I decided that maybe my life was not going to consist of getting married and having children and oh brain that life should be thinking about. To give my step in expanding my own horizons, i can say thats one book that totally changed my way of thinking about myself here can see that book tv once to know what you are reading this summer. Treatise here answer at book tv or posted on our facebook page. Cspan, crete about americas cabletelevision companies and brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. C1 Jeffrey Toobin, welcome to cspan to indepth. The author of indepth and counting . Host including your most recent book, american heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes and trial of patty hearst. I want to begin where you in the book. You wrote this without her cooperation. Guest i did and there were several things different in my other books. This was the first bookk i had written that was really the border of journalism in history. All of the other books i i wrote, i had sort of covered the underlying story in realtime and then wrote about it. This is something i was alive in the 1970s, but i was a kid i was really starting from scratch in terms of my research, and i discovered that there was a tremendous volume of printed material, in particular 150 boxes of material about the Liberation Army and trials and phil harris one of the survivors had and i managed to obtain o access to that homicide had a great deal of material that no one had ever seen before, but obviously to answer your question i would have liked to talk to patty hearst appeared she may clear through intermediaries and then indirectly that she wanted no part of this, but i realize i had so much material from herre and about her, her own book, her own testimony, her fbi interviews, transcripts of interviews that she had given to the fbi and others, i had her perspective. I got to speak to the people who knew her during that. Back and subsequently, so i was able to reportt around her to wait that i think i was able to give a fair impression of her perspective on the events. Host this quote probably further seems we wrote the book. You say the kidnapping foretold much of what happened to American Society in a diverse number of fields including illuminating the future for the media , the culture of celebrity, criminal justice and even sports. Ustice a guest i sometimes thought of the first case when i was writing the book, as a trailer for modernity, like a coming attraction for summary things. It was the first of the great modern celebrity criminal events that of course anticipated the o. J. Simpson case. Hootout the shootout on may 17, 1974, where six of that sla kidnappers died was the first live broadcast of a breaking his event that anticipated so much of how we cover news and even smaller things like participants in the big news story seeking out book deals during the events. Here, you have stephen weed, her former cant say. At jack scott who was one of the people who sheltered the sla trying to get a book written. You had bailey trying to get a book deal well her defense attorney, summary things that became commonplace started or became visible in the hearstt kidnapping saga. Host and of course around often have to hearst, their pictures were newspapers. They were on television and you made reference to the black threat, her mother. Whys that . Guest one of the important back stories of the whole kidnapping and this aftermath was Patricia Hearst difficult relationship with her mother, Catherine Hearst. There was or their was and is let me just take a sip here. Sip here by the way, patty hearst is still alive. Guest very much. Still alive living in the new york suburbs. Shes 62 years old, mostly homemaker, socialites. She has two daughters, a couple of grandchildrenl life. And she raises show dogs thats what she does a lot of the time, but to answer your question about the black dress because i think this is important. Like a lot of 19 b yearolds, patty was 19 when she was kidnapped. 19 she had a contentious relationship with her mother especially in the 70s where people used to talk all the time about the generation gap. Im Catherine Hearst came from a conservative georgia family and patty at the time of her kidnapping was living with her boyfriend, what used to be called with living in sin with stephen weed, her fiance. There was a lot of contention there and when patty was kidnapped and there were all these press conferences that her parents held in front of theirs house in hillsboro, patty said on one of the early communicates, mom, get out of that black dress. Thats not helping anyone. Hat blac it was an interesting signal of how she was bringing her rebellion against her parents intorents io her life with that sla, that part of the reason why she joined the sla was that she was alienated from her parents, not a big deal in ordinary circumstances. And a lot of 19year old young women are alienated from theirar mothers, but under these extraordinary circumstances it turned out to be significant. Host as a way to get her release right following the event was without precedent in American History. No had tried on short notice to see thousands of people i wanted the moment more extraordinary was it took place because of a political kidnapping. This is a program put in place by patty hearst mom and dad. Guest correct peer just to back up a little bit, when patty hearst was kidnapped initially there was no ransom demand. I mean, there were these bizarre communicates from this group that called themselves the Liberation Army, but unlike both kidnappings they did not say give us money and we will give you the person back. Eventually, the sla, which was chaotic and disorganized sort of on the spur of the moment said randy hearst, patricias father has millions of dollars, lets make him feed the poor and that will be our initial ransom demand it really hearst, remarkably actually set up an entire Organization Called people in need run out of a big warehouse in San Francisco and they did, in fact, spend millions of dollars feeding the poor. It didnt go very smoothly and some of the Food Distribution there were riots. So many people one of the food that people were injured seeking it out, but randy hearst who i think is sort of one of the few heroes in the story, randy really wanted to get hisge daughter back and he had less money than the sla that he did, but he spent millions to set up this organization, which did in fact give out a lot of food. Host this is a picture and hearst and stephen weed after the kidnapping. He does not come across as a strong character. Guest no, it is funny one of the things i learned in doing whats of interviews about the story is that the only thing that the fbi, the sla, the Hearst Family and patricia herself had in common was thatel none of them could stand to stephen weed. That was the one point of view. Stephen was eight 23year old i mean, this is not a bad person turkey was a graduate student in philosophy, he was kind of hot tea and arrogant and he thought he sort of knew better than everyone about handle how to handle the situation and he succeeded only in annoying everyone and the Hearst Family and patricia work particularly resentful of the fact that during the kidnapping itself on the night of february 4, 1974, after he was hit by bill harris, one of the kidnappers, he ran off instead of staying to protect patricia. Host we will spend the next three hours with author and lawyer Jeffrey Toobin. Our phone lines are open and you can join us on facebook at facebook. Com. book tv. Send us a tweet apple tvs, boo you can also send this email, book tv at cspan. Org. On average, how long does it take to write a book for you . Guest i have a very simpleminded system for writing books, which is related to the fact that i am a staff writer at the new yorker and my editor there gives me a limited amount of time off. I dont have the bandwidth, the capacity to both right new yorker articles and continue my work as at the new yorker, but what i do is what i am in the writing portion of the book after i have done enough reporting to feel like i have enough material, ite write five pages a day. To write 1250 words a day of that is i finda it is a significant amount, but not an overwhelming amount to write and it really accumulates if you keep up at that pace. 25 pages a week, 100 pages a month and i find that that gets me to appropriate book line is somewhere around six to eight months. Thats just the writing. I view the reporting, the research as equally if not more important than the writing. That is a little harder to measure how long that takes. As i said, in these other books i have written i was sort of reporting in real time, so it wasnt sort of a separate research periodod , but all in at least a year. But, probably somewhat more. Host talk about the kid having that took place in 1974, and have a picture of the house where to place in San Francisco. Guest berkeley. Host berkeley. You also point out how San Francisco has change significantly in the 70s where it is today. Guest it really is remarkable. This to me was one of the real revelations in writing american heiress, how different the 1970s were especially in northernrt california. Way thi from the way things are today, to give you one in the mid 1970s there were a thousand political bombings a year in the United States. Seek about what that would be like today. Most of them didnt cause injuries or death. Although, some did, but this was a time of tremendous Political Violence and the epicenter was the bay area, San Francisco and berkeley. There had been the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967. There had been the Free Speech Movement in berkeley in 1965. But, by the 70s those movements, which began with a good deal of idealism had hurtled into real anger and resentment and San Francisco, in particular , was driven by terrible crime including the zodiac killer, the zebra killer i think people forget everyone remembers dirty harry, went eastwards famous detective. He was a San Francisco detective. Because San Francisco at the time of those movies was the symbol of all that was horrible and dangerous in the United States. Today, course, San Francisco is Silicon Valley and hightech and prosperity and high. Then, it had a completely different reputation, which was interesting to me as someone who is just coming at the story new. Host we want you to join in it on the conversation. We also welcome our listeners on cspan radio. Our conversation as we do the first sunday of every month here on r cspan2 with Jeffrey Toobin. Let it go back to a 1997 interview on nbcs dateline with Patricia Hearst. Patricia, how are we to understand the socalled missing your beer life after mels sporting good, after the shoot out at sla members are killed. You couldve left in any number of points. I think its not true that i could have left at any point. Couldnt do anything at any point anymore. I couldnt even think thoughts for myself anymore because i had been so programmed that the fbi was looking for the f the sla and i should not even try to think about rescue because they wereecause t calling sexy psychics to find me enough a kind of thing that i believed host so, what letter to basically stay with them . Guest because it she joined in. I mean, she was part of the group. Host her name was tonya. Guest she called herself tonya. She took the name tonya becausee a fellow revolutionary in bolivia was tonya and an east german woman. One of the things i try to stay away from in writing american heiress was the jargon associated with the story, brainwashing, stockholm syndrome. All of which are journalistic terms. They are not scientific terms. I try to look at the facts of the story and what actually happened and when you see what the choice is was like during that year between may of 74 and september of 75 when shes arrested, you see these tremendous these repeated opportunities for her to leave that she accounted police officers. She went hospitals. Ship poison a look and needed to get treated. She gave a fake name. She traveled across the country with the jack scott and his elderly parents who basically begged her to go back to her family and i simpleminded view and i think its good to look at things sometimes in a simpleminded way is that she did uncle back because she did not want to go back. She had joined the sla like a lot of young people did in the 70s. They joined in with revolutionary groups that they later rolled their eyes and thought how in the world could i have been involved with this crazy people. I have no doubt that she wouldnt do it todayt of t like most of those people wouldnt do it w today, but then she did. Host youre very descriptive and the conditions she was in. It here someone who grew up in wealth and privilege and she was in an apartment house that was pretty squalid, that was dirty and she took the name tonya. She met with who she called her comrades in the sla. Very different lifestyle to say the least. Guest to call the way they live a lifestyle, almost in place in plate in place what was. They were desperados on the run and had the money. Sometimes people ask, where than drugs and the answer is, no. The the reason is at least in part is they had no money to buy drugs even if they were inclined in that direction. They robbed banks. They robbed three banks for the very simple reason that as Willie Sutton said thats for the money was. They needed money and n they were living on enormous 20pound bags of chicken park parts. At one point they ate horsemeat. They bought enormous containers of black beans and blackeyedntains o peas, the cheapest food they could have picked thats the life she was living for much of this time it was very tough. Host you have a picture and take a look at this from one of the Bank Robberies that became one of the iconic photographs of the mid 1970s. Where was she . What was she doing and why did this becomesh synonymous with her situation . Guest this video is from the first bank robbery, the most famous one. Remember, she was kidnapped february 4, 1974. On march 31, 6 or soso weeks later she issues that communicate and says she is tonya. Two weeks later on april 15, this robberye we are looking at now is the bank in the veryer quiet section of San Francisco. They go in as a group and remember just how weird and shocking this was bank robbery as scary as it is is usually committed by one or two people. This was this, you know, basically all six of the eight, kidnappedd this this Liberation Army members were involved in some way in this bank robbery and they had scouted the location of this bank robbery and noticed a relatively new innovation, security camera. Stationed p they stationed patricia as you can see right now , she was told to stand where they knew she would be photographed by the security cameras as in fact she was because the sla believed in guerrilla theater. Several of them came from the Indiana UniversityTheatre Program and they wanted to show off that their prize recruit and so thats why they put her at that part that part of the bank so that you so the camera would take her picture. Host another book, the nine inside the secret world of the court. Are they doing now with a . Guest the Supreme Court canan clearly function with eight people. It is not designed to function with eight people and i think most people dont realize historically the constitution does not set a number of justices and until just after the civil war the number, the fluctuated, actuallyuated because congress can raise or lower the number of justices at any time. Number of but, to state the obvious there is a reason why theres an t audit number of justices on the court because tie votes is not an effective way for the court to operate. This is not ideal, but it is certainly it doesnt mean the Supreme Court is not functioning , but it is just indicative of the political dysfunction that we live with that no boat has taken place. Host is the chief Justice John Roberts up on par that he said he wanted to be . Guest well, you know, chief Justice Roberts is an extremely impressive person and he is a very good symbol and custodian of the courts public persona. He is, i think, someone who takes very seriously the court, how the court is perceived in the country and i think does his best and is a very good job to make sure the court is seen as the best possible light. He is also a serious judicial conservative. He is someone who like the other eight justices was appointed by president who wanted him to represent a certain ideological perspective on the court and robert has done just that. He now faces a very unusual and extraordinary situation where he chief justice may be in the minority in a great number of cases Going Forward if in fact, barack obama or if Hillary Clinton winss repr her appointees represent a majority of the court. Host one final question before we get to call speared do you suspect the senate will go back on its pledge not to have a hearing on Merrick Garlandif hillary is elected and if it appears she will announce her plymouth after she becomes president in january of next year . Guest no, i think when mitchk oconnell says that the next president should fill this seat, i mean, i think he means the next president should fill the seat. By no means does that mean if