Hi, everyone. Good evening and welcome to the Cleveland Park library. This may sound okay. Welcome to the Cleveland Park library and welcome to our bookstore. Bookstore, excuse me, featuring tom baker. Im so happy to be here, all of you. My name is diana spyro, and i am the president of the Fordham UniversityAlumni Chapter of washington, dc. Tom, of course, is one of our most prominent alumni here in the dc area, and were so happy to hear him about his new memoir. Id like to share a bit of toms background first before he begins and offers some opening remarks. Thomas j. Baker is an International Law enforcement consultant. He served over 33 years as a fbi special agent and a variety of Leadership Missions dealing with terrorist and criminal challenges. He has experience with Police Management and training issues, having served as a management instructor at the fbi academy in quantico, virginia. He has been published in professional journals both nationally and, internationally, on aspects, biometrics. Major Case Management and police training. He has presented before national and International Forums concerning these topics as well. His writing has appeared in the wall street journal, the hill, the Washington Examiner and the daily caller on television. He has provided commentary on the fox news channel, fox business and msnbc, and featured in segments of cnns crimes of the century and dateline. His book, the fall of the fbi by post hill press, was released on december 6th. Toms International Experience is extensive. He served as the legal attache, the american embassy, and can bear to australia where he was responsible for maintaining u. S. Law enforcement interests and a large part of the asia pacific region. He was then assigned as legal attache in paris, where he developed expertise not only in western europe, but in much of africa. These experiences were in the operational side as well as the diplomatic side. He was commended by the director of fbi for his role in the investigation of major terrorist attacks. Tom has been closely involved. The planning and management of major events. He was the american representative to the Security Task force for the calgary winter olympics. During his time paris, he was the senior u. S. Law enforcement advisor to the planning and Security Management of the world cup. While in canberra, he conceived and implemented the pacific training initiative. Successful ongoing program. Help police the Pacific Island nations. Tom holds a bachelors degree from university and a masters degree in Public Administration from. The John Jay College of criminal justice. He successfully completed the senior command course at the Staff College in brams hill, england, and is fluent in french. Currently, tom advises Law Enforcement agencies in the United States and across the world on innovations in forensics, communications and identification systems. He significantly assisted corporations in the capture and management of National Biometric and command and control systems. He represents and interprets Law Enforcements interests and needs corporations and universities. He is an active member of. The International Association of chiefs of police, the fbi, National Academy associates. The fbi, National Executive institute associates. And the society of former fbi agents. Tom, without further ado, i invite you to come forward and share that about your book. Thank you, deanna. D. A. Done a heck of a job as the president. The Alumni Chapter of fordham in the washington, d. C. And i appreciate all help with this project. She was one of one of several people, but d. A. Has expertise in this who i gave an early draft of the first few pages to edit and she had some very good suggestions. And thats one of the things ill share with you right off the bat. If you and i know several you have and several of you are going to write books. If you write a book, you have to have very thick skin because as good as you think your writing is, when you give it some editors and d. A. One of them, they will have some criticism or corrections. This book, the fall of the fbi. Let me talk a little bit about which i know is of interest to some of you, how it was, why it was written, how its organized. And then ill talk about the substance of the book. I think at book talks, people like to know a little bit about this for quite a few years of i would as is my agent and some you have heard this i would be telling stories of some adventure at a dinner party or a Cocktail Party and somebody would say to me, you ought to write a book. And course thats something people say. But sometimes you get the message that this person means it and my white book and, then i, i had the privilege of working with an individual who i mentioned in the book, mel semler, who was the American Ambassador to australia, and later the American Ambassador to italy. And he told me, and this applies to a lot of you, you must write this stuff down. Its not in a book form, in some form for the benefit of a children and grandchildren and other friends to share with them what you did. Because sure, as sure shooting and some of us have already experienced this, your parents die, your old friends die and you wish jesus have asked. I wish i would have asked him or her this or that. So and mel did write a book about his adventures and he made great contributions for our country of. So that was, in my mind and in early on, i say early on over the past half dozen or a dozen years, i wrote up a few my adventures as standalone articles because i was lucky enough and it is luck to be involved in or on the periphery of some major historical events and cases specific. The attempted assassination of president reagan, the crash of pan am 103, the crash of. Two 800. The the death in paris of Princess Diana and several other things of that nature. And i felt, you know, that was worthy of recording my thoughts and my observations on it because. People. And i know that some of you have been in this position whove been involved in historical things, a newsworthy. To receive story. The story thats out there that everybody believes you know is a little bit different, not necessarily contradicting it, but you have something to add to it and its worthwhile those facts. So some of these early chapters in the book have written some time ago and then three or four or five years ago now, i became very concerned along with several of my recently retired fbi agents or some executives in the fbi and in the department of justice about the way certain things were being done, some of the abuses of authority that we perceive that were going on. And i started to organize my thoughts around that. And i didnt want it to be political of be perceived as being political, which which it is by a lot of people. But i felt that some of these abuses threaten everybody. They threaten people on the left as well, as the right. And they need to be addressed. And and i undertook that that mission by writing a about 13 or 14 pieces over the last several years for the wall street journal, particularly. And thats most the third part of the book. So in organizing my thoughts and now ill get to the substance of the book, i call, in fact, and i in my draft, i called it the the good, the bad and the ugly. And every time i see that, i hear music, i read it anyway. The good, the bad and, the ugly, and the good is adventures. And it has a lot of interest and appeal to a lot of people the bad is injustice and unfortunate lately ive seen several instances working in the federal government. And in the years since then, when ive worked as a consultant with the federal government of injustice and and thats probably the most profound and shocking thing to me. And the thing that i learned while in the fbi that really changed my mind when i grew up. Like many of you i had a very idealistic image of justice in the Justice System here in america. I essentially thought and i think most of the public thinks this that all the accused guilty, everybody in prison deserves to be there. And i found out and ive come im i now understand that thats not so that justice imperfect and proper while were on this earth, justice will always be imperfect. There are some people in jail who shouldnt be there. Theres a lot of people not in jail that should be in jail. Thats to simplify it, this injustice is more complicated than that. Sometimes. So thats middle part. The bad and the ugly. What i think has happened to our fbi in the last several years and and what i think are some the things that need to be changed to to address those problems, to address the ugliness. So its the good, the bad and the ugly in undertaking this book. And i mention this in a in a book, talk, i learned a about writing and publishing is obvious. I learned a lot about writing, had a lot of good editors, informal editors. I mentioned. And the number one editor is my wife, anne, whos here with us tonight. And thats not an unusual situation. Ive talked to a lot of journalists and wellknown authors, and youve probably heard of of them. And they all say that their spouse is the number one editor. I mean, thats just how it happens of so i learned a lot about writing. But ive recently learned a lot about the Publishing Business and some of it. And its not all good either. Number one in a contract for a book, one thing i learned, the publisher, the editors, they cant make you change your words stay. The authors words, the are your responsibility. Youre the one who writes the words, but they have the final veto on. On the cover art and on the title my had several different titles before it wound up with this title, but the publisher has control over the cover art and the and once you get it you realize well that makes sense. They want to sell books and they want to make money, whereas often. And also like myself and like like most of you, youre motivated. Youre not a profession or writer. Youre not looking to support yourself by your writing. So you want to get a point across, want to leave a legacy and youre not so much interested in any money on the book. You you want to get an idea across. Whereas the publisher wants to sell books. The other thing i learned is happening to publishing in america, and this is rather alarming. I think. And let me just throw this out as a question. What percentage of of hardcover books like this one . What percent do you think are sold online as opposed to in a bookstore . Anybody have any idea . I guess 70 , 70, 70. Thats what i would have said. And thats what a lot of people say. According to my publisher he told me 90 of books today are sold online. And of that, 90 , 90 is sold by amazon. Amazon is the big dictator on the street now. They we still thank god in this country read, write and sell a lot of books because ive done a half dozen at book signings in bookstores, barnes and noble and a couple of independent bookstores. And on saturday a sunday, theres a theres a fairly crowd in there. And as youre doing a bookstore signing, youll see people online at the cashier. Young, middle aged people, all kinds of people, often with two or three books. They roam around and they buy two or three books. So spite of what you see at the barnes and noble percent of the books are being sold online. And most of those by amazon. The result is that amazon is calling a lot of the shots theres been a lot of disputes and even legal cases amazons been involved in with publishers. But essentially my publisher told me that the sales on amazon are more important and than any other sales because a statistic that everybody looks at and early on in a book coming out, this is what they call advanced orders or advance sales and almost always in fiction and nonfiction and in the wellknown authors and the people like, myself, they are anywhere three months to six or eight months in advance. Youll see a book listed coming in december, coming this fall, you know, and often with the specific date you can preorder now on amazon, those preorders are in credit highly important. The publisher has make their decision about print runs based on the preorder days now im talking about most books and most books i like my book and they sell a few thousand copies. And hopefully will sell 10,000. But right now were somewhere between two and 4000 copies of my book. Thats kind of typical for most books. The people, the celebrities, prince harry, michelle obama. A lot of sports, big name in sports who all do a book. Most of them, somebody helps them write it and they acknowledge that those books they sell hundreds of thousands copies, sometimes millions of copies thats a whole different ball game. But in this case the so theyll theyll guarantee someone and they pay them in advance. I mean prince Harry Michelle obama people of that nature brady theyll get 100,000, 500,000, a big check for promising to write a book. Somebody puts it together, it goes out there. And they they they do a big printing on it. And then youll go to to barnes and noble and youll see table just with prince harrys book on it, you know, 40, 50 copies and you stay there all day as i have and a half dozen stores and not one copy sold to a retail customer but theres some kind of back office deal in publishing. And theyre to theyre going to be all right. But for like us, those advanced tell the publisher whether hes going to do a print run of 1000 or 2000 or more, they make that decision on that. They also make the decision theyre going to spend any money in promoting the book on what the advance sales are. And then the the statistics for these lists. The wall street journals top ten bestsellers on the new york times, top ten bestsellers, they kill off of these big things like amazon. Now they use other metrics, but amazon is the big thing all go to and and thats thats a key thing so that was all interesting learning that that i chose good the bad and the ugly as a theme to highlight the avenges, the injustice is and then the ugliness with some suggestions as to what should be done. There are other themes that run through the book that some people have picked up on. One is my encounter, which was thanks to the fordham club of dc with saint mother teresa, and i explain it in the book, but she gave us all some very advice in a meeting with her and everybody who was there still. It vividly, and i harken back throughout the book to the event she gave me and how its still relevant. The other theme. One of the other themes that comes throughout the book is the movies. There have been a of good cinema and i mean it good cinema and a lot of not so good cinema done about the fbi or about Law Enforcement work or about several cases. And i to that those cinemas events in the book and i also give my opinion as to how or inaccurate they are and some of them have been pretty good and a lot of them are pretty lousy. But thats another subtheme running through the book. So, so the main contention which the title the book comes from and ill mention this and when we go to a question and answer session with diana, questions will come up about this. But its my contention after talking to a lot of people that there was a big change in the fbi right. The september 11th attacks and a lot of problems that have surfaced in the last two or three years have there origin back then. And what happened then was bob mueller, Robert Mueller became the director of the fbi just a few days before the september 11th attacks. The attacks were on a tuesday, september 11th, on saturday morning, september 15th. Bob mueller was summoned to the the president s retreat in the mountains in maryland, camp david, to give he thought to give a report to the president on the problem, the progress, the investigation now. So about only about and a half days had elapsed from the attack on tuesday september 11th to saturday morning, 15th. Mueller came in with the report. And the president , of course, was they were kind of hunkered down, literally bunkered down there in this rustic setting with his key adviser is sitting beside him. In one of the photographs ive seen of this meeting was Condoleezza Rice sitting beside president George W Bush and other key people were around the room, and mueller was one of the early people called on. And he gave his report to the fbi investigator in and the fbi had done what they do best investigate. And in three and a half days, they had identified all 19 hijackers. They had identified their financing that identified past travel. They identified their credit cards, their rental cars, all their contacts going back, their connections to al qaeda. And he laid out this report expecting and he later told us this on several occasions expecting praise and thanks. And George W Bush just looked at him and said, i dont care about that i just want to know how youre going to prevent the next one. Later that morning george tenet, who was then the director of the cia. George tenet, gave a report and he had a plan and he gave this report his proposal going forward. And what he was done and this is in several other peoples books. And once again, molla had told us on several occasions this himself, George W Bush turned and said, thats great and then he turned and looked at molla and said, thats what i want to hear. So molla left that meeting humiliated and he left that meeting. And he has said this repeatedly bound and determined to change the culture of the fbi. And in doing so he turned the fbi as he wanted to into an Intelligence Agency and a way from being a Law Enforcement