[inaudible conversations] and beginning now on booktv, heres mri pulitzer prizewinning author Lawrence Wright live from the texas book festival. [inaudible conversations] so it is wonderful to see a full house here, but if youll please take your seats, and well begin. Welcome to austin, texas, and the f x book festival texas book festival, the greatest book festival in the world. [cheers and applause] its terrific to see you here. My name is brian sweany, and i am the editor of Texas Monthly magazine, it is always a pleasure [applause] hey, thank you for that. Whoo hoo thank you for that. It is always a pleasure to be part of this festival. Its roots are so deep here in this city and in this state, and it is always a great honor to be part of it. I have to say today is very special because sitting to my right is a writer that i have long admired before i had the chance to become his friend but has produced some of the most important journalism in my lifetime for sure [applause] both in magazines, primarily the new yorker, and in book form. Ladies and gentlemen, Lawrence Wright. Thank you. [applause] you no doubt know larry from all the unbelievable works he has done, the new one is called the terror years. But as of late, he has had just an unbelievable string of bestsellers and books that have been enormously influential. Certainly, 13 days in september, going clear on scientology, and and a book that always remains on my night stand, the looming tower, for which he won a pulitzer prize. [applause] the new book, as i said, is the terror years, and it is a come to bylation of articles that he compilation of articles that he had written for the new yorkers as a primer on what is happening across the globe. What i wanted to start with you to see is could you tell us your first trip when you were sort of overseas into the middle east or that region of the world came when you were a young man during the vietnam war. But its a fascinating story as to what took you over to egypt in the first place and, i suspect, got your interest going in this. Well, yeah, it is an odd story because i didnt know anything about the middle east at all. I was a Conscientious Objector during vietnam. I didnt i was surprised to be given a Conscientious Objector status out of dallas, texas. It was a little bit surprising. And so i had two weeks to find a job, and you had to it had to be 50 miles from home, it had to be low paying, and it had to be nominally in the interests of the United States. And i thought i didnt mind the 50 miles from home. The vietnam era was one of the worst periods in our history, and i wanted to get as far away from america at the time as i could. So i went to the United Nations thinking they would give me a low paying job far, far from home. And they said, no, we dont do that, but heres a list of american institutions abroad. And one of them, the American University in cairo, had an office right across the street at 866 u. N. Plaza. So i walked across the street. And when i walked across the street, i did not know, for instance, that we had no diplomatic relations with egypt at the time. [laughter] i knew that this had been a war over there that there had been a war over there, but it wasnt a war that i was paying i much attention i dont even think i knew what language they spoke. And so, you know, there were a couple hundred americans in the whole country, a handful were trying to run this university. So i went in, i applied for a job, and 30 minutes later they said, can you leave tonight . [laughter] well, no. My girlfriends back in boston, i havent told my parents what im doing. Can you leave tomorrow . Yeah, i can go tomorrow. [laughter] so i went back and told roberta, im going to egypt for two years, i dont know where this leaves us. And then i called my parents from jfk, and i flew to cairo, landed at midnight, taught my first class at nine in the morning. [laughter] i was teaching kids whose english language ability wasnt quite good enough to get into the university, so my first words as a teacher or as i walked into the lowest level of this preschool Teaching Assignment for the university, i said can anybody here speak english . And someone said, you do. [laughter] and my beginning of my brilliant teaching career in the middle east. [laughter] you should always be careful when you walk across the street. You never know whats on the other side. Its perhaps a wonderful accident that that took you overseas,some then i would imagine and then i would imagine the first steps of informing your knowledge in that part of the world, one as you say i suspect many of us didnt have nearly a good understanding of as either we should have or needed to as global events began to overtake our modern day politics. I want to read one thing from the introduction of your book to frame what you are doing here. It is a little bit to unpack, but i think its important for our session. You write, and this again for the for the terror years, this book can be seen as a primer on the evolution of the Jihadist Movement from its early years to the present and the parallel actions of the west to attempt to contain it. Americas involvement in the middle east since 9 11 has been a long series of failures. Our own actions have been responsible for much of the unfolding catastrophe. Which, i think, is a fascinating and yet provocative statement, no doubt controversial in many areas. I wonder if thats something that you can just sort of begin to talk about your sort of understanding of that as it relates to your role as a reporter, explaining a world that very few of us here probably do know, have any real insight into aside from what we do see in media or read in books. How did you begin to unpack it . What are the skills as a journalist that you brought to over, you know, a decadeslong career . Well, when you know, i used some of the experience of living in the middle east to write a movie called the siege with Denzel Washington and bruce willis im going to cheat and say that i watched that as part of my research. Oh, good for you. You can write that off on your taxes. [laughter] so, you know, that experience informed my journalism, and i had spent some time in the middle east before 9 11. But when 9 11 happened, i felt compelled to write about it because, you know, in some i had lived in a muslim country, i spoke some arabic. It had been a long time, but, you know, id studied arabic for fun when i was in egypt and so i could get around. And also i had written this movie which in creepy ways foreshadowed what was going to happen on 9 11. It was the question that the siege asked, what would happen if terrorism came to our country as it already had, you know, for instance, in london and paris. What if terrorism came to new york . And so thats the premise. What kind of country would we become. How would we change. And it was a Box Office Failure because muslims and arabs were so angry at being stereotyped as terrorists. This was 1998. And before, you know, it came out just after the Embassy Bombings in 1998 in east africa when alqaeda began its assault on america. But when i wrote it, that hadnt happened. So people were picketing the theaters, they didnt, you know, nobody wanted to cross the picket lines to go see a movie, and so it was a big bust. And and then after 9 11 it was the most rented movie in america. And ive thought about that. You know, it was labeled prophesy, but it wasnt really. It was just, you know, i had studied up on how other countries handled situations like this and what weve done in our own history. But it was end creepy to see it was creepy to see these events that i put in as plot points in the movie one after another the rounding up of muslims, the torture and all those things that had been a feature of the movie became a part of our national life. And i felt, you know, because of all those things i was, i had just a compulsion that i had to find a way to write about this incident. I want to, certainly, talk about where we are right now in this war on terrorism that we have now spanned the complete administrations of two president s. But lets go back a little bit to that actually, three if you go back to clinton. 98 was our first attack. Exactly right. And so you think of the long time that we have been engaged with this, but then perhaps not engaged enough, perhaps something thats happening separate from what we do as we go about our daily lives. So tell me about in your view as you say in the introduction the mistakes that the west has made either leading up to 9 11 as you say the attacks, obviously, had already begun. We can trace this going way back to the takeover in iran, beirut, sort of going all the way back, but what are some of the mistakes that you think we have made either before then or, in particular, post9 11 that have informed your reporting . Well, to start with, i think the fundamental problem is we simply dont understand that part of the world, and we dont have a comprehensive understanding of what is meaningful to them. And an example of that is after, you know, when Saddam Hussein invaded kuwait in 2003 and his massive Million Man Army on saudi arabias border, and saudi arabia is a country that cant really defend itself. So Osama Bin Laden came over to talk to the Saudi Defense minister, and he proposed that he would just have alqaeda defend saudi arabia which was a couple hundred guys at the time, and they were going to use his fathers Construction Equipment to trench, you know, it was a lunatic idea. And the defense minister said, no, i think ill turn to america instead. And they did. So half a million american and Coalition Troops went into saudi arabia. Very few of them muslim, many of them women. This was in an extremely conservative islamic country, probably the most conservative. And seeing american women soldiers driving jeeps and humvees, this was a total revolution in thinking in saudi arabia. And many, many very conservative muslims believe in one of the sayings of the prophet muhammad, on his death bed, he said let there not be two religions in arabia. Islam is the only religion that can be represented in saudi arabia. So having nonbelievers, having female soldiers in the country was inflammatory to their sensibilities. And we promised to get out as soon as we finished up with Saddam Hussein. We didnt. The saudis had given us wonderful bases and great accommodations. There were other american bases in the persian gulf that we could have retreated to, but it was just why bother, you know . The reason why bother is because it was a huge talking point among radical islamists. And that became one of the things that ignited alqaeda in its war against the west and especially america. It was simply a lack of understanding. And, you know, of course iraq is the thing that everyone points to as a catastrophic error. I was in saudi arabia when we invaded iraq, and my wife [audio difficulty] there i was very close to the war, and the saudis were saying iraq . Are you kidding . Of all the countries in the middle east, youre gown to invade youre going to invade iraq . Everybody over there knew that this was going to be a catastrophic mistake. Nobody was saying that in washington, apparently. And so in we went. With good intentions, as often is the case. But we broke that country. And between iraq and afghanistan according to various estimates we spent 46 trillion. And think how im just setting aside the loss of life cost, yeah. Yeah, the vast human cost. Think about what 46 trillion could do. And what do we invested that in misery. We did not invest that money in anything that would make the world a better place or a safer place. Its far from it now. And those are the kinds of errors of understanding that i think have had such dismal results for us and for the region. I, i wonder if you had been, you know, sort of offering advice outside of the iraq war which certainly is one of the more controversial decisions, are there other things that you would have said from not understanding culturally what is happening, not having a sense of what the wests role has been . Certainly not to take responsibility off of the other side, but what would you, what would you have suggested beyond that . What are some things that we should have known as we tried to combat and contain . Well, you know, right after 9 11, you know, one of the heroes in this book and also in the looming tower is a lebaneseamerican, fluent arab speaker. He was one of eight arabicspeaking agents in the entire fbi. Theres a statistic that i still have a hard time crediting, but a University Census showed that at the time of 9 11 there were only six students in the whole country majoring in arabic. So, you know, it was a totally unattended part of the world. And we had nobody on the ground who could understand. And while i was roaming around in the middle east and south asia after 9 11, there were practically no westerners to be seen. You know, and so i was very conspicuous. But one time i was talking to a probable cia agent in this, in the embassy i think in afghanistan, and he said, you know, id like to do what you do. Well, why not . You know . [laughter] why dont you just go outside and talk to people . The problem and i recognize the danger that our diplomats are sometimes placed in, but theyre so imprisoned by these fortified consulates and embassies. And theres good reason for it. And while i was in jeddah, bin laden tried to kill the american consul general, lovely woman named Gina Abercrombie stanley, and three or four people were killed outside the gates trying to get into the consulate. But that inability to get into the culture and to understand it means that weve cut off the flow of information. There are so many again, this book is a collection of stories that have primarily run in the new yorker, and so many of them will be things that youre familiar with, and theres a lot that i had read and delighted in, enjoyed rereading, some that i had missed. One thing i found fascinating because its actually an update to the way the piece had originally run, and that is a story that you had written called the spymaster on Mike Mcdonald who had been the director of national intelligence. Yeah. Theres a great moment not at the beginning of the piece, slightly into the piece where you say sort of reluctantly when hes meeting with mr. Mcconnell that i dont know much about you. And he replies to you, well, thats a good thing, im a spy, which i thought was interesting in terms of the difficulties of reporting on this type of subject matter. But there are two moments in that piece that i think are striking. One, your discussions with him about the fact that your own phone had been tapped and that information had been taken based on your reporting. Two, you acknowledge in the introduction the fact that you had material based on your reporting that did not appear in the initial new yorker story that you did include in this version, and that was as he was sort of talking about torture or enhanced interrogation techniques or whatever the term is, that part of his training early on that he, in fact, had been tortured. You had left that out of the new yorker or piece but put it in here, and i wonder if you could talk about those things. All right, ill talk about it. Mike mcconnell, a distinguished, you know, military veteran, naval admiral and became the head of, you know, after 9 11 we reorganized our intelligence community. There are 16 different agencies in the intelligence world, and a new one was the office of the director of national intelligence. And then the idea was to get a coordinator so the different parts of the community could talk to each other. That had been a horrible problem during 9 11. Preceding 9 11. And mcconnell, part of his job at the time i was talking to him was to deal with the fact that we were waterboarding our prisoners. Right. And, you know, the fact that americans were engaged in what most people acknowledge to be torture was quite a shock. And mcconnell is from south carolina, and so i, i said, you know, he said we do not torture people. And i said, well, what what personal experience informs your view about that . Well, what do you mean . I said, like, did you ever go through the se survival, escape what is it . Survival, escape, resistance survival, evasion, resistance and escape . For troops that might be placed in places where they might be captured, they torture them in a, you know, in a kind of mock way. And just so they learn what it might be like. And so mcconnell said, yes, i was tortured. Ive been tortured, i think were his actual words. And then he said, they beat me up prison pretty seriously, and they put me in a hole with a snake. And i wouldnt want that to happen to me. But he never thought that he was going to be killed, you know . Right. Thats the point you make in the book, that even if this is part of the training right, right. And the new yorker has extensive, as you know, factchecking. So the checkers are running everything by him, and one of them was mcconnell said that he had been tortured. And i didnt want say that. I said, do you want to see the transcript . And so i sent him the transcript, and he larry, please dont print that. Ill lose my job. Its one of those moral decisions, you know, that you have to make as a reporter because i knew ive been tortured is a sentence that goes all the way around the world in about five seconds. You know, the director of intelligence in the United States claims hes been tortured. Right. And as a reporter, you like that. On the other hand, it wasnt my object to get him fired. Right, right. So i took it out. And then he went and lied to congress about my story [laughter] when i asked him about waterboarding, he and i kept in the story, he said, well, its not torture, but it would be torture if it happened to me. Well, why is that . Well, ive got a deviated septum. [laughter] you know, when i was a lifeguard, i had to wear the, you know, so i, i kept that part of the story in there, and senator Dianne Feinstein asked him, you know, is it true that you said that it would be torture if it happened to you . No, maam. That was taken out of context. And, of course, i sent him the context. [laughter] as for the there was another conversation we had which i, when i was working on the looming tower, there was initially it started with a sourc