i think that's one of the lessons that i think we as a culture -- i mean the americans are pretty good at that. i think it's one of the overall lessons of pakistan in addition to the lessons on islam and cultural power and understanding other cultures and connecting with them and so forth. just kind of being a free spirit and celebrating that in any human endeavor. >> let's speak to our military that we know -- so maybe they are getting better at that. >> a learning organization. the military had forgotten about cultural understanding to some extent. do you know dealing with the local population, learning the language, all these things that are very logical now, they had largely forgotten when we invaded iraq. the special forces, but the big army had forgotten it and they learned it pretty quickly and d. are no came in and they adopted a lot of the lessons learned in anbar province. i think americans in general have to learn from the american military though. what some of these lessons are. because they are critical lessons. we have to know these lessons now on the world stage. we need to expand their thinking, do more homework, think and an intellectually more open way about all of these and who are potential allies are and how to defend americans and what real national security is an liberate ourselves from some of the clichés that we have fallen victim to over the last nine years in this incredible new world. i think patrick shows as part of the way in doing that. >> it's an amazing story and the book is a soldier's dream, and thank you william doyle and i am down strauss. thanks for coming in thanks for talking with us. >> thank you verythank you are . coming up next book tv presents after words an hour-long program where we invite guest host to interview authors. this week "msnbc"'s chris matthews and his latest book, "jack kennedy" elusive hero. in it he presents a portrait of president kennedy rarely seen based on personal interviews with those who knew him, records from his school years and published interviews with former first lady jacqueline kennedy. he discusses his discoveries with veteran journalist, sam donaldson. >> host: chris matthews, welcome and we have been friends for 35 years? >> guest: at least. >> host: at least. talk about a man who is faded into history for most americans, you have to be of a certain age to remember what john kennedy looked like in the flesh. how did you read this book? >> guest: first of all that may be true what you say in terms of fresh memories but they asked people, this time of year, two years ago, "vanity fair" and cbs 60 minutes, who should be on mount rushmore and who is not there? guess who won? beating out at trn reg in. in terms of heroic stature he is there. he is the president they look to him that goes back to the archivist life from the the heroism saving his crew, the cuba missile crisis, getting us through that without a nuclear war. i think getting killed the way he was killed. people deals to have in their mind so i think he is in our hearts as well and i think that although you may not come to mind as much as he did, when he does come to mind there is a stirring there. >> host: let's talk later about kennedy the president. what did he do right and what did he do wrong? let's start with a man, kennedy demand. who was he? >> guest: that's a great question that's the question i wanted to get to, the him and him, not the husband, not the president but the guy, the person the one you would hang around with in the navy, the one you went to high school with. jackie when he was killed, when theodore white tried to explain her husband i guess to herself he said he was a sick young kid was alone all the time always reading about his heroes. he was never -- inside he was still that sick young kid and lonely as hell and then and when he went back to get the notes of that interview she added, all men are a combination of good and bad, not as bad as teddy white reported it in "life" magazine, bad and good. smothered never loved him so she's trying to explain this guy who was her husband. unfaithful to her as a husband that she was trying to find him as the guy himself and that took real love for her to do that and what she found was basically a hero worshiper, a young kid who'd grew up loving churchill, loving churchill's writings looking to hear the legend and wanting to have to be one of those hero sunday. so she signed that way as the young sick kid, lonely, scared. he thought he had leukemia author high school. he thought he had a deathly sentence that he would never be able to escape to get through high school. >> host: joe kennedy the patriarch, the man who ran the family and all of the people in the family we are told. jack kennedy was the second son. it was joe that was supposed to follow in do something that joe kennedy senior couldn't do. because what? he killed himself with appeasement for adolf hitler? >> guest: open anti-semitism. he would use the words, not the worst words but pretty close to the worst words. he was openly tribalistic and he basically was fittest. he wanted joe jr. to be his avatar, his person to get over the line past the catholic issue, passed his problems and become president. he was killed in the war trying to prove himself to the old man and prove himself to the country and jack moved up to the position. what i discovered in the book it isn't as simple as he was drugged and into service because he wanted to be a scholar for some kind of journalists, some ethereal man. think about jack kennedy. do you think it was going to sit in class with 30 kids at princeton? no commerce it away writing book somewhere along? no. going back to high school, he read churchill's history of world war i in its entirety when he was 14 at canterbury school. he read "the new york times" according to his fellow students every day. he got a copy mailed to him and try to figure out each issue in each article and then distill out of its meaning. he ran for student council, his second year of harvard and intended to go to law school. when he was in the navy it was only talked about with state and local politics, all the indications were from his friends chuck spaulding len buildings, charlie bartlett he was headed for a political career so this was really not true that he wasn't ready and primed to go forward. the minute joe was killed he was there. >> host: so his father was ambassador to the court of st. james in london and believed he could deal with adolf hitler and here was his second son who jackie described according to your book as all of those things and weak in some respects. who said no dad, you are wrong. yeskel brilliantly i think he cut his father's legs off because his father would sometimes agree with him. he said yes britain was justified in not fighting it in a can 38 because they were ready to fight. here is where he disagreed. he should have been ready to pop fight and baldwin talked them into not taking enough to threat seriously. they never rialta and 35 and by 38th a loss what he called the years the locusts it. they weren't ready to buy the nazis and i'm sure was cleaned up by arthur crock he wrote basically they were ready to fight. they should have been and we darned well better be ready to fight because this could become a world war. the old man was not only in appeaser. i think it was fair to say he was a sympathizer. he had no beef with them. kristallnacht seem to do nothing to this guy. what was happening of course the final solution that began in 42, the were being picked up and taken away. this stuff is going on and he didn't do anything about it or care to do anything about it and jack was pretty good on that front. he was of a certain age, and irish and that certain age were not particularly good in terms of jewish people. there was a point later on in his political career when kenny o'donnell said wanted to put out a letter saying i wish the jewish vote have been better so dumping on the jewish community to one of its leaders where jack said don't ever send out that letter. we have to think of the future not the past and secondly these people, i love this line, these people, jewish people have problems you will never understand. he had tremendous empathy for what they have been through in history. totally unlike his old man. >> host: there was a popular view for years that jack kennedy was reluctant because his brother joe had been killed, airplane blew up someplace and his father had to say no you were going to run for office. that's not true? >> guest: one of his war buddies, paul fay said that is how he would sham it. he would build a case, the old man wants me to do this. you know the world war ii guys. they never want to admit ambition. it was once better to say the old man wants me to run for congress. everybody close to him said this guy is raring to go. he took the call in for the music and heard the bugle call. by the way all these years of covering politics, did you ever hear anybody or hear of anybody or meet anybody who was talked into the political career? is something you have in you, that. the only thing that gets rid of it is formaldehyde. jack wanted to eat a success. >> host: the guy who says i have no plans to run for presidency and yes his acceptance speech in his pocket. guest: it's unseemly. today there is more open ambition but i think jack came of that generation, he was very much a world war ii man, don't complain about your billets or the motions -- missions you have to go on but don't brag about the war which most of those guys never did. >> host: let's talk about boston politics. he runs for the house, doesn't know the district and there's this wonderful story that someone, maybe his father, but to guy on the ballot against him with the same name as the guy who may be. >> host: that was. >> guest: that was joe russo. there is the irish and the italians and the irish get the biggest hick as somebody once said stepping on the fingers of the italians right below the latter. they're coming up right behind them and they like to step on them. count the number of italians like congresspeople in massachusetts. the irish love winning seats in holding onto them. jack had an opponent named joe russo who is a serious opponent. they found another guy for 20 bucks named joe russo and put him on the ballot. a clean legal trick. it's not a dirty trick. there's a difference and we can talk about that sometime. also jack had some other components, mike neville his toughest opponent had been mayor of cambridge. jack strategy come in second and all the towns. let all the local guys be the favorite sons but you come in second everywhere and he by the way was the only governor with a war record. coming back from the war with this heroic period of service and saving his crew which was well advertised by the old man, there was nobody else on the ballot that would touch them. nobody else had a war record. that was the election that nixon and smathers one. all those guys came in at ortous six coming back from the war. the american people wanted to reward them. if you hadn't serve you had a problem. >> host: and 52 he runs against henry cabot lodge, great emily name. >> guest: and really a great man. what was wrong with him? there was nothing wrong with henry cabot lodge. >> host: it turned out he could not win. how did that happen? eska the kennedy people working with kenny o'donnell and bobby was the great hero of the campaign. what they did was realize, the old way of running in massachusetts if you are republican you ran from outside of boston. if you are a bostonian, you ran from the city and knew you weren't getting any votes outside of the city. the kennedy people discovered, lots of people go into boston college law school or harvard law the moved out of the boston area to the quiet burbs where they may be 20 or 30% of the population. they were quiet. they weren't vague city irish guys. they were independent voters who would vote democratic or republican so it can he did starting around 47 or 48 for 45 years campaigned around the state of massachusetts going into those communities where they were minorities but they were there and he got to those pockets. back and 52 he had it been there and 57. pins on the map, you have been there before. before. you have already communicated with those people, dealt with them and those people said one we have the waspy irish guide. why do we have to have the waspy yankee? this guy is classy and has a war record like lodge and they convince them that they had somebody from their world the catholic world that was as good as the protestant world. that was the toughest to crack to convince the irish devote or an irishman. this is the same thing that the face and 60 one all those governors like lawrence of pennsylvania and pat round didn't take an irishman could get elected president. bid to convince their fellow catholics that they could do it. that was an interesting thing within the catholic world. >> host: you emphasize the irish connection, the average family. part of his drive, part of his father's drive in his drive was to show that the irish were just as good as everybody else. >> guest: i love the historian high school. he is at this very rich posh school. it used to be all yankees. they were all the fords and if it's in the yankee families like adlai stevenson went there and people like that. he was one of the first. the headmaster didn't particularly like the irish but he had to put up with them because like today they were the chinese kids with all the money. the kids with the money got to look -- lead in. one day the headmaster george st. john was giving a chapel speech, a sermon about those kids have the right spirit. but some were mockersmarkers, they were troublemakers. mockers had a truck -- couple of meanings. get mad iris trashed cleaned up the horse manure and kennedy heard that. he formed a club called the mockers and they did nothing but plan to cause trouble. the old man came up to see them when he got in trouble and it practically expelled and said if you are really my son you would not have begun that club with the letter m. so there was the old man. i always wanted to have a swashbuckling father like that. he bought them a couple of film projectors and they let the kid off. by the way jack only elected kids who were wheels whose fathers had so much money they couldn't be kicked out. >> host: by the way we remember the great line from his inaugural address, asked not which country can do for you and you say in your book felt that he got it from the headmaster at -- >> guest: i went back to the archives and it says the irish have not taken over. lorraine connolly is a wonderful woman who is head of public relations and the headmaster at the time was a wonderful man named ed shanahan. i got up there and she introduces me to the archivist. she hesitantly gives me a briefing book, a looseleaf look and i open it up and on the right-hand side was the chapel notes of george st. john the beloved headmaster and and it was a couple of sermons for the day. regular there was something called essays which was an essay written by his hero, the former turn of the 19th century dean of studies at harvard. it ended with the following phrase and when i read it i could not believe what i found. the rosetta stone here. it said the youth should always ask of its alma mater not in the end quote, direct quotes, not what she can do for me but what i can do for her. in direct quotes, and sorensen was kennedy speechwriter. he always thought that was the most credible theory but not even he had gone back and found it. he said they told them there wasn't any record of that but there was in fact a record. at the time kennedy gave a speech it so aroused the ire of some of his protestant republican schoolmates that they accused him of plagiarizing the great george st. john so i don't know what he was supposed to say. as my headmaster once said, paraphrased george singin. leah beasley took offense and by the way i put it in the bookstore for buddy could say the actual copy. >> host: ted sorensen used to say when he would ask him, you know did you write that or did john kennedy write that famous line? >> guest: that drove the family crazy because they thought he was saying i wrote it. but i remember vicki kennedy, ted kennedy's widow said i think i trace that thing back and it was great because ted thought he'd written it and actually, he obviously drafted a lot of that stuff for kennedy by kennedy and he from nifty 6060, here is to young guys in their 30s and he was all in his 20s most of that time, traveling the country. the whole country all around the country putting pins on the map. jack giving the speeches, ted drafting them and listening to jack give the best of them in writing it again. his speeches weren't well delivered. they were very well-written and it was only in 60 he began to learn how to give a good speech with speech coaches and a voice doctor. >> host: let's talk about kennedy the senator. i wasn't in this town until two weeks after he was inaugurated as president. i was politically aware of the 50s and what i remember from that era and talking to the guys who are brown, he married jackie and he almost died in 54. someone, guess he or someone wrote the book. >> guest: i think sorensen wrote it. i think if you read it again or remember, i remember reading it years ago and thinking the introduction, the prep was red like the idiomatic jack, politician. the sympathetic things are the speechwriter wouldn't write which only in this position -- >> host: we are talking about profiles in courage. >> guest: what other profession are you supposed to act against her interests on the st. lawrence seaway which is what got this thing going. he voted for the st. lawrence seaway which was a passage from the great lakes to the atlantic ocean into canada but what did they cut off? a cut-off the boston harbor from commercial like today. they thought the locals up there especially the irish who were always bitter about things, he is doing this because the old man was not merchandise mart in chicago. they were really angry with him, so he began and sat down with ted sorensen. we have to do a magazine article about times in which senators had acted against their local constituencies and shown national courage. it evolved organically to a bigger book. but i think if you listen to a sorensen wrote before he died in what he told me, he was only a 28-year-old kid working for kennedy. kennedy knew all the history. i think it's fair to say kennedy produced the book. he had all the history and read all the books, scribbled out all the notes figured it out but wasn't going to set their month after month and draft it. but when i looked back at kennedy's letters they are beautifully written. letters from the service to his girlfriend, typed, six pages, beautifully written letters. without any problems. i would love to talk about inge. that was his most -- they were all gorgeous his girlfriend but she was a danish, gorgeous creature you might say, a movie actor. she was married a second time when he was having his relationship with her. she had gotten her picture taken at the 36 berlin olympics with guess who? adolf hitler because he had taken a fancy to her and whatever his sexual interest where he thought she was the nordic physical ideal and he thought she was the greatest looking nordic woman around. and she was. she looks like a poster of the nazi poster rib lawns, gorgeous woman. she has this apple and features and jack was totally smitten with her. is best read at the time chuck spaulding said it was the most compatible relation. >> host: j. edgar hoover said she was a spy. >> guest: that picture, he tracked her down to charleston. jack was a navy intelligence. here he is a young naval officer and his father was a suspected pro-nazi. going out with this dazzling blond nordic woman who had been seen in a photograph. we have evidence or probable cause. we have to follow her so they send kennedy to charleston to get away from him. kennedy said to a friend, they shagged me down to charleston because they thought it was hanging around with the nazi spy. that was his word. she chases him down there and they spent four days together at the fort sumpter house hotel. four days together in the only time they came out from there period of living together down there and i loved this is a roman catholic was basically for a couple of late night meals and to go to mass. [laughter] that is so jack and they both went to mass together in the cathedral on broad street down there in beautiful charleston. it just shows as they came across throughout the book, and thinking about after i had written a book, jack was a devotional catholic who prayed every night at his bedside. jackie would laugh and say how superstitious he was. david powers told me, my editor said say dave powers told you and don't act like you believe it and jackie said that in her tapes, condescendingly because she was not very religious. she thought it was just superstition. i found out from lynne billings his closest friend who had a room at the white house and traveled with them in europe, travel through nazi europe, he would pray by his bedside. jack was a devotional catholic who also was what he was. he was very complicated. >> host: let's talk about the woman for a minute. we may have to return to it but let's talk about the women during that era. men straight, women stray. there are statistics to try to purport, tell you how many into and blood but he was a serial betrayer. why would he do that? >> guest: as i said a few moments ago his wife tried to figure it out because she said his mother never loved him. sort of freudian trying to figure out his motherly love. i think she attributed the men were in those days. jackie was not only a woman of the madman period, early 60s and late 70s where men were in charge but she also grew up -- her close friend told me that she grew up in that old money world where after dinner the men would go to their own room and smoke cigars and talk about their girls. they kept the seekers from the women. in the women would often talk about whatever they talked about but they were always denied access to that secret world of the men. jackie said when her husband was killed i will now lose john to the men's world. the only way to interpret that was he was going to be part of the secret world where they phil gramm and the rest knew about everybody's girlfriend. remember? they kept it secret and the other part of it was, just who he was. jack kennedy, one thing was he was his father son in this case. the old man chased women. gloria swanson, there is a wonderful story. i don't know if it's apocryphal or not where rose kennedy and joe kennedy or on an oceanliner, the queen mary and crossing the atlantic. rose said to joe you won't believe who else is on the boat. [laughter] and joe had set it up where he had his girlfriend on the boat with them for the five-day trip and this is the kind of stuff that was outrageous. it was men's behavior in a day would make whitman could get away with it. >> host: intel 1987 when gary hart said follow me around unless you've jumped into the tidal basin. the press did not write about it. >> guest: by the way still to date do you know anybody really hit goes out and does investigative pieces, digging into somebody's private sexual life? >> host: i know a lot of people from other candidates. >> guest: doing it for each other by what normally happens is there's a press conference in a down-home -- downtown hotel. or there is an indictment or some kind of discovery with paula jones. it is sort of thrown at us. i think it's thrown at is more than any digging into this. >> host: women say to me that does not make it right. and i want to make certain that i know about it. >> guest: that is another point if you. >> host: it's a political.. >> guest: they really want to know this stuff. in fact been a debate at the end of 2011 where one of the candidates romney asked, pointed out the other guy had been married three times. they had an open discussion of it. >> host: that's true. john kennedy wanted to -- adlai stevenson but stephenson threw it open to the convention. he was ambitious that then and already saying i'm going to be president. >> guest: he had only been senator for three years. he had a terrible back operation and 54. he had last rites for the third time in his life. nixon was crying come i don't know if you knew this rex skelton. he became a curator. this guy told me in an interview nixon was crying that night. he was close to kennedy and he really liked him before they went to war with each other. kennedy wanted to be president. he began to think about that in the 50s, clearly by then and he wanted to woo stephenson. he was wooing him and knocked off the chairman of the party in massachusetts because berg was burke was at mccormick guy in kennedy -- he gets off to chicago and at 11:00 stevenson won the nomination for the second time. he didn't like kiefer. he was a drinker and just didn't like the guy but he didn't have the nerve if you well. >> host: keith was also a womanizer. >> guest: okay. stephenson was not able to make a decision. that was the one notorious problem is his personality. he was always rethinking, maybe the side. he wasn't much of an ideologue. so he said let's have a faux. what he was trying to do according to his offenders was he wanted to focus on the fact that eisenhower who is up for re-election, they wanted to put the focus on who was his vice president so this was a way of zeroing in on nixon who while the democrats hated. it's so important stephenson said because of all the help of a president that we have a boat on this so i will throw it out to the delegates. kennedy says i'm going to run for vice president. he gets smathers and calls them up, his buddy, segregation is from florida and says we give me a war buddy speech? then he starts going to people like to sap you of new york the big boss of the city of new york, running around desperately. charlie bartlett is with him. to crazy campaign. he ends up almost winning. he is moving ahead and then sam raeburn puts in the fence. he calls on the oklahoma governor who does not like kennedy. kennedy doesn't have it. he has a lot of strength in the south but not enough. kefauver was good with civil rights and he also ran in the primary almost beating stephenson. kefauver deserved it. but kennedy came so close. he said if i can get this close, with no preparation then think what i can do if i spent four years running for president. >> host: 1960 iran. we don't have time to do the whole campaign because we want to get to his presidency but they're wonderful stories, stories, the one about the first debate in chicago. and the makeup that you have in your book are co. >> guest: first of all kennedy really took the debate seriously. he went out with don hewitt who later became head of 60 minutes but he was director. he wants to know where i stand where the lighting is and where everything is. he wanted to get a fix on it. nixon was really afraid of the press and never pressed for it. kennedy spent hours in the ambassador hotel constantly answering the question over and over, trying to get ready. he gets in there and he starts to psych out nixon. they ask if he wants make up and kennedy goes no i don't want it. then they go back in the other room can somebody says nixon, i will put makeup on when he puts it on so they had this have this mexican stand off. they are both macho men because kennedy had laughed openly at humphrey his primary opponent for using make up that today everybody uses it. you were around then, apparently the lighting was brutal. you had to use make up so bill wilson puts the make up on secretly in the backroom. this handsome guy with a great tan still puts the makeup on because you need it. nixon comes out with this horrible stuff called lazy shave and it's melting almost like death in venice. just pouring off of him on camera. nixon had been in the hospital for three weeks but not only that can kennedy people wanted lecterns over very thin. the pole holding up the lectern had to be so thin so you could see his legs wobble. they knew nixon was in bad shape physically and they wanted that to be seen by the public. they were cruel and they also wanted to make sure he had to stand the whole time and they waited until the last minute. as the lights are about to go on the on on-air thing is about to go on candidate weights and heights in the green room. five seconds before a nixon is going what is going on here? the second debate here in washington, nbc studios, nixon gets control so he brings the level of the temperature the room down to 40 degrees. it was a meat locker and kennedy arise. again he is with bill wilson at "tv guide." wilson races down to the basement and finds the thermostat. there is a nixon guy standing guard on the thermostat and he says if you don't get out of the way up the thermostat and let me turn that thing up to 65 or 70 i am calling the police. they had another stand off and they ended up compromising on the temperature. they get back up to nixon. the whole idea was they did not want pics into sweats of the nixon people had seen them sweat profusely in the first debate. they all knew what was going on but this was about who is going to rule america by the way. >> host: chris you know as well as i do in particular today we like it to be about judgment of background. presentation, presentation. >> guest: kennedy was sweat was an calm, like a harbor dawn. the way he crossed his legs in the way he would look at nixon with that sardonic look every time nixon said something weird. sarge shriver said he won the election because of the way he looked at nixon quizzically like what is this guy story? the country was looking at nixon. his eyes would dart over. he would see those eyes darting and he couldn't stop his eyes for moving that way which is what is he did in the first debate in 1947 in pennsylvania. they had their first debate in key sport pennsylvania. they took the train back terse -- >> host: d'amico and at the nixon? >> guest: not only did they have the debate but they took the train home and flipped for who got the bottom bunk and all might long they talked about the cold war. i always would love that picture, wouldn't you? nixon on the bottom and kennedy on the top talking away about the cold war. >> host: the first debate in chicano ted sorensen told me the story. after the debate they went down to find a payphone and jack kennedy borrowed the quarter from ted to activate the phone to call the data and see how he did. so he is in control. >> host: . >> guest: his dad always said he did great. that is a story he didn't know about. >> host: he won the election by of what? thanks to it is said in chicago the old man a are your daily and sam gioconda who ran the unions and lyndon johnson being on the ticket are co. >> guest: with the help of a few good friends. >> host: with the help of a few good friends from the graveyards. we are halfway through our program with chris matthews and a great book. let's talk about kennedy as president and i will start you out with what you know is coming. "the new york times" in late november wrote an op-ed piece. i'm going to quote from it. the first premise is kennedy was a good president it might've been a great one if he had lived. few serious historians take this view. it belongs to camelot, surviving stenographers in the popularizers like chris matthews whose novel works hard to gloss over the 35th president's actual accomplishing and. >> guest: i think rush should have done his homework are co i think the comment was whimsical and ideological. the great thing about kennedy is his record is there on the surface. i think this president is fighting for re-election and has to look at the fact the kennedy strength was you know what he would do in his second term because he was doing it. look what was happening when he was killed. he had gotten the civil rights bill which we live by today which outlaws jim crow which says you can walk into any restaurant, gas station and you can be there is an american. that bill, he was fighting to get through the senate, the house judiciary committee weeks before he was killed and yet gotten it through the judiciary committee. he was moving that legislation. he was the one that advanced the power of the saturn rocket. he was the one who jackie said, she wanted his initial secretly put on the next saturn rocket because he knew and she knew as part of the merits of that was the one that would pass the soviet union thrust and get us to the moon. in terms of our competition for support in the third of war which kennedy was all about winning the competition with the soviet union without a third world war was the whole strategy, the peace corps and alliance for progress, special forces. don't let the worst be escalated to the point of a nuclear conflict are co that was his great strength getting us to the worse. i don't know how ross or anyone else can investigate this and not see the miraculous ability of that president kennedy to set us on a course to win the cold war without a war. that is what i believe he did. in terms of economic policy the keynesian policy of heller, the tax cut which the publicans today herald but in those days criticize and oppose. i think his record is pretty darn good and in fact a look at things like medicare which he was pushing and a lot of these things for his. i think you would have had a good second term and i think ross is wrong and a bit petty in this regard are co. >> host: by the way, the greatest civil rights speech of modern times was martin luther king, jr.'s at the memorial. and the second was john kennedy in june of 1963. he collaborated of course was sorensen and i invite people to go to the ability to get it from the university of virginia and put it up on your computer and listen to his speech. >> guest: you know the power for president of the united states for the first time ever to go in the middle of a fight with wallace over desegregation of the university of alabama. to go to the midst of that and he did have the upper hand and bobby justice. they go on television and say this fundamental as the bible, americanist constitution. it's a moral issue. that is what johnson encourage them to do. to make it a moral issue and for president african-americans have him many today still, on their walls, picture of him and bobby and dr. king for recent. anyone, i don't think russ was there. i think in all fairness to the younger critics i don't think you can understand the early 60s without knowing how tough the fight for civil rights was. we needed federal chips to go into mississippi, federal troops to enforce letting a couple of black people and then you had to do it that way. episodes of. we had the freedom riders. young jewish kids from the north were getting killed and buried alive are co this was an amazing struggle. everybody talked about vietnam being a struggle. you and i know the real struggle of the 60s began and ended the civil rights. it was domestic. >> host: i think you are right. i covered mike dukakis campaigned campaign that he went to philadelphia mississippi gave a talk in town, never mentioned the three civil rights workers who had been murdered in an earthen dam nearby. let me go back to the cycle of things he said canady did well and did right and did well. that may be. that was towards the end of his presidency. let's start at the beginning. the joint chiefs took him and allen dulles of the cia. >> guest: let's talk about that. this is where president learns the worst way by failure. here is what happened. eisenhower policy supported i suppose by the joint chiefs which we were going to take a group of middle-class who are living in miami and a lot of them were dr. sons are doctors themselves. they were just good people. they wanted to take their country back and we trained 1500 of them under the auspices of the cia. it was a cia operation but these richard cuban heroes. the plan was to get them on the beach somewhere in cuba and arouse at that time perhaps -- plot to overthrow the country like that can guatemala. that something would magically create an incredible time malt and all of a sudden the middle-class would overthrow castro. that was the idea. the trouble was they kept changing the landing base until finally it was so remote that they wouldn't even hear about it in kennedy want to keep the noise level down. but he never asked the most profound question. you were landing 1500 exiles on the beach. how many regular cuban troops will be there on the first day? that is all he had to ask. the answer? 25,000. once you know that you know they will lose. 25,000 trained hard defenders of their country and their revolution are going to be 1500 guys so then he was told they will escape into the mountains. nobody told kennedy and kennedy never asked. 80 miles of swamp separated that each from those mountains. so kennedy never asked the critical questions. i think what happened was in this this is not defending him, this is to criticize him, he thought well the first time in his life he was not the boss. he was the boss among his high school and his girlfriend and friends. he gets elected president and the cia is running the operation. the joint chiefs what do you think khrushchev is going to do if i start killing of bunch of russians? lemay said nothing. khrushchev warned him, if you go there i'm going for berlin. he made that explicit are co and he learned. >> host: we will get to berlin but let's go through vehement. kennedy meets khrushchev in vienna. after the bay of pigs and khrushchev is thinking i can take this kid. >> guest: that was the assumption he had. "the new york times" said, i told him there would be 70 million people killed in a nuclear war and khrushchev said -- never blinked an eye. we have had wars, here's another one. he never met a person is a that nuclear war was another asked weighted matter -- not battled. that did shake him. it would shake anyone and he came back with that. i met a man willing to face nuclear war over berlin and that aware of is different from ike. ike would come back and say you should have stood up to him and kept brinkmanship. eisenhower had the upper hand towards weaponry. in 61 you read the manifesto coming out of christian is mouth in january of 61. you would not be messing with the guy because at that point they had the rocket thrust and they were headed toward the moon. they were moving ahead in africa and they were feeling their oats. they were ready to fight and that is what was different. he had to be careful with the russians about berlin because kennedy promised the german-american campaign that berlin was worth a nuclear war. it was easier to say that than to fight a nuclear war over berlin. in the end he did not want to fight a nuclear war over berlin. nuclear war was his number one goal. >> host: august of 61 khrushchev had sent every message possible, we are going to normalize it. recognized east germans and all of that. now here comes the law. >> guest: the law lawn than a war. and he is a real credit. >> host: he had written a book called berlin 61 in which he tries to take the case that kennedy was rolled by khrushchev once again. we should've knocked on the wall. >> guest: consequences and as we watch this election we are covering now, the most important question you have to ask whether we allow the israelis it's okay to bomb iran. what is the second step? here is the way the kennedy looked at this whole thing over berlin. we had 15,000 nato forces, the french, the brits and brit send us. guess how many the russians had? 350,000. the minute they roll toward, and their tanks rolled into berlin we would have the choice give them less berlin in a matter of hours which would have been horrific for europe. to some kind of first use of nuclear weapons and stop them in their tracks. kennedy said i'm not going to that step is that step is horrible. it puts us in the position of wanting a third world war. kennedy knew this. ike would say, just say no to them. that might work and it might not at this time went on it became more likely that it would not work that the russians knew we wouldn't use of nuclear weapons and in the end we would not use them. by the way goldwater never thought we would use nuclear weapons so in that and it was not a good laugh and that is what kennedy realize. he realized it was not a bluff because we would not blow up the world that he decided he needed to do something about it. the best thing that happened was, remember fulbright on "meet the press" the chairman of the foreign relations committee. that was the key signal to the russians. if you cut off east berlin we can live with that, just don't take was berlin are co he signaled to them clearly, take what you have to take to protect your soviet round but you don't want workers going to the west. do what you have to do but no war. it's easy for camp to say. we should have been tough the tough is not a metaphor. it leads to consequences. outside of that, the russians backed down are we back down or neither side ask down. the fear kennedy had gotten from reading barbara tok was wet launches countries and to world war ii and world war iii is each side does what it feels it has to do step-by-step and you create a ruth goldberg situation where both sides find themselves killing each other over something both sides did not want to do. that is where presidents differ from historians. >> host: we will continue on the major points of the presidency but now it differs and back to presentation. i remember going to the news conference. i didn't have the guts to think about asking a question. >> guest: you could wave your hand at that time are co. >> host: we think about the way it. this was not scripted. the questions were usually pretty softball but not always. so he could have couldn't have thought of dancers in the time it took to get there, but he had this kind of wit that with that everyone concentrated on. you cut your finger, how did just that? i was slicing bread in the kitchen or something like that. that was part of his charm. >> guest: it is rare in politics to have a witty politician. clinton was a good time but he was not witty. stephenson was funny. jean mccarthy was to his regret probably. politicians tried to avoid being urbain. to be urbain is to be elitist but for some reason jack makes the irish background with his wit and didn't seem to be to urbain but it was fine. it was not clunky, and those press conferences where a treat. they were not on prime-time because even in those days with kennedy self-confidence thought of going on at 9:00 at night with everybody watching, everybody watched more television in those days than they do now because there were only three channels. everybody watch those press conferences when they were on so you are right. i think that wit and by the way one of the reasons i wanted to write this book i came across a guy named garrison. probably a republican, most of those guys were. he said i'm not going to talk about kennedy is a president that is a pt boat commander he was a good officer but he was great company are co he said we were stuck over there with no showers, no movies. we were at the front and the middle of the night he talked to the guys. there were guys who are willing to listen and laugh at your jokes and tell good stories. they had to be good guys and he said kennedy was a great company. that stirred me. i said here is a guy want to write about it. someone once said of winston churchill as they were drinking and smoking cigars, the later got into the morning to more churchill became churchill. that is what i wanted to find. >> host: i remember and i'm paraphrasing, headed toward a re-election at some point and someone asked him, to tough job as president would you recommend others to be president? he said, yes, but not yet are co. [laughter] alright. desk of the timing in the sense of self-deprecation. remember he was running against working guys in the cambridge massachusetts and 46. they knew the neighborhood. he was a carpetbagger and he began to write his memoirs, okay a carpetbagger. they were telling top stories and the finally stands up to this lean rich kid and says i guess i'm the only one that didn't work his way up the hard way and he just laughed it off. at least he admits he had it handed to them. >> host: that reminds me about reagan used to say, they say hard work never killed anybody but why take a chance? let's go to 1962, the bay of pigs, chris jeff, berlin whatever you think of those things. now we have a real problem. it is for 13 days in october after discovering that there are soviet missiles with nuclear warheads rapidly trying to be put in place. which would threaten us. >> guest: intermediate-range missiles that could reach new york easily. they were not defensive missiles. >> guest: . >> host: they were saying at first we have to strike them. what happen? >> guest: the people who wanted the strike including kennedy and bobby and all of them in later on it was george bundy and curtis lemay who wanted to level the country and shoot the admiral. >> host: the air force general. >> guest: if you see a good movie like 13 days which is an excellent film. >> host: that was directed by her roger donaldson. >> guest: a friend of mine, a producer. [laughter] the scene where the mayberry red face fay says you know, you are in a tough spot mr. president a president comes back and says i think we are in it together but he walks out of the room and the admiral defends him. you cut the rug right out from under him general. they were determined to go and take those muscles out. they also recognize to have an aircraft you have to knock out the installations and the ground rockets that can knock you. you have to do a full invasion. that was a plan. kennedy is looking at that going wait a minute, -- it turns out some other things we didn't know. and these are the things i discover. he has different conclusions. if we had gone in, khrushchev said this is what he wrote in his memoirs, had have they attacked my missiles and if i had any left and by the way, maxwell told the president we cannot get them on if we go and we will get x% but there'll be 10% or one third left and we can't get it. they are going to fire them. what do we do? kennedy said if we are not going to allow situation where they attack us because then we have to attack them. we went on national television saying any attack on cuba is an attack of of the soviet union on us. >> host: that you use the word attack. requiring a full response. >> guest: what does that say? it turns out khrushchev was ready from his ends to act and this is the scary part of any kind of chain reaction and the word consequences has to be considered here. how do you attack khrushchev said if i have any missiles left even a couple of big ones and he's talking like a little kid, meaning intermediate-range missiles i was going to hit new york. i might not have killed everybody but i would kill billions of people and taught america what it's like to fight a war on its own territory. there again khrushchev is not thinking of the consequences because had he done that we would have had to strike and we would have gone for the full strike are co so a kennedy was looking out was a couple of things. first of all i don't want them to strike and use their missiles on us because then we have to return the attack. he also i think wanted to do with it anyway undercover so he did two things. he set up the blockade, the immediate threat of action. >> host: call called a quarantine. >> guest: it was only about the missiles and the material leading to the muscles and then he cut a secret deal. bobby went to see the soviet ambassador and the only thing that was different in the movie he actually went over and saw him -- actually he saw him at the justice department. he saw the pictures on the wall and bobby for the first time in his life did not act like it was so big. he didn't start yelling about communism. he talked them as the is the father, we have to say this planet. the word got back to khrushchev that although we could not publicly trade their missiles for missiles kennedy would remove the turkish jupiter missiles from turkey. quietly in a couple of months. if they could keep the secret. was a combination of churchill and chamberlain that got god is through it. both a tough stand and a secret collaboration. and kennedy said, couldn't live with myself and history of by allowed a nuclear war to take place over turkish missiles. he was able to see the difference. >> host: so we make a deal to save us from going into nuclear war. today in this town you can't make a deal to keep the government opened. open. >> guest: i think one really, not to sell the book is a useful tool, but i think a lot of presidential election should be about consequence. of atomic journalists asks, what would you do if? and then you say what would happened then and what do expect what happened then? what calculation have you made? if they say i don't care what happens you shouldn't be president. we have to care what would happen next. >> host: we want a president who knows how to play chess. we have five or six or seven in his left. we come to november 22. do you think oswald, he acted alone. he was the sole shooter no question about it. but was there anything behind him? >> guest: i know, and made a point in my book not to write about his name or put his name in my look. i wanted to bring kennedy right up to the yet so i took him in the car and thanks jim wright for giving me this information years ago. >> host: later became speaker of the house. >> guest: kennedy gave that morning and this is the way life works. the end comes without knowing and you know not the day or the hour. >> host: like a thief in the night. >> guest: kennedy is getting up that morning. he knows he is going into hostile territory because the people in dallas had spat on adlai stevenson. the daily papers were filled with this horrible kennedy is a trader ads and nixon of course is ponting because he was there the night before st. kennedy is going to dump johnson and put somebody else and just to taunt him. >> host: not a chance. >> guest: kennedy was in texas as you know because he push for civil rights, cost himself any chance of getting mississippi or alabama. probably not south carolina or the carolinas. he was trying to hold on to texas and the anti-civil rights environment and thought he also needed georgia. so he is campaigning for money and re-election. as he is traveling from fort worth to the airport having had a pretty good morning with the union guys and a good speech to the chamber he is talking to jim wright and john connelly saying why is fort worth such a good yellow dog democrat town of bias odalys right wing? what i like about my ability to have that story as stories his shows jack kennedy in the political career, he was fighting the career to the end trying to be a good politician so he could get done what he needed to get them. the answers he got you find fascinating. jim wright blamed it on the newspaper business. he said it was the daily press that owned the dallas morning liz -- new sets that this anti-kennedy mindset in the city of dallas. john connelly was far more sophisticated. he said it dealt with the economies of the two cities. fort worth with was the town of factory floors for people works next to each other, blue-collar blues rooting for each other voted as a working middle-class crowd. they would work in corrals or stockyards and the same thing, regular people. dallas, high-rises come insurance business. everyone is wearing a white shirt to work and they want to work on the next floor. they want to work their way up to management level. they are voting like there bosses, thinking republican and guess who was like that? john connelly because he became a republican. you should be to the did the whole thing to economics. the right populism and as we no, you are getting to the question of to what extent was the anti-kennedy from the right environment of texas in those days over civil rights primarily, what role, that is what the liberals have wrestled with because they feel that atmospheric, that toxic atmospheric anti-civil rights anti-kennedy. somehow had something to do with him getting killed by a guy who was infatuated with castro. didn't like what kennedy said in tampa. as long as castro is there nothing is going to have him. the minute he is gone everything can happen. very anti-castro. elena was lee harvey also find after the right wing general. he was going after nixon because he thought he was in town but it was johnson. hit gone to the soviet embassy and the cuban embassy the day before. all the information suggests it was a man on the hard left a real anti-american communist and actuated, no longer the soviet union where he lived but now with castro. that is all we know. the latest books, bugliosi's, posner all the books a single assassin. i can't get any further than that. >> host: you said at the outset correctly that america, whether they knew him or not he should be on mount rushmore.
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