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I produce hundreds of our events, we will be taking questions from the audience so be sure to make your question as a comment and follow us on facebook to be notified about our fantastic Virtual Events. From the bestselling author lawrence of arabia, gripping history of the early years of the cold war, the cias covert volume against communism and the tragic consequences that affect america today. The end of world war ii the United States dominate the world militarily, economically and in moral standing. Seen as a victory over tierney and a champion of freedom it was clear to some the soviet union is already executing a plan to expand, implement revolution around the world. The American Governments strategy relied on the secret effort of the newly formed cia. The quiet americans 4 cia spies at the dawn of the cold wara tragedy in 3 acts chronicles the exploits of Michael Burke, a charming but former football star fallen on hard times, frank lightner, psion of a wealthy family, a sophisticated german jew who escaped the nazis and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. Trying to out with the ruthless kgb in berlin, parachuting into Eastern Europe, plotting cools and directing mores against communist insurgents in asia but time and again their efforts went awry, for it by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government and more profoundly the decision to abandon american ideals. By the mid1950s the soviet union had a straight a hold on Eastern Europe, the us had become disastrous intervention in vietnam and america, the beacon of democracy was overthrown, democratically elected government and earning the hatred of much of the world. This, native act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the cold war into place for decades to come. Anderson brings the telling of the story all the narrative research, skeptical eye and lively probe that made lawrence of arabia a Major International bestseller. The intertwined lines of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom from the ravages of the cold war, led them to different fates. Two quick the cia in despair, one became the archetype of the duplicitous and restrictive anyone would be so heartbroken he would take his own life. The quiet americans 4 cia spies at the dawn of the cold wara tragedy in 3 acts is the story of these four men and how the United States at the pinnacle of its power managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world and the author of say nothing says in this sweeping, vivid, beautifully observed book Scott Anderson on earth devastating secret history of how the United States lost the plot during the cold war. By focusing on this twisting Colorful Life of four legendary spies anderson distills the larger geopolitical saga into an intimate story of flawed but talented men, the disease of empire and the inescapable moral howard hazard, and the unintended consequences of espionage and interventionism that still resonates powerfully today. Scott anderson is author of two novels and four works of nonfiction including lawrence of arabia, international that so that was the finalist for the National Book critics circle award and New York Times notable book, veteran war correspondent, he is a corresponding writer for the New York Times magazine and tonight he will be in conversation with juilian sancton, a senior features editor at departures magazine and has worked on publications including vanity fair, esquire and bloomberg business. He is the author of the upcoming Nonfiction Book the house at the end of the world about an illfated 19thcentury antarctic expedition providing a link to that as well so if you want to preorder that you can. I am so happy and thrilled to welcome Scott Anderson and juilian sancton. Today is the publication day which is a great day for authors when they get to see their book in the aisles for the first time. If everyone would help celebrate that by giving scott and julian a hearty round of applause wherever you are loud enough that we can all hear it, thank you so much. Thanks so much for everything and having us and for everybody tuning in. This is such a critical period of history, a sprawling story in terms of geography and time even though a couple decades that you converse so much goes on in that period. You dealt with this by focusing on four people, rather extremely influential, not household names, how did you settle on this approach and how do you settle on these four guys . The product of the cold war, i grew up in east asia, the front lines so these are heavily militarized zones, dictatorships that a remotely anticommunist, the success of cold war is a real thing, i grew up with that. I always wanted to explore that in writing and starting to do a little bit of research, i came to the conclusion so much to come almost 50 years, so much was set into place between world war ii and the mid1950s. 1944 fdr was talking about world war ii being the end of empire, dismantling the french empire and america was going to be this harold of democracy and 12 years on, 1956 and now the United States is paying around the world and they are not bringing democracy, they are overturning it. We want to study how did that happen . It also occurred to me people on the front lines, generals or statesmen or men and women on the front lines and when it comes to the cold war, they were spotters. The ones who infiltrated each side and helped fuel the arms race, i thought great, i get to write about that and the process of finding these four, in the time frame i am writing about, the field operatives, Edward Lansdale were wellknown in the other two were not at all so it took a lot. I wanted to find people who big stuff had happened to them during this timeframe who then were also changed by it and left a paper trail showing that change and after looking at 25 different potential people to focus on i ended up with these four. Kind of the proverbial chest of letters in the attic. Peterson shell was still alive, 97 years old, the last surviving member of the cia of the cold war period and completely lose it and agreed to a series of interviews. One challenge im sure you faces you are writing a history of an agency dedicated to secrecy and deception so i assume first of all it must have been very hard to find people writing reliable stories and second of all how the cia must have had a hand read acting what they were able to put out, the first one was redacted and can you tell us about that . Yes. There is censorship but in the United States the censorship tends to be very uncomplicated. Theres a page redacted was redacted, sometimes i could pick up the name through a black chart they could use or accounting letters of the name they redacted. You can triangulate information, it happens all the time, two minutes of topsecret meetings and memorandums of that meeting, go to one of their memorandums and it will be almost all blacks out and the other one would be fairly untouched. Michael burke actually wrote about a biography and because he was in the cia and had to go in front of the cia review board they completely gutted the book. It was published but all the best parts had been at sized. But there was a cia official who said i happen to know theres uncensored manuscript at Boston University and so sure enough i went to Boston University and there it was, unredacted manuscript so i could fill in all the details that had been taken out. Host there were a few others that struck me as people that could have made great characters to focus on. Rufus phillips but anyway, i believe you spoke to one other 90yearold. I forget what his name was but to get him to agree to talk about this or was he just waiting for somebody . Probably somewhere in between. Guys who are still around still, they live under a lifelong not a band but to the day they die there are certain things they cant talk about legally but what i wanted to talk about was what was it like. He was the station chief in berlin from the end of world war ii to 1952 so berlin was ground 0 of confrontation between east and west during those years. I wanted him to tell me war stories essentially. What was it like . What were the pressures he faced and he told some Amazing Stories early on. He was very clear how utterly clueless the americans were going up against the soviets who had deception and disinformation down to a fine art and the other thing i should add, a sign of just how out to lunch, when peter showed up in west berlin to become the covert operations chief in 1945 there were tons if not thousands of soviet spies operating. Peter had just turned 24. The soviet monolith. He told the story in 1946 they were running chains of spies and informants all through east germany, eastern germany and all being run by former German Military officers. He talked about german arrogance. They were not concerned how long people were involved and how one night one guy disappeared, and probably 300 people, they had their chains wired at all times. So 67 years later, all these people the kgb had their act together, america sort of winking it where the kgb, the elaborate hoaxes and has that always is that still the case, that they have a ducks in a row and whatever the inheritors of the kgb are . Are we now living through the consequences or the continuation of the period you are talking about . I think so. Two things you still see today but certainly you saw it from the day world war ii ends and even before, the soviets understood the next enemy was the worst specifically the United States, that we were going to be adversaries and we see that from stalin all the way down and americans were slow to understand that. Truman came in in april of 1945 as the war was ending and for some crucial years he kind of imagined the Wartime Alliance might be safe, these were two crucial years in which americans were essentially demilitarized while soviets were taking over Eastern Europe. That is one thing. The second thing is soviets, the things they would do in the field, to the western mind kind of unbelievable. One thing they do quite frequently, theyve done this very recently is dangle across to the west, dangle is a false spectrum. He will come across and say i want to detect and to build up his own edicts, he will that out other russian or soviet agents in the field, these are his colleagues and they will get arrested and thrown in prison and sometimes if it is an important of operation one guy could read out a dozen of his own colleagues on the field under orders from the top so this is a coldblooded miss, not the cia couldnt cope in other ways but this is something no western intelligence agency, we dont sacrifice one of your men let alone 12 to help one. You make the case that mentality stems ultimately from the pathology of one man, stalin. The whole idea of the paranoia it takes to behave that way and to treat human life as expendable. Is that an exaggeration, to say the kgb m o and the ruthlessness of the soviets at the beginning is an extension of his own ruthlessness and paranoia . I think it absolutely, the figure of stalin absolutely added to the paranoia and even panic. Already they had nobody behind the iron curtain reporting what was going on. Well into the 1950s the cia didnt have a mall even in the fifth layer let alone high up, they had nobody. On top of that you have a figure like stalin, a paranoid sociopath and how do you protect what he is capable of doing next . It sounds kind of silly but if anyone has seen the movie fargo the geopolitics reminds me of that. It has been a long time but fargo is the story of a gardenvariety crime where no one is supposed to get her but a sociopath in the middle of it and i really think so much of trying to figure out what was coming next revolved around this unpredictable character. An area where it seems like the cia had some success in the soviets as far as i can tell didnt lag behind is psychological warfare. Is a correct they werent doing it on the level of the americans and second of all tell me about the bread lansdale. Edward lansdale is one of the four follow andys operating in asia almost exclusively, hes an ad executive in San Francisco and he came to asia at a time when a loss of uncertainties were just starting up in the philippines, and the very simple concept, if you want to defeat communists and went over the populace you had to give the local population the government they could believe in and that is where it first went. The country had been for decades by a very corrupt oligarchy, the same thing that is happening there now and his idea was you need to reform the government, put in someone whos not out to rob the country. As far as actual fighting against the communist insurgency you need to get soldiers out of their barracks and in the field, not just fighting communists but to be seen as a force of good among people, rebuild schools, bridges, harvests and lansdale not singlehandedly but had a huge role in defeating the communist insurgency in the philippines. He was so successful that by 1954 that when vietnam was perking up the cia director said just go do the same thing you did in the philippines so he goes out and tries and comes close to being successful like he did in the philippines where he handpicked governance, handpicked a new Prime Minister in vietnam and a whisper of how to defeat communism and reform bureaucracy and it got so big, vietnam, a small settled hearts and minds by ideas that got swept away by the huge military. One thing, in 1960 few for he headed up the First American military mission to South Vietnam and 12 others died. And of course eventually followed by 3 million others. You talk about sort of near intervention and how that might have led, several other things could have defused the cold war, tell us about these moments things could have gone differently and ended the war. I mentioned roosevelt 1944, his ideas what the resolution of world war ii was supposed to bring, spreading democracy. He dies three weeks before the end of the war. Truman is in over his head. He first meets stalin and after his first meeting with stalin that summer says to stalin, he is honest, smart as hell but i can deal with it and those self assurance, he is wrong on all counts. That is where you see fdrs death when it came was kind of a fork in the road. If he had been president longer he would have known how to deal with stalin. Would have reacted to soviet usurping of Eastern Europe in a way where truman to my mind had 0 headlights. The other great turning point, in 1966, spontaneous revolution, people rose up in the streets. The and gary and military joined the revolutionary and there was this moment where khrushchev one night said we have to let hungary go. We cant put this down militarily and the tanks were leaving hungary and the very next day november 1st, 1956, over the course of the late khrushchev changes his mind and thinks if the americans do anything to help the hungarian revolutionaries they would have done it by now, they are not coming and if we let hungary go we are going to let the cancer will spread through Eastern Europe and we will lose Eastern Europe. And the incredibly sad thing, the Eisenhower Administration rolled out against communism and encouraging people in Eastern Europe and all of a sudden we cant do anything. And so a crunch. Host all of the guys you talk about started with great intentions, living up to the idea of america as the morally right upstanding postwar savior and all went pearshaped after a while and they ended up participating in some pretty horrible things, backing up dictators, letting down legitimate movements. Did you end of judging the men you write about . Know. I dont. I dont. I see it as it is easy to do that. It is easy with 70 years of hindsight to stand in judgment of people. I think also what happened to almost all of these men, it is very gradual, a gradual process. Right after the war they start working with military Intelligence Officers because they are the only ones who know what is happening and then it becomes people who are members of the nazi party and you go on and on working with bona fide nazi workers and it doesnt start out that way. It is a gradual process. The other thing is for all of these men they saw the cold war happening every other day, stuff that happens all the time, this was an exit stencil crisis, exit stencil is in the world. Having come at this, world war ii veterans, to come into this new concept, they also the end justified the means and