Devices please turn them off and walter will discuss his book for 25 minutes and then take as many questions as we can fit in. We encourage questions. After the q and a its a great help if you fold up your own chair and place it against the book shelf. Thank you. The signing line will be here and books are for sale upfront. He tells the story of Freeman Bernstein, boxing promoter, and card shark. And the man who pulled the conon the nazi government which resulted in one of many an effort. He is his great uncle. Walter did get hustle. He has covered every president ial election since 1980, and has written for roll call. Time, newsweek and the washington post. He has served as bureau chief, as a speechwriter in the carter white house. Is a lecturer. And were pleased that he is here tonight. [applause] i want to thank politics and pros, which is one of the great bookstores. I love it. And i love that politics and pros, is delivering. And looking around. I dont know how many are old enough to remember, the old, old, 1950s t. V. Show, this is your life. Well thats a little bit how i feel, looking around the room and seeing so many old friends. Let me start off by this book really starts, with my father. My father, he died in 2004 was a connecticut city planner, mildmannered city planner who went tom zoning board hearings in the evening. Racy upbringing. But my father kept talking about his uncle. My grandmothers older brother and he kept saying, he was really, big in vaudeville and he knew people like sophie tucker. And he married a showgirl and he cheated hitler on a nickel deal. Wait a minute. Were in a connecticut living room. It was like my father saying you know, son, youre a direct descendant of the sitting bull. After my father died i didnt really think about Freeman Bernstein until 2010 when a visiting cousin from paris showed up and the visiting cousin was from a branch of the family, i didnt recognize the name. And hes doing research, not for him but for his sister. Donna. So there we are, two guys, we go out to lunch and we are trying, over eggs and onions, we are desperately trying to maintain conversation. It is flagging because, how much can you talk about family, among two people who dont care about family. After about 45 minutes in, he says to me, you know, the only interesting thing i ever heard about my family was that i had a great uncle who cheated hitler. Wait a minute. I had a great uncle, who cheated hitler so, i was told. I took enough College Courses to know that there were two tribes, on two islands in the Pacific Ocean 2,000 miles apart and they have religion, based on the arrival of a white ship that probably was a white ship. Now we are about to deal with the first lucky thing in doing hustling hitler, and migrate unexels name was Freeman Bernstein. It would be hard to find sam bernstein. So i went to all right. Lets be honest, i can brag about my research methods, they started off with mr. Google. I typed the name Freeman Bernstein, into google and i expected to only come up with a pod dietrist, in minknee ap bliss. It recounts how one Freeman Bernstein, metals dealer, and former vaudeville manager had been arrested at midnight in the back of the limo, smoking his cigar, having just left me wests apartment. He was arrested for cheating the canadians. He was indicted from new york, and this was a fugitive warrant, in los angeles. Okay, im hooked. But the moment that really hooked me was the last paragraph, of this 1937 unsigned, l. A. Times story. Mr. Bernstein asked a visiting reporter for a cigar, in los angeles jail. When told there was no cigar available he settled for a cigarette. And blew a perfect smoke ring. I mean, forget the Surgeon General for a moment. I wanted to be related to someone after 24 hours, in l. A. Lockup, could still blow a perfect smoke ring. This got me started on the quest, and the next moment came, when, in the new york public library, we, i found a 50 page pamphlet that, why do i feel was not in heavy demand . It was a pamphlet by Freeman Bernstein, was hitlers nickel hijacked. And reading it i discovered, if you believe his story, somewhere on the high seas, between canada and germany, another boat came up with the exact same weight of the nickel, in scrap metal and substituted the cargo. In the book, one other thing, a jew born in 1873 claimed that he met with chancellor hitler. And, in his telling, hitler spoke flawless english. I mean its amazing how sloppy it is, when you have original sources. That was enough, in fact, i was going through one of the upsanddowns of journalism and my wife was with me and i said, i know they say in times of trouble you can depend on your family, but this is ridiculous. Win tip, it really helps to sell a book if you can get adolf hitler and mae west into the opening paragraph and neither is a metaphor. [laughter] i spent five years researching the life of Freeman Bernstein, a person who variety, in his 1942, obituary called a cash ter yes, sirrer year. The nickel deal was just the end of a long career as successes as a manager and silent movie producer, abject failures and rar interesting approaches to honesty. [laughter] rose across america, shows up, speaking no english and inspired by the statue of liberty, goes to work in a garment factory, and goes, to church, and only put young david through medical school. We have all read that. We have seen the stories of the jewish gangsters, and the people for whom a submachine gun. I better not use weaponry, a gun, is really not a a gun is part of their lively hood and dead bodies come with the turf. But theres a middle ground that no one writes about and that is jews who believe that honesty is the best policy, if you are born a wasp, and if you were given membership in the Union League Club at birth. For them, it works fine. For people without those advantages, honestly works only when it is convenient. That got me started down this road, and i cant tell retell all of his life but, i can tell you, some high points. He started off, i mean he always, he he was known in sprawdville for having the loudest voice, biggest cigars extremes and not paying his bills. He was successful enough, biggest small time agent, he booked acts, into places like scranton, pennsylvania. Syracuse, new york. And towns not big enough. And he had relatively sometimes, major figures on the way up, and both george burns, and actually mae west also claims that he helped her, gave her, her start on stage. The point about all this, is he wasnt a nobody. But he kept his dreams always surpassed his income. [laughter] in 1904 he had the dream, enough with the surkit its time for the bernstein circuit. He gathered together 17 theaters, in places like scranton, harrisburg, and guaranteed them split fee entertainment. Bernstein production and it worked like a charm until he had to change acts. The fact is, that in vaudeville, the only way to get people coming back, is there had to be something new each monday. And the problem was, the gate receipts werent big enough to book a second tier of good acts. So he had to book a second tier of very bad eangts. [laughter] the gate receipts such, that there was only enough money for one train ticket out of town. [laughter] i will let you guess who got it. In vaudeville he specialized in a subset of vaudeville called, freaks. And what they were, they were reality t. V. If you were the other woman, in a famous divorce case which ended, with your note tor righty, theres freeman trying to book you at 10,000 a week. May, in the 18 90s, was an american young actress who hit london and took up with the british royalty. Particularly, lord hope. The owner of the hope diamond. And may actually the hope diamond for about 7 years, until she ran off with someone more attractive and decidedly less wealthy. So down on her luck, freeman would put her on stage for 1,000 a week. He did things like this. But, vaudeville dried up, by 1914, and silent movies were killing the good days of vaudeville and he was broke. He was really broke. It was a reenactment of the battle of saratoga called continental. You didnt see . May ward clambered up a 40 foot flagpole to show the stars and stripes . It was inspiring. The second film had a wonderful plot. May ward as this innocent girl in a boarding school, obstructed by white slavers and brought to new york to live a debauched life only to be rescued in the final real by her loyal boyfriend from pennsylvania. It was wonderful. Except the sensors did not capture the mood of a movie called virtue and focused a little too much on the debauched scenes in new york in the middle and was banned in philadelphia. He was banned in new york that he was banned everywhere. This led to the business necessity known in the annals of American Business as the insurance fire. By the 1920s, he had gone a little more rogue. He and his wife who retired from vaudeville loved ocean life. Freeman was a card sharp and what he was wonderful that was fleecing his fellow first class passengers with their money during the five or six days from new york to southhampton or share borg and the best thing they did was the anniversary hustle and it worked like this. First night out in the first class saloon they walk in arm and arm and say tonight is our anniversary, free champagne for everyone. We want all of you to be our newfound friends and celebrate with us and there was no con. The champagne was legit. It flowed, it was good vintage stuff. The next afternoon, normally these wealthy people in firstclass wouldnt like it when a stranger suggests a little card game for fun, but Freeman Bernstein wasnt a stranger. He was there close friend who was buying them champagne the night before. Invariably by the time the boat docked, freeman made 10 times the cost of the champagne. By 1929, he was a little desperate, looks like Freeman Bernstein, at the boston garden, he organized an irish festival under the name of roger oh ryan. It was authentic. The stone was authentically dug up. And the irish razorback cakes came from the estate in new jersey, and more importantly the meals were provided by demi moore. The placemats were stolen. Irish stew was cooked by not duty policeman at the irish fair. This was a glorious Financial Success and this will shock all of you. Roger oh ryan disappeared just before the performers were going to do that. This time, the Boston Police and pasta newspaper tracked them down and made a lot of attention to a man they called mister oh ryanstein. Not my joke but the boston herald. I dont want to borrow the sports book that did not go right in the Hotel New York in 1930, the only way to pay off the gamblers was for freeman to write a few. And the hotel cashed, and freeman love hotels, and love writing checks in canadian banks. At the end of railroad lines, four to six weeks for consultants. The second grand larceny indictment was time to relocate. Freeman bernstein moved to shanghai and crowned himself j king of china. It was a stirring investiture a little like king arthur and the sword in the stone but he actually traveled all over asia to get jules, and mae west sketched out in his autobiography, goodness had nothing to do with that. He had a novel way of smuggling jewelry. Tools. He and his wife didnt have children. He traveled with this beautiful white carrier. And three hours outside of port before facing us customs the dog was fed a mineral rich diet. What could be cuter than this distinguished gentleman coming back to the orient accompanied by this beautiful little ball of fluff with a slightly protruding stomach . All of this set up the great con i will not go into much detail on which was he and the corrupt metals dealer got the idea for selling the nazis on bogus canadian nickel. It turned out nickel in the 1930s was desperately needed for lining the insides of guns and armor plating. If you intended to invade poland and france you needed nickel and canadian nickel was the only nickel available but the canadians were keenly aware of the number of canadian soldiers who died in the trenches of world war i from guns fired by germans lined with canadian nickel. Almost impossible to export canadian nickel so freeman and his partner set the word out in new york that they had 200 tons of canadian nickel and sparked the understandable bidding war, the germans represented by a fellow named otto costa, franz kafkas first cousin. Im the only person who did a book on a drifter who took out of the nyu library and economic volume called kafkas relatives. It is in the bibliography. So the all of them working together created this bidding war but they kept whispering we cant label this when we export it as canadian nickel or the mounties will stop us so we need canadian craft metal and whenever a question was raised, doing it this way to hide what we are doing from analysis or they find out. The metal had to be inspected. All that meant was the metal inspector had to be bribed and the entire deal was done with 20 pounds of nickel. Not 20 tons, 20 pounds, a small metal shop in lower manhattan, this was his constant sample case, injected at the top in toronto when the barrels were inspected. Ultimately he had the good fortune if you are exporting something from halifax in march and the temperature outside is7 you can have pretty good hope that the cargo will not be closely inspected. Freeman from his days in vaudeville knew when to get off stage so as soon as he was paid 150,000, about 2 million today upfront, he took off for the orient. When they both landed in hamburg, instead of hard to get canadian nickel the nazis opened up hard to get canadian tin cans, hard to get Canadian Auto bodies, hard to get canadian discarded break rooms and the middle dealer in toronto called in his number 2 bundles. He was indicted through the middleman in new york and locked up in la lockup where he spent two months in jail. He was backed by the Hollywood Jewish community. He portrayed himself as a martyr to the nazis when he wasnt claiming the nazis got what they paid for, melt down what i gave them, there is some nickel in there somewhere. s lawyer turned out to be on his way up, a man about town named greg bouncer who was dating, dating might be the polite word, the 17yearold lana turner. During despite his sleepless night, he was a very good lawyer and by rallying the jewish community, including a major producer named joseph shank who was cofounder of 20th century fox, the governor of california quickly figured there was more Campaign Contributions to be made from keeping Freeman Bernsteins friends happy rather than indicting him to the new york das office where there were no Campaign Contributions. A year later he was indicted again, rested on a fugitive warrant for bum checks and the Hotel New Yorker, was hard to blame on the nazis so he tried. The governor of california was staunch, said he couldnt be tried, he went back to new york after a day in the tombs, announced he would help the prosecutor convict his confederates. He didnt prove to be that reliable a witness and after two years of supporting him the new york das office sent him to california. I have done this as i said with 2500 newspaper clips and 1500 pieces of legal document. The wonderful thing about being a con man is you leave a paper trail. The only family paper i ever found was a telegram Freeman Bernstein wrote from hollywood to my parents in new york for their wedding on august 10, 1941, and a telegram, all 10 words promise sunshine galore and it is signed colonel Freeman Bernstein. I spent a lot of time staring at that telegram which i found in my parents papers and wondering why did he sign it colonel . My father knew the only time he dealt with the colonel was when he investigated the war department, and incumbent after the war, presumably my mother would ask my father who is this military hero and be set straight . I like to picture Freeman Bernstein with a flower in his boutonniere charming the Western Union woman as he sent off the telegram by signing with a flourish colonel Freeman Bernstein. He died in 1942 in december, in the hotel room of a hollywood producer named William K Howard, a pretty major 1930s producer. What i would like to imagine is Freeman Bernstein, when he had the fatal heart attack, was pitching William K Howard on his life story, the life story of hoodwinked hitler. Probably was trying to borrow 5. When we are out in la a couple years ago, i visited freemans grave, a little Jewish Cemetery in a latino neighborhood outside of la. When we stopped to buy a little plant, no one in the flower shop spoke english, the cemetery had a combination lock, there was no office on site, i had to call and get the combination and was told it was grave number 34. I get there and find road 22 but around grave number 26, the grave stopped and there is just debris. I call the Cemetery Office and i am told i said what is the real number . There is no grave number 32 and they said it is under the leaves. So i have to remove about this much debris, and 10 years of being unkempt and uncared for. And i find a footstone not as large as this book but as large as a paperback book and my wife and i had a little bottle of water in the car with kleenex and a bottle of water, clean off the footstone and it says f bernstein. There wasnt enough money to give his full name. It is f bernstein 1942, there wasnt enough money to etch the year of his birth 1873 and as i stand over this neglected grave, i am not religious, it would have been hypocritical to give a blessing even if i knew one, so instead i looked down and try to find words that might bridge eternity, words that this old drifter might want to hear. I said you are remembered. Thank you. [applause] we have 20 minutes for questions, ask what you like. I have two closely related questions, seems like a really great book and a great book to make a movie of. I wonder if you are thinking alon