absolutely indispensable book and im sorry that she is gone. Im heartbroken. She would be an incredible witness in this covid moment. She was the wife of matthew matt olsen who is also a major figure in this book. I quote both of them in the book because the above so important to it. But what she chronicles was the fact something of people talked about but she did the best job of it was that there was a desperate attempt to get as many of the japanese germ warfare expert as possible and get them away from the russians and get them into the american orbit and then hide them from view. The russians decided the war crimes trial should take place and that they had a few japanese germ experts. They held their own war crimes trial and theres a full transcript of these trials and its really an appalling book because theres no question that everything people are saying in that book is absolutely, its an absolute transcript of what people actually said and the japanese scientists said i so regret what i did. Its just an amazing book actually come an amazing book. What the result of that was that the russians were upset, worried, frightened of the United States plans and the United States meanwhile had teams of experts in reviewing all these japanese savants of biological weaponry and figuring out how best to take what they had learned. Had done experiments on humans so it was absolutely priceless to their way of thinking, and pull those things back to camp dietrich, the hub of germ warfare and the United States come and see if these particular suite of diseases could be further perfected and intensified so that we could then apply them in a in a hoste matter to the russians. That was the flow. Quick parenthesis and that i want to go someplace else, but here are trump calling coronavirus the china virus. China and once in a while mumbles under its breadth maybe this is an american bio weapon. Maybe this is all bogus. With your incredible depth in history, what is possible in the manipulation of the coronavirus even now since you finished your book . The history of germ warfare in the United States, the history of american scientists getting sick from the own weapons. Lab accidents are just a constant. In this book theres National Institute of health, a man who decides hes going to study q fever and is going to study it because its a very, very dangerous and very were some disease and going to weaponized it. So takes it to the National Institutes of health and people start getting sick there. A person dies. This is a refrain of, in the history of American Laboratory science the diseases get out of laboratories. The first thing, if theres a murder and a couple, the person you want to ask is did the husband do it . The first thing you want to ask always if there is an unexplained, exotic disease that breaks out in a certain place you always want to look to see if there is a laboratory there. At i do not think that the chinese are involved in some sort of evil plan to cook up a germ. They are very concerned about getting a lucrative vaccine for various viruses. All of the american laboratories were doing the same kind of work the National Institute of health were paying the chinese to do this kind of work. The fact is that it may be something to happen in a laboratory, but the first thing you want to do is ask the people who are in charge of the laboratory to open their freezers in their notebooks and explain what happened, and that hasnt happened. I want to digress, nick, because as you sing at the outset this is a historical inquiry but its also, we love nick baker, theres a lot of nick baker. We just read a paragraph, and i bet you will find it, i think it is page 225, which are talking about your method, your house, your wandering, your dogs, your wife, your weather. So you are in name but why do you write these books . The book is, this chapter, the type of the chapters april 15, 2019, monday. Each chapter is titled by a day of the week and and i just had gotten very want up and i sort of have revealed my