Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20130119 : vimarsana.com

His journey as a civilrights activist participating in the 1963 march on washington, a prominent historian and editor of Martin Luther king jr. s papers, part of three days of booktv this weekend, monday, featuring authors and books on the inauguration, president obama and Martin Luther king jr. Last week booktv attended the key west literary seminar in florida. Today from noon to 3 00 eastern we bring several of their talks and panels from the event. Paul hendrickson, robert richardson, jeff gawker, and many more present and discuss their books. Next, cynthia helms, widow of Richard Helms, recounts her life. She drug in england and served in world war ii, calls for introduction to the world of secret intelligence via her husband, the internal politics of the cia and the couples time spent in tehran as Richard Helms served as American Ambassador prior to the iranian revolution. This is about an hour. [applause] [applause] thank you. Very kind of you, nice event you allowed us to have here. I am most grateful to you and i thank you for coming. Cynthia is quite right. Five years if you knew Richard Helms you didnt dare argue what was in the cards with him. What we were going to tehran i finally said to him can you cope the box . He said what box . I said a Cardboard Box that has been on the top shelf for years. So he opened it and the only thing and it was his silk scarf with his evening clothes. All those years i thought it was love letters. From wonderful beautiful woman that i didnt know anything about. I did not really intend to write this book. I had written a book on iran and then i tried to write this book and found it too difficult because i was much too close to some of the events, particularly the war, my divorce, all those issues, so i gave up, put all the stuff away and went to work, then last november in 2011 my grandchildren, my grown grandchildren made me promise that i would do it. I had told some stories and nothing pieced together so he made me promise that i would do it so in january, exactly yearago, high was lucky enough to find chris, the ultimate person to work with, the professional, kept me focused the and she was fun, we were joined from months and produce the whole thing in eight months so i am most grateful to chris, but that is how it all started. Thank you. Thank you for hosting this wonderful event and thank all of you for coming to celebrate a remarkable woman and her intriguing life. I long felt the woman of the greatest generation have not gotten there do. They have not gotten the attention or the credit that they deserved. That is not to take anything away from the men. The men were extraordinarily patriotic and brave and survived the depression and fought a war and contributed to the baby boom after the war, but then so did the women and women really havent gotten the attention even though they average just as talented, just as patriotic and just as important. Cynthia helms has experienced up close and personal some of the momentous events of the 20th century and has also known some of the most famous people of the 20th century. We were working on this book often told her you are like forest gump. You knew everybody. In this embassy, in 1964, when the beatles were here on their first tour of the United States there was a reception here and she found a quiet spot to get away from the crowd and found herself sitting next to paul mccartney. Of course she did. Her life was like that. The most remarkable thing to me about her is she was not just a witness to history, she really lived it. She has lived an extraordinary life and she has lived all the incredible changes that have taken place in the lives of girls and women in the last century. When she was born in 1923 the liberals were expected to grow up and the wives and mothers which was fine, but nothing else. In the course of her life things changed and she changed too. I hope that this book helps contribute to younger womens understanding of what their mothers and grandmothers went through and great grandmothers for that matter, not to take for granted all that they have. She earned all the time throughout her life to have a life of her own. That is the way she put it. A life of my own. It was about having her own unique identities that was not just as someones mother or someones wife come as much as she enjoyed being a mother to some of the children who are here today and as much as she enjoyed being mrs. Richard helms, she was more than that and that comes through in this book and that is an important thing that every human being wants their own identity. We are going to begin today with our discussion with her service during world war ii. Cynthia helms grew up on the southeast coast of england which is part of the island closest the continent and for the millennium that part of england had been invaded by vikings and you name it and the people in that area were acutely aware of the threats of the nazis, more than anyone else because it was in their dna that they were vulnerable to invaders. She enlisted in the Womens Royal Naval Service exactly as soon as she could come as soon as she turned 18 and was legally eligible. My first question is tell us, why did you enlist and what was driving you as a teenager to become a member of the Womens Royal Naval Service, and tell us about being a boat crew which is very special. I was sent to the west coast by my parents when war broke out. Peace in our time was 1938 and the work came in 1939 and our area was very vulnerable so after a few months, there was odd bombing but not too much. My parents sent me to the west coast to live with an elderly uncle who was a naval officer. I lived with him and in france when france collapsed, his second son eventually committed suicide because he lost all his money in the financial crisis in england. I lived with him for about a year looking for food because there was no food at that time. Some times if you came back with a jar of marmalade and sometimes nothing. He was very strict. I called my mother and said he wont let me out at night. What is the problem . I have to be home. She said because he was such a naughty playboy in knows what can happen to young girls after dark. Then he enlisted me to go to the Imperial Hotel where the pilots, it had been taken over for the rehabilitation of airborne pilots, burned pilots. I was 17 and i went there one day and i was leaning against the room like this, leaning against the door thinking can i do this . I was looking at all these men with huge bandages and terrible disfigure ration, one young man, i presume he is young, he had all these bandages on his hand and his arms and his head and his eyebrows had gone and he was looking at me and he held my eyes and i knew instinctively that he didnt want me to flinch when the pilot that his face fell i made myself stand there and dance with him and said my uncle i am going home and he said why . I have to go, this is ridiculous, i am going home. This was in the middle of july when the battle of britain was going on and i went home and said im going to join up and there was a great discussion because my brother who was older, he was 19 when he joined up, he was an air force pilot and was flying the Dangerous Missions of dropping agents into france, they were flying at the top level and dropping all the agents in and in the end he flew 18 missions and got endless distinguished medals of valor, the only survivor of his squadron, rotation of 600 people. I still talk to him in london every weekend. I went to london. There was much discussed about this. I got on a train and went to london and went to the naval officer on my eighteenth birthday and waited two or three weeks to get my call up papers and they sent me to scotland. When you volunteer for something you going the opposite direction. They sent me to a school that had been turned into a Naval Establishment and i was to work in an office there. I arrived there and was assigned to a man called Richard Miles. He since had become he became a great friend of mrs. Roosevelt. He came over and tried to win support for the war. I am sure i was useless at the age of 18. Had no idea what i was doing and couldnt type or do anything but that about two months later a rather large lady walked into the office and said that the looking for volunteers to man the but, man all the boats in the south of england, the men could go off of the harbor boats and could be run by women and she was so large, i looked at her and i thought she must have been the one responsible for the underwear we had been issued because we had huge bloomers we had been issued with and huge drops, neither of which had anything to put in either of them. I put my name down as volunteer and off i went and what i got there, we were the first group, they had no idea what to do with us so gave us six weeks training. I was called, after the six weeks we learned navigation and everything and we were all signed a different boat in the harbor. What was wonderful about it was as we walked on the both the men walked off. You really were taking their place. They went to fight the greater war or go to the ships but i was first assigned a hospital ship where a couple men stayed on and slept in hammocks, we fell lot of the amex every night, things like that. They had a hard time accepting us. I was assigned to the admirals barge. In all weathers, we plowed Plymouth Harbor and the ships were coming in and we were doing all the work between all the ships and all the motor torpedo boats going and we had two or three submarines always tied up there and so that was particularly what we were doing. The blitzkrieg was over but there were a lot of rage and when they were coming back from the raids on the others and like coventry and things they fashioned they would drop their bombs on the way home rather than take them home so we had constant air raids every night and when you went to bed, we have a curfew, you would have to put your valuables on the end of the bed at night, your warm coat sleeve could get up every night and go because the moment the sirens went off, you had to go to the roof to look for the incendiary bombs and in the daytime we would go to the dock and i would arrive in one of those double decker buses and look at the people with all the damage on the way down to the dockyard everyday and then i was sent to a place where theyre getting ready for d day and we ran the liberty boats and there was no harbor. It was just open sea and it was quite different from the glamorous life we had led they were waiting for dday and it was incredibly tense, all the young men, they would get drunk every night, it was not real drinking and every night we had to take them back and if you could imagine, tremendous sees and dark, not a single light at sea or on the land and you had to plow your way out to sea and find out the different places that the sailors along to but the main thing that i did at that time was listening to these people because they wanted to talk. They were young men which no idea why they were there, half of them. They wanted to talk about their families, their mothers, and i was thinking the other night i dont think any of them never talked about the future because they were not sure what the future was but i know in plymouth i spent hours and hours talking to the mariners, most of whom were lost, about life and what it meant to them and what they wished they appreciated more and that was part of a role in those days, just listening to the people, that i will tell you one story. We were having a hard time being recognized in plymouth by the navy so the queen, Queen Elizabeths mother came to plymouth, i am sure she came on an official visit, she came on my boat so that she could look more legitimate and we were more accepted as part of the navy. Came in her ship on high heels. It was very good of her to do that. I was struck by the sense of mortality the young people typically dont have but in a time of war particularly with bombs dropping all around you very acutely, there was a real pressure to live for the moment. So you ended up getting married at the age of 19 and after the war came to america with your husband was a medical doctor, had two babies at the time and you thought it would be a relatively easy transition because they spoke english in rochester but you discovered that was not precisely true. Tell us about that. Coming to america, i spent the first night of my life in america quite irresponsible. My husband came home one day and said we were to go to the mayo clinic and it was not as simple as that. We would go to the mayo clinic but i had no idea what the mayo clinic was so he went off happily and i was to come as soon as i could and i couldnt get a package until november. I arrived in america, spent the first night in new york, very kindly came to the plane and took me off, she had this fantastic house in new york and she took me in my first night when i had flown 17 hours across the atlantic, we ran out of food, but these two little children, spent the night at this extraordinary house on sixth avenue and she put me Richard Miles put me on a plane to minnesota, i didnt know where minnesota was. I had no idea. My father when he put me on the plane in london had me on brandy, tears were pouring down his face, gave me a bottle of brandy. What is the brandy for. When i got to minnesota in 6 feet of snow which two babies i knew what was for. It was a great experience because we have a wonderful little prefab house and i threw up in the windows and my husband said i cannot do that. The whole thing froze up. People had come and and freeze them. We had a wonderful very different. People were exchanging tuna fish casseroles. I had never seen tuna fish or a casserole but i was doing my best. A friend of mine, a psychiatrist who now lives in california, we were laughing about it the other day because they had these wonderful houses but two houses up, all the children getting the vacuum and all this, not easy but it was all right. The first night they took me to buy food. In england we had no food. The winter of 46 had been simply terrible and there was nothing. You couldnt buy anything. I was completely overcome with all that food. I couldnt cope with all the packaged foods. I had never seen a can or chicken packed up like that. Chickens are running around in england. I had no idea what to buy. The psychiatrist was fair, and great the carrots for children. I didnt know how to great carrots. The man next door was a texan and wanted to take me fishing. This was a language story. As i was leaving his house the night before, he was going to take me fishing at 5 00 in the morning and turned to him and said from the off at 5 00 in the morning, he said theres nothing i would rather do. I had no idea what i had said but the language really was quite funny. My daughter on a telephone call, paul the woman hangs up and use it to an american you are throwing your connected. A completely different language. We managed to. After the time in rochester, you all moved to the washington ariane and your children were growing up to the americans. And they wanted you to become an american too. You hesitated. But finally in march of 1967 you went down and became a citizen but tell us why you hesitated. I had raised them completely as americans because i had given it a great deal of thought and i felt their loyalties should not be divided. They should not be told britain was this or anything. I wanted them to be complete americans. So when they were 10 or 11 if we are americans why wont you be american . I applied for citizenship and it came through very quickly. I didnt tell a single person. I went down and became a citizen. In those days they accusingly and ask questions and this wonderful husband of my friend in california had told me the week before it is all right, you can do it. They never mention the queen. So i went down and they asked me the questions and ask where you give up king and country and never mentioned the queen and i said yes. I will give up king and country. By that time the queen was i found it very hard to do. England, i had fought for england and been at school with churchills daughter who was part of my life, we had done nothing but listen to him on a radio begging people to come and a saying he needed everybody. It was all very emotional and i had thought of nothing but england and what it meant and how i wanted to fight for it for years. It hadnt done anything to incur my wrath, throw me out of the country or thrown in jail or bothered me about my religion. It was hard for me to give up my citizenship and i am sure in tehran is not easy to do. The man behind me in line with a hungarian who hugged me and citizens it great to be an american . I said dont know. I will tell you later. We opened the book with a vivid scene from 1968, you had flown to reno to get a divorce in the days before his divorce. Very difficult to get a divorce back then. It had be someones fault and it was not easy. She came back and was in a bit of a state and drove her car directly into the middle of a riot in downtown d. C. It was the morning after the night Martin Luther king was assassinated in a city of people here who note exploded. The 1960s and 1968 was a time of major turmoil in the United States and also a huge time of change in your life because you did something that was difficult, you got a divorce after a very long marriage and it was the time when the Womens Movement was really beginning to get underway in United States but i was impressed that you were not inspired by the Womens Movement, it was something else. I did not find Womens Movement appealing at all. I have done a lot of reading in my life and i had been inspired by the pioneer women who settled this country. Coming from england where i had known my ancestors since the 1400s and at a list of amal, it was very insulated and coming to this country and reading the stories of the pioneers and the women who went west and what happened to them, you know these stories but i really found that very inspiring and there were other women around the world, there was a wonderful greek admiral engine in the book who was first in the days of ancient greece, a woman admiral. I really loved the stories of the pioneers, they to mute meant much more in my life and the Womens Movement which slightly irritated me. Didnt think much of that. Your marriage to Martin Luther<\/a> king jr. s papers, part of three days of booktv this weekend, monday, featuring authors and books on the inauguration, president obama and Martin Luther<\/a> king jr. Last week booktv attended the key west literary seminar in florida. Today from noon to 3 00 eastern we bring several of their talks and panels from the event. Paul hendrickson, robert richardson, jeff gawker, and many more present and discuss their books. Next, cynthia helms, widow of Richard Helms<\/a>, recounts her life. She drug in england and served in world war ii, calls for introduction to the world of secret intelligence via her husband, the internal politics of the cia and the couples time spent in tehran as Richard Helms<\/a> served as American Ambassador<\/a> prior to the iranian revolution. This is about an hour. [applause] [applause] thank you. Very kind of you, nice event you allowed us to have here. I am most grateful to you and i thank you for coming. Cynthia is quite right. Five years if you knew Richard Helms<\/a> you didnt dare argue what was in the cards with him. What we were going to tehran i finally said to him can you cope the box . He said what box . I said a Cardboard Box<\/a> that has been on the top shelf for years. So he opened it and the only thing and it was his silk scarf with his evening clothes. All those years i thought it was love letters. From wonderful beautiful woman that i didnt know anything about. I did not really intend to write this book. I had written a book on iran and then i tried to write this book and found it too difficult because i was much too close to some of the events, particularly the war, my divorce, all those issues, so i gave up, put all the stuff away and went to work, then last november in 2011 my grandchildren, my grown grandchildren made me promise that i would do it. I had told some stories and nothing pieced together so he made me promise that i would do it so in january, exactly yearago, high was lucky enough to find chris, the ultimate person to work with, the professional, kept me focused the and she was fun, we were joined from months and produce the whole thing in eight months so i am most grateful to chris, but that is how it all started. Thank you. Thank you for hosting this wonderful event and thank all of you for coming to celebrate a remarkable woman and her intriguing life. I long felt the woman of the greatest generation have not gotten there do. They have not gotten the attention or the credit that they deserved. That is not to take anything away from the men. The men were extraordinarily patriotic and brave and survived the depression and fought a war and contributed to the baby boom after the war, but then so did the women and women really havent gotten the attention even though they average just as talented, just as patriotic and just as important. Cynthia helms has experienced up close and personal some of the momentous events of the 20th century and has also known some of the most famous people of the 20th century. We were working on this book often told her you are like forest gump. You knew everybody. In this embassy, in 1964, when the beatles were here on their first tour of the United States<\/a> there was a reception here and she found a quiet spot to get away from the crowd and found herself sitting next to paul mccartney. Of course she did. Her life was like that. The most remarkable thing to me about her is she was not just a witness to history, she really lived it. She has lived an extraordinary life and she has lived all the incredible changes that have taken place in the lives of girls and women in the last century. When she was born in 1923 the liberals were expected to grow up and the wives and mothers which was fine, but nothing else. In the course of her life things changed and she changed too. I hope that this book helps contribute to younger womens understanding of what their mothers and grandmothers went through and great grandmothers for that matter, not to take for granted all that they have. She earned all the time throughout her life to have a life of her own. That is the way she put it. A life of my own. It was about having her own unique identities that was not just as someones mother or someones wife come as much as she enjoyed being a mother to some of the children who are here today and as much as she enjoyed being mrs. Richard helms, she was more than that and that comes through in this book and that is an important thing that every human being wants their own identity. We are going to begin today with our discussion with her service during world war ii. Cynthia helms grew up on the southeast coast of england which is part of the island closest the continent and for the millennium that part of england had been invaded by vikings and you name it and the people in that area were acutely aware of the threats of the nazis, more than anyone else because it was in their dna that they were vulnerable to invaders. She enlisted in the Womens Royal Naval Service<\/a> exactly as soon as she could come as soon as she turned 18 and was legally eligible. My first question is tell us, why did you enlist and what was driving you as a teenager to become a member of the Womens Royal Naval Service<\/a>, and tell us about being a boat crew which is very special. I was sent to the west coast by my parents when war broke out. Peace in our time was 1938 and the work came in 1939 and our area was very vulnerable so after a few months, there was odd bombing but not too much. My parents sent me to the west coast to live with an elderly uncle who was a naval officer. I lived with him and in france when france collapsed, his second son eventually committed suicide because he lost all his money in the financial crisis in england. I lived with him for about a year looking for food because there was no food at that time. Some times if you came back with a jar of marmalade and sometimes nothing. He was very strict. I called my mother and said he wont let me out at night. What is the problem . I have to be home. She said because he was such a naughty playboy in knows what can happen to young girls after dark. Then he enlisted me to go to the Imperial Hotel<\/a> where the pilots, it had been taken over for the rehabilitation of airborne pilots, burned pilots. I was 17 and i went there one day and i was leaning against the room like this, leaning against the door thinking can i do this . I was looking at all these men with huge bandages and terrible disfigure ration, one young man, i presume he is young, he had all these bandages on his hand and his arms and his head and his eyebrows had gone and he was looking at me and he held my eyes and i knew instinctively that he didnt want me to flinch when the pilot that his face fell i made myself stand there and dance with him and said my uncle i am going home and he said why . I have to go, this is ridiculous, i am going home. This was in the middle of july when the battle of britain was going on and i went home and said im going to join up and there was a great discussion because my brother who was older, he was 19 when he joined up, he was an air force pilot and was flying the Dangerous Missions<\/a> of dropping agents into france, they were flying at the top level and dropping all the agents in and in the end he flew 18 missions and got endless distinguished medals of valor, the only survivor of his squadron, rotation of 600 people. I still talk to him in london every weekend. I went to london. There was much discussed about this. I got on a train and went to london and went to the naval officer on my eighteenth birthday and waited two or three weeks to get my call up papers and they sent me to scotland. When you volunteer for something you going the opposite direction. They sent me to a school that had been turned into a Naval Establishment<\/a> and i was to work in an office there. I arrived there and was assigned to a man called Richard Miles<\/a>. He since had become he became a great friend of mrs. Roosevelt. He came over and tried to win support for the war. I am sure i was useless at the age of 18. Had no idea what i was doing and couldnt type or do anything but that about two months later a rather large lady walked into the office and said that the looking for volunteers to man the but, man all the boats in the south of england, the men could go off of the harbor boats and could be run by women and she was so large, i looked at her and i thought she must have been the one responsible for the underwear we had been issued because we had huge bloomers we had been issued with and huge drops, neither of which had anything to put in either of them. I put my name down as volunteer and off i went and what i got there, we were the first group, they had no idea what to do with us so gave us six weeks training. I was called, after the six weeks we learned navigation and everything and we were all signed a different boat in the harbor. What was wonderful about it was as we walked on the both the men walked off. You really were taking their place. They went to fight the greater war or go to the ships but i was first assigned a hospital ship where a couple men stayed on and slept in hammocks, we fell lot of the amex every night, things like that. They had a hard time accepting us. I was assigned to the admirals barge. In all weathers, we plowed Plymouth Harbor<\/a> and the ships were coming in and we were doing all the work between all the ships and all the motor torpedo boats going and we had two or three submarines always tied up there and so that was particularly what we were doing. The blitzkrieg was over but there were a lot of rage and when they were coming back from the raids on the others and like coventry and things they fashioned they would drop their bombs on the way home rather than take them home so we had constant air raids every night and when you went to bed, we have a curfew, you would have to put your valuables on the end of the bed at night, your warm coat sleeve could get up every night and go because the moment the sirens went off, you had to go to the roof to look for the incendiary bombs and in the daytime we would go to the dock and i would arrive in one of those double decker buses and look at the people with all the damage on the way down to the dockyard everyday and then i was sent to a place where theyre getting ready for d day and we ran the liberty boats and there was no harbor. It was just open sea and it was quite different from the glamorous life we had led they were waiting for dday and it was incredibly tense, all the young men, they would get drunk every night, it was not real drinking and every night we had to take them back and if you could imagine, tremendous sees and dark, not a single light at sea or on the land and you had to plow your way out to sea and find out the different places that the sailors along to but the main thing that i did at that time was listening to these people because they wanted to talk. They were young men which no idea why they were there, half of them. They wanted to talk about their families, their mothers, and i was thinking the other night i dont think any of them never talked about the future because they were not sure what the future was but i know in plymouth i spent hours and hours talking to the mariners, most of whom were lost, about life and what it meant to them and what they wished they appreciated more and that was part of a role in those days, just listening to the people, that i will tell you one story. We were having a hard time being recognized in plymouth by the navy so the queen, Queen Elizabeths<\/a> mother came to plymouth, i am sure she came on an official visit, she came on my boat so that she could look more legitimate and we were more accepted as part of the navy. Came in her ship on high heels. It was very good of her to do that. I was struck by the sense of mortality the young people typically dont have but in a time of war particularly with bombs dropping all around you very acutely, there was a real pressure to live for the moment. So you ended up getting married at the age of 19 and after the war came to america with your husband was a medical doctor, had two babies at the time and you thought it would be a relatively easy transition because they spoke english in rochester but you discovered that was not precisely true. Tell us about that. Coming to america, i spent the first night of my life in america quite irresponsible. My husband came home one day and said we were to go to the mayo clinic and it was not as simple as that. We would go to the mayo clinic but i had no idea what the mayo clinic was so he went off happily and i was to come as soon as i could and i couldnt get a package until november. I arrived in america, spent the first night in new york, very kindly came to the plane and took me off, she had this fantastic house in new york and she took me in my first night when i had flown 17 hours across the atlantic, we ran out of food, but these two little children, spent the night at this extraordinary house on sixth avenue and she put me Richard Miles<\/a> put me on a plane to minnesota, i didnt know where minnesota was. I had no idea. My father when he put me on the plane in london had me on brandy, tears were pouring down his face, gave me a bottle of brandy. What is the brandy for. When i got to minnesota in 6 feet of snow which two babies i knew what was for. It was a great experience because we have a wonderful little prefab house and i threw up in the windows and my husband said i cannot do that. The whole thing froze up. People had come and and freeze them. We had a wonderful very different. People were exchanging tuna fish casseroles. I had never seen tuna fish or a casserole but i was doing my best. A friend of mine, a psychiatrist who now lives in california, we were laughing about it the other day because they had these wonderful houses but two houses up, all the children getting the vacuum and all this, not easy but it was all right. The first night they took me to buy food. In england we had no food. The winter of 46 had been simply terrible and there was nothing. You couldnt buy anything. I was completely overcome with all that food. I couldnt cope with all the packaged foods. I had never seen a can or chicken packed up like that. Chickens are running around in england. I had no idea what to buy. The psychiatrist was fair, and great the carrots for children. I didnt know how to great carrots. The man next door was a texan and wanted to take me fishing. This was a language story. As i was leaving his house the night before, he was going to take me fishing at 5 00 in the morning and turned to him and said from the off at 5 00 in the morning, he said theres nothing i would rather do. I had no idea what i had said but the language really was quite funny. My daughter on a telephone call, paul the woman hangs up and use it to an american you are throwing your connected. A completely different language. We managed to. After the time in rochester, you all moved to the washington ariane and your children were growing up to the americans. And they wanted you to become an american too. You hesitated. But finally in march of 1967 you went down and became a citizen but tell us why you hesitated. I had raised them completely as americans because i had given it a great deal of thought and i felt their loyalties should not be divided. They should not be told britain was this or anything. I wanted them to be complete americans. So when they were 10 or 11 if we are americans why wont you be american . I applied for citizenship and it came through very quickly. I didnt tell a single person. I went down and became a citizen. In those days they accusingly and ask questions and this wonderful husband of my friend in california had told me the week before it is all right, you can do it. They never mention the queen. So i went down and they asked me the questions and ask where you give up king and country and never mentioned the queen and i said yes. I will give up king and country. By that time the queen was i found it very hard to do. England, i had fought for england and been at school with churchills daughter who was part of my life, we had done nothing but listen to him on a radio begging people to come and a saying he needed everybody. It was all very emotional and i had thought of nothing but england and what it meant and how i wanted to fight for it for years. It hadnt done anything to incur my wrath, throw me out of the country or thrown in jail or bothered me about my religion. It was hard for me to give up my citizenship and i am sure in tehran is not easy to do. The man behind me in line with a hungarian who hugged me and citizens it great to be an american . I said dont know. I will tell you later. We opened the book with a vivid scene from 1968, you had flown to reno to get a divorce in the days before his divorce. Very difficult to get a divorce back then. It had be someones fault and it was not easy. She came back and was in a bit of a state and drove her car directly into the middle of a riot in downtown d. C. It was the morning after the night Martin Luther<\/a> king was assassinated in a city of people here who note exploded. The 1960s and 1968 was a time of major turmoil in the United States<\/a> and also a huge time of change in your life because you did something that was difficult, you got a divorce after a very long marriage and it was the time when the Womens Movement<\/a> was really beginning to get underway in United States<\/a> but i was impressed that you were not inspired by the Womens Movement<\/a>, it was something else. I did not find Womens Movement<\/a> appealing at all. I have done a lot of reading in my life and i had been inspired by the pioneer women who settled this country. Coming from england where i had known my ancestors since the 1400s and at a list of amal, it was very insulated and coming to this country and reading the stories of the pioneers and the women who went west and what happened to them, you know these stories but i really found that very inspiring and there were other women around the world, there was a wonderful greek admiral engine in the book who was first in the days of ancient greece, a woman admiral. I really loved the stories of the pioneers, they to mute meant much more in my life and the Womens Movement<\/a> which slightly irritated me. Didnt think much of that. Your marriage to Richard Helms<\/a> at an end of 1968 ushered in one of the most personally productive and rewarding times in your life. Gave you the chance to have a life of europe. The children were grown up enough and doing well at school and you got involved in environmental organizations and got your first real pay job as host of the smithsonian radio show. What did that mean to you . Wonderful time in my life. We receiving on the couch one night and decided and Environmental Movement<\/a> to tef1 o night and decided and Environmental Movement<\/a> to teach women what to do in the marketplace, we took up pesticides and overpackaging, lead and paint the and all of those things and worked incredibly hard and also joined Margot Mickey<\/a> to join us and we were quite successful and joan gardner gave us an office, no doubt about we were helped by the people that we knew. We raised money and went on television and all sorts of Television Shows<\/a> and worked incred3 ily hard and also put out a gardening catalog which was very good so i did that two days week. The other job i had was at the an end. I had volunteered through the years, a lot of the smithsonian at the portrait gallery, i didnt force and worked at the museum there and one day they said would you like to start Radio Program<\/a> . I would love to. I interviewed people and it was on sunday night and i had all sorts of wonderuccl people who would call me and remarked on the shows we had had. I could interview anybody i could find. One day what are you going to do todayogro cf1 o he looked at me in astonishment, you dont know anything about the topic of warfare. Were you doing . I had two of your people come down for lunch the other day. I know enough. We got through that and dick came home from the white house and said you mustve done all right because i wanted to do business and he said he wanted to ask how you were. It was a wonderful job and i loved. I interviewed people who talked about worms and the sex life of a snake and all sorts of exciting things. It was incrediincre and aall museums and it was no end to the wonderuccl things i could do. You were married for dick for 30 years and he was known as a man who kept a secret and probably the most his commitment is of secrecy was so great that got him in trouble with congress. We discussed a few times in the course of doing the book how your surprise that the spouse of people who work in the cia had a difficult time because to you it was never an issue. Couldnt tell you certain things and you were fine with that. By have to say that i did not come up through the ranks. I didnt suffer the way other wives did when they lived a clandestine life. It was obviouslyo aery difficult for some people and i think much more difficult for others that they didnt know what their husbands were doing and i can understand that. If you live somewhere ldaye japn or something and your husband is out all night, it is difficult for people. It is incredibly difficult when you have to be a selfcontained person. I didnt find that with the deck. I didnt it didnt bother me with things i didnt know. The extraordi ary thing about dick was he was known as a man who kept seworkets. He was always quiet but he loved to talk about things that were nothing to do with his classified life and i did not feel any great need to know what was clastelfied. Richard was the sort of person youd ask aervthing but you nevr crossed the line because there was no point making his life more dkepficult than it was. Everywhere we went people were giving him a hard time about viet am and about all anything, all sorts of things. I didnt feel a great need to know. I was happy talking about the thint b that we were allowed to talk about and so i think you can live with a man i was ma the know about his patients and thint b. I dont think it should be an issue with people but it is hard slor some peiewle to li and i can understand it. But i didnt have that prwerele. Wanted to be sure and ask you a question about iran because he spent four years there as the ambassadors wife at the end of the shahs regime and the United States<\/a>s role in overthrowing the democratically elected leader in iran in the early 1950s is still hotly debated, the significance of that. That history is reviewed aerv o the scenes of a new movie that just iewened which is actually quite good. What do you think as you look of time, the lasting implications of u. S. Policy deof iran is very complicated which we all understand. The ku of the Prime Minister<\/a> was ousted if that is the word in 53 and the shop was never out of office but was reinstalled and put back in power. It was originally thought of by the british because it turned all the avy into oil. But i do think the present situation, you can understand or one should understand little bit that the iranian country has been overrun all its life by alexander, it has been told what to do by the greeks, the russians, United States<\/a>, the british, they want to have a place at the table and they would like to have a say in their own lives. They live in a community surrounded by arabs. They have never gotten along despite the fact theyre all muslims, the iranians dont like the muslims the iranians know that israel has Nuclear Weapons<\/a> and we have nuclearweapons and they feel they would like to be in charge of there and destiny or player at the table i think and i have written carefully in a book about iran and i wish you would read it carefully because i think it is a very complicated subject. Also i know is complicated. The iranians are very good negotiators. They have been negotiating for 3,000 years and our people, i feel for them but i dont know who are the negotiators, if thereve to that sort of negotiation. The iranians are. It is important to understand their culture and i do think in terms of hostages it was not fully understood, i dont want to go to great length but they were not understood. Two things come out of this. We should not have to interfere in other countries. We as a country should lead by example. This country has been incredible what it has done to integrate raises and countries and languages and people and we should do leadership by that. And i think also that we should listen to what the iranians are saying. Sometimes what is quoted as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad<\/a> is miss conflated. Heat said israel will be no more, he said we will annihilate it theres so much to this question but i do think the americans will have to understand, fully understand the culture they are negotiating with but i wish that you would read because i put it better in the book, one of the big things is to understand other peoples cultures. I could ask a million more questions i am sure the audience has a few. If you like to ask questions, someone has a microphone. Raise your hand. Your grandson in the book, the offsets [talking over each other] [inaudible] i have written a lot and have files and had some plan because i got all this stuff out, that is where it all came from. I have a pretty good memory but also lots of things that i have written by follow iran and various things. Her story almost told itself. Everybody has a story. It was clear to me after we had been working together for six weeks or so that 1968 was a pivotal year not only because she ended one marriage and began another but because of that moment in time in history and one of the interesting things about her life is how she has lived through these extraordinary historically significant times if and new people like Richard Nixon<\/a> knew she had of this response to and did not like that all which is interesting. Her perspective on Richard Nixon<\/a> is a prospective i dont think i have never seen a man have. Very much a womans perspective because she was responding to the way he treated his wife. That is valuable about memoir, it contributes to the historical record and it is also why her story is important because women do have a slightly different take because they have a different experience. Another question . If not i have more. [inaudible] [inaudible] was this at all unchallenged or natural gift with you . I like to tell stories in a way. I wanted with the iran book originally in 81, really wanted people to try to understand islam. I felt people didnt dick was extraordinary. He felt so strongly that people had to understand cultures and he got so upset when he would brief people and they didnt know what he was talking about. He drilled it into me and everything i say he would say qualify that, how do you know that, prove that to me. He would never allow you you always had to know. He talked to David Ignatius<\/a> before he went overseas and said i dont want you to just tell me who is stealing the capital, tell me the history of that country. I felt with iran, the iran book was interesting because the chapter on islam to three different professors and three different professors send it back with totally different statements. Point quoted this in intelligence because three professors, no wonder nobody could understand muslims because it was three professors writing completely different things. It was something i thought up so i could show it. I think i am always interested to hear peoples stories and it adds a lot to our lives to know about other people, what they have won. That is what i like to listen to. When we were working on the book at one point i said to her this sounds like an endless dinner party because there were so many moments that took place at dinner parties and back then there were remarkable hostesses like kate graham and joseph, very good friends of yours. There was a lot of Business Done<\/a> at those dinner parties. That is greatly missed these days because in those days the senators and their wives were all great friends and stockton was a very controversial figure but his visits were extraordinary. There were always 12 people at the table, always use cotton gloves and the wonderful turkish chef. Robert mcnamara and george shultz, general westmoreland, you could hear what they really thought. You had senators there and really huge bellicose discussions and it was different because she had a huge number of people but then she makes all the senators and business men from new york and all the people from washington so people got to know each other and talk and it was there that i met people like Warren Buffett<\/a> who wanted to play bridge so we played bridge and it wonderful scene one night, walking through the room, everybody was talking to him and bill gates was hovering behind. Nobody was speaking to bill gates and bill gates turned to me and said why doesnt anybody talk to me . Everybody was all over it is because nobody knows what to talk to you about. We shared our ignorance when we talked to bill gates. I used to watch Richard Helms<\/a> head to the senator he wanted to talk to. It would have been very difficult to go up on the hill and talk to that senator but he was going to and it was a big difference in the way people lived. And they sat together at night. It was a lot more difficult to demonize your opponent on the hill. You had dinner next to his wife and i before. Going on about the troops that he wanted, i went to dick one night and said we have to go home because Robert Mcnamara<\/a> never mind. Sit down. But it was good. Can you really learn what they thought. And i think washington misses that now. Any other questions . I know from all the work you have done including the relation of the stories how much you had connections with that culture. Unwanted to ask you did you enjoy your time in germany and now is safe to ask you did you think the revolution would be coming when you were there . And that this kind of revolution would be coming . Did you anticipate that . The head of the Womens Movement<\/a> and Womens Department<\/a> in iran, she now worked with women around the world, she had done a terrific job with women in iran and did a great deal of that time which was rolled back. I dont think we did see that and part of it was we were not listening. I went to school at Tehran University<\/a> and went to the university for two years and i could see the women were beginning to wear head scarfs but i dont think we realize what was going on with the ayatollah. He was very clever because he changed his story. I dont think the western press had picked this up. He had been saying what he was going to do with anti women and all of that and assumed, exiled in paris and became more found by the western press his tune and became very pro women and other things that he wanted to sound like a good guy so he was an extremely clever i do think it was your history the other day you were saying the shop forbidden them to see 8 the ayatollah and things so that was cut off and they didnt try enough to go against that but i do think we all knew that the shah was in trouble because you wouldnt have another political party. And this we talked about constantly. The build hospitals and schools and i spent a lot of time sitting next to him because we had a poetry class and he loved our poetry class and we talked about alltime but he would not allow another political party. He thought he could modernize iran. He had to have a party at the same time so you could see the clash coming. No doubt about it you could see it coming. He couldnt have survived it. But he couldnt see that. There was a huge divide in iran between the haves and have nots and that contributed to the attention as well because you didnt see poor people effectively. I traveled around the country and we did see it. There were very good at we still talk about it. Even with the president here, people decided something agreed to tell them and when we got outside a room no one would tell him. You probably know what that was. That is one of the things we should probably wind up. You told a wonderful story about how all lbj had a tuesday Luncheon Group<\/a> of people he knew would tell him the truth, that not afraid to tell him things he didnt want to hear because that is often the case with people in authority. Dick was part of that group. He was very fond of that. And he was sad for him, a memo had come out that dick had written in 67, bob mcnamara founded it in texas at the lbj library and forgot about it. And he had a memo to say what would happen in this country if there was failure in vietnam. And a tuesday luncheon one day he stayed behind and handed it to president johnson and president johnson read it. He didnt show it to bob mcnamara and bob mcnamara called from the library and it has been declassified. He was screaming from the other room why didnt i see this memo . They concluded that it was the six so he didnt see it. And it would not have made a difference if he had seen it. The memo concluded the United States<\/a> position in the world would not be affected if it lost the war. That was a very important point. There were other things in the memo that were not quite right. It was an interesting memo. Was really written before they could know what was going on. We could take one more question. Any advice for the new cia director . I do have. I always have an opinion. He should learn to be quiet. If you remember i hope you will send the frame back to the pentagon, if you remember, after the Osama Bin Laden<\/a> capture, he came out of the white house, you remember that . You were probably third. I hope you will be more circumspect. In every part of the agency, he knows it well but i am hoping. My personal opinion is our hope he will send a drones back to the pentagon and i hope the agency will go back to intelligence. This is what dick believed so completely. You need human intelligence. He used to say you can fly over and see how many planes you have but you cannot tell in a leaders brain what is in the leaders mind. You need human intelligence for that. I think they should go back to human intelligence. They keep saying there is an intelligence failure in new libya, that is what they need. Thank you all, thank you so much for coming. [applause] is there a Nonfiction Author<\/a> or book you like to see featured on booktv . Send us an email at booktv cspan. Org with sweets as at twitter. Com booktv. You have got to first of all persuade people that their soul is in dire danger, headed to the ultimate bonfire on the other side of existence. After that you need to label them followers of the devil. So to look for the devil and look at all the deities of the pentium, very complex religion, very elaborate, very well structured and they found and the eminent delicatessen of the human condition, and unpredictable issue, the issue exists, theres always more than one side, more than one face to any reality that gives you the wear of appearances, the best laid plans of mice and men, issues the embodiment of the lesson embedded in such things. The folly in being dogmatic, plans to do it like a good teacher, symbolically and for adults, the wisdom of looking at both sides of the question and this is the crossroads where of course the place where human beings get confused. If you are so mischievous, he is not allowed in the house. His place is always on the doorstep because the issue in the house is too temperamental and before you do anything, before you worship any of the deities you make sure you set aside a morsel for the issue. Issue is really the messenger of the deities. It can deliver the message strict, always quick tofold that may deliver it in a way with outlying that makes you misinterpret the message. The other message is in part. When the missionary and looked at this among other deities, the god of light and got of the river and gone of purity, the god of war, the god of the moist elements, that is the uncertainty. This mischievous person upsets him and plans back to the devil and the issue became christian, the devil, saying. Than the european interpretation, translation of the bible, fear of the devil, but anything but evil. That is the truth. On the contrary, you will find the symbol in the divination bold because to interpret the scriptures, the wisdom, even from ecology, the wisdom of diversitys. And the verses, the divine recite for human beings. Ishue is anything but the devil. It is painful to find ones own countrymen and women referring to ishue as the devil. By contrast look at what happened to ishue when he moved with the slaves to latin america. Arrived with the knowledge that ishue was feared by the christian missionaries. The slaves adopted ishue as their patron deed. The christians wanted them to convert. Ishue became the paramount symbol of resistance in latin america in the americas. It went beyond that. In certain parts of brazil you find that ishue has been elevated to the supreme deity simply because that was the symbol that was the protagonist for freedom. So you find the transposition across the atlantic, certainly a junior deity, became not only the symbol of resistance in the new world, but the supreme deity in certain parts of brazil. On the contrary, if you go to the heartland in, the hierarchy is quite clear. In certain other parts, ishue became supreme deity","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia601603.us.archive.org\/35\/items\/CSPAN2_20130119_130000_Book_TV\/CSPAN2_20130119_130000_Book_TV.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20130119_130000_Book_TV_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240619T12:35:10+00:00"}