Zealot as an atheist. And we just had so much time just joshing around like this. And same with all of this so yeah, i really got on with everybody, and i heard from quite a new people including admiral nora tyson saying how much she liked the book. And apart from the person who said i was creepy [laughter] anything ive heard has been really quite positive. And not i mean, the thing is about the book that its, you know, really, you know when im making a fuss about not liking the food, you know im not unaware that im behaving like a spoiled brat and a jerk, you know . So its a thing of buying into that really. You either find it funny or you just find me, find the author a sort of pain in the neck, you know . I know which side im on [laughter] find myself incredibly charming. Well, lets thank our pain in the neck for coming down. [laughter] [applause] and geoff is going to go and sign books up on the second floor, so just meet him up there. Thank you. Sure thing. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter and facebook and we want to hear from you. Ooktv to ar tweet us twitter. Com booktv, or post a comment on our facebookme over page, facebook. Com booktv. You are watching booktv, 48n o rel hours of authors and books every weekend. Nextatnal. Yocan w gayle lemans delimit talks about the cultural support teams. Its a program that puts women on the battlefields to conduct culturally Sensitive Missions in afghanistan that requires contact with women and childrent despite women being officially banned from combat. Hello. Good evening. Welcome to book passage in sanng. We franciscos Historic Building their own thank you all for coming out tonight to support independent bookstores and bo independent thinking theyre also want to thank our future cspan viewers. We have cspan you with us tonight videotaping so please know that your on camera. Hank i we when they go around for the q a also know that we will be sortso of having a mic around totaping capture your questions for cspan. But we arease go to very honored tonight to welcome author and journalistss amic gayle lemmon a senior fellow at the councilwe of Foreign Relations as well as a contributor to the atlantic the fence where she reports on issues of National Security and foreign policy. Is also the best selling author of the dressmaker of khairn isss of khana. Shes here tonight to talk about her latest book already garnering lots of National Attention and praise all the ashleys war. Its a book that looks at the all but unknown history editing ultimately the continuing legacy of a special all women Pilot Program done as the cultural support teams putting women on the battlefield alongside other special ops teams to gain access to afghan women. Her in depth reporting brings the story to life and in particular that of First Lieutenant ashley white for whom the book is titled illustrated not only the valor of these women and their bravery but incredible courage and desire to fight for the country. So please join in a very warm welcome for gayle lemmon. [applause] so nice to be here with all of you and of course i love cspan since i was 10, just very exciting. Well keep it pretty conformal. Ill talk for about 50 minutes and then we can do the rest of question and answer. The story began when i was hosting an event in 2012 at the council on Foreign Relations and i was asking somebody about combat story. She said its just like the First Lieutenant who lost her life on the battlefield in afghanistan on a special operations nightvision. What rex so she said yes there was this lieutenant who is out there and she was on a night raid alongside Ranger Regiment at a lot of these guys and in special Operations Teams if you look at her obituary that who says shes a member of the North Carolina national guard. But if you keep reading it tells you the story of what shes actually doing a night she died. She was part of a special Operations Team. I said how is that possible . The combat ban is still in progress urban afghanistan from the privilege of writing about the dressmaker of khair khana but i had never known that when rather was special Operations Teams. Answer three questions popped into my mind. Who are these people . What were they doing out there . And why as a country do it no idea that women were out there seem to can combat the less than 5 of the entire United States military sees while the combat ban was still officially in place . Because they could come in you would know that a lot of women that you would see on airplanes or on patrols but you didnt necessarily know what it was they were doing. You certainly did not there on those kinds of nighttime rates. Those were the questions i started with. And i called up a beautiful family bob and debbie wyatt in ohio. I found another called you dont know me but you can look at everything ive ever written and i would like to come and talk to you about your daughter. And as it turns out im not integrally called and said that ended in 18 months since shed given her life for the United States. At the thing that always hoped that someone would call because as every family who loses a child in these wars would tell you that biggest fear is that your child is forgotten. So went out to see them and the first thing that struck me which is still the thing i think but every time i think about this story was a sign that was in the corner written on a piece of torn off notebook paper like some of you care every day to school and it said you are my motivation and all block letters. What i quickly realized was there was not her death that it made her so extraordinary and special, it was her life. And so that reporting trip led to two years hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews in a lot of very bad gas station coffee cups and a lot of holiday and express of night stays all around the country trying to find the answers to those three questions. And i spent a lot of time with some the most senior people in the special Operations Community and with some of the most Battle Tested made a special operations and, of course, this incredible cast of women. Because at the heart of it this is a story of friendship, a story of courage and it is a story of the love born only on the battlefield that no one else will ever understand that the people who serve alongside you. It just so happened that these people were females. So i started meeting a group of these people trying to figure out what they had done and what i quickly realized was a when not there because of some social experiment. They were there because of a security gap that some of the most tested leaders leading america through 14 years of war felt. There was a security gap on these night raids which is that he really had the sense you could only talk to half the population because any conservative tradition country like afghanistan, male soldiers would never be able to speak to win. Admiral olson it was the first navy seal the special Operations Command said we need to get more knowledge out out of there. We are leaving notes behind. mr. Whitley know about, people we dont know about. When youre trying to keep pressure on the insurgency in afghanistan, people who are trying to take on the government, you have to know everything you can. So he has this idea about meeting and yang of warfare as he started jokingly said a lot of people waiting for the next commander to coming. But didnt have joint special Operations Command admiral mcraven comes in with an actual request or his rangers. And said we need women out here. And so from those two men posted general mcchrystal and a bunch of others who had overtime will become to believe they were not getting everything out of the information that they could have and they were leaving a security gap there to fill, came the idea for what became known as the cultural support teams which is incredibly benign name for and actually groundbreaking concept that you needed women to see the kind of operation that is very small sliver of the entire United States military was seen at the time. So the poster goes out female soldiers, become part of history can joint special Operations Command on the battlefield in afghanistan. Almost all of them as you see in the early pages of this book have the same reaction. This is way too good to be true. These are people who had always wanted to test themselves. The only thing to hobart for was to put themselves in the most challenging situation to face the biggest test they could to do a mission that mattered and to serve alongside the best of the best. All of a sudden they had their chance even though officially they were not permitted in combat. So admiral olson comes up with these cultural support teams. They are attached to any special Operations Team that needs them. That could be rangers or seals our special forces, and that was the idea. So in one of the early themes, more than two women apply for the program about 100 come to this nothingness until called a landmark in on fort bragg. Not nice but its not polished the way you san franciscans think about tells. Theyll go to the landmark in and at the same moment at the breakfast room where you have the waffle maker and the little metal milk machine. They look around and theyve never had a moment where they have been around women who are as hungry as ambitious has driven, additionally committed to doing something that mattered as if they were. They all had this kind of moment where they had been so used to being the only giraffe at the suit that they did not there were more people like them. So what followed from that motel is what is called 100 hours of hell. That was the test they had to face because 100 women, and about 55 of 60 will make it. 100 hours of hell was a series of mental tests and physical tests, climbing 30foot walls figuring out puzzles doing a lot of things with very incomplete information. Been doing things like putting 35 of 40 pounds on your back sometimes more and walking are marching for an unknown distance. That could be two miles or in this case it was more like nine or 10 or 11 months. It was not made for everybody but what each of these women had was the same experience, that almost all of the net friend who forwarded them a note to said i would never do this but this looks like it was perfectly made for you. So you have this assembly of women the instructors had never seen much of anything like it they had never seen anything like it and they as simple and they really start to realize that even though theyre competing with one another they all want each other to be great. They want to be great because they know everything they do is going to be watched by everybody who comes after work. Everything up it gets a chance to come afterward will depend on whether they succeed or not. There was a Pilot Program before them and they were the first ones to be selected from all across the army and the guard and reserves. So they are chosen in march or may and they start training in june or july and by august they are deployed onto the battlefield alongside people that serve five, six, seven, eight, 10, 11 12 combat deployments in this last decade or. They were really Incredible Team of characters. They are real people but they really strike you as characters because i could never have made them up if i tried. You had one west point track star who never wore socks never wore socks and she runs never wears socks. It causes a stir in the early pages of this story because our boots smell so badly better teammate cannot take it and put them in a trash bag and puts them in the bathtub the first moment she meets her before she even introduces herself. You have another gal who is like maybe 53 on a good day to play High School Football all four years. And to out you wanted to stop and go to the glee club after he won the because people told the girls cant play football she felt like she had to keep going because she could. You have another gal who basically looked like heidi and who was, as a kid, loved to go shoot stuff. And didnt know women couldnt be in the infantry until much later and so she was one of those people who wanted to test results all the time and she ends up, going to bosnia as an intel officer coming back deciding to become actual officer from enlisted and she goes and helps the fbi bust drug gangs in pennsylvania. Then there was a girl who won a bronze star or ballot and another one whos on the fourth deployment. She already served three times and then you had First Lieutenant ashley white. Who was beautiful fight to, blonde who as a ranger trained would later say looked like a d. C. Land greater. As megatron quiet down who had a smile that would light up the room and it would never talk to you about what she had done but was one of those people who would get up big rig shuffle away at osh tschida absolving nothing remarkable. She really was from everybody who you talk to the best of us do everything quite honestly the best of american character. She had grown up in a beautiful small town in ohio we always took the hard right over the easy wrong. Where you worked hard, where you never looked for shortcuts, we always ask how other people are doing before you worried about yourself. She was one of the gals who they would work out three times a day crossfit mostly come in during lunch he would work out and so when they would come back she would take fruit juice and granola and pass them around to everybody was eating as they sat there sweating through the course. She through the course. She was through the course pictures want other people if you forgot your goods or you need something, she was the one you call because she always had it read and should never make you feel foolish or having forgotten something. Theres a scene early on so about, of the 55 or 60 20 of the most fierce, most of it and also most feminine get chosen to go with Ranger Regiment. These guys have been continuously deployed since 9 11. These are some of the most tested special Operations Teams and they had never had to take females out with them on a mission. So they figured if theyre going to do this for the first time they would have to bring women who could keep up they were fit and who could could in need of the battle take off their helmets and show they were female. Which is why the high detail the editor in the book would always wear braids because should aground off and it was immediately apparent under all the body armor and weapon a pistol and rifle night vision goggles, that she was, in fact, female. So on these missions, what would happen they would all go on a helicopter in the dead of night, go to the compounds, the rangers will look for the person they were looking for and then the women and children in the middle of all this combat with the ushered away by these women away from Everything Else that was going on in the women would talk to them. And lo and behold they would have experiences were sometimes the women would say that guy youre looking for is two houses over. Which certainly made things a lot easier for them in alongside him these women were serving. One night one of the Council Early on finds a woman sitting on an ak47. Another time early on a woman is given a suicide vest but it wasnt the women were part of the insurgency but they were asked to keep things by people. So really quickly these women away just been plucked from the other job from their day jobs come from the regular unit were out there in the heat of battle at night alongside guys would do in 1011 12 deployments, the equivalent of three or four years of war and they were proving themselves. And what they found was of course it was hard to be the only female with the guys who had never worked with women but they were openminded because all these guys wanted to do was accomplish their mission and get home. And if those gals can get out there and pay the rent and show their value, that was all they asked for. One of the ranger trainers, take it one week with with a range of the political outcome about a case at this point before they go out and yet this moment at the very beginning and this is Chapter Seven where he looks around when he first gets out and said he got to go train girls. You know, me what kind of assignment is about . At the end of his eight days with them, these women made into the our own tuskegee airmen. He has a sense can i do what use language that in the book rather chilly but read the chapter because theres a lot of colorful children but read the book because theres a lot of colorful language where he just has these moments about how serious they are and they want to be here. And he said if they want to be here then im going to teach them everything i know. What he found was they had heart and they had grit and when he asked them to climb rope up and down with their body armor on its hard for a lot of them. Then them. Then comes ashley white goes up and down three times usually only her arms. Then apologizes because he had taught them to do it using their arms and legs. He said what you do here if you do out there you will be fine because you care and you want to be there. Those guys understand that all they want to do is get the job done. So all this goes on and they start prove themselves they are all starting to get there and then Tragedy Strikes in that First Lieutenant ashley white is on a mission just like every other night with her interpreter who is from Orange County chapter 11s altars and she is one of those people who thought she was going to do a humanitarian russian leaves Orange County to go interpret and realizes 36 hours after she got there that she is going to be translating for bosnian detainees 12 hours on in 12 hours off in afghanistan. She gets asked if she wants to be part of the