So people know where youre coming from, on that dayin 1949 when the republicans took back the house of representatives, did you have a smile on your face or scowl . I teach a course on the u. S. Cong, and for part of that course i have the students play a member of congress, and they try to get a bill enacted through their house of representatives. And thats a great experience for the students and for myself, if for no other reason than at the end i get to play speaker. And then i also teach a course called power in american politics where we learn about different aspects of power in the United States, power of interest groups, power of congress, power of the president , power of people, power of voters. So those are some of the classes that i teach here at catholic. Host why dont speakers traditionally vote on legislation . Guest speakers traditionally do not vote because its a legacy of this hybrid position of speaker, as i mentioned before. They are seen as both a partisan leader, but also as a nonpartisan leader. And if youre nonpartisan, it means that youre not supposed to be taking part in the issues of the day that put you on one side of the question or the other. And to the extent the speaker is supposed to be presiding over the house and insuring that everythings done fairly, people might question their ability to do that if theyre also participating in the vote. So traditionally, speakers do not participate in votes. They can. Theyre not prohibited from doing so. But traditionally, they do not. This also has changed over time, and in the 1970s speakers started participating more and more often, i think culminating in gingrich who voted quite a bit. And nancy pelosi did as well. But boehner, again i mentioned before, has moved back from that partisan role. He votes very, very rarely on the house floor. And i think that is in part a reflection of his belief that the speaker needs to move himself or herself out of these debates and conflicts in order to be seen as someone who really has the whole house and the interests of the whole house at heart. Host and weve been talking with Catholic University professor Matthew Green about his book, the speaker of the house. Published by Yale University press. Heres the cover, youre watching booktv on cing span 2. On cspan2. Is there a Nonfiction Author or book youd like to see featured on booktv . Send us an email to booktv cspan. Org, tweet us booktv or post on our wall, facebook. Com booktv. Vanity fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough appeared at the 2015 Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest to talk about his history of americas radical underground. That next on booktv. Welcome to the 31st annual Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest. My name is tom, and before we start id like to give a special thank you to all the lit fest sponsors. We are broadcasting live on cspan2s booktv. Were going to leave some time at the end of this program for audience questions. We just ask that you step up to the microphone up here and ask your question so that our Television Audience can hear the question. You can keep the spirit of the lit fest going all year long with a subscription to the tribunes premium book section, fiction serious and membership program. Also feel free to download the trib books app. For more information on the lit fest as well as access to our digital bookstore. And finally, the lit fest loves social media, like anyone else, so feel free to take pictures, post messages and upload them to twitter, instagram or facebook using the hashtag prlf15. Before we begin, please science your phone silence your phones, turn the flashes off your cameras, and i will introduce our moderator, rick perlstein. [applause] i like a short but sweet introduction. [laughter] so ill give a short one for bryan. Although for the indefatigable research in his most recent book, i joke we should call him bryanou burroughs because ye, thank you. [laughter] im here all week. [laughter] i asked him how he wanted to be introduced, and he said he writes for vanity fair, and he writes books. And the books for which hes known other than this most recent k one is barbarians at e gate which came out in 1990, and the murder of rjr the merger of r. J. Renadle and that nabisco, the food company. Nabis. His latest book is an accomplishment of research, story telling and moral inquiry. And it is something based on the facts we know and that is domestic terrorism. He takes the story back to 1969 or so. And all the way up through the middle of the 1980s. And one of the striking facts in the book is that the most fatal and interesting year for domestic terrorism prior to First World Trade Center bombing in the United States was 1981 which really makes you scratch your head and say maybe i should read this book which you should. I have read it closely and have a review in the nations magazine coming about next month. First thing i would like bryan to talk about is the scale of violence during this time. My favorite example is a story you told about the evacuation of a movie theater. Maybe you can address that. This was a small item in the New York Times i picked up. May 1970, small puerto rican Independence Group set off a bomb in the theater in the bronx during the liberation of jones. Bombs were so prevalent by that time. And according to the new york city times when the police tried to cleanup the theater after the bomb no one wanted to leave and wanted to see the rest of the movie. It was like we are new yorkers, it is a bomb already. And the box score in the San Francisco chronicle. San francisco had so many bombs during the 1970s the chronicle ran a box score of how many there were and who was in the lead. But the scope of domestic violence, what we would call domestic terrorism today, i dont call it terrorism because by and large these bombs were not intended to kill indiscriminately. Most were protest bombs set off in empty buildings, court houses, exploding press releases. They were not intended to kill they were intended to draw the media and police focus to communicate and that would take to the bottom of the pay phone or sent to a Radio Station and this type of thing. The sure scale of it is what stunned me. The Senate Inquiry in the early 70s counted 2,005 bombings. I remember trying to explain the first bombing in berkeley and we disclose why it was so little noticed and it was because i counted 34 other significant bombings in february around the country most that injured far more people than the half dozen people weathers first attack did. The major thing is not only how widespread it is but how forgotten it is. There is so little culture in the memory. I lived through the 70s. I remember patty hurst and most thof of the rest of it was centered in the bay area and chicago. Media capitals. If you grew up like i did in a small town in texas or small town in arkansas this was easy to miss. Even though i am one day in new york in 1975 following a puerto rican bombing and there so so many threats that 100,000 Office Workers were evacuated Milling Around the streets of manhatt manhattan. It was the first time they evacuated the world trade center. One thing that speaks more of americaness medaling is you talk about new yorkers saying this is new york but you dont talk about this event in the book. I researched this period, too, and came across a lot of strange stories. But in 1975 a man climbed over the whitehouse fence with a lead pipe. And the secret service doing what they do when there is a physical threat it the grounds of the president ial residents they actually shot him to death. There was a like a threeparagraph story in the New York Times that day. And that was it. There was a one sentence written about it. I compare that to what happened when a poor mentally ill woman a few years ago rammed her car into the capital grounds. She had her infant in the car. It was National News for a week but a hundred or so military and Police Personal descended on her home with Hazardous Material suits to make sure she wasnt part of a terrorist cell. This type of violence was so deeply woven in the 70s no body expresses outrage. It was so much a part of life in urb urban america it was no big deal. My favorite part is the woman from the New York Post who they talked to after a bombing that killed someone at mobile Head Quarters in new york in 1977 and her quote was another bombing. Who is this time . Can you imagine saying that today . That is coming after the 60s and watergate and the multitude of awful things going on in new york and the country i dont think radical violence would have been in the top ten things of what anyone was worried about it. Do you think it says anything about us as a people or country that we are so scared of our shadow . Once we forgot this period we were reintroduced to violence. Suddenly out of nowhere to a country that didnt remember this we had 93 and then 9 11. And suddenly when i say bombing to people they shutter and call these people terrorist. As they write back our own interp interpretation of the past. For me to write this book i had to get back to 9 11. Less than one percent of these bombs killed anyone. A few of them did. A bomb went off on a wall Street Restaurant that killed a four people but the vast majority were not intended it kill. There were awful acts. The independence cause of puerto rico was their one groups cause and they had a bombing in 1975 at the location where George Washington said good bye to his troops, and they did this during rush hour with propane tanks and killed six people . Four people. Four people. They were half new york half chicago. Their bombs were 7481. The story, and i am sure it was the first time i read it, they came from a high school in chicago and most were counselors and teachers and oscar lopez the one in prison was an activist. The interesting thing about that particular bombing to me is also in distinction to violent terrorist today, these folks within the mainstream, even the level and liberal, you may say supporters and apologist. What is striking is the response of the church in new york saying they had a puerto rican mainstream social Service Group that was a front for a terrorist group and proved to the churchs leadership the communicator was written from a typewriter and the woman running the group bought the plane ticket and the response of the archbishop of new york was there. The diocese, the government split into two halves with those who were freaked out and concerned and progressives who attacked the fbi for overreaching. In chicago, there were you have a quote about someone saying going after politically active hispanics. Right. But it was difficult for anybody to imagine then or prove until now a revolutionary terrorist Bombing Group was using the national Head Quarters of the church work out of the basement as a front and we can prove it with the womans lawyer admitting it in the book. There are stories like this from the 70s that the have been forgotten. We remember patty hurst and when weather blew up the court house but there are so many other stories like that. Lets talk about what these folks believed themselves to be accomplishing. Lets center the discussion around a group that has profound connection to chicago and that is fdf, in the weather man, in the Weather Underground that started in 1968 or 1969. There is weather, the black Liberation Army and others but the one thing all of these groups for the different causes had in common was they were born from the 60s. The underground in the 70s is a forgotten last chapter of all that happened in the 60s. Obviously what happened is, i always say most of these people were unable to shake the dream of 1968. The dream of 1968 was a worldwide revolution was sweeping the global, it was in evitable it was coming to the United States, the government would fall and literally a new world order was upon us. In 1969, it didnt happen, nixon came in and started cracking heads literally as seen by the storm troopers here in chicago. And the hardest core of the and they all ended up in control of the countries. And weather was the largest, the most influential of the groups that sought to make that happen in america. Theres a great untold story about how they failed utterly to do so. Right. And to connect it with chicago, one of the leaders who was the leader of this, bill ayers, whose name surfaced during the 2008 campaign, you know, kind of still goes around giving speeches at high schools and stuff, you know, talking about this great antiwar movement. And i point out in my review of your book that bill ayers was not an antiwar activist, he was a war activist. You know, he declared war on the United States. And i tell the story in my review about a great socialist friend of mine, jamie weinstein, who was a publisher of americas first socialist newspaper in decades in these times, now ath great leftwing magazine. And his cousin was in the w weathermen. And i said what would you do if your cousin, whose name is j. J. And was an absolute, very, very, very vociferous, basically advocate of murderous revolutionary violence, what would you do if he knocked on your door today . I would turn him in to the fbi i because they destroyed the left. Favors. Right. One of the interventions you make to this story is that you demonstrate that yes after this terrible accident that happened in a town house in Lower Manhattan in march of 1970 that pretty much several members of the Weather Underground blew themselves up accidently you point out that that move to a policy of only undertaking bombs that would only damage property not people. But prior to that they had a different idea in mind. That has been the central myth of the Weather Underground is they never intended to hurt a soul. After the townhouse that is the path they embarked on for six years. They did fairly conventional protest bombings in bathrooms. The fbi after a while began to take them less seriously and called them the terrible toilet bombers because the bath plea room is where most of them were placed because in a public building you are given privacy, you can close the door and do there wiring you need to do. But the important thing and one of the more important points in the book is what is forgotten by appall gist by bill airs and weather alumni is what they want to cover up. And there were two. For the first 90 days they tried to set off bombs to Kill Police Officers and military worker. They did so in berkeley seriously injuring one officer and lightly injuring a bunch of others. There was an action in detroit in which bill airs group set off to bombs in a hall but they were found first. And the third was in the townhouse where the new york collective led by a young man named terry robins was building a series of large bombs they were going to set off at an officers dance that night. As luck, or however you look at it, terry knew a lot about politics and poetry about not enough about building bombs and the bomb went off in his hands and killed him and two others and brought down the entire townhouse upon them and convinced the best of the leadership they had to stop murderous violence. Other groups went on to do it but from there on the principle leaders and bill ayres called it responsible terrorism and that was protest bombing. Bombs not intended to kill. Bill said he never tried to kill cops. How did you get the story and how confidant are you they are behind this berkeley bombing . Sgr my source is the man who built and put the bomb there and others there that night. But there is a large segment of the radical left out there who bill ayres is not poplar. A lot came forward in the book because they felt like why is he the only on the ground figure most of america has ever heard of. The young man who built 98 of the Weather Underground bombings comes out in our books and he is identified and tell his story. I feel certain part of is ron realizing he had a part in this history, too. And many of them, including howard, the one who talked about building and placing the bomb that night feel like bill is not telling the true story. The true story is uglier than they want people to remember. How did they get away with it . I love the fbi today and i love the loyalty and professionalism. I have come to know a lot of people there but the 1970s isnt their finest hour. There are funny memos you can get back in the old files about how these people leave like dirty hair and live like they do andrewi drugs. No one in the movement would talk to the fbi. So hoover, and many on the left dont want to remember, hoover eliminated black bag jobs and by and large i think that was moved away from. The weather squad, especially squad 47 in new york, brought jobs and illegal mail opening and everything you can do in space to going after weather. And long story short, one of the great ironies of the era is in the end one weatherman of the primary group, exactly one, one of the two young women who crawled out of the rubble that morning was convicted and the top three officials of the fbi were indicted for these breakins. One had the charges drop, two convicted and Ronald Reagan pardon them. The fbi cheated and also lost. And not only that one of the most frustrating things is i thought i would go in and tell this with documentary files. But on weather, and most of these groups, what they did is junk. I talked to half a dozen investigations and after the inveigations and scandals started they were taken all of the files home and burning them in the fire place. There is nothing there. As a result, i kind of had to take off my historian