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tv   Book TV  CSPAN  September 1, 2013 4:15pm-5:16pm EDT

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website. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2. here is our prime-time lineup for tonight. big -- beginning at 7:00 p.m. he said we hear from greg of tree he talked about his book that the 2013 eagle forum collegian summit. a 7:45 p.m., george becker presented history of the united states of the past three decades . at 9:00, craig steven wilder joins book tv in an interview with joe madison he talks about his book ebony and ivy, race, slavery, and the troll history of america's university. then at 10:00 p.m. eastern meredith whitney explains why states and the midwest would become the new powerhouses for the american economy. we wrap up tonight primetime programming and 11:00 p.m. eastern.
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her experiences and the experiences of others with the american foster care system. that all happens tonight on c-span2 book tv. >> and now on book tv jesse walker talks about his new book, the -- "the united states of paranoia", in which he discusses the popularity of political conspiracy theories and paranoia going back to the founding of the country. this is about 45 minutes. >> our author. today we present a book dealing with an american history of conspiracies, just three days ago the cra admitted that such a place known as area 51 those actually exist. even though they disavow all knowledge of any aliens, so-called conspiracy theorists' rejoice.
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[inaudible conversations] >> the best way the some of mr. walker's book is from page a worries says, pond and stand to write off political paranoia has the future of the french, they are wrong. the fear of conspiracies has been a potent force across the political spectrum from the colonial era to the presence. in the establishment as well as at the extremes. so all 338 of these readable pages ways out in clear, often funny and often surprising detail how that is still the case. one present-day but old conspiracy that i personally remember mated surrounds the the internet was to fold the $20 bill.
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anyone familiar with that? a few folks. this layout in base 302. the $20 check. if you fold -- for folks who don't know, if you fold it just the right way, it alleges to show how the world trade towers fall. allegedly foreshadowing the attacks. from the items like that can easily be dispelled. some other examples of so-called conspiracies might take about 50 years for any real information to come out and the truth to be exposed. jesse walker is the book's editor. university of michigan alone who wrote rebels on the air, an
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alternative history of radio in america back in 2001. you can follow him on twitter or on his block page. he resents ride up the way in baltimore with his wife and two daughters. i now present you jesse walker and his second book, "the united states of paranoia". [applause] >> what i'm going to do is read a bit from the book. i'm going to talk a bit about the book. then of going to read a little bit more from book, and then we will take your questions, as will the police. [laughter] on january 30 if -- can everyone here me in the back?
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and january 30th, 1855, as andrew jackson exited the congressman's funeral an assassin true weapon and pointed of the president's. the pistol misfired. the gunman pulled a second weapon. as though loaded, it, too, failed to fire. several bystanders subdued the would-be killer, an unemployed house painter. lawrence later informed interrogators that he was king richard the third checks to a kill his father, and that what jackson did money would be more plenty. he was judged insane and committed to an asylum where he died three decades later. a loan not come or at least the was the official story. it was not too long before two witnesses filed affidavits climbing to seen lawrence at their home shortly before the attack. poindexter was a noisy opponent of the jackson administration
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and projects in newspapers accused the senator applauding the president's murder. jackson himself told by standards after the assault that the shooter had been hired by that damned rascal poindexter to assassinate me. some of jackson's critics countered by suggesting the president had staged the gasol to gain public support and is explained by both weapons failed. many jacksonian pointed the finger at john calhoun, south carolina senator and former vice president arguing that if he had not been directly involved in the assassination attempt he at the very least and cited it with a speech denouncing jackson has an american caesar. that's what they did before they could compare you to have a. when the republican writer john smith died 29 years later he saw an even more devilish plot of work. kaelin might not have been directly involved in the assault whether this man was induced to attempt to murder the president
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by listening to is speeches in the senate or whether he was secretly hired to assassinate him, god alone can determine. i believe that kill her and had been a part of a larger force that would have benefited if jackson had been put in the ground. more than willing to kill a powerful man to get its way. in 1841 president william henry harrison told cal when he was not sure he was willing to annex texas which southerners wanted to add to the union as a slave state. harrison probably died. officially the cause of death was pneumonia. kaj was sure our sncc was to blame. nine years later president zachary taylor opposed the agenda in cuba and the southwest and tilly was killed by the same poison. when president-elect james buchanan prepared to make some appointments he narrowly survived one of the most
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elaborate assassination plot sarah conceived. on february 203rd 18577 agents boys and containing launch your. southerners drank coffee. coffee drinkers use pulverize sugar. the tea drinking north diners would be like dow. intimidated by the attempted assassination buchanan became more than ever the tool of the slave power. there is little evidence for the explosive charges. you could make a case that his doctors did more to hurt and help, but no more than conjecture supports the idea that anyone deliberately killed and. corners to bunt the belief that zachary taylor had been poisoned on his body was exhumed, and buchanan was not even present in washington on fed your 23rd, 1857, the dysentery did break out at the hotel when buchanan
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stayed there a month earlier and again when he returned for his inauguration. the outbreaks usually attributed to a sewage backup the contaminated the ins food and water, several stories circulated by me poisoners with the suspects ranging from the chinese call to abandon homicidal abolitionists. conveniently the dead included a seven congressman. but the country was at war with the self. when a new edition appeared to years later under the title history of the plots and crimes of the great conspiracy to overthrow liberty in america, the nation was still reeling from the assassination of abraham lincoln. in that atmosphere a boat that feels like a 1970's conspiracy set in the antebellum error received the respectful novice and the new york times and was excerpted in the chicago tribune republican piper's priest it.
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in pennsylvania it was proclaimed the most powerful book of this century. he drew on rumors that had been floating through reagan republican circles for years. after lincoln was elected, well before he appears several supporters of the incoming president sent letters warning in to watch out for the plotters who had killed two of his predecessors. general harrison left but a short time after he was installed in office. in general taylor lived but a short time after he took his seat. be careful that the king's table would be entering key date. another letter informed lincoln that i have often heard it stated that the last to wade president's came to their sudden and lamentable and by federal poison administered an effort at the white house. after lincoln died at least two prominent ministers were to the
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supposed murders of harrison and taylor in to their sermons. henry ward beecher not only invoke their alleged assassinations but added the anti secessionist democrat writing that he had been killed because of his position in the party that made him one of the most efficient champions against the rebellion during the effort to impeach a lincoln's seven successor, andrew johnson, james mitchell ashley of ohio brought up the same accusation declaring that harrison, taylor, and buchanan had been poisoned for the expressed purpose of putting the vice-president in the presidential office. and in may 1868 an extraordinary article in the new york tribune managed to taliban i die accusing a democratic conspiracy of engineering the city's malaria outbreak. after counting the sec retailer fell under the mauries vapors of
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washington and died because he was prone to acting honestly and straightforward the tribune writers claim to washington in subsequent years was free of malaria. when the new republican party began to gain strength and it was possible that they might become the ruling power in congress the water of washington suddenly grew dangerous. the hotel's, dozens of error text from the democratic faker sec almost on to death the contagions continued into lincoln put the walls and springs of the capital under the care of loyal soldiers commanding the of bricks. after lincoln was deposed the pattern returned. representative before the vote to impeach johnson we had a return of the bathwater. two or three senators, republicans mind you, and frustrated with sudden illness. what does this mean? why does it happen that whenever the current set against the
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master and never read any other time we find the air and water and the whiskey a washington full of poison. a great name. the assassination perce were not the only americans worried about conspiracy used to describe the political influence. it often adopted a conspiratorial coloring. an alleged it agenda to extend slavery to a territory and free state possibly to destroy a civil liberties, control policies of the federal government, and complete the formation of a nationwide ruling aristocracy based on a slave economy. he himself believed that he could clearly see a powerful plot to make slavery universal and perpetual. he engaged freely in
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conspiratorial speculation. senator henry wilson put the idea bluntly. slavery organized conspiracies in the cabinet, conspiracies in congress, conspiracies in the state, conspiracies and the army , conspiracies in the navy. conspiracy's everywhere for the overthrow of the government. meanwhile, southerners had a leveraged conspiracy theories of their own blaming slave results on the machinations of rebellion stoking abolitionists and other outside agitators. there was a paranoid time in america. so that's of the book begins. up till you a little bit about what else is in a. basically this is a history of political paranoia in america. and using that word colloquially
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, not clinically. i think it virtually everyone is capable of being a conspiracy theorist, political paranoia. when i say everyone, including you, me, and the founding fathers. the first half the book sets out -- and i should add also the assumptions people have made when they hear about the book. it's an attack on conspiracy theories sori and espousing all my favorite theories. neither is true. i am frank about it if i think the conspiracy theory is nonsense. i also discussed conspiracies did genuinely did happen. the chapter in the 1970's. exposing various awful deeds. i'm really interested in the story, the stories that keep getting told again and again. sometimes they sound familiar.
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but the story seri, because even when the conspiracy theory says absolutely nothing true, it says something chair about the anxieties and experiences. the first half of the book lays out five primal archetypal conspiracy stories that are told over and over. on give you their names and you can acquire more about the. the question and answer. sometimes the conspiracies are supposed to be the big guys. american history through the lens with the toolkit of the first half of the book.
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while look along the way pat a self-conscious conspiracies of culture and when i call the ironic style which is people are not so much interested in either espousing or debunking it. but having fun with it, may be building one of their own. maybe looking at other people, the sort of laugh or metaphor or what have you. and there also make sure to look at the conspiracy theories of the establishment which cannot always called conspiracy theories. often when they're is a moral panic afoot all sorts of conspiratorial notions are taken very seriously in government and the mass media. i think the most extreme recent example would be the satanic ritual abuse care of the 1980's and 90's, but there are others as well. oftentimes something that sounds like it is a french dairy in one
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decade can suddenly have a version of it be promoted by american institutions, mass media and someone. so i mentioned the ironic style. at the end of the chapter i talk about a couple of writers who created such a visit conspiracies for find that they wound up going on -- going down a rabbit hole and believing in themselves. one of them came back from matra , a writer worth reading. the of a never came back. co-founder of sort of on mock religion called the story in as an. worshiping the greek out of chaos, a big influence on the illuminatus trilogy, the classic
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cold novel, the treatment of conspiracy theories. and also had the distinction of serving in the marines with lee harvey oswald. one of salt defected to the soviet union, thought this was interesting. many decades later, still probably the only book written about oslo before the kennedy assassination. sir jumping into the other section, fondly managed to get drawn into the jfk assassination circle. jim garrison, better known as kevin costner these days, the new orleans d.a. who was investigating the kennedy assassination in the 60's. he tried to get involved in his investigation. after it rebuffed the d.a. garrison started suggesting that he himself had been a part of the plot. garrison put out a press release
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claiming that it had been closely associated with the house wall, not just in the marines, but at a number of locations. the only give a deposition before the grand jury but the beginning of 1968 and the experience convinced him that keresan was not interested in justice. among other things, the team members seemed intent on pigeonholing him as a conservative. i explained several times that i am neither a traditionalist more nationalist. i oppose what passes today is political conservatism. i went on to say i am right winger in so far as i favor individualism, but my right is and is more anarchistic and authoritarian. it looked at me blankly. as garrison's allegations spread through the underground press he put up his side of the story in every venue available. the subscribers to version living with surely surprised and
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the material they're used to come of the typical article informed readers that planting can be gathered in nets and used as a nourishing food stuff next the statements by assassination there's criticizing garrison. he was soon spreading the story that formally had served as a double for the accused assassin chest. as he fended off the attack he reconsidered his assumption that oswald had acted alone in dallas. in 1973 he wrote a speech that would later be expanded into a book. not just convinced committee began to suspect that he really had been involved in the assassination without his knowledge. a hypnotizing on the held in reserve.
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he served a typing of the speculation. after the perceived various odd events as the czech government reaction to memorandums. some of the incidence of scare anyone. at one point on bandits and ski masks ran the party was attended stealing his identification. but he was also capable of accusing his car friend of working for the conspiracy. he wrote to greg hill, the other founder, i am literally surrounded by the intelligence community. i am literally surrounded by the intelligence community, but after the first three attempts to murder me, things seem to have cooled down and most appear to be on my side. at one point he became convinced a show workers was really broken anton wilson he wondered whether
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was caused by foreign intelligence agencies. organizers with the substance causing heart disease after maintaining control over them by means of a microwave device capable of instantly halting a pacemaker. by the 1990's he believed he was the product of the society breeding? and on manipulation experiment. a cut of his correspondence. it was hard to communicate with somebody when he thinks your diabolical mind control agent and you're convinced is a little paranoid. he continued to write. he spent the last few years of his life working menial jobs in atlanta and selling trinkets a darkly poetic state. would have
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realize this is not going to come true. [applause] >> did you tell us what it's like to write about this topic? >> it was a payoff. i started reading for the conspiracy theories and 19 skin actually reading those serious expos days of the cia, fbi when it cannot following the church committee report and so on. often there are on the same shelves with books that were not quite as reliable but often fun to read and around the same time also and discovered things like the illuminatus trilogy, bowl
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ironic style and this whole subculture. kaj all the way constantly and to the freak out with someone believe something that isn't true. that was the origins of the intro. i wrote this book in the last few years, but i draw on interviews i did as a journalist in the middle of the 90's covering stuff about the militia movement. unexpected intersection with black nationalists and so want often around conspiracy theories . i had the long time of writing about this to build on. >> if i read your mind correctly, you leave the impression that all of the american public is subject to a degree of paranoia and can be unconsciously developing conspiracy theories. is this partially what you're
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saying? >> i try not to use 100 words like all. there is always someone that can stand out and therefore not be having a conspiracy theory. i think that there's three things that kind of -- i hate to make any reactive explanation of where conspiracy theories come from. it's like there's a particular type of person who is susceptible. but there are three things that are always going on. we naturally seek patterns. when naturally create narratives, tell stories. that's how we make sense of the world. reorganize things. we constantly have things to be afraid of. with in creating stories to expire in the world. that makes you prone to conspiracy theories.
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when you draw on the fact that people really do conspire commence now like being afraid of royals were seen monsters. you can actually. and say, well, that what happened. the chapter about the 1970's investigation, part of it is calling on about what actually happened. the actual bonafide conspiratorial behavior, but also talking about how that kind of lower the bar for what people want to believe. once you have heard that the cia did this, you start to imagine maybe it did that. when it starts going to pop culture and we get all the movies around that time that in turn also influence the way people form the narrative. i hope to answer the question. >> for a conspiracy theory to spread it has to be picked up. on wondering what your thoughts are about the internet. is that capable of being
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corrected? the see the internet having an impact. >> not so much on the quantity has in the velocity with which to spread and also the way. really in the 1990's, this had been building. in the 90's there was the sort of golden age of the militiamen and the hippies and the black nationalists and a ufo, spines. you could have all sorts of odd combinations or what might seem at first to be hot combinations emerged. that is only intensified since then. >> what is the difference between -- what makes a difference between misinformation and a conspiracy
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theory? >> two things. >> a lot of misinformation. they don't all become blown out. on thinking about the death panels with obamacare. >> i actually stroh with whether or not there was right to describe the panel says the conspiracy theory. they do have that conspiratorial image of people in a room, condemning people to death. but -- your question is where you draw the line. i guess you draw the line at the park or someone invokes a conspiracy. one third -- there are two things that bother me about the way the phrase conspiracy theory gives turnaround. one is, as i said, if they're embraced by major social institutions for a lot of people they're not considered conspiracy theories. and the other is oftentimes just
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anything that challenges the dominant social institution in its called a conspiracy theory, even if there is no conspiracy involved. i think it was mother jones recently had a top nine conspiracy theories. i think maybe two of them actually involve conspiracies. the richest one night to mark these ideas by calling a conspiracy theories. most of them weren't. does that sort of dance around answering the question? >> i can agree it is seems like americans are especially subject i said, i can see that it's easy to imagine that americans are especially susceptible to conspiracy theories. is there any hard evidence that is true?
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and a quantitative information? >> i don't claim that it is true i said at the beginning, talking about this is me looking at american history through the prism of the things people of been afraid of. obviously for a line of the french are scared to death of everything. [laughter] that's clearly rusher, the middle east, many countries year about conspiracy theories. i assume that the dominance -- the style is going to differ from culture to culture. the on a sort of conspiracy stories from abroad that i cover are the ones that have influence in america. on not making a quantitative klein. >> the american tradition which is to kind of minimize our relations with latin america.
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latin america, as you perhaps know, is full of ideas of practically everything but the united states does is a cia conspiracy. but to me, i was attending a meeting at the johnson library and ran into -- who was it? he was in the cabinet, secretary of the cabinet of johnson. anyway -- >> will call him mr. ax. >> mr. axe said, you don't realize that castro was getting ready to kill kennedy. as a matter of fact, i have interviewed castro many times. if there was anything he had been looking forward to kennedy
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coming into the a ministration as a matter of generational understanding. it was impossible for eisenhower to understand where it came from he belonged to another generation. kennedy who was coming at the time, about to take office, had already been elected. he said and very helpful. and this was an official interview. i was taking notes for five hours. he said, well, i am looking forward to improved relationships. i was leaving. he called me back. but they will not let him. they, of course, was what eisenhower called the military something establishment.
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>> to you talk anything about economic conspiracies? people describing things to forces beyond their control? surely there must be a conspiracy. >> obviously in fact the chapter on the enemy above, the evolution of always seeing the enemy above as being in are trying to capture the state. during the see. gradually expanding to include corporations. things like the second bank of the united states which was a creature of the state. railroads which are subsidized by the state.
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so there are all sorts of economic related conspiracy thinking in here. >> thank you. this is a fascinating topic. overall -- and now want to stay with you on this hire plane, what to you do about conspiracy theories that is so dividing when we have no institution with the credibility to address and resolve these competing views of reality? ounces take september 11th. there is the government case, and then there is the architect and engineer case which says that the government case is not possible under the laws of physics. so that is pretty compelling. what do we do when faced with conspiracy theories.
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>> there are a few things in there and back. conspiracy theories can be divisive, but there are product of division. social the vision is inevitable. it times you can have more than others. wondering what's going on in the other faction. so of course they turn around and reinforce it, but i don't think there is some magic bullet that can end social divisiveness. i think that there is always going to be debates over the proper direction for the country . the need to have -- yet. anyone else?
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>> an example. >> of, yes. the enemy outside. it's kind of self-explanatory. the enemy outside -- the two classic models of the fear of native americans, native american conspiracy's command the fear of the roman catholic church. while the indians were sort of seen as this kind of unruly anarchistic alternative, the charge was seen as the aristocratic old world trying to reimpose its hierarchy, there were, of course, all sorts of imagined ententes between the catholics and indians. the enemy within. i'll come back to the one. the enemy above is the conspirators of the top.
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the enemy below is the fear of people at the bottom because people in power have conspiracy theories. i get into a discussion. and talk a lot about fears of slave revolts. historians often have a very hard time looking back and telling which slave results happened and which were just on a shrieking out because this of people talking. the enemy within is someone who is not easily identified by where they're from or their social status, other ethnic or racial background as a possible agent of the conspiracy. the enemy within is a neighbor, a co-worker, or someone in your family. and in the benevolent conspiracy is working behind the scenes to make life better. it would include people who have great visions, founding american
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secret in trying to create higher destiny, of the benevolent extra terrestrial, the angel fan of the 1990's. in a lot of ways ufo people sort of secular rise old ideas about higher powers. the angel folks grief actualize the body of storytelling. >> i wonder if you could take a few minutes and walk us through the kennedy assassination, the warren report, the conspiracy theories that were prevalent then, and maybe the conspiracy theories that are prevalent now. >> the kennedy assassination is one of those things. it keeps popping up.
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i don't have a chapter devoted to it. and i will say about it is in setting aside questions, obviously a once investigated. so i don't want to psychologize the entire thing. people can have questions based on their reading of the evidence . nonetheless, i notice that the conspiracy theories or even sometimes other forms of paranoia might catch on at different times in reaction parallels of the fears going on in society. so in 1963 on the one hand the president a shot in dallas. this big fear of the radical right. people worried about the minutemen. there is this instant assumption that oswald must be an agent of the radical right or a member of
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it. then it comes out that he defected to the soviet union, had activism, procure and activism. conspiracy theorists also appeared to be. and so that fed into cold war fears. the natural sort of anti-communist conspiracy theory . as the new left build, there is more and more fear that the government was in on an end in the 70's with the post watergate investigation, that breaks through. a wave of folks talking about blaming the cia and fbi. even as late as the first bush administration, h. w., there were people saying he was in the cia before we knew he was in the cna. i mentioned paul krasner. he continued in the conspiracy investigations, not labeling
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which were which. he ran a piece by someone who actually fabricated some stuff trying to implicate busch sr. in the kennedy assassination. then ran a notice saying that this guy lied to me. in aston, since your famous for having a magazine, do you just move this from one category to the other? so of course can't cover everything. the mafia -- mafia theories and someone. i do think it is one way of looking at the kennedy assassination. >> one question about the intersection of conspiracy theories and investigative journalism.
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so much more within the last ten years about the freedom of information act. it seems like there's a much greater awareness of the eddy that after a certain amount of time such and such documents will be released in some form or another. we have seen a few know where the incidents were some pretty serious inflammation can to pass . the documents were released. have you seen any trends that our emerging in terms of, maybe these are not things that a become big enough to become full-blown conspiracies but within that certain community of people who are actually doing investigations. >> investigative journalists, often they are exposing or seeking to expose the legitimate conspiracies that exist. often they will say conspiracy
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theory. some of those may be a bit on the muddy side. they can still try to identify what they're doing. just as there are conspiracy theories that are true and some that aren't, there are good investigative journalists and bad. you mentioned the reaffirmation. actually had one i put in on someone a write about. as i was checking the proof. it has become actually more difficult in the last decade. ..
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i forgot if i anted your question. hopefully i did. >> you mentioned at the beginning of the talk how america has always been a territorial nation of paranoid people. i was sort of put in mind of the great reason tv video. i think was 2010 talking about -- and politics politics are we criticizing each other too harshly. and the video pointed out back in 1800 people were calling each other -- [inaudible] i'm wondering if the conspiracy theory you saw toward the beginning of american history were more outrageous orless --
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less credible or anything like that. >> i won't fry to quantify it. the jefferson began and the federalists had such complicated theories about -- about each other. there is one john adam's administration he planned to unit his family with the royal house of great britain the bright room to be king of america. there certainly was no shortage of that sort of -- yeah. and i would like to think the rise of education and et. cetera, et. cetera would dampened that a little bit. perhaps not. i don't know. it's not like people were writing pamphlets were real educate at that point. [inaudible] >> recently there's been release
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of government archives to substantiate conspiracy theories, people basically knew to be true over the years about the cia -- [inaudible conversations] also sort of saying area 51 does exist. do you -- not that i'm trying to start a new conspiracy theory. but do you see any reason why these things are happening? do you think there's in intent to sort of get attention away from prisonment? >> i don't know why the cia chose this moment to reveal it. and they may women have said why they did. i read the headline. i didn't read all of the stories. so i don't know what the stories -- , i mean, i will say that it's
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-- the british government at regular interval release a document. there's sometimes pretty amazing. there's one in the book. of course it's not the book because it's british. there was a ufo cover-up it was not they were covering up the existence of ufo like they are covering up the failure to -- i don't know. i shouldn't be saying this extemporaneously. it was sort of a great moment bureaucratic covering that can spiral to all sorts of -- anyone? so the last sentence has asked and apparently -- c-span, yeah. i should have insisted you call me the honorable speaker while i was here. [laughter]
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all right. i guess that's it. thank you. [applause] we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback here are the best selling hard cover book. this reflects sales as of august 29th.
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for nor information go to when you write a book a lot can go wrong. that's how i approach the world. i'm somewhat e rat knick writing and reporting. a lot can go wrong in 110,000 records. i've been pretty shocked by -- i guess if there's been criticism from mostly from how dare he? how dare the insider giveaway the secret handshake? how dare he talk about in otherredred inners in keeping with the codes in washington. and people keep asking why are people uncomfortable here. i welcome the discomfortable. u i think it's journalism. it's what we should do. booktv's book club returns this month with "this town." read the book and engage on
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facebook page and twitter. romance in the mob, those that are mafia afish nad dough. to a certain degree it's a romantic. there's a level of brutality that is terrible. you can never -- as a writer, by the way, people say like i'm being interviewed. don't you get captured by this? don't you get lost in who the guys are? the term moral capture was what a federal prosecutor later used to describe what he thought happened to him. hanging around with the guys. he would wear a pinky ring, wear gold jewelry. every other word was an f-word. i had to get with them and convince them to trust me. in fact after certain point, the
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stockholm syndrome happens. you begin to potentially cross the line. as fascinated i am i have to audit myself don't fall in love with these guys. okay. think of the joe scene in ""goodfellas"." he stabs a guy to death with a fountain pen. not everybody in the mob is like this. this is -- remember i told you the second son to scarpa. he ended up -- this is expar with fbi surveillance video outside a social club. he was -- this is in the mid '80s he paid the dues with the g. the government. he became most probably cause in the mafia commission cases came from scarpa senior. they can argue that -- he call it is the championship season in had his book the mafia, the back of the mafia was
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broken by -- on the left goes to prison the head of the colombo. and anthony. you have to have the middle name like if you're in the mob. you know, anthony "the ant." and they all go to jail. that's what makes rudy giuliani. it's one of the las vegas story. from my book, that is like, wow, anthony "gas pipe" was the underboss. took over the other went away. he went after john gotti. he put a bomb in the guy named frank i can. got it, i wasn't there. franky died. tblown bits and so now there's a contract out on anthony and three young guys shot at him one
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day. he was icing -- eating and ice cream cone. he wanted to know right away. this is a famous interview he did for "60 minutes" and said he's talking about the most famous murder jimmy, one of the shooters and he got the mafia cops who were living in las vegas, as you know, in 2005 were arrested in las vegas. i actually wrote a pilot for a series called "middle series." i start with "crime story." it was to watch michael man shoot a script. i tell people i stopped at the top and worked my way down. they shot at bob's las vegas world. and anyway the mafia cop arguably the biggest organized
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crime law enforcement story the last ten years kept -- they were later convicted of supplying information that he would use to kill people. guess what he told me? he told me that jimmy, the most famous murder. the cops delivered him but the intelligence that he got to learn that he was the shooter he got from gregory scarpa, s who he believe got from -- this is another part of rewriting the modern history. he said to ed bradley. i shot him a couple of times. how many? twelve or thirteen. anyway. anthony gave me an interview from prison that was an eye opener. this, again, the comparison to whitey bulger. this is john connelly, his control agent, doing life two convictions completely different story. now i told the story in my book "cover up" about him. and i introduce a whole story. scarpa, junior, senior, the
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whole thing is in the second book "cover up." the brooklyn da calls in me september of '05. the book came out in you're, they called me in a year later. the congressman from massachusetts who was a prosecutor who knew the bulger case also contacted them as did angela clement the forensic investigators who got a lot of files. the con influence of the three of us. resulted in on the 30th of march 2006, came up from sarasota, florida. he retired with a full pension and indicted on four count of murder. on the right, the picture is a night before surrounding. but the next day after he was a million dollar bail was set for him. okay. 50 x agents supported him.
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they surrounded him as he walked down adams street. there was a scene unlike ever scene. they were pushing people away. they were like soccer hooligan at the uk soccer match. straight arming guys protecting him while the reporters are trying to ask questions. they call it body checking. chuck grassley from iowa mentioned it even if fbi agents should be so quick to protect somebody who presumed innocent, of course. the take -- tack tickets were pretty wild. headlines like this every in the new york tablet. "agent of death." they basically convicted him. the star witness, one of the star witnesses was linda, the woman i told you. it was alleged by these reporters, now on the left you'll see jerry, probably one
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of the most famous and the greatest contemporary reporter on organized crime. he hasn't a column called "gangland" for years. he played himself in the soprano s. tom robins the guy in the middle worked him at the daily news. they interviewed him in 1997 far book they were doing. they claim it was kind of suspicious they claim they happened to look for the tapes just before trial. they had known for a year and a half she was going to be a star witness. whatever. on the right is mike. a lot of these names -- i'm -- [inaudible] a half italian. at least half of my book is accurate. all right. anyway. no but mike vecchinoe was on trial. jerry, when -- he was at the height of the colombo war. it was waged from '91 to '3eu9d.
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fourteen people killed including two bystanders. literally that scarpa killed himself. he was no doubt was leaking information to him that lead to some of the death which is why the brooklyn da indicted him. capcci and robins wrote about it. they knew that linda was going a star witness. linda allegedly lies and they abruptly end the trial. talk about a reverse of fortunate. "moll tape freeze g.-man." and you know what he did that night? they start -- celebrated at sparks steak house. heavens given the note of irony. listen to what the judge writes back. this is his decision dismissing the case. here's what he said. what sun denial in the face of the men answer posed by organized crime the fbi was willing to make their own deal with a devil


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