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'The Twilight War' Between The U.S. And Iran
In The Twilight War, historian David Crist outlines the secret history of America's 30-year conflict with Iran. based on interview with hundreds of officials as well as classified military archives, the book details how the covert war has repeatedly threatened tot bring the two nations into open warfare.
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Other segments from the episode on July 24, 2012
July 24, 2012
Guest: David Crist
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest David Crist has written a new book about the secret war between Iran and the U.S., one that has gone on for 30 years. The book is called "The Twilight War," and it details conflicts that have frustrated six American presidents, involved Iranian-backed acts of terrorism, ongoing failures of diplomatic dialogue and several times that nearly led to war.
This history explains how we got to where we are today, with no diplomatic contact and the U.S. coordinating international sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. Crist has a unique perspective on this conflict. As a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, he made two tours with the elite Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. His father, General George Crist, was the commander of CENTCOM from 1985 to '88.
David Crist is now a senior historian for the Defense Department, but the book reflects his own analysis and does not represent the views of the government. The book is based on documents released through his Freedom of Information Act requests, his father's papers and hundreds of interviews with people ranging from CIA officials to members of Hezbollah.
David Crist, welcome to FRESH AIR. What's the closest that we've come to war with Iran?
DAVID CRIST: There's been a couple of key times. I think in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. made the decision to escort, naval escort Kuwaiti tankers who were being attacked by Iranian warships. At the time, Kuwait was a major financial backer of Iraq in their war with Iran. And the Iranians took that as a direct challenge in their war effort and deliberately mined us, damaged a U.S. warship, nearly sank a U.S. warship, which resulted in the Navy's largest battle since Leyte Gulf in World War II. That's one example.
The other example, I think, is Khobar Towers. Khobar Towers was a dormitory for Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. pushes through a plus-up of the CIA's covert budget. Newt Gingrich is the main sponsor of that. It was done very publicly, mostly for domestic reasons. But Iran took it as a deliberate act of covert war.
And so they respond in their usual way, with terrorism, which is a truck bomb outside this dormitory, kills 19 airmen. And probably by about - that was in 1996. Two years later, by the time we'd really uncovered the Iranian role in this, it revitalizes a whole set of new military plans to attack Iran. And I think that was probably the second-closest time we've come.
GROSS: So in the case of the Kuwaiti ships, how come - and this was during the Reagan administration. How come we didn't end up in a war with Iran?
CRIST: Well, ultimately, I think it ends up in a pretty sharp skirmish in April, ends up in about half the Iranian navy, around 60 sailors, killed. So it's a pretty substantial fight. But it's at the end of an eight-year war with Iraq, and between that fight with the U.S. Navy, between their defeat at the hands of Iraq with a lot of U.S. support, causes Ayatollah Khomeini, who's the supreme leader at the time, to accept a ceasefire.
So really, it was a case of a lot of pressure, including military pressure, causing Iran to back down.
GROSS: And what about the Khobar Towers bombing during the Clinton administration? How come that did not end up in a war?
CRIST: For a couple of reasons. The biggest reason is there was an election in Iran, and you have a new president by the name of Khatami who's elected, and he seems much more pragmatic. He makes early openings to the West to try to improve relations. And regarding Khobar Towers, when the U.S. sends an inquiry putting Iran on notice through the Omanis, Khatami responds with an interesting line, which is: Well, we had nothing to do with it, but it will not happen again.
GROSS: That's funny: We didn't do it, but it won't happen again. So that was an opening. Do you think if it wasn't for Khatami, there would have been more military action?
CRIST: Yes, I think absolutely. The Clinton administration, I think, was gearing up for a pretty substantial military strike. They developed the first major war plan since the Kuwaiti tankers operations about 10 years earlier. So I think yeah, absolutely, we were gearing up for a conflict had Khatami not been elected, and it seemed like a new opening. And Khatami sacked one of the MOIS, who's Iran's intelligence service, one of their senior commanders who was probably involved in the bombing of Khobar Towers.
So all the indications were that Iran wanted to get beyond this and improve relations. So I think President Clinton wisely took the military option off the table and pursued diplomacy.
GROSS: The U.S. has had several secret war plans to attack Iran. What's the earliest one that you came across?
CRIST: The earliest one was actually in the very early 1980s, about 1980. And oddly enough, it really wasn't geared towards Iran. It was geared towards the Soviet Union. Iran was actually the chessboard on which the U.S. and Soviet Union were going to play. And the amazing thing is through the plan, as the U.S. was discussing ways to counter a Soviet invasion of Iran, which was going to be a precursor to seizing Persian Gulf oil, the whole role and attitude of the Iranians never even figured into the plan.
GROSS: What do you mean the role of the Iranians never figured into the plan?
CRIST: There was no thought about how the Iranians were going to react to either the U.S. or the Soviet invasion. It was if they were sort of a neutral territory, which we're going to play a war on. It's not until about three years later that the United States starts taking a hard look at, you know, the Iranians really don't like either us or the Soviet Union. How do we know they're going to welcome us with open arms if we try to invade them on the precursor that it's to try to stop the Soviets?
GROSS: So this war plan was to invade Iran if the Soviets had invaded or to prevent an imminent Soviet invasion during the Cold War?
CRIST: That's absolutely correct. All the early U.S. war plans, up till about 1986 or so, when Iran starts emerging as a threat from the U.S. perspective in its own right, all the American war plans and thinking about Iran was all vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.
GROSS: So was this plan right before or right after the hostage crisis in Iran?
CRIST: It is all right after the hostage crisis. The main U.S. command that was established by President Carter was called, initially, the Rapid Deployment Force. It was a headquarters that was going to fly in with troops from the United States and respond to probably a Soviet incursion aimed at Persian Gulf oil.
The U.S. was very concerned at this point in the Cold War that the Persian Gulf was an Achilles' heel of the West, that rather than confront the West in Europe or out in the Pacific, if they seize the oil, they effectively cut off the lifeline of the West.
So when the hostage crisis happens, it coincides with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and just sets alarm bells off in all quarters of Washington.
GROSS: You write during this period the American military was planning for World War III in Iran. Were nuclear weapons involved in this war plan?
CRIST: Yeah, in sort of the best Dr. Strangelove-ian speak out of the Pentagon, it was called the passive option. And the goal or the objective was we would airdrop in these about 163-pound, man-packed nuclear weapons. They would arrive with American Special Forces, and that we would detonate a series of large passes that run through - around Azerbaijan on the likely avenues the Soviet troops would invade.
And in using these nuclear weapons, we'd seal these passes up, and then the Soviets couldn't get in. And it was called the passive option because we wouldn't use nuclear weapons directly on Soviet territory, just Iranian territory.
GROSS: But it would still be a preemptive use of nuclear weapons?
CRIST: Absolutely. And that was - there was an interesting series of memos I uncovered on just that point. And one of the senior officials - and this time it was early Reagan administration - raised the issue that, well, then, the Soviets might respond by dropping nuclear weapons on the ports the U.S. needed to get into Iran: Bandar Abbas, Bushehr.
And one of the officials, a guy named Robert Komer - better known as Blowtorch Bob for his combative style - said, well, that would be OK, too, because if we can't get in and the Soviets can't get into Iran, the Persian Gulf oil is safe. And nobody bothered to inquire how the Iranians might react to that.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Crist. He's the author of the new book "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran." So you witnessed how easily war could break out after the American invasion of Iraq, when you were in the Special Ops and you spent two weeks after the invasion of Iraq on a mission on a river that separates Iran from Iraq. What was your mission?
CRIST: Well, I was part of a, as you said, a naval special warfare unit. And our mission was to drop several U.S. patrol boats off at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, which was the waterway that divides Iran from Iraq. We were about an hour into the mission when, all of a sudden, three Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats come screaming across from the other side of the waterway and stop just in front of us, unmask their guns, point them straight at us, and then proceed to bombard us with a hail of choice American obscenities.
Our commander at the time was a Navy SEAL who had lived in Tehran up until he was 16 years old. So he's fluent in Farsi. And he tried to talk with them. He had even rigged an Italian flag turned sideways to make it look like an Iranian flag to show that we had no hostile intent. But the Iranians would have none of it.
And we unmasked our guns. We called for airpower, and I thought we were on the absolute brink of a major shooting war with Iran.
GROSS: Why did not that happen?
CRIST: We were ordered to withdraw by a very high level, to withdraw and not antagonize the Iranians. So we pulled our ships back with the Iranians trailing us. And what I didn't realize at the time was that was a pretty significant mistake, because by doing so, we essentially surrendered that entire waterway, in many ways, to the Iranians. And they were in the process of what I term in my book the counter-invasion of Iraq, and they were flooding southern Iraq with Quds forces, who there's - their special forces officers, plus thousands of armed Iraqi supporters.
And what this - these three boats were doing were trying to prevent us from interfering with that counter-invasion.
GROSS: They were arming the Shia militias and training them.
CRIST: They were - yeah, they were arming the Shia militias, and they are also bringing in their own. They had - the Iranians had a sort of a surrogate force of Iraqi exiles called the Badr Corps, perhaps 10,000 fighters. And right behind the U.S. tanks, as we were driving on to Baghdad, these guys were flooding into southern Iraq to position Iran for the post-war world in Iraq. And they did it very effectively.
GROSS: OK. So you think that by withdrawing, the U.S. empowered Iran to train and arm anti-American militias in Iraq. On the other hand, had your boats not withdrawn, had your boats and the Iranian boats fired on each other, think about what that would have led to.
CRIST: Oh, I think it would have led to a conflict. The issue is the Iranians were trying to position themselves to influence Iraq, arm trained militias, flood their own advisors into southern Iraq as quickly as possible. Had we stopped or made a more concerted effort to stop this, it would have positioned us far better for afterwards. Iranian influence would not have been as significant.
And by backing down, essentially, what we do is we acquiesce to the Iranian military, as far as their operations.
GROSS: But couldn't that have led to a full-blown war between Iran and the U.S.?
CRIST: It's possible, but the one thing I've noticed with the Iranians over the years is - particularly the Revolutionary Guard. They tend to respond - they're very cautious by nature. They push till they find weakness, and then they try to exploit it. But when they meet resistance - particularly by the U.S. military, that they know is much more powerful than they are, they usually back off.
So I think rather than lead to an expanded conflict - particularly at that time, with 250,000 U.S. troops positioned right next to them. Rather than expand or lead to a conflict, Iran probably would have backed down and been much more cautious about their approach with Iraq.
GROSS: My guest is David Crist, author of the new book "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Crist. He's the author of the new book "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran." You write about a couple of possible positive breakthroughs that could have happened with Iran. One of them, and President Khatami, who's, you know, a relative moderate - was perceived as a relative moderate in Iran - after the 9/11 attacks, wanted to go to ground zero and light a candle.
And he also wanted to have additional Revolutionary Guard officers expand the security dialogue that was taking place in Geneva between the U.S. and Iran. So before we go any further, tell us about what that dialogue was.
CRIST: The U.S. had meetings with a host of nations in Geneva over Afghan refugees, even before 9/11. But after 9/11, Iran makes it quite clear that they would like to work with the U.S. in Afghanistan. The Taliban were hated by the Iranians. They had killed a number of Iranian diplomats a few years earlier. That nearly led to a war between Iran and Afghanistan. So they had no love for the Taliban, either.
And so they make a - through a series of meetings, efforts to try to work with the United States that really does bear some fruition. It culminates in December of 2011 in the Bonn Agreement, which establishes the current Afghanistan government. And the Iranians were key to getting that deal done, and also early contributors to a lot of money to what would be Karzai's government in Afghanistan.
So the Iranians clearly saw that there was an overlap or a confluence of interest between the United States and Iran, at least on Afghanistan.
GROSS: OK. So President Khatami wants to light a candle at ground zero and bring more of his people into these talks in Geneva. The U.S. government refuses him on both counts. Why?
CRIST: It was considered - at least by many within Bush's first term - that it would confuse the war on terrorism, that the war on terrorism had to be this broad-based monolith that included essentially every terrorist nation, regardless of whether they were involved in the 9/11 attacks.
And as Newt Gingrich - who had a lot of influence in the administration - said, that by having Iran seen as an ally in the war on terrorism only undercut our efforts to delegitimize the Iranian regime.
GROSS: And not expanding the security talks to include more Iranians, same reason?
CRIST: Exactly the same reason. There was a deep division within the Bush administration over the wisdom of talking with the Iranians and pursuing these - building on the Afghan talks. The Vice President's Office, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, were both adamant that this would do nothing but give the Iranians a platform to delay and stall, and was not going to achieve anything anyways. You can't trust what they say, so it was actually going to undercut our efforts to isolate the regime.
Other elements of the administration, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, for example, both believed that there was potential openings that we could use with the Iranians. For example, one of the things the Iranians offered was to use one of their ports as a supply base for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
We decided that was sort of a bridge too far for our relations, but there was potential we might have been able to build on.
GROSS: So this could have been an opening of sorts, you think?
CRIST: I think - you know, it's the great unanswered question, since we never pursued it. In this case, the hardliners on Iran in the administration won the argument. We're never going to get a situation with Iran where we sit down and hold hands and sing "Kumbaya." There are steep and deep divisions between the two countries. We have a relationship that was founded on mistrust, and we built a house over the last 30 years that has done nothing but become more and more unstable.
However, the opportunity, I think, was there to start a dialogue with the Iranians that we haven't had for 30 years, a formal face-to-face diplomatic interaction that we simply haven't had. In fact, the way we do business now diplomatically with the Iranians is it's like two schoolchildren passing a note through an intermediary.
In this case, it's the Swiss. We don't even know if the note gets there correctly. Or we have these strange meetings in dark corners of hotel bars between our diplomats, or our CIA and their spies. It's no way to either reduce the amount of distrust or have a frank dialogue on each country's interests.
GROSS: So after the U.S. government turns down Iranian President Khatami's request to go to ground zero and light a candle and to bring additional Revolutionary Guard officers to the security talks in Geneva, shortly after that, President Bush gives his axis of evil speech, and Iran is surprised to hear that they are included in the axis of evil. What did you learn about Iran's reaction to the axis of evil speech?
CRIST: They were stunned. In fact, what it leads to is a complete cutoff by the Iranians of the talks we were having in Geneva and Paris, these quiet talks we were having that started with Afghanistan. They completely cut them off. They released a pretty nasty Afghan warlord they'd been holding, deliberately to tweak the American nose. And it really soured many Iranians who had been hopeful that this might lead to better relations between the two countries.
It seemed like the U.S., from their perspective, was back to its old habits of name-calling and bashing Iran and lumping them with the likes of al-Qaida and North Korea.
GROSS: And so tension increases between the two countries. How serious do you think the Bush administration ever was about making Iran the next Iraq, the next target of regime change?
CRIST: It might very well have come up had Iraq - had the war in Iraq gone better. However, having said that, there is no evidence that I've uncovered - and I've gone through just about everything - that there ever was a secret Iranian war plan, that after Iraq, we're immediately going to take on Iran. There wasn't much stomach, even amongst the hardliners in the Bush administration, for a real war with Iran.
It's just a big country. It's much more powerful than Saddam Hussein was. What they had hoped Iraq would do was have a - the term they used in their memos was a coercive effect on Iran, that between the sight of free elections, or the Shia in Iraq would make Iranian people think that why can't we have that same thing here, and that it would sort of start to subvert the regime, as well as make the regime nervous that maybe they are next with U.S. forces on their border, both of Afghanistan and Iraq.
GROSS: David Crist will be back in the second half of the show. He's the author of "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with David Crist, author of the new book "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran." The book is based on hundreds of interviews, and on documents released through his Freedom of Information Act request. He also had access to the papers of his father, General George Crist, who was the commander of CENTCOM from 1985 to '88. David Crist served in the Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's now a historian for the Defense Department, but his book is his own analysis and does not reflect the views of the government.
One of the incidents you write about in your book is the bombing of the Marine barracks during the Reagan administration in - was it 1983?
CRIST: Yes.
GROSS: Where 241 Marines were killed. What did you learn about the attack that you don't think was public before?
CRIST: Well, what's interesting about the attack is, one is, it depends on how one looks at the - at both sides of this issue. From the Iranians' perspective, the U.S. Marines were not peacekeepers, but were part of a policy that the Reagan administration had adopted of openly supporting the Christian Phalange, who were the...
GROSS: In Lebanon.
CRIST: In Lebanon - and openly supporting the Christian Phalange in Lebanon. And they were seen as just - while they were technically the Lebanese government, they were also seen as just one party of a really nasty civil war. So the U.S. was no longer neutral when they started openly supporting the Lebanese army and the Phalange. Iran had a long-standing relationship with the Shia community - it goes back many, many years. And when they Iranian revolution happens, the Iranians really tried to exploit that. They send a lot of idealistic, young Iranians who will become - Iranian soldiers who will become key leaders later in the Iranian military to help and train and support the Shia.
When they make the determination that the U.S. was essentially just another party of the civil war, one of their Shia supporters, a guy by the name of al-Musawi, who runs an organization called the Hussein Suicide Squad, goes to the Iranian ambassador in Damascus and he basically says, hey, we want to take a spectacular action. We don't know against who. Should it be the Americans? Should it be against the Christians? Maybe the Israelis?
And the Iranian ambassador in Damascus, who's really the main guy running their operations in Lebanon at the time, says: "Why don't you take a spectacular action" - a direct quote - "against the Marines?" And so he steers them to target the Marines who were mostly housed in a single, multi-story building that served as a headquarters and barracks for them.
And so there's some back-and-forth between Musawi and Lebanon, the ambassador and the Foreign Ministry in Tehran. And it's quite clear from the documents I uncovered that it was not only approved by the running ambassador in Damascus, but it was approved by their foreign minister and very likely by Ayatollah Khomeini himself to do a suicide bombing against the Marines. And it succeeds wildly: 241 Marines are killed. It ends up forcing the Marines out of Lebanon, and the U.S., it really collapses the American policy in Lebanon.
GROSS: So is this basically the prehistory of Hezbollah?
CRIST: It certainly is. Hezbollah, as a group, didn't really exist. It was still coalescing amongst a whole faction of - multiple factions of pro-Iranian Shia. And the interesting aspect of this whole debate is the Reagan administration doesn't respond to this. There's - it's - some very contentious debates within the White House Situation Room between Caspar Weinberger, who was opposed to military retaliation - mostly, he was opposed to the entire mission of Lebanon - and others, Secretary of State George Shultz and the national security adviser, who basically say you cannot allow 241 Americans to be killed and not respond to it.
Finally, it appears the president has made a decision on November 16th of 1983 - which is about three weeks after the bombing - to retaliate. But the military strike never happens. And it doesn't...
GROSS: Why not?
CRIST: The strike doesn't happen because everybody comes out of the meeting with the president in the Oval Office convinced the president had said something differently. Weinberger believes that the president had said, well, let's continue to wait and build up the intelligence to make sure we strike the right person - which, of course, is what he wants to do.
And those who are advocating the military strike - Bud McFarlane, who was the national security visor at the time - believes the president ordered a military strike. And McFarlane, in my interview with him, claims - and there's some documentary evidence to support this - that he calls up his command center in Pentagon about two in the morning and asks how the military strikes went, the air strikes went. And he's told, well, the secretary of defense called them off. And McFarlane's livid.
And he gets on the phone to Weinberger, and Weinberger says, well, I just don't think the president really wanted to do that. And so as a consequence, we never respond, and it's not President Reagan's finest moment as a leader. He essentially vacillates and never takes a firm stand on it.
GROSS: You call him the American Hamlet in that chapter.
CRIST: Yes.
GROSS: My guest is David Crist, author of the new book "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran." We'll talk more after break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Crist. He's the author of the new book "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran."
Let's talk about where we are now with Iran. Iran appears to have backed the terrorist attack against - young vacationing Israelis in Bulgaria, which was what, about a week ago.
CRIST: Yes.
GROSS: The Stuxnet Virus - which it's unclear how much Israel and how much the United States had to do with that - but that virus destroyed a fair amount of Iran's nuclear program. And there were several Iranian nuclear scientists who were assassinated. And it is assumed - it is widely assumed that Israel is behind that. So this kind of low-level conflict is underway between the U.S., Iran, Israel and Iran. Where would you say we are now?
CRIST: Well, I think there is certainly a sort of low-level war that's being engaged between both sides. There's very little doubt in my mind the bombing of Bulgaria was in retaliation for what Iran thinks of the Israeli assassination of their scientists. And it's very much in keeping with the Iranians' playbook, which is you don't attack directly at a much stronger enemy. You use terrorism to sort of achieve the same result. And it provides the Iranian government with plausible deniability. It's hard - in many cases, it's hard to trace these back to the Iranian leadership.
But I think it's just a continuation of what I describe in the book, which is, in many ways, a 30-year quasi-war between the United States and Iran. And Iran has used terrorism a number of times - from Khobar Towers to the Beirut bombing - as a means of striking back in this covert war.
GROSS: President Obama initially wanted to approach Iran and talk with Iran, and that not having been successful, is now working with other countries to keep increasingly tightened sanctions against Iran. Where would you say we are now on that?
CRIST: I think President Obama made a very courageous move early in his administration to try to extend his hand to the Iranians. Between public speeches, between a Nowruz message, I think he really tried to reach out to the Iranians. And it was a mistake, I think, for the Supreme Leader not to accept it.
When that was shut down, that avenue was shut down, Obama falls back on a policy that, in fact, was already in place by Bush. There was an interesting meeting in the Oval Office between the two men just before Obama's inaugural where, essentially, Bush lays out what steps the United States is taking to delay the Iranian nuclear program. And he needs - and he's really trying to buy time for President Obama, so he's not faced with a nuclear crisis early in his administration.
So Obama already has that in his hip pocket if his opening to the Iranian leadership doesn't work. And when it doesn't, he falls back on that and, in fact, has really built on it, these - the sanctions. And really, the international pressure, I don't think I've ever seen as quite so - not only so coercive, but so well-coordinated, not only with the U.S. government, inside the U.S. government, but across the international community.
And I think the crisis is really starting to come to a head, at least as far as the nuclear issue. I think at some point, either Iran's going to do like they do in many cases: They take everything up to a brink, and then they find a way to make an agreement. Or it could be leading to a conflict.
I'm hopeful that the diplomacy works. I really think it's the right approach at this time with their nuclear program. But the other thing I think is important to realize is that the nuclear standoff is really a symptom of a larger problem with Iran. It's not the - it's really a - this antagonism and this mistrust that has gone back for three decades. And if we solve the nuclear problem tomorrow, that's not going to change.
GROSS: Your book about the 30-year conflict between the United States and Iran ends with this sentence - your book is called the "Twilight War." And the sentence is: Soon it may no longer be twilight. The light is dimming, and night might well be approaching at long last. That's a very pessimistic note to end on.
CRIST: Yeah. I guess I'm not an optimist when it comes to the U.S.-Iranian relations. I just think if you look at it - as I said, we built a foundation of distrust, and over the years it's only widened. I don't think we've ever been quite at such loggerheads with the Iranians. The potential for miscalculation in the Gulf, a firefight that breaks up between our warships is extremely high.
We have no way to easily defuse it, because we don't have any direct diplomatic ties with the Iranians. So we'd have to go through an intermediary, which takes time. By that time, it'll be too late.
And the nuclear standoff's an open question. And I don't see this antagonism changing much, frankly, while the current supreme leader's around. The Iranian revolution put in place a key pillar of Iranian foreign policy, which is really anti-Americanism. And the young men who overthrew the very unpopular U.S.-backed Shah of Iran 30 - over 30 years ago, now have gray in their beards, but their attitudes have not changed that much. And so I think the key is we have to figure out a way to continue to avoid heading into the night, at least staying into the twilight, and at the same time hoping that over time, attitudes on both sides will change.
GROSS: Your position is as a historian for the federal government. I don't know if you're in the position of doing in that role what you had to do for this book. And what I mean is for this book, you got a lot of formerly secret documents. You worked through the Freedom of Information Act and mandatory review requests. Does that go counter to what's expected of you as a historian of the federal government?
CRIST: No. In fact, it's our tradecraft, in many ways. I spent probably two decades - although I hate to admit it, that it's been that long - on researching this book, both inside and outside of the government, and I dug very deep. As you said, I got access to senior officials' records that hadn't been accessed before. I found an admiral who had some great meetings of - very important presidential meetings in his journal, which were in the crawl space in his basement. And I traveled to back-alley safe houses in south Beirut to interview Hezbollah and Hamas representatives to get their side of the view. It's essentially what a historian inside or outside the government should do.
And the one thing, you know, I do have affiliation, a long affiliation with the U.S. military. Obviously, I'm a colonel in the Reserves and have been around it for a while. And the one thing I can say unequivocally is I've never known a general to object to good history.
GROSS: Having spent two decades writing this book on the secret history of America's conflict with Iran, do you see any presidents differently than you did before the research?
CRIST: What I found is that the interesting trend that each president has had some successes and failures dealing with the Iranians. I think at least presidents who have served two terms, everyone has had a close encounter with war and also made an effort to try to reach out to the Iranians. I think Bush is a real - George W. Bush is a very interesting person because his first administration, Iran wasn't well done. It was very dysfunctional.
There's tremendous divisions within the administration and he's not real strong or resolute about making a decision between the two competing views of a way forward. His second term is far different. He's much more comfortable. He's not afraid to overrule his advisers, and as a result, there is a much firmer, much more concrete inner agency or national plan to deal with Iran of which President Obama was a great beneficiary of.
GROSS: And that plan was?
CRIST: The plan is essentially what we have now, which is you continue to reach out to the Iranians. If they're willing to unclench their fist, as President Obama said, we'll take it and we'll pursue on a wide variety of issues including the nuclear issue. If they don't, we'll continue to increase the sanctions and increase their international isolation.
GROSS: So when you're a historian for the Defense Department, what exactly are you doing?
CRIST: Well, I write a lot for them too. Unfortunately, those books are usually stuck in vaults and won't see the light of day for a long time. But they're...
GROSS: Why are they in vaults?
CRIST: Because they're all classified.
GROSS: So you're writing classified histories.
CRIST: Yes.
GROSS: So is there classified information that's in your brain that you couldn't use for the book because that's classified and you didn't get access to the Freedom of Information Act...
CRIST: Yeah. They're...
GROSS: ...to get the documents that you've already been able to read?
CRIST: Well, I meticulously avoided writing about Iran while I was doing this book so I wouldn't have those dilemmas. I was writing about Iraq and some other issues, some special operations issues and things like that. But, you know, I've also been an advisor recently to senior leadership. So, yeah, there's a lot I know that I can't have in this book.
GROSS: So you're writing books for the Defense Department that end up in vaults. When do they - when do those vaults end up getting opened?
CRIST: Well, we're just now - my office is just now getting, I think, the Ford administration reviewed for declassification. So you're about 30 years behind the times. So it's a good long time to let the sensitivity of a lot of the issues drop off and also it's long enough that you can then go back and relook at an issue with sort of a more objective eye than you might have had writing about an essentially current event.
GROSS: And the histories you're writing about are based on classified documents?
CRIST: Yes.
GROSS: What an unusual and interesting job.
CRIST: Oh, it's fascinating. It's the best job for a historian, in my view.
GROSS: Better if you had readers, though, right?
CRIST: I'm sorry?
GROSS: It would be better if you had readers.
CRIST: It is much better. Nobody reads this.
GROSS: Yeah.
CRIST: This is not a lie. I wrote a history that I think five people read because of the sensitivity of it. It is an absolutely fascinating story and 70 years from now when that thing's declassified people will look at Desert Storm and the invasion of Iraq - really, our whole wars with Saddam Hussein in a different light. But it's just not going to - and it's classified for some very good reasons. There is a lot of people's lives on the line if these things are exposed.
So, yeah. It's a fascinating job. Frustrating, again, sometimes because if your audience is only five people, well, what's the point of it sometimes? But I think it's important for the American public to have this stuff captured because eventually the stuff will get released and they'll know what the government's done in their name. And in many cases, it's actually pretty good stuff.
GROSS: David Crist, thank you so much for talking with us.
CRIST: Thank you for having me.
GROSS: David Crist is the author of "The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's 30 Year Conflict with Iran." You can read an excerpt on our website, freshair.npr.org. Coming up, our linguist Geoff Nunberg talks about our conflicted attitude towards swearing. This is FRESH AIR.
TERRY GROSS, HOST: The town of Middleborough, Massachusetts, stirred up a lot of discussion recently when it decided to impose a fine for swearing in public. Many people were skeptical about the ordinance but our linguist Geoff Nunberg says the most interesting thing about the story is what it reveals about our inconsistent attitudes toward profanity.
GEOFF NUNBERG, BYLINE: Sometimes it's small government you need to keep your eye on. As with Middleborough, Massachusetts, whose town meeting recently imposed a $20 fine for swearing in public. According to the police chief, the ordinance was aimed at the crowds of unruly teenagers who gathered downtown at night yelling profanities at people, not just somebody who slams a finger in a car door.
But whatever the exact idea was, nobody thought it was a good one. The ordinance had the rare distinction of being denounced by FOX News commentators, the editorial writers at the Washington Post, and the director of the Massachusetts ACLU. There are some people who want to keep government out of the marketplace and some who want to keep it out of the bedroom, but pretty much everybody's spooked at the idea of policing what we say to a neighbor who starts his leaf blower at 7:15 on a Sunday morning.
But that's where the consensus ended, as the commentaries drifted off into culture war face-offs between moralists and modernists. To the moralists, the pervasiveness of swearing is a clear symptom of the collapse of civility and the coarsening of American culture. As they tell it, the dissolution began with the foul-mouthed demonstrators and hippies of the '60s and was amplified by Hollywood, rock music, and hip hop. Until we turned into a society that's lost all sense of shame or stigma. This is an old song.
Social critics of the 1940s railed at the depraved profanity of the returning GIs. In the '20s they were lambasting the vogue for four-letter words among the society's slummers called mucker posers. And so on back to the Victorians.
But then as the philosopher Montesquieu observed, people have been complaining about the decline of manners and morals since the time of Aristotle. They couldn't all have been right, he said, or men would be bears today. The moralists are correct about one thing, though: this language has become more widespread and more audible than at any time since the early 19th century.
I'd put the turning point in the '70s when the styles and attitudes that emerged in the '60s were domesticated and divested of any subversive meaning, the moment when jeans, long hair, and casual vulgarity became universal signs of democratic informality.
But a modernist could argue that the ubiquity of four-lettered chatter actually makes it less of a concern. In a piece criticizing the Middleborough ordinance, the linguist John McWhorter said that it's time to bring our sense of dirty into line with our modern, come-as-you-are American spirit.
True, there are one or two genuinely taboo words, but the rest of this language has gotten so ordinary that it's not profane, merely colorful. Just teach kids not to use it at inappropriate times and they'll be fine. If you take the modernist point of view, potty mouths are like potholes: just another of life's little inconveniences. They're there, they swear, get used to it.
That uncompromising rationality may seem utterly at odds with the keening philippics of the moralists yet most of us move easily between one position and the other. Just note the reactions when a political figure is caught out dropping the f-bomb. To the opposition, it's gutter talk that shows his classlessness. To his own partisans, it's a demonstration of earthy authenticity.
Then when somebody from the other party uses the same word a week later, the two sides just exchange their copy. And both views do have a lot going for them. Vulgar language may be a fact of modern life, but it's a lot more troubling than potholes.
It's infuriating to hear somebody behind you in the movie line swearing energetically, even if you don't happen to have a six-year-old in tow. In one recent survey, three-quarters of the respondents said that parents should teach their kids that cursing is always wrong but not a lot of parents teach that lesson by example.
The proportion of Americans who claim they never curse runs anywhere from five to 15 percent and you figure some of them must be telling the truth. But while the rest of us may officially disapprove of swearing, we also engage in it enthusiastically and even at the family dinner table, devant les enfants. Well, profanity makes hypocrites of us all.
But without hypocrisy, how could profanity even exist? To learn what it means to swear, a child has to both hear the words said and be told that it's wrong to say them, ideally by the same people. After all, the basic point of swearing is to demonstrate that your emotions have gotten the better of you and trumped your inhibitions.
That's why the words have to be regarded as bad, not just inappropriate, so that you make a point when you use them. Swear words don't describe your feelings, they manifest them. Throwing the F-word at somebody isn't just a particularly emphatic and colorful way of saying, I'm awfully vexed with you right now.
In the end, neither the modernists nor the moralists could ever win this argument. Each needs the other too much. The specific vocabulary items may change, but swearing itself can never become so ordinary that we no longer consider it naughty. You can't have profanity if there are no prudes left to be shocked by it. So let's give some credit to the good people of Middleborough, Massachusetts for helping to keep the old traditions alive.
GROSS: Geoff Nunberg is a linguist who teaches at Berkeley's School of Information. His new book, "Ascent of the A-Word," will be published this summer.
GROSS: You can download podcasts of our show on our website freshair.npr.org and you can follow us on Twitter @nprfreshair and on Tumblr at nprfreshair.tumblr.com.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Today's Names to Know: Adrian Peterson, New England Patriots, Adrian Peterson, Antonio Cromartie, Adrian Peterson, Terrell Owens, Adrian Peterson, Ohio State, LSU, Kansas, Navy, Darren McFadden, Lute Olsen, John Russell, Adrian Peterson and More.
Pats dismiss Colts in
Now, the Pats have a clear shot at 16-0, and with home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs, it would be an upset if they DIDN'T go 19-0. What: Like the Colts are going to be able to beat the Pats in Foxborough in January?
Sure, the Pats didn't win as decisively as they had in the previous 8 weeks. But they beat their closest competitor -- if "closest" or "competitor" have any meaning relative to the Pats this season -- on the road and down late in the game.
UPDATE: Yeah, I missed the most interesting subplot of the game: That the Colts apparently piped in crowd noise. By the way, that's cheating. So let's end the holier-than-thou comparisons between the Colts and the Pats... or the Colts and everyone else.
More NFL: Rookie Adrian Peterson is the best running back in the NFL, and he set the single-game rushing record (296 yards) to prove it. (Oh, and he dominated his head-to-head match-up with LaDainian Tomlinson, if that symbolism could be any greater.) He also became the first rookie in NFL history with two 200-yard rushing games.
If you were starting a franchise today and could pick from any player in the league to start your team, there's a very good chance that Peterson would be the No. 1 overall pick -- which makes the fact that he was the No. 7 pick in last year's draft seem kind of strange.
More records: Antonio Cromartie set the NFL record for the longest scoring play in history, 109 yards on a TD run-back of a missed field goal. (And speaking of field goals, Sebastian Janikowski came thisclose to setting a new NFL record with a 64-yard try that hit the post.)
T.O., Cowboys beat Eagles: How nice was it to see that this game really didn't hit the radar, eclipsed by the Colts and Pats. TO had a huge game: 174 yards (on 10 receptions) and a TD.
Welcome back to relevancy, Jamal Lewis: The RB had 4 TDs in the Browns huge OT win over
Speaking of rookie RBs, how about Marshawn Lynch, who did it with his legs AND his arm? (If not for Peterson, Lynch would probably be the leading Rookie of the Year contender.)
CFB BCS Watch:
Meanwhile, it's nice to see
CFB Weekend: That Navy win over Notre Dame was the most thrilling ending of the year. I was standing on my couch, rooting for Navy to pull it off.
BC and
My BlogPoll Top 25: I have LSU and
I appreciate that
Heisman Watch: Darren McFadden's candidacy was done, the victim of the Razorbacks' weak start to the season. But he single-handedly lifted himself back to the top with his performance Saturday night: 323 rushing yards, an SEC record. (Three team losses? Who cares?)
My current ballot:
(1) Darren McFadden
(2) Dennis Dixon
(3) Mike Hart
(4) Percy Harvin (yes, over Tim Tebow)
NBA: Ray Allen had 33 and a ton of 3s, including the game-winner in OT, showcasing that on any given night, any one of the Celtics' "Big Three" could explode as the star... Meanwhile, how far behind have the Cavs fallen as an NBA power (if they ever were)? Even without Amare, the Suns still beat them.
CBB: Why has Lute Olsen taken a leave of absence from
MLB: Pirates to hire John Russell as manager. Extra points to any of you whose first reaction was "Who?"
MLB Hot Stove: Do you think anything will happen when the GMs meet in
NYC Marathon: Radcliffe (6 months after having a baby!) and Lel win NYC Marathon, which will always be best-known to most people for the cameo in Seinfeld: "You're all winners!"


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Sunday, August 19, 2007
Duff Goldman has Nothing on Me ;)
42 comments:
- Erin M said...
uh coolest cake EVER !!
I love to bake but suck at cake decorating so pretty much any and every birthday cake is covered in 9 million rainbow sprinkles and then I call it a day - August 20, 2007 at 1:42 PM
- Alison said...
Hey, I'm one of the 500 people (so far) who found you through your hilarious eBay post. As the mother of "only" 3 kids, 2 of whom are Pokemon fanatics, I completely related!
But I've got to say, what really blows me away is this cake! One of my Pokemon-loving children celebrated his 9th birthday a few days ago and wanted a Star Wars theme, and never in a million years did it cross my mind to replicate R2D2 in cake & frosting! WOW. I once made a fairly elaborate castle cake for him, but that was 3 years and 1 kid ago, and now I just buy cakes pre-made. ;-) You would totally be my kids' hero...I mean, if you didn't sell your kids' hard-sneaked Pokemon cards out from under them, which wouldn't sit too well with mine! Ha ha. - August 20, 2007 at 5:39 PM
- Jennifer said...
Wow!!!!! That is an AWESOME cake! Will you be my mommy and make me a cake like that!?
- August 20, 2007 at 11:07 PM
- Dawn said...
Sure! As long as YOU do the shopping for the ingredients! ;)
- August 21, 2007 at 12:34 AM
I loved you Ebay auction, BUT, my son LOVES this cake!!! It's awesome!! Please Please Please tell me how to do it....... his birthday is in October and he is BEGGING me to make THIS cake!!!!
Loving your blog too....... it's a riot!!!
Wendy - August 21, 2007 at 2:04 PM
- MegWeb said...
I'm also one of the 500 people who read your ebay post...now, the cake! My husband is SUCH a Star Wars fanatic, that in addition to collecting figures, etc...our older daughter is named LEIA! So, *claps hands* YYAAAY! for your R2D2 cake! It's awesome!
- August 21, 2007 at 6:32 PM
wow, my mom read your pokemon story on ebay to me and i thought, 'wow, she is so like my mom except she doesnt have 6 kids, she has 2, and shes made it clear shes done.' and then i see this and i'm like, 'man i wish my mom would make an r2d2 cake for my dad, he'd be in heaven.' but alas, she doesnt make cake unless shes bored... or pregnant and stuck at home all day... those were the good ol' days when she was pregnant with my sis and not at work, we always had cake or some sort of yummy fun thing in the house... except now she only goes and buys nutter butter and 10pm,,, she didnt let me go though, we would have come back with the entire bakery,... wow long comment, and i'll be sure to leave more, i found my new everyday website! YES!
thx for being funny,
melanie - August 21, 2007 at 7:08 PM
Another eBayer via Fark.com visitor here -- don't put that cake down. It's AWESOME.
~~D - August 21, 2007 at 7:35 PM
holy crap!! thats totally awesome. and i thought i did a good job on my sons r2 cake for his bday, but yours has totally blown mine out the water. so what else did you use other than cake and fondent to shape it??
- August 21, 2007 at 8:34 PM
- Jess said...
Another one who found you through your ebay list. Please, please, please can you share how you made that awesome cake? My son would be ecstatic if I created that for his next birthday. It's only 6 months away, if I start practicing now I might get it right!
Jess - August 21, 2007 at 10:09 PM
- Hen Jen said...
that cake is amazing! You are amazing!
I'm feeling somewhat lacking now...
your note to self just did it to me, good thing I didn't have any kind of beverage in my mouth!
great pics, thanks for sharing. - August 21, 2007 at 11:22 PM
Awesome cake, very ambitious! Is that a fondant coating or just icing?
- August 22, 2007 at 2:13 AM
- Wendy said...
yep i got here from your ebay post...just wanted to say this cake wa A-MAZE-ING!!! wtg! your sense of humor definatly started my day off in the right direction :)
- August 22, 2007 at 7:53 AM
- grumpus said...
Sweet cake!
- August 22, 2007 at 11:05 AM
I bow down to your cake making skillz. :-) Love your blog, too. Hope you don't mind, but I'm adding you to my blogroll!
~ taffi, mom of 4 (us "large family" moms gotta stick together, although I've never thought of 4 as large! LOL) - August 22, 2007 at 11:22 AM
I got an email from my sister about your ebay listing. Which directed me to your blog. You are sooo funny. And this cake is amazing. I look forward to reading more from you!
- August 22, 2007 at 1:00 PM
- becca said...
crazy cake!! we love star wars here! very cool!!!
- August 22, 2007 at 1:43 PM
- sociallyskilled said...
wow, that cake is amazing. and here i was feeling pretty proud of myself for making my daughter animal pancakes. you've put me to shame. :P
(yes, i too found your blog from your ebay auction). - August 22, 2007 at 3:25 PM
- Mrs.Temple said...
What a friggin' AWESOME cake. I'm jealous... i want one!!!
- August 22, 2007 at 3:27 PM
My friend sent me your Blog link and the Ebay link...and I just had to post after seeing this cake (my DH is a SW fan and I'm an Ace of Cake fan)...you are one hilarious woman! btw...I say (snort) all the time too, 'cause I actually snort when I giggle.
Enjoyed reading your blog!
hang in there...
Peg Graham - August 22, 2007 at 3:33 PM
- SarahB said...
That is a great cake! (I'm another one who found you from your eBay auction--I've got a 3 year old and an 18-month old and even they wear me out at the store!)
- August 22, 2007 at 3:44 PM
You must REALLY be getting sick of reading all the comments eh? So I figured I'd go ahead and give you another....why not joing the herd?!
I'm not goin to comment on your cake or your ebay listing because I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not too much like everyone else. But I do want to tell you that the world needs more people like you! I frequent a parenting forum online and it is very rare that you find someone that has a "no shit" kind of attitude like yours. You seem to have a way of laughing at all the petty (sometimes maybe not so petty) things and not losing your cool. That's impressive in todays world!
I'm glad I was directed to your ebay listing, and I hope to read much more from you in the future (how's that for pressure huh?). I've even added your blog to my favs!
As for ebay....may you make millions of dollars just from the interest in your humour!
Good luck, and the best to you and your family! - August 22, 2007 at 4:39 PM
- Ioldanach said...
You should post your pics to the aceofcakes group on livejournal...
http://community.livejournal.com/aceofcakes - August 22, 2007 at 5:05 PM
- Pam said...
I think Duff would be very impressed! I found you from Fark that sent me to your eBay posting.
You are hilarious! - August 22, 2007 at 5:26 PM
- sendthembothtodss said...
You built....
Oh my God, marry me. I'm 18, not much of a looker, but I'm like a big, fat, ugly puppy! You'll love me! Really! - August 22, 2007 at 6:37 PM
This cake rocks, and I love your Pokemon card story. I have many friends who can relate. We are foster and adoptive moms to "special needs" kids. Life is absolutely insane.
Just a suggestion. Next time, hire a sitter while you go shopping. It will probably be cheaper and will certainly preserve what little bit of sanity you might have left.
And next time if someone asks you if they're all yours, tell them that some of them are robots and you wanted to see if anyone could tell the difference :)
Hang in there. - August 22, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Someone posted your ebay on a triplet site that I belong to so I had to read it. Wow you are funny you made my night. I am going to catch up on your other post. I also think your cake was awesome. Your life sounds like a lot of fun.
- August 22, 2007 at 8:13 PM
- The Amazing Supermom said...
mother of 9 here, my husband read your ebay ad while my eldest and i laughed till we cried. well said, my friend!
- August 22, 2007 at 9:51 PM
Oh, mommy. Are you my twin?! I forwarded your ebay item to my family because I know they will picture me on this grocery store trip! It's too late for me to read your blog tonight but you have yet another fan. I did stop and see the lever teeth marks though! LMAO! I have 4 boys...
- August 23, 2007 at 1:12 AM
OMG that is the coolest cake i ever saw.. i am a cake decorator also but wow that is creative... and very cool... oh and loved your ebay ad, that was too funny!!
- August 23, 2007 at 3:21 AM
- TW said...
After all these years, we women of the world have found a replacement for our much beloved Erma Bombeck (everyone under 30 runs to Google).
I am smart. I had one child. My son was not so smart. He gave me 4 grandchildren. I was young before they were born. I aged 85 years since their invasion.
We could win any war if we wanted. Just sic the kids on them. Surrender would be within 24 hours.
Thanks for making my day. Ebay led me here. You'll be my daily morning read from now on.
Kudos! - August 23, 2007 at 3:39 AM
We have 6 kids in our family too! Your ebay listing AND your blog made my day. Someone else lives my life!! woohoo!!! Hang tough, sister.
- August 23, 2007 at 6:46 AM
Hi, I also found your eBay story and like so many, I found it hilarious and true to life. An online friend forwarded the link to a list I'm on.
Feel free to drop by my blog whenever you have a moment away from your six-pack. Which will probably be sometime next year. :-) - August 23, 2007 at 9:06 AM
- Ann said...
Awesome cake! I was too chicken to try the 3D version--it didn't help that my dear son told me the NIGHT BEFORE his birthday that he wanted R2D2, not a Star Wars battle scene, so all I had was a 9x13 to work with...here's my humble attempt, but yours takes the cake!
http://morequestionsthana.blogspot.com/2007/08/happy-birthday-henry.html - August 23, 2007 at 10:26 AM
- Unknown said...
Wow- That is amazing- it's fun to see another Duff Goldman fan. Although make cake making caliber is nonexistent.
- August 23, 2007 at 4:59 PM
- Unknown said...
What a cool cake! You did such a great job on that!!!
- August 23, 2007 at 7:17 PM
- Unknown said...
Weir are u finding time to do this stuff women!
- August 23, 2007 at 7:37 PM
- Neasa said...
Another of the masses who read your pokemon auction. As a mother of just 2 handfuls I feel a little inferior but still, reading that gave me the chills! I can completely relate. Looking forward to reading your blog now. Oh, by the way, your post has reached Ireland!!!
- August 24, 2007 at 8:50 AM
Wow...just, Wow!
- August 24, 2007 at 9:46 AM
Yes, my sister sent me a link to your ebay auction. We can relate. I hate shopping with my kids (5 of them, too.
But that cake is AMAZING!!! Really, truly. That must have taken you forever to do! I'm very impressed.
And I hope we're all not overwhelming you with our comments and love. We'll get over it soon. - August 24, 2007 at 4:20 PM
- Unknown said...
I LOVE your cake! That's so fabulous! I have a "Boo" too! (my youngest is known as "Boo, Boo Bear, Boo Boo"
I don't know how you find the time...
I only have 2 and I feel like I will never be done cleaning up after them.
I think it's time to throw out some toys!
LOL - August 28, 2007 at 1:20 PM
My sister sent your ebay skit to me, funny as all out. Actually they thought is was me pretending to be someone else and adding 2 more kids. I know exactly where you're coming from regarding this Pokemon phenom. It's so funny how every other Mom has a child known as Boo in her life. My Boo is the eldest and Pokemon eventually parted our lives totally by 2002. Hang in there! Something else will replace those cracked out looking creatures down the road. Your cake is amazing. I decorate cakes as well, but shy away from the 3D stuff. Hang in there. I'll cross the finish line in 2011 when the baby girl graduates high school. - August 30, 2007 at 7:27 AM


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We're about to find out if there will be a way anytime soon to slow the course of Alzheimer's disease. Results are due within a month or so from key studies of two drugs that aim to clear the sticky plaque gumming up patients' brains.
A pivotal study of a third drug will end later this year, and results from a small, early test of it will be reported next week at an Alzheimer's conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.
These three treatments are practically the "last men standing" in late-stage trials, after more than a decade of failed efforts to develop a drug to halt the mind-robbing disease. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.
Experts say that if these fail, drug companies may pull out of the field in frustration, leaving little hope for the millions of people with the disease. An estimated 35 million people worldwide have dementia, which includes Alzheimer's. In the U.S., experts say about 5 million have Alzheimer's.
The three treatments being tested are not even drugs in the traditional, chemical sense. They are antibodies — proteins made by the immune system that promote clearance of amyloid, the stuff that forms the plaque.
It's a strategy with a checkered history, and scientists aren't even sure that amyloid causes Alzheimer's or that removing it will do any good in people who already have symptoms. But there are some hopeful signs they may be on the right track.
"Everybody in the field is probably holding their breath that there is something positive to come out of these trials," said Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.
"It may not be a home run" in terms of improving memory and cognition, but if brain imaging or spinal fluid tests show the drugs are hitting their target, "they will be regarded as successes," he said.
William Thies, scientific director of the Alzheimer's Association, agreed.
Even if there is just a small effect, "that would be a huge finding because that would let you know you had a drug that worked," he said. It then could be tried as a preventive medicine or given earlier in the course of the disease when it may have more impact.
The three drugs and their developers are:
—Bapineuzumab (bap-ih-NOOZ-uh-mab), by Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy unit.
—Solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), by Eli Lilly & Co.
—Gammagard, by Baxter International Inc.
All are given as periodic intravenous infusions; some companies are trying to reformulate them so they could be given as shots. If a major study shows that one of the drugs works, there will be a huge effort to make it more convenient and practical, Thies predicted.
Still, it would probably be very expensive.
The first two on the list are lab-made, single antibodies against amyloid. Gammagard is intravenous immune globulin, or IVIG — multiple, natural antibodies culled from blood. Half a dozen companies already sell IVIG to treat immune system and blood disorders. It takes 130 plasma donations to make enough to treat one patient for a year.
Treating Alzheimer's with IVIG would cost $2,000 to $5,000 every two weeks, depending on the patient's weight, said Dr. Norman Relkin, head of a memory disorders program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He consults for some drugmakers and has patents for tests that measure amyloid.
Relkin is also leading a late-stage, 400-patient study of Gammagard that will wrap up late this year. A much smaller, earlier study he led showed less brain shrinkage among people receiving the drug than among those getting dummy infusions.
"It was so startling that I sent it to two laboratories for independent verification," Relkin said.
Next week, at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Canada, Relkin will give a three-year progress report on 16 patients out of the original 24 enrolled in that earlier study.
Jason Marder is among them. The New York City man, who turned 70 on Tuesday, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's more than eight years ago.
"It was devastating," said his wife, Karin Marder. "I thought, 'Our life is over together as a couple.' But in fact it really has not been, and I have to attribute this really to the clinical trial."
In the roughly five years that her husband has taken Gammagard, there has been decline in his health, but it is minimal and the kind of slowing down you might expect from ordinary aging, she said. "He travels the subways, he does things that you and I do. And our quality of life together is what's most important," she said.
Jason Marder said he takes a creative writing class, runs errands for his wife and bikes around the city. As for his disease, "I fight it as much as I can," he said. "I feel I can handle it."
It's impossible to say how Marder would have fared without the treatment. Some patients decline rapidly, while others not for years. Hard evidence comes from large studies like the one that will conclude later this year, in which a group of patients getting the treatment is compared with a similar group given dummy infusions.
Studies on the two other drugs already have ended and results are being analyzed. The main outcome is likely to be announced by the companies as soon as it is known, and detailed results are to be presented at scientific conferences in October.
Bapineuzumab is one of the largest bets ever placed in the field of Alzheimer's disease. More than 4,000 patients are participating in four studies around the world — two in people with a gene that raises the risk of Alzheimer's and two in people who don't carry that gene.
The studies, which started enrolling patients in 2007, involve brain scans every few months. "That's enormously expensive and time-consuming," said Dr. Eric Yuen, head of clinical development for Janssen. These experiments are just now yielding results.
Concern arose when an earlier study found possible bleeding or brain abnormalities in up to 10 per cent of patients on the drug. However, most had no symptoms and were able to resume treatment after a brief break, Yuen said. In fact, some researchers think these changes might be a sign the drug is working to clear the amyloid plaque.
The fact that independent monitors have not stopped the new studies has made Dr. Reisa Sperling optimistic the drug will prove to be safe. Director of the Alzheimer's centre at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, she has consulted for Janssen and Pfizer and enrolled patients in the studies.
Relkin, who is leading the Gammagard study, said that if all three of these drugs fail, "we're in trouble." There hasn't been a new drug even to help symptoms in nine years, he said.
Petersen of the Mayo Clinic agrees.
"If they're dead-flat negative, the impact on the field and the implication for Big Pharma could be huge," he said. Companies "may bail" from the field entirely. "They may just say, 'This nut is too tough to crack.'"
Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov
Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org
Alzheimer's Association International Conference: http://www.alz.org/aaic/overview.asp
Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Nine of Rings (Coins) Tarot Card Meanings
Realize you are free to create a secure, enduring, and satisfying lifestyle for yourself. Look for ways to share it with those who have helped you along the way.
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What does the Nine of Rings Tarot card mean?
Learn the meaning of the Nine of Rings Tarot card in under a minute!
Nine of Rings Upright Meaning
The Nine of this suit points to a person who is financially secure enough to live comfortably. This is about someone supported by her own business, inheritance or property. This is one person in a thousand.
This fortunate individual has turned a historical accident into a personal opportunity. This is one who has the vision and strength of character to hold onto gains against all odds. Do not be fooled at the apparent ease displayed on this card -- the person pictured is at the tail end of a long and stressful process of winning the right to be taken seriously. All of this grace has been paid for several times over.
Nine of Rings Reversed Meaning
The Nine of Coins reversed suggests a period of self-discipline is needed to restore your energy and vitality. You may be enmeshed in a situation of dependency or overindulgence.
You may be getting a bit sloppy, not in full possession of all your energy and focus. The remedy is austerity and self-discipline. You'll be much healthier -- and happier -- after you have straightened up your act.
Nine of Rings Advice Position
The Nine of Coins in this position suggests that you prepare yourself for greater resources to be flowing in your direction. If you pay attention -- and keep the faith -- you can make a smooth transition into a state of well being and peace of mind. Hard work has brought you to a place where you could earn and receive grace, comfort, and freedom -- whether that be personal, emotional or financial.
Exercise your imagination and create an abundant, sustainable, and enjoyable lifestyle (or relationship) for yourself. Acknowledge the friends and others who were loyal to you during the difficult times. Gather your dreams and get ready. You deserve this happiness.