A United States senator again respectfully is subject to a sense of selfimportance after it while and youve got to guard against that. I think at the time president elect reagan said to you, think he came up to you at a party. Jack is too modest to tell the story but i will tell you the story that i heard. And the story was that on his first visit to washington having won the election he was being vetted at Katharine Grahams place, the famous owner of the Washington Post and there was a receiving line. Reagan arrived. Jack happened to be there and reagan came in and he was talking to kay graham and he looked over and he saw jack watson. He made a beeline over to jack. The story i heard said jack, its so good to see you. My people tell me that if you had been chief of staff from the beginning i wouldnt be here. [laughter] a story of extreme exaggeration. [laughter] i think theres a little bit of truth to it. He did say it but he was also one of the most charming man that ever journal a breath. I want you to have a chance and youll have a chance to ask some questions outside. I wanted you to have a chance if you dont already have this book and chris is going to be signing copies of it, it is as jack said, it is a fascinating story. You get to know not only the chiefs of staff but the president s they serve and the people around them. Its hard to put down this book. I encourage you to get it. Please join me in thanking chris and jack. [applause] and if you want join us in the lobby. Thank you all very much for being here tonight. [inaudible conversations] next on after words pulitzer prizewinning journalist Helene Cooper reports on the life and presidency of liberias first elected female president in her book madam president , the story of Ellen Johnson sirleaf. Host i must tell you that i have enjoyed every minute of reading the book. Thats the best thing you could say to me. Host when theres a book that you really like huron most disappointed when it comes to the end and thats exact to the way i felt in reading it. It was very special to me because i certainly know president Ellen Johnson sirleaf if i thought i knew about her past and all that you went into such incredible detail about her rise and it left me feeling what an unbelievable leader she is, International Leader but it also made me want to ask about you. I know this isnt your first book. Your first book is the house of sugar beach, is that right . Guest thats right. I will just echo something you just said. I thought i knew a lot about her too. I had heard about for all of my life. She was a political dissidents so once i started digging into it i was amazed at how much i didnt know. I am from iberia and my family to send it from the free american migrate great great grandfather Elijah Johnson was on the first ship of slaves that sailed from new york harbor in 1820. They ended up first in sierra leone and eventually ended up in liberia in 1822. And thats on my moms side. My fathers side there were five brothers sailed from Norfolk Virginia in 18292 liberia and thats where my dads side of the family comes from. So i grew up there and only moved to the United States in 1980 right after the military coup in my. They were buried rave and courageous but they set up a very unbalanced antebellum society the same society that they had fled from the American South except this time they were the ones that made it over. This whole unbalanced system exploded in 1980 after the military coup. I had family members who are in the government who were targeted. Host was he in the book where he said they marched the people out . Guest one of the 13 but interestingly there were 13 cabinet officials and one of the few who was not and we explored some of the reasons why in this book as well. Host i have to tell you was one of the riveting scenes in the book because when you talk about how she was basic way pretty much anticipating being executed because she knew what had happened and the way the people were crying to her to save them before they were marched out. He was not able to do that obviously but that was one of the most captivating parts of the book. I have to tell you i think theres a part of u. S. History that people dont really know about and i like the way in the beginning of the book you describe how was really a combination of forces. There were that wanted the races that wanted the black people to leave because they didnt want free black people roaming around the state. There were abolitionists that combined forces that led to the first shift but i think the u. S. Population knew so little about the slavery. Back in this part of our history we didnt know about but i do have to tell you i was disappointed to hear that our ancestors went back there and replicated not completely the oppression they face in the United States but certainly the way they treated the native liberians for the native africans because they were on liberia was not very good. Guest i think about the universality of the way human beings treat each other. Our ancestors who went back there, one of the good things they did, britain had outlawed the slave trade in west africa at that point and they were very very antislavery. Keep in mind a lot of the native africans who had met them there had been engaged in the slave trade. They were the people who were selling their brothers and sisters into slavery and they were saying this way of life as an economic staple for them eradicated. That was part of some of the tension that you also had a lot of belief among these colonists that because and this is where you get into some of the racial complexity that liberia has been dealing with for almost 200 years now. A lot of these were mixed race, children of white slave owners had these mixedrace children and wanted to get these children off the plantations. So these kids went back to africa thinking that, many of them thinking that because they had white they were as superior. This race and class and the slave trade and all of that is a part of what became liberia. Its such an interesting history and so wedded to the United States. In the beginning of the book you talk about the various tribes that were in conflict with each other before the africanamericans arrived and then later in the book you talk about the tensions between the various sects. Were their original tribal differences . Guest some of that was in some of the wasnt. That goes back a long way so a lot of these entities when the freed american slaves arrived it just became native liberians ursus the freed slaves. We called them the congo people. Once that slipped away we sort of went back to a lot of tension between the different ethnic that have been there to begin with then and there were some that were created later on when the military coup was led by the guy who became president and he elevated and pointed all of them to high levels of the library and office. It was just different people and that angered a lot of the other tribes. We have a lot of tribe warfare going on as well. That was one of the things that led to the civil war. Host when you were 14 come he left in 1980 and i wanted to know if you could describe what life was like before the coup. As a 14yearold you saw some of the beginning to happen in the attention and all. But what was life like for you in liberia before . Guest for me it was at completely normal childhood. It was treated as the Little Princes protected and my family was an upperclass position. Even though we werent terribly poor country i was protected from all of that. I went to school and i have my brothers and my sisters. I played out in the yard. My parents, we had moved to this big house to house some sugar beach that was on the Atlantic Ocean with 22 rooms. I had eye on bedroom for the first time in my life and i was scared to sleep by myself. What was common in liberia at the time they went and got my sister and her mom lived with us because it was a chance for her to go to a better school. This was very common in liberia. We were raised together as sisters and when the coup happened in our family was attacked we ran away and eunice didnt come with the spirit she chose not to come which was something i didnt realize at the time. I thought that we just left her but its a long complicated story that i go into in my first book. We were separated for 23 years and a wasnt until 2010 come i didnt know she was alive. I went back and found her again. Thats what the first book was about. At the time when the coup happened in 1980 my family, my mom was gangraped by soldiers. We went there a lot as immigrants as refugees actually. We got amnesty under the reagan amnesty act in 1988 but my childhood was growing up as a librarian. My life seizing up in the 19802 and coming to the United States in trying to push the library and part out of my life. All i wanted was to be like everybody else. Host of course. Guest and realizing years later i needed that part of my life back. Host when did you know madam president . What she president or did you know her before . Guest when we match it does become president in 2006. She addressed a joint session of congress. Ive known about her all my life rated. Host what did you know . Guest she was minister of finance in 1979 in 1980 when the coup happened. She knew my parents and she was somebody as a child growing up in liberia i heard that she was always speaking truth to power and i was criticizing the same government that she worked for and then in 1985 when she was arrested and thrown into jail i heard all about that. She became at this time sort of a political icon. I was about to say a bad word. She was the angela davis you know political fighting truth to power and jailed and she wasnt going to bend and they were trying to get her to take the senate seat and she wouldnt do it. Host i think i remember seeing a picture in there of her and it certainly reminded me of the 60s actually where she comes out wearing that tshirt. She looks like a rock star. Guest i had known her for a few years so i knew her as the elegant stateswoman. Host you have met her. Guest when you first meet her she comes across as very standoffish and then you put that together with [laughter] host absolutely. You were talking about you knew her as minister of finance. Wasnt she the only woman who had a commission that high in the country . Guest at the time i think she was the only woman in the cabinet in 1979 in 1980. She was the certainly the first woman to be in such a high position but its a very page for a cool place. Thereve always been a handful of women in higher levels of government but in 1979 that was a pretty big deal. Host a few things that were fascinating to me. I knew a little bit about her past in terms that she worked at the world bank and i. She was a harvard trained economist and the way you describe in the book she systematically build Close Relationships with the International Finance community and i wondered if she had it in their mind. You talk about in the very beginning she knew she was destined for something but i wondered if she had it in the back of her mind always that she would wind up being president. Shes her tediously use those relationships to deal with liberia. I dont think anybody else would have been able to have done that. I dont think anybody else could have. She was about to be kicked out of the imf. The country was postwar apocalyptic mess at this point. That then through 15 years of civil war, 23 years of financial mismanagement and the place was a rack. Because she had International Compacts and she had this background she was uniquely qualified to begin the proper process and to get the debt forgiven so that was a big deal. I asked her many times when did you decide he wanted to run for president than ive ever gotten a good answer from her. I think it started a long time ago. I think it started back when she left her abusive husband. She was the victim of domestic abuse. She got married at 17. By the time she was 20 when she had four boys under the age of four or five. She left them and came to the United States. She let them with her mother and her motherinlaw and came to the United States to get her associates degree. She went back to liberia and started working as the ministry of finance. A very few handful of women were working in those positions of finance in the 1960s. You can imagine a very maledominated area and i think it started back then. She had fights with her husband and he was very abusive. She started an affair with another liberian man. Host that was pretty bold in the 1960s. Guest but she finally walk out and took control of her life it was the middle of the 1960s. You think back to then, women didnt really do that. She just took it and took it so she was pretty extraordinary from the getgo. Has gone knowing how humble she is guest she is not humble. Host everything counter ive had with her she is so understated. She comes to the u. S. And she is no stranger on the hill. And most people know her but she has always been understated given her stature and all. But i think given all of her experience in the financial world, internationally i dont know how she could have looked at those guys whether you are talking about doe or taylor or any of them and not see them as guest idiots . Host thank you. I think that was the name of one of the chapters of the book. She calls the president and idiot. Guest that was in philadelphia. Then she incomprehensibly went back to liberia. She called the military dictator of library and idiot and went back to liberia and they fear her in jail. Host do you think it weighed heavy on her initial support for taylor . Guest thats a big one mission her reputation. When Charles Taylor in 1980 find right at the turn of 1989, 1990 she supported him. A lot of people who probably should have known better better supported him at the time because they were so fed up. The cia helped bust him out of jail. Host looking at the people that initially supported taylor we could be here all day. She initially supported him and it took eight months before it became, it was clear in liberia that few forces were as bad as though was bill was. But it became known that the people that he unleashed in the country were easily as violent as he was and he unleashed this of rape andasol the murder on the civilian people not only attacking the government soldiers to the library and resilience as well. When Charles Taylor killed one of her Close Friends for her to turn on him. She still paying the price even today. She should. You turn out to be a math man. Host but i wonder and i dont remember you describing in the book what was the initial reason for it . They killed doe. Guest those tribes supported him so that was what the whole civil war was about. John taylor stayed in liberia in december 1989 through the ivory post and came over the border. There were so many people the tribes that have been attacked by the doe regime, the people that supported another liberian who tried a coup in 1985. He had gone after everybody in that tribe so there were people who were very very angry at doe and they were the ones who flocked to taylor that those tribes stated thats where you, thats where the actual civil war comes from. And that was terrific and thats what started the whole thing. Liberia became famous for the child soldiers. Both sides, government soldiers and the rebels, the children of these women turning them into child soldiers in raping the mothers and from the children and taking the children away. It was a truly horrific time for liberia. Host and you would read about how the kids were drugged. Switching gears a minute thinking about the market women, the women who organized. Guest they were my favorite. Posted definitely one of the favorite parts of my the book knowing how they deliberately organize and then theres one part in the book where they are organizing separate, Johnson Sirleaf going about doing a Traditional Campaign and they were doing their own separate organizing. They essentially confronted her at one point in the capital and she becomes very emotional. I just wondered what you thought about that. Why didnt she recognize them in the beginning . Was that that she didnt want to be the woman president . She didnt want to be associated with womens . What was the reason that they organize separately . Guest i dont think that she didnt want to be the woman president that their technocratic parts of her personality. They dont rule her but this woman is in her heart a mobile bureaucrat. She looks at things, she breaks down problems pragmatically. She is not overly emotional pitch he can be and there are times that she comes that weighs weighs things in a very poor cat bureaucratic way. She thought this is a country that is this and that and that im going to fix fix it. She thought that she could win the presidency on her own merits just presenting her wonkish will. She gave speeches and people just looked at her. Guest meanwhile though and she was aware of this but there was this underground Guerrilla Campaign going on by these market women who had endured 15 years of horrific civil war which they thought was brought on and it was, brought on by the men. They saw this harvard educated global bureaucrat. She stood up to doe and they are to knew who she was in they thought she is our girl, we are going after her. She took away while to realize the one she realize she embraced the entire move in. Host another fascinating part was when they were praying and they could have been executed. I know when the men drove up in tanks and. They are very feared soldiers and this is 2003 in the end of the war when the women were so tired of war. They started paying for humanity there is this scene and i talk to the women who were there. They were praying in their white tshirts at airfields. They had been praying for days. Its a deeply religious country who believe in african religions and also very christian and also a lot of muslims as well. Charles taylor Security Forces would order to shoot them. The women are continuing to pray they couldnt bring themselves to shoot them and they walked away. That was a moment. Host it was just like it was a moment for her. When she became presid