betrayal and i think what i really loved about it is it doesn't impose morality. it asks the audience to bring their own life experiences, their own mortality to the piece. i think it's a discussion and i found that really exciting. >> rose: frederick kempe, keira knightley, next. every story needs a hero we can all root for. who beats the odds and comes out on top. but this isn't just a hollywood storyline. it's happening every day, all across america. every time a storefront opens. or the midnight oil is burned. or when someone chases a dream, not just a dollar. they are small business owners. so if you wanna root for a real hero, support small business. shop small. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: fedrick kempe here, president and c.e.o. of the atlantic council. he's also a journalist and author. his latest book is called "berlin, 1961: kennedy, kruschev and the most dangerous place on earth." it looks ater be flynn 1961 and the forces and pernal tease that shape the building of the berlin wall and therefore the cold war. this august march 50 anniversary since the wall was built, i am pleased to have my friend frederick kempe on this program to talk about this book. welcome. >> thank you, charlie, great to be here. >> rose: when did you decide that this was a great thing to do? >> i read margaret mcmillan's book "paris, 1919" and i today myself-- this was my fourth book. and i said to myself "that's a really interesting idea. a city and a place that changed history. and i said, as you know, i became a cold warrior the old-fashioned way, by being a reporter out there, seeing people fight for freedom. i have relatives that were east german who i visited as a student. i then covered poland, the changes in poland, solidarity... right of solidarity, fall of soviet communism, german unification. and i said to myself what i care about most is the cold war and i thought the year that was most decisive but that hadn't been written about as much as i thought it should have been was 1961 and then clearly the epicenter of the cold war was berlin. so berlin, 161. >> rose: so how did you go... you went and had access to lots of documents that had not been seen before? >> i got access to some documents that hadn't been seen and then i also accessed lots of documents that hadn't been used. >> rose: right. >> and there were soviet documents, there were german documents and there were u.s. documents. but the story that i ended up really spending a lot of time on because it became clear to me early on in my research that this is the story that wasn't told was the story of president kennedy's first year in office and his foreign policy regarding berlin. >> rose: you call it one of the worst first years in presidential history. >> and i'm sure i'll pay for that with... it will be the most controversial point in the book. but kennedy admits it himself. he says at the end of the year in a conversation with ellie able who was the... his... my dean at columbia university journalism school but at that time he was the detroit news bureau chief, the washington bureau chief and ellie able came up to him and said "i want to write a book about your presidency, the first year of your presidency." and kennedy said "why would anyone want to read a book about an administration that has nothing to show for itself but a string of disasters." and if you look at it, he's right. the bay of pigs, botched invasion of cuban exiles that he allowed to go ahead but didn't give the teeth to succeed. the vienna summit with nikita kruschev by kennedy's own account to the "new york times" he was savaged, he calls it the worst day in his life, felt he showed kruschev a lot of weakness, and then the building of the berlin wall which i think was a total outgrowth of the bay of pigs and the vienna summit where kruschev was relatively confident that he could go ahead shut down the border, stop a hemorrhage of refugees out of east germany without kennedytor west really doing anything to oppose him. >> rose: you said? the book and i said in the introduction this is about two characters and the cold war, that's what it's about. and a city and a wall. but it was real they part of the cold war. tell me how you saw kruschev and how he's so different. >> you are right. one of the lovely things about this book is his... you know, history sometimes gives you better characters than hollywood a k. and in this case you have a 43-year-old brilliant, handsome, charming son of privilege. and you have a 67-year-old hardened survivor of stall inism survivor of world war ii son of peasants. >> rose: who was illiterate until he was, what? 20? >> he was illiterate into his 20s. the thing that's interesting about kruschev as seen through this book-- and i think we don't understand that authoritarian countries also have domestic politics, and cruise chef was in a situation where he was really fighting for his survival. there was a... in may, 1960, the soviets shot down an american u2 spy plane. that might have looked like a try yum of the many, but for kruschev, who was really fight for peaceful co-existence with the west, was trying to build a better relationship with president eisenhower, the stalinist remnants came out of the woodwork, mao tse-tung and china came out of the woodwork and said "you're not being strong enough to the u.s., you don't understand the threat of these imperialist capitalists." so going into 1961 kruschev has got a real domestic political problem and in october of that year he has a party congress coming up where he has taken out rivals himself at such party congresses and he knows that his biggest you will haver inability going into this party congress will be the situation in berlin. and-the-that he has to deal with it one way or another. either by negotiating with kennedy or by acting unilateral before his party congress. >> rose: so at the same time he's made a kind of gesture right after kennedy took office of saying "i'll return not francis geary powers but some of the crew..." or some of the people involved. >> rose: it's under the chapter "kennedy's first mistake." and this really gets to the point of young, inexperienced presidents who think they know more than they do. we don't really prepare our presidents for the presidency. and you're playing match point at the moment you step into office. kennedy... >> rose: that's a nice phrase. >> it's... these are hard jobs and if you... whether it's president obama, whether it's president george w. bush, h.w. bush was a little different, better prepared, or president kennedy, pretty inexperienced at the purpose of running the world before they get into office. kennedy has two things he's looking at. one of them are gestures from kruschev because i think those were quite genuine because i think kruschev was looking for a way to reopen a dialogue with the u.s. president. this is the r.b. 47 pilots on the day after kennedy's inauguration, it was sort of an inaugural gift. he prints his entire inaugural speech in the soviet press, which was unprecedented. and there are two or three other things he does. kennedy at the same time, however, is reading a speech that kruschev gave january 9. it's tough rhetoric. it's declaring a new cold war escalation across the developing world. he thinks this is a sign to him, it's an epiphany. he sees that this is the real kruschev. but it was really just a routine propaganda speech. but it turns... >> rose: a miscalculation by president kennedy? >> total miscalculation, total miscommunication between the two of them. what happens is he then delivers the most apock lip pick state of the union speeches that has ever been delivered ten days after his inaugural, taking a much harder line with the soviet union and at that point kruschev himself turns in a more hawkish direction in response to that. >> rose: and who was in this process... for kennedy, what lessons was he learning along the way? >> well, sadly, i think he really didn't learn the lessons until 1962 of the cuban missile crisis. >> rose: listening to people like dean acheson and others or was he not? >> he was listening. the domestic politics of kennedy is awfully interesting in that time as well because he has what were called slobs-- soft liners on berlin-- and these were people liked a lay stevenson, admiral hair man and tommy thompson who was his ambassador to moscow and you had the hard-liners circling around dean acheson. kennedy brings dean acheson, secretary of state for harry truman, president truman, back into his administration partly to protect his hawkish flank because acheson is beloved by the hawks. and as a great man of history himself. so acheson does the initial review for berlin and for nato but kennedy is always on the fence. am i going to go down in history-- and he wanted to go down in history, he'd made clear he thought he could be a great president like abraham lincoln and franklin delano roosevelt. but he was afraid because they went down in history through war and in the 1960s that meant nuclear war. so don't u do you go down in history by making peace with the soviets or going to war with the soviets? and he tries to strad this will line until after 1961 through the cuban missile crisis it's not possible any longer. he has to stand up to kruschev. >> rose: kennedy and kruschev were... what was it that made kennedy feel like he'd been beaten up. >> it was a two day summit in vienna. if you rewind a bit it was the first year that television played such a role in politics. 1960 you had the first presidential debates live on television, nixon and kennedy. you had the first live presidential press conference and this was really the first live presidential summit with... in vienna. he was told by his advisors don't get into an ideological debate with kruschev. whatever you do, avoid that. so what does he do the first day? he gets in an ideological debate with kruschev and kruschev is just too good at that. it was almost like a soccer player monopolizing the ball and the field. the second day he goes to berlin and has a presummit agreement that nothing is going to be decided on berlin and kruschev dumps a berlin ultimatum in front of him and says "if you don't help me fix my berlin problem within six months, i'm going to do it unilaterally." caught him totally off guard. one other... >> rose: does that say as much about him than it does about his aides and the preparation he should have had? >> it says... first of all, he went into the summit late notice after the bay of pigs, kruschev only agreed after the bay of pigs so you only had a month and a half. not enough time. and he's doing it partly to restore his foreign policy luster after having really botched the bay of pigs. so he's coming in already in a weakened position and a lot of people think he shouldn't have rushed to come to a summit when he was already weakened. kruschev, on the other hand, has just put the first man in space, gagarin, so he's riding on a high. and so already you have this problem. then one other problem which other historians haven't really connected to the vienna summit. kennedy was sick and he was in pain. he had chronic back pain, addison's disease, all sorts of different things and going into the summit he had his regular doctor along but he also had a doctor named max jacobson. >> rose: dr. feel-good. >> dr. feel-good. the dr. to truman capote, tennessee williams and he injected him full of a fluid that included animal organ cells enzymes, vitamins, and amphetamines. so you have a situation where kennedy's fighting fatigue and depression but he's taking something that has the side effects of angstness, impaired judgment, mood swings from depression to euphoria. so this is... i don't know how you feel about your u.s. president, but i'm not sure i'd want the leader of the free world going to meet the leader of the communist world after having been injected with this. >> rose: take know the wall and the building of the wall and whether kennedy could have at that point changed history. >> my view-- and brent scowcroft who writes the introduction-- lightly says history doesn't reveal its alternatives and rightly reminds me that history doesn't reveal its alternatives. that being said, it's my view that if kennedy at vienna had said very clearly what he would tolerate and wouldn't tolerate and he wouldn't tolerate any change of easter lynn statustor border status that kruschev would not have done the construction of the wall august 12, 13. what kruschev didn't need ahead of his october party conference was taking a huge risk or having a big failure in berlin. if he could have a win in berlin that was terrific. instead of sending him an unambiguous message that you better not change anything in berlin, kennedy instead sent the message as long as whatever you do stays within your own borders. if you don't disrurpt west berlin access or west berlin freedom, if you read between the lines, that's the message. i can put up with that. and the reason he's done that is pretty clear. kennedy has a world to worry about. he has nuclear weapons to worry about. he wants to get a nuclear test ban. berlin stands in the way because kruschev is so nervous about it imploding. he thought he would get a more cooperative negotiating partner if kruschev were allowed to fix his berlin problem. and, again, another tragic misreading. instead he got a soviet leader who was willing a year later to try to put nuclear weaponss in cuba. so... but he... kennedy's biggest concern at that point was nuclear war and he thought that's what could erupt over berlin. >> rose: what do we know about how the russians saw ken economy? >> we know that in the runup to the election kruschev... during the election kruschev was already getting intelligence, questioning kennedy's character, questioning his strength. some of these issues regarding kennedy's womanizing were already known to russian intelligence. and also known to west german intelligence. the west german chancellor knew about that as well, which is part of the reason why he was worrying about kennedy's strength in office. so kruschev much preferred kennedy to be elected because he definitely didn't like vice president richard nixon. but on the other hand, hi wasn't sure what kind of president, he would be dealing with. so they looked at that i mean way but he was also harder line than other democrats. he actually led a more hawkish campaign toward the soviet union than did richard nixon, partly to... and he may not have won the election if he hadn't gone in that direction. so he went very much to the right of richard nixon on issues to dealing with military defense in the soviet union. >> rose: so what impact did it have on the cold war? >> it extended it by 30 years. now, would it have been extended anyway by 30 years? perhaps. but the wall froze everything in place. >> rose: or if there had been changes in the soviet bloc or if you had gorbachev come on earlier it might have... >> yeah. look. when president... >> rose: did... go ahead. >> when president kennedy acquiesced to the wall he could not have known that it was going to fall down 28 years later. he just couldn't have known. he was acquiescing to a situation, a status quo that he was willing to live with if it didn't get any worse. at that point, we were worried about things getting worse with the communist world. communism would spread even further. so to lock in the status quo and to get in a situation where eastern europe is yours, east berlin is yours, west europe... west berlin is ours. president kennedy went further than any president before him to accept the division of europe. >> rose: any lessons in this for america and the world today? are they comparisons to be made between barack obama and john kennedy? >> well, there's a simple lesson and there's a complex lesson. the simple lesson is when american presidents show weakness and indecisions to their adversaries and their friends you can very often end up paying that. whether it wiese the soviet union of that time or whether it's iran now. the more complex thing is when is it that presidents really learn and how do they learn and when do they become presidents? did president obama become president last week with the killing of osama bin laden? was that his cuban miltz crisis? president kennedy didn't live long enough for us to know... he had the cuban missile crisis, then he went to this triumphant berlin speech. he turned tougher toward the soviet union. so in some ways i'm watching obama now to see whether this osama bin laden moment has a larger impact on his presidency but i do think that even though we have very, very periods of time, half century apart, young, inexperienced, relatively inexperienced brilliant charismatic presidents dealing with, i think, the 2011 is going to be every bit as important to world history as 1961 was if not more important. >> rose: really. because of osama bin laden? >> because of the middle east upheavals. >> rose: right, because of arab spring. >> right. and what a president does at times like 1961 and at times like the middle east upheavals is magnifyed in terms of its impact and ramifications. >> rose: so how do you assess what the president's done so far? >> in libya, i would have made some comparisons to the bay of pigs in the sense that people who told him to intervene... not to intervene. kennedy was told by some not to intervene at the bay of pigs. he didn't listen to them. obama was told by some not to intervene in libya. >> rose: even his secretary of defense said it was not a great idea. >> chair of the joint chiefs. a lot of people were telling him not to intervene. he didn't listen to it. on the other hand, other people were saying "go all out. if you're going to intervene, you better be successful." and kennedy was given that option. obama was given that option. neither one of them took it. clearly these two situations, it's much more complicated, these comparisons, but i would have said that obama needs to be careful. whether or not this was the right course, he had to be careful how he was perceived. you saw the saudis move into bahrain. you see the iranians taking certain measures. when a u.s. president is perceived as weak it does have knock-on impact. and that's why i'm saying that the picture with osama bin laden you know, these are not black-and-white situations. but the perception of american power is still quite crucial to the world at times of historic change. >> rose: it is so far a fascinating story of a president who decides that he... that this may be an opportunity but he carefully goes through it and has a series of national security meetings and then the end listens and there was a divided advice and makes the decision on his own understanding the risks, clearly understanding the risks. the risks that might have happened on the ground and the risks that it might be for his political future. >> kennedy was much the same sort of personality in the sense that people would talk about his cabinet meetings and seminars where he would draw out of everybody what they felt about the situation. he did this with the soviet experts. would never reveal at the meeting which way he was going but take all the information in and then go away and then make the tough decisions or not. >> rose: my sense is that is... i was thinking about this, actually. is that when you get to where the president is-- president obama or president kennedy-- you have reached a level in which you have got therein because you have trusted your own judgment. and in the end you want to make the judgment based on as much information, as much opinion, as much consideration as you can, but in the end you know it's your call and you have to make that judgment. you can't simply le