>> this week on "q & a" our guest is neil sheehan. his new book is on the nuclear arms race told through the life of general bernard sleefer dshriever who led the research. we also look back at "a bright shining lie," america in vietnam. it won the pullitiesier prize in 1989. >> you started the trek to look at books and this interview show every sunday night at 8:00 and 11:00. i want to show you a little moment from 21 years ago. >> what do you want to do next? >> i don't really know. i want to help promote the book because that's a necessity. and then the only specific thing i have in mind that i would like to do is to go back to vietnam, see what's happened to the country and write about it. then what i will do, i don't know. i'm not worried about it. i might go back to daily journalism. don't know. i've stayed busy all my life. and the one thing that i've been taught is that if you want to work, you'll find plenty to do. so i'm sure i'll find something. you learn as a newspaperman that you go from story to story. in this case i went to the book. it's moved on. -- it's done. i'll move on and do something else >> that was 21 years ago. the book i have in my hand is called "a fiery piece in a cold war." 21 years later, why did you decide to spend your time on this subject? >> i decided i wanted to write another book rather than go back to newspapering. first i went back to vietnam, as i mentioned. i did a short retrospective book called "after the war was over." then it was -- i had to find another topic. it was time to move on. someone said to me, why don't you write a book on the arms race in the cold war? i said, my god, that's pretty diffuse subject. i want to do something with a narrative. and so i started researching. it's about 1994 now. i was over at the air force association in arlington here. right near washington. and i was in their library. and they keep files on prominent air force figures. someone said to me, you ought to look up bernard, or bennie, as he was called, shriever. so i asked for the file. she hand it to me. and i opened it up. and right there, the first -- the beginning of the file, was a photograph of this general leaning up against a table with all of these missiles around him. it's in the book. that photograph. and i said, this guy looks interesting. so when i got hoax -- home, i asked some questions about him. he was well known within -- famous within the air force but not outside. and so i got home, i looked him up in the phone book. he turned out -- to be living in retirement eight blocks from my house. so i called him. arranged to come over and talk to him. and if t began the first of 52 interviews with him. and then i realized that this man had stood at a pivotal point in the cold war. we look at the cold war as one long, glacial period. but it wasn't. it was a period -- there were changes. particularly at the beginning. it was a very unstable business. in which we could have gone into nuclear war with the soviets. i realized after talking to this man that he had stood at the center of that pivotal period. and when he and a group of others with vision had really saved us from what could will have with -- well have been a nuclear war. but for him and those who work with him, you and i might not be sitting here. we might well are eradiated dust. >> i have in my hand "a bright shining lie." it's the newer version just out this year. this book's about 800 and some pages long. do you remember how many of these, the original copies, sold in both paper back and hard back? >> hard cover sold in the -- the original hard cover sold about 165,000 copies. paperback, i don't know. a lot mover. >> in our interview, and for those who weren't with us 21 years ago when all of this started, we sat down in a studio across the hallway here for two and a half hours and ran five 30-minute programs over five nights. and then you sat with us for a call-in show at the end of that fifth night that actually started "booknotes." we didn't start it until the beginning of 1989. but in that particular interview -- i'm going to show a clip from there. you talk about a man named john paul vann. this is bernie shriever then it was john paul vann. >> i realized that if i wrote a book about this extraordinary man, i could tell the story of the war through him. because he was such a compelling figure. and he summed up in the 10 years he had been in vietnam the american venture there. and he summed up the way we like to think of ourselves, the qualities that we admired in ourselves in that period. the drive, this brilliant, analytical mind, these incredible energy, sleeping four hours. only need four hours of sleep a night, the fearlessness, etc. he had an extraordinary metabolism of all of these things that we really admired in our sexes as people. -- ourselves as people. he had devoted himself to vietnam. he had died there. i felt that if i wrote a biography of him, i could also write a history of the war. that's why i started out. then, of course, i was trapped in the enterprise. it was too late to go back. >> 15 years you spent on that book. how many years in total on this book? >> probably about 14 years. >> did bennie shriever turn out to be what john paul vann was for you? >> yes, he did. >> why? >> because there was a period, as a said in the cold war, when -- first we got the bomb. then we fell into this period of hostilities with the soviet union. and then they acquired their bomb. and it was a very unstable period of time. we were dependent because you had to bring this nuclear possession of the bomb by both sides to some sort of stability. and there was no stability. we were depending on the aircraft, the bomber, the strategic air command under curtis lemay, the figure for the general in stanley kubrick's "dr. strangelove." we were depending on the s.a.c., the strategic air command. the soviets decided not go down that road. they were going down the road of intercontinental ballistic missiles. they were working their way toward building one. now, you only got 15 minutes' warning of an incoming missile this those years because of the limitation of the radars. and if they had acquired a fleet of icbm's, intercontinental ballistic missiles, they would have destroyed the credibility of the airplane as a deterrent, and you'd have gotten a pert of real instability which you might have well have gotten some adventurism by soviet leaders which would have led to a nuclear war which would have destroyed the whole northern hemisphere because of the side effects of nuclear weapons. nuclear winter. the radio active dust coming down every time it rained and making -- killing everyone. and so you had to bring stability to this period. what -- shriever saw this. we had to build our own missiles to create a nuclear stalemate which is what he did, he and those who worked with him did. they created a situation where neither country could pull off what was called a first strike against the other and escape destruction itself. lived in fear of what was called a nuclear pearl harbor, which was a surprise attack by the soviets. it's called a first strike in nuclear ease, nuclear strategy. by building our own set of nuclear weapons, we created the nuclear -- which neither could pull off the first strike and you got stability. which lasted. except for crecheoff -- who was the exemplar of that who almost triggered nuclear war. once this sunk in to the soviet leaders, you got people who did not want a nuclear war. he was a status quo type. he wanted to enjoy the perks of power, the mitts tresses -- mistresses, the hunting, the collection of foreign cars including a lincoln nixon gave him. these were men -- they were opponents but they were not interested in destroying their own country by attempting to destroy ours. so these men really saved us from the possibility -- probability of a nuclear war. and they're genuine american heroes. he personified it. >> go back. this is in 1955 when all the discussions became very active up till this day. i got on the internet today. and you can correct me if my figures are wrong. but there is at least 5,, 500 intercontinental ballistic missiles active today. am i right about that? >> that's probably too large a number for icbm's but in terms of missiles, yes. you've got the navy which are icbm's, out of the nuclear submarines. and you've got 450 minuteman missiles, intercontinental missiles, on alert. and the army has tactical missiles. and all of that happens starting back when you started basically this book. >> that's right. general lemay, in command of strategic air command, believed in the bomber. he had been the great bomber leader in world war ii. i don't know if you've ever seen "12:00 high" on late night television. it's about the bombing of germany in 1942, 1943. these men were going through without fighter escort, taking on german fighters forp an hour and a half, fighting their way deep into germany to bomb the industries. le may lost 40 bombers on the first raid deep into germany. but the bombers got through. he believed in the bombers. he wasn't interested in missiles. they were "fing firecrackers" as he called them. he was opposed to the program. shriever saw the missile would detroit probability of aircraft. he was a visionary. and pressed ahead against major opposition from le may and the other bomber generals. >> how much fire power is there on the tip of one of those icbm's today? >> right now the minuteman has enough to destroy several cities. >> compared to, say, hiroshima or nagasaki? >> vastly more. two or three megatons. and one combleagton equals 80 hiroshimas. >> let me go back to bennie shriever, four-star general in the united states air force before it was over. died, as you say in your book, june 20, 2005, at 94 years old. you did 52 interviews with this man. set up that. what was the environment? and how long did you talk to him? >> we would meet on saturday. he was in between marriages when i first met him. we would meet on saturday mornings at his house, which is about eight blocks from where i live in northwest washington, by american university. before he went to lunch at burning tree, his golf club. i'd pick wrup i left off the last time. i'd take thim through the story. he was a very -- bernie -- bennie was a very thoughtful man. he wanted to make sure that you were the person to tell his story. at first he was standoffish with me. then he decided i was the person to tell the story and became very cooperative. >> how old when you first met him? >> he was in his 80's. but had been in excellent health. excellent health with all of his mental faculties, fully intact. i asked him -- i told him, general, i've got have your entire military record, the whole thing from the very beginning from 1932 when he joined the army air corps, including all your efficiency reports good or bad. he didn't have that. i said, you've got to submit it, ask for it, i need it. fine, he said, i'll get it for you. and he did. he withheld nothing. he told all the people who had worked for him, who were still with us, to talk to me to tell me the truth. and they, of course, led to others. and i was racing the grim reaper because these were older men. and their lives were in the twilight years so i had to really work fast and hard. i did 120 interviews. to get the interviews i needed, to tell the story, to get -- to tell the story. i believe, as you know in writing history in narrative form. i believe in catching that segment of history which is in men's minds, the memory. it's an important segment of history. if you don't catch it while they're still alive, it's gone forever. >> the sidebar is the woman he married who people our age can remember her from entertainment years, joanie james. >> that's right. >> is she still alive? >> she is still alive. she's still living in the home they shared together where i first met him, before he married her. >> she was 20 years younger than he was. >> yes. they met down in palm beach and fell in love. and got married in his later years. he was 87 when they married. but a happy 87 to have married her. he was a lucky guy. i called shriever lucky. he never had -- he joined the air corps in 1932 when planes were quite unsafe. and flew through the air mill crisis when 12 pilots were killed flying these uninstrumented planes through snowstorms, hail storms, and whatever in the midwest trying to deliver the mail. bennie -- and he flew constantly in world war ii. never crashed. >> you were at the funeral. >> yes. >> i'm just going to dip in to a little bit of the narrative here and ask you to explain a couple of things. you wrote, "he bent over joanie for a few minutes with words of condolence while everyone watched in curiosity." both of those, the last statement from you about the catastrophic war in iraq, i want you to talk about. but also before that, explain that funeral and why was don rumsfeld there and all the other, as you say, 44 stars there at that funeral. >> the chief of staff of the air force time -- first of all, i should back off. general shriever came to be known as the father of the modern high-tech logical air force. as a result of building the icbm. and advocating other technological advances. he was, as i say, a technological visionary, like the founder of the modern air force, happ arnold. he was shriever's first commanding officer in 1932. and he was a technological visionary. and shriever was, in effect, his disciple and his descendant. the air force was deeply grateful to this man for what he had accomplished. and for the air force, he really created. so general jumper, chief of staff, decided he was not going to be buried as just a four-star general. he was going to be buried as a chief of staff so they gave him all the honors they would have normally given the chief of staff, the flyover of the planes, which is very dramatic, three aircraft, with a space for the missing co-pilot, missing wing man. then rumsfeld, i gather, felt that he had to come and pay tribute, too. and so in the midst -- at the last minute, just before the last few minutes, just before the ceremony ended, rumsfeld suddenly showed up from the wings. joanie, who was a stage star, said he looked like an actor coming in from the wings. he came in. he said some words of condolence to her, and then he disappeared. >> how well did you get to know him from a personal standpoint? and 'twas tough on you when he died? >> it was in the sense -- well, he was 94 years old. he was declining and had been declining for several years. but it was tough in the sense that i hated to see -- i had gotten to respect this man and we had become very good friends. and i had really come to respect and understand what he had accomplished. he said to me after we got to know each other well, during one of their reunions, these men had a reunion every year. they call at the time old-timers reunion. i went to every one of them. he said to me at one of them, look, i want you to do this right. i won't be here when it's finished. i know that. but i want you to do this right. i want you to tell the story right so i had enormous respect for him. but he died in the fullness of life. and so in that sense one couldn't regret it. because he had had a really full life and a good life. he had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish. he had helped me to tell the story through people. i believe in writing history well in a narrative form, a novelistic form. but you have to be careful. it's tough to do it that way because you have to make sure you don't distort the truth. by using him, he was my lens on this story as vann was my lens on vietnam. >> i want to talk about the vietnam thing and to connect it again, and ask you after we show this clip about your statement about the iraq war. the last time i saw you was about 10 years ago. we did a series on writers. we were down on the mall near the vietnam me northerly. -- memorial. we talked for three hours about your book and his book. but let's watch this. >> will there ever be coverage of any future endeavor in this country like there was in vietnam? >> it's america's involvement. i would not think so because i don't think we're going to get into a long, grinding war like that again. in the gulf war it was all high technology. then you had about four days of armored combat. and then, of course, in afghanistan it's very elite units that go in where you really can't have reporters, i don't think, camping out with them. but part of it is the new nature of the technology and the elite units, laser-guided missiles and stuff like that. part of it is a desire to control the reporting. but you really can't control the reporting if things don't work. it will out. if it doesn't work, people will know. >> david halberstam, killed in an -- a strange automobile accident in california. start with that. what was your reaction when you heard that? >> oh, it was devastating. david was a very close friend. he and i were partners in vietnam. we had worked together there he worked for "the new york times." i was with the u.p.i. we partered up. we would each -- we shared an office, which was the front room of my apartment there. it was the dining room table. he typed on one side. i typed on the other. we kept the friendship all of those greers 1963 on. we didn't see each other as often as i would have liked because he lived in new york and i lived down here. but we'd talk on the phone frequently. i hear his voice all the time. the phone rings and i hear david say, "how are you doing, old buddy?" it was a very close, wonderful friendship. it was so sudden. his death. in that auto accident. susan, my wife, who is also a writer, she came up the stairs and said "david's gone" and she was heart broken over it. and i was just -- i broke down. i couldn't help it. he made -- he meant so much. he was a wonderful journalist and a great guy and a real loyal friend. >> we have some video of this meeting. >> we met 40 years ago and we've been pals ever since. the goddaughter -- we worked together. i felt i was so lucky to have a younger brother that i had never had out there. i mean, to work with someone so fearless and so optimistic and so talented a reporter. it was one of the gifts of my life. >> had you seen him much over the 10 years? >> yes. as i said, we'd talk on the phone. he came down for my daughter's wedding. he was the godfather of our older daughter. we kept up the relationship. >> as you know, you were responsible for the pentagon papers being published in the "new york times." but prior to that you and david halberstam and malcolm brown and that still had this profile, and people still can get upset to this day what b what they think did you to the whole vietnam war. what's your take ton all of these years later? were you right? >> i think we were right. >> what does that mean, being right? >> we told -- we reported what was really happening in vietnam. the command in those early years, general harkins and the ambassador general -- about a ambassador million to tee, were convinced they were winning the war. and the regime was respecteded by the population. it was a myth. it was a total myth. they were losing the war. there wasn't respect even by his own people. he'd come down for a speech at the national assembly, which was a phony body he selected, you'd see the civil servants assembled. they'd lie down and go to sleep in the street. it was incredible. and we would go out to the countryside. and the military advisors like john vann, would tell us that the war was being lost. and then we would go out on military operations and see it ourselves. we'd go back to saigon and write the story. and all hell would break loose from the military headquarters. we'd be told how displeased general parkins was by our reporting. well, i later on discovered that thes