This is a collection of communications I’ve had -- my queries and others’ responses --, with washingtonpost.com. This compilation poses difficulties to readers who have the advantage of hindsight that our discussions were lacking. It is almost a mystery in reverse: we are wondering what will happen when you readers often already know.
Newsmakers and news observers are questioned on current events. Historians may note that some discussions are interestingly prophetic. I fear, that some of my questions will appear, in retrospect, naïve. I hope that exploring perspectives frozen onto a static world can serve to present understandings of what was thought-and what was questioned-at that time. In particular, it should be noted that the discussion on current events in Iraq cover the time prior to the American invasion through the war (or skirmish, as some prefer to categorize it) through the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein and to the end of the Bush Administration.
It will be noted that I was one of the many voices that had many questions about war with Iraq. President Nixon commented during the Viet Nam War that the Washington Post editorial pages had equivalent powers to military divisions. The Washington Post editorial page, in many people’s opinion including mine, belatedly did question the merits of military force in Iraq. When they reached this opinion, they cited the public opinion stated in letters to their page and the questions in washingtonpost.com, which claims four million readers worldwide, as one of the forces that guided them to examine and then question American policies towards Iraq. It was especially satisfying when it was stated that many staff within the Bush White House regularly read these discussions. To that end, I am glad to have been one voice in the movement that sought peace.
Many subjects are questioned. It is believed these questions included such things as the first printed observation that the Old Man in the Mountain has a new man formed in the mountain to my hope for cooperative government in the lands disputed by Israel and Palestine. Tucker Carlson’s answer to one of my questions became the washingtonpost.com “Quote of the Day” and became one of the early signs that diehard Republicans were abandoning support for then Majority Leader Trent Lott. An aide to President Bush’s praise for FEMA seems premature when they later faced difficulties helping people harmed by Hurricane Katrina. Often, these questions were my attempts to force us to examine our world from various perspectives. Generally, questions were asked because they were things I truly wished to learn. Sometimes, questions were provided to challenge and produce insights from those responding. If it is true there is no such thing as a dumb question, I am glad to discover that most answers I received were vastly informative, even when some are politically evasive.
This material is the copyright of washingtonpost.com. This compilation has no commercial purpose, is copied only as much as needed for this site, and is provided for public review and discussion.
Leon Czikowsky
Saturday, May 9, 2009
ABORTION
ALLISON HERWITT, Government Relations Director, NARAL, June 5, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Please help me understand the issue. Previously, we were told that partial birth abortion was something that didn’t technically exist and that in the rare cases where it is performed to save the life of a woman, the ban would not affect such cases. Now, there are reports that the previous reports were wrong and that the procedure does exist for purposes of abortions. Does or does not partial birth abortion exist for the use of abortions? Also, does this bill that Congress is working on provide for an exception in the life of a woman?
HERWITT: It’s not surprising that you have questions about this bill. It’s designed to mislead the public. There is no such thing as “partial-birth” abortion. It’s a political term made up by the anti-choice movement, and has no medical meaning.
Furthermore, sponsors talk about one procedure in a graphic and misleading manner. They are betting on the fact that most observers won’t read the language of their proposal carefully-because there, it’s clear they do not outlaw only one procedure. The bill’s definition is broad and vaguely worded, designed to sweep in other safe and common procedures. Also, the bill isn’t limited to the post-viability stage, so it outlaws constitutionally protected abortions that happen much earlier than they claim. The bill does include a very narrow exception for a woman’s life, but none at all for her health-and aside from this being dangerous for women, it’s also unconstitutional.
Rather than criminalizing safe medical care, we believe the government should focus on proactive policies that protect women’s health and reduce the need for abortion. Better contraception, sex education, and pre-natal care would be a good start.
STEVE CHABOT, Member of Congress, June 5, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Please help me understand the issue. If there is no such medical term as partial birth abortion, as your opposition claims, why bother banning it, or vice versa, what is the harm in banning it? Your opposition claims you are banning broader procedures than what you describe as partial birth abortion. What exact procedures are you proposing to ban, and is the language in your bill specific enough that it limits the ban to what you are describing as partial birth abortion?
CHABOT: There clearly is a procedure that occurs in the country about 5,000 times a year that by common acceptance is now called partial birth abortion. There are other terms which can be used but that is the accepted term now through common usage. It is a procedure in which a baby, most commonly in the fifth month of pregnancy, some of the babies being viable, some not, is delivered through the birth channel all but the head, which remains inside the mother, than a sharp instrument, generally a pair of scissors, is used to puncture the back of a child’s skull and then a tube is inserted and the brains are sucked out. This causes the skull to collapse and the now dead baby is pulled completely out of the mother. Had the baby been killed in this manor completely outside the mother it would of course be considered murder. The only difference is a matter of inches. There now exists a consensus in this country that this procedure is barbaric, gruesome, inhumane, and should not be permitted in a society that likes to call itself civilized. The vote to ban this procedure in the House yesterday was 282 in favor of banning to 139 against the ban. 62 Democrats agreed with almost all the Republicans to ban the procedure.
JANICE SHAW CROUSE, Beverly LaHaye Institute Executive Director, April 23, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: I fear that, while abortion is terrible and should be prevented, when a woman makes a decision to have an abortion, she has made a very strong and personal decision. Why would it be better for such a woman to have to get a risky, illegal abortion as opposed to getting a safer legal abortion.
CROUSE: She shouldn’t do either. She should talk to a crisis pregnancy center where she would learn that there are other options that are better for her and certainly better for her child.
CZIKOWSKY: Please help me understand the issue. Previously, we were told that partial birth abortion was something that didn’t technically exist and that in the rare cases where it is performed to save the life of a woman, the ban would not affect such cases. Now, there are reports that the previous reports were wrong and that the procedure does exist for purposes of abortions. Does or does not partial birth abortion exist for the use of abortions? Also, does this bill that Congress is working on provide for an exception in the life of a woman?
HERWITT: It’s not surprising that you have questions about this bill. It’s designed to mislead the public. There is no such thing as “partial-birth” abortion. It’s a political term made up by the anti-choice movement, and has no medical meaning.
Furthermore, sponsors talk about one procedure in a graphic and misleading manner. They are betting on the fact that most observers won’t read the language of their proposal carefully-because there, it’s clear they do not outlaw only one procedure. The bill’s definition is broad and vaguely worded, designed to sweep in other safe and common procedures. Also, the bill isn’t limited to the post-viability stage, so it outlaws constitutionally protected abortions that happen much earlier than they claim. The bill does include a very narrow exception for a woman’s life, but none at all for her health-and aside from this being dangerous for women, it’s also unconstitutional.
Rather than criminalizing safe medical care, we believe the government should focus on proactive policies that protect women’s health and reduce the need for abortion. Better contraception, sex education, and pre-natal care would be a good start.
STEVE CHABOT, Member of Congress, June 5, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Please help me understand the issue. If there is no such medical term as partial birth abortion, as your opposition claims, why bother banning it, or vice versa, what is the harm in banning it? Your opposition claims you are banning broader procedures than what you describe as partial birth abortion. What exact procedures are you proposing to ban, and is the language in your bill specific enough that it limits the ban to what you are describing as partial birth abortion?
CHABOT: There clearly is a procedure that occurs in the country about 5,000 times a year that by common acceptance is now called partial birth abortion. There are other terms which can be used but that is the accepted term now through common usage. It is a procedure in which a baby, most commonly in the fifth month of pregnancy, some of the babies being viable, some not, is delivered through the birth channel all but the head, which remains inside the mother, than a sharp instrument, generally a pair of scissors, is used to puncture the back of a child’s skull and then a tube is inserted and the brains are sucked out. This causes the skull to collapse and the now dead baby is pulled completely out of the mother. Had the baby been killed in this manor completely outside the mother it would of course be considered murder. The only difference is a matter of inches. There now exists a consensus in this country that this procedure is barbaric, gruesome, inhumane, and should not be permitted in a society that likes to call itself civilized. The vote to ban this procedure in the House yesterday was 282 in favor of banning to 139 against the ban. 62 Democrats agreed with almost all the Republicans to ban the procedure.
JANICE SHAW CROUSE, Beverly LaHaye Institute Executive Director, April 23, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: I fear that, while abortion is terrible and should be prevented, when a woman makes a decision to have an abortion, she has made a very strong and personal decision. Why would it be better for such a woman to have to get a risky, illegal abortion as opposed to getting a safer legal abortion.
CROUSE: She shouldn’t do either. She should talk to a crisis pregnancy center where she would learn that there are other options that are better for her and certainly better for her child.
ADOPTION
SHANE SALTER, Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children of Washington, D.C. Chief Executive Officer, May 18, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: We are having a debate in the Pennsylvania legislature. Some of us wish to provide incentives for foster families to adopt their foster children. Others believe foster parents are intended to be temporary and that no special efforts should be created that may create a bond between foster children and foster parents when that bond is likely to be temporary. Do you have any thoughts on this debate?
SALTER: Yes we should be providing incentives for foster parents to adopt children. Why move a child if we don’t have to. However, foster care is supposed to be temporary. If we fix the system and engage the public as part of the solution, we can recruit the families necessary to move children out of foster care within shorter timeframes. This however all begins with a shift in attitude to commit resources to prevent children from coming into foster care in the first place. Many would not be there if the families they came from were supported and encouraged to strengthen their skills, resolve, and overall capacity to successfully parent.
PEGGY ORENSTEIN, author, March 13, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Did you consider foreign adoption? I know someone who was engaging in a foreign adoption when the government changed which led to a heartbreaking several months’ addition to being allowed to leave the country with her child. I can easily see how stories such as there can become involved and interesting to pass along to others.
ORENSTEIN: Yeah, we did. We did pursue foreign adoption. We are offered a baby through contacts in Japan (my husband is Japanese American and we’ve done a lot of work with Hiroshima survivors, which is also a part of this book (“Waiting for Daisy”)). We were pushing forward as hard as we could on it, but there was one woman, the head of adoption in what was then called INS in San Francisco, who was blocking Japanese adoption. Only INS in the country where this was the case, but she had total control and power and we were screwed. Other people we knew had babies in Japan that were stuck there indefinitely (though after 6-8 months they eventually got them out, but we didn’t know that would happen at the time). So we went to Japan, spent time with the little boy, and in the end had to make a very painful decision, and it was truly heart-breaking.
CZIKOWSKY: We are having a debate in the Pennsylvania legislature. Some of us wish to provide incentives for foster families to adopt their foster children. Others believe foster parents are intended to be temporary and that no special efforts should be created that may create a bond between foster children and foster parents when that bond is likely to be temporary. Do you have any thoughts on this debate?
SALTER: Yes we should be providing incentives for foster parents to adopt children. Why move a child if we don’t have to. However, foster care is supposed to be temporary. If we fix the system and engage the public as part of the solution, we can recruit the families necessary to move children out of foster care within shorter timeframes. This however all begins with a shift in attitude to commit resources to prevent children from coming into foster care in the first place. Many would not be there if the families they came from were supported and encouraged to strengthen their skills, resolve, and overall capacity to successfully parent.
PEGGY ORENSTEIN, author, March 13, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Did you consider foreign adoption? I know someone who was engaging in a foreign adoption when the government changed which led to a heartbreaking several months’ addition to being allowed to leave the country with her child. I can easily see how stories such as there can become involved and interesting to pass along to others.
ORENSTEIN: Yeah, we did. We did pursue foreign adoption. We are offered a baby through contacts in Japan (my husband is Japanese American and we’ve done a lot of work with Hiroshima survivors, which is also a part of this book (“Waiting for Daisy”)). We were pushing forward as hard as we could on it, but there was one woman, the head of adoption in what was then called INS in San Francisco, who was blocking Japanese adoption. Only INS in the country where this was the case, but she had total control and power and we were screwed. Other people we knew had babies in Japan that were stuck there indefinitely (though after 6-8 months they eventually got them out, but we didn’t know that would happen at the time). So we went to Japan, spent time with the little boy, and in the end had to make a very painful decision, and it was truly heart-breaking.
AERONAUTICS
DR. EILENE THEILIG, Galileo Project Manager, January 9, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Would you please describe more of what the Galileo project entails? Has it been conducting scientific experiments beyond sending back photographs? What important discoveries have been made?
THEILIG: Galileo has had a long history of scientific discovery since its launch in 1989. During the cruise to Jupiter, the spacecraft flew past Venus, Earth, and two asteroids (Gaspra and Ida) before arriving at Jupiter to being its primary mission of studying the atmosphere, magnetosphere, and satellites of the jovian system. There were two parts to the primary mission, an orbiter and a probe which entered Jupiter’s atmosphere. The orbiter carries 11 science instruments in addition to the camera.
ANTHONY R. CURTIS, Editor, Space Today Online, February 4, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: The tiles that protect the space shuttle from heat need to be delicately put into place. To test they are firmly on, there is a suction test to see they remain in place. Does this test itself cause the tiles to then become loose?
CURTIS: I have not seen such evidence. However, with more than 100 flights completed by the fleet, it would seem that such an occurrence would have been noted before now.
BEN BOVA, writer, June 18, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: You were on the NASA study commission on space tourism. What topics did you examine, and what appears to be a possible timeline for when space tourism may become a reality?
BOVA: Basically, we tried to determine if there was a viable market for space tourism. The answer was classic chicken vs. egg: If you can bring down the price of going into orbit, yes, a multi-billion tourist industry could develop. But unless (and until) there is such a large market IN EXISTENCE, neither the government nor commercial industry will spend the investment necessary to make boosters that operate inexpensively enough to entice tourists. However, Burt Rutan is testing a vehicle he callsSpaceShipOne, which will be able to carry three persons about 100 kilmometers uo, into suborbital space for far less than any other rocket booster.
HENRY McDOUGAL, University of Tennessee in Chattanooga Engineering Professor, August 26, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, states that space flights are worth the risk of loss of life. Would you agree or disagree with that assessment?
McDOUGAL: No, I don’t agree at this point in time. I believe the scientific returns of human space flight are good science, but not great science. Given the resources required, one has to question whether the scientific return at this point in time is worth the risk of human life. I believe most of the science can be done using robotic devices and would not involve human risk.
BUZZ ALDRIN, astronaut, January 2, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Is there a need for manned space expeditions, or can robots handle most of the needs of such flights?
ALDRIN: There will always be a need for an appropriate mix between scientific robotic missions as precursors and augmenters for manned flight. I expect in the future a balance will be established and funded as world and domestic conditions permit.
BRUCE BETTS, Planetary Society Project Director, January 2, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What is the Planetary Society and what its objectives? Who is involved with it, and how do people become involved with the Planetary Society?
BETTS: The Planetary Society is the largest space interest group in the world with 100,000 members in 130 countries. Our objectives are in inspire and engage the public in planetary exploration and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It was started in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman. One of our projects, Red Rover Goes to Mars, is an official part of the Mars Exploration Rover mission.
CZIKOWSKY: What are the scientific projects that scientists are attempting to discover with the next few Mars landings?
BETTS: We have only successfully landed on Mars in three locations. Mars has about the same land area as the land portions (excluding the oceans) of Earth. Landers give us ground truth that enables better interpretation of our orbital data. In the case of Spirit and probably the next U.S. lander, many of the scientific questions revolve around liquid water and life: were there liquid water environments in Mars past that may have been suitable for the development of life? Where is the water now on Mars? Etc.
WALTER CUNNINGHAM, former NASA astronaut, August 9, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: How exhilarating is it to be in outer space? How nerve wrecking is it knowing that there are so many things that can go wrong? In sum, is it an emotional roller coaster, or does your training help keep things even through the journey?
CUNNINGHAM: It is exhilarating, but in my day, little time to enjoy the experience until late in the mission. Too busy. I get the impression that there is more time to smell the roses on today’s missions.
I did not worry about things going wrong on Apollo 7. No one knew the spacecraft like I did. We thought we could handle almost anything. You only worry about something not working when that particular thing is critical to your survival. Those seconds (or minutes) only amounted to 5 or 6 minutes on Apollo 7.
ANDREW SMITH, author, September 1, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There was a report that Mr. Aldrin was scheduled to walk on the moon first and that the order was reversed. Is there any truth to this?
SMITH: Actually, the BBC’s Space Correspondent at that time, Reg Turnill, confirms tha this was true. Aldrin was originally slated to leave the ship first, in accordance with Naval tradition and space program precedent up to that point.
CZIKOWSKY: As astronaut spoke here recently, and he answered someone’s questions about UFOs by stating he never saw a UFO. Yet, the person asking the question insisted that other astronauts had reported seeing UFOs in space. Have there been any reports of astronauts seeing unidentified phenomenon while in space?
SMITH: If I remember correctly, there was talk of one of the Mercury astronauts, Gordon Cooper, having seen a UFO. I think he later denied or retracted this. The moonwalker Edger Mitchell did tell me that he believed there had been a cover-up of UFOs at a very high government level-even though he’s never seen one himself.
JOHN GLENN, former NASA astronaut, May 5, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: There were published reports that several astronauts reported seeing unidentified report that several astronauts seeing unidentified objects while in space (not to say they these are alien craft, but that there may possibly be things in space that have not yet been identified.) Do you have a response?
GLENN: I’m an agnostic when it comes to UFOs. I just don’t know. I have never seen anything myself in my flying in airplanes or space that I thought could not be explained, but I certainly do not try to argue with other people about what they’ve seen. Gordon Cooper, who passed away a couple of years, was very convinced that he had some contact with UFOs and I didn’t try to argue with him. There are literally millions of places in the universe where the conditions are such that some kind of life could have developed. Whether it will be intelligent life as we know it, so some growth like moss or other forms of growth, is unknown. I would be very surprised if there was not someplace where there is life of some kind, not necessarily life as we know it here on Earth.
MICHAEL J. BRAUKUS, NASA Exploration Office Spokesperson, June 22,2006
CZIKOWSKY: When do you see a person landing on Mars?
BRAUKUS: First humans have to return to the moon. It’s on the moon that we will develop the knowledge and the technology for long-term space explorations. Once we are comfortable that we can handle the challenges of an extended mission of more than a year, we will set off for Mars. That probably will be several years after we return to the moon, which is no later than 2020.
MARC KAUFMAN, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 10, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: How does one stay healthy in space? How easy of difficult is it to exercise properly and to eat food that is kept fresh and edible?
KAUFMAN: The exercise part seems to be manageable, and fairly frequent deliveries of fresh food to the space station has kept astronauts / cosmonauts pretty healthy. But when it comes to lowered immunity and bone loss, I think challenges clearly remain.
IVAN OETRICH, Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Programs Vice President, February 20, 2008
C ZIKOWSKY: What are the approximate odds that this satellite (falling to Earth) will be shot down, and how embarrassing would it be if we shoot and miss?
OETRICH: The odds that the satellite will be intercepted are high. Although it is traveling fast, the satellite is in a fairly predictable orbit even at the last stage. So the interceptor will know when it is coming. BUT, you can’t “shoot down” a satellite. It is not like a hunter with a gun shooting down a duck. BANG! It falls to the ground. The satellite is in orbit and following a trajectory and when the 40 pound interceptor hits the 5,000 pound satellite, it will break the satellite into pieces but those pieces will travel, on average, in pretty much the same orbit. Some will come down sooner than the satellite would have and some later. The “shooting down” image is in all the news reports but is nothing like shooting down an airplane.
CZIKOWSKY: Would you please describe more of what the Galileo project entails? Has it been conducting scientific experiments beyond sending back photographs? What important discoveries have been made?
THEILIG: Galileo has had a long history of scientific discovery since its launch in 1989. During the cruise to Jupiter, the spacecraft flew past Venus, Earth, and two asteroids (Gaspra and Ida) before arriving at Jupiter to being its primary mission of studying the atmosphere, magnetosphere, and satellites of the jovian system. There were two parts to the primary mission, an orbiter and a probe which entered Jupiter’s atmosphere. The orbiter carries 11 science instruments in addition to the camera.
ANTHONY R. CURTIS, Editor, Space Today Online, February 4, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: The tiles that protect the space shuttle from heat need to be delicately put into place. To test they are firmly on, there is a suction test to see they remain in place. Does this test itself cause the tiles to then become loose?
CURTIS: I have not seen such evidence. However, with more than 100 flights completed by the fleet, it would seem that such an occurrence would have been noted before now.
BEN BOVA, writer, June 18, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: You were on the NASA study commission on space tourism. What topics did you examine, and what appears to be a possible timeline for when space tourism may become a reality?
BOVA: Basically, we tried to determine if there was a viable market for space tourism. The answer was classic chicken vs. egg: If you can bring down the price of going into orbit, yes, a multi-billion tourist industry could develop. But unless (and until) there is such a large market IN EXISTENCE, neither the government nor commercial industry will spend the investment necessary to make boosters that operate inexpensively enough to entice tourists. However, Burt Rutan is testing a vehicle he callsSpaceShipOne, which will be able to carry three persons about 100 kilmometers uo, into suborbital space for far less than any other rocket booster.
HENRY McDOUGAL, University of Tennessee in Chattanooga Engineering Professor, August 26, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, states that space flights are worth the risk of loss of life. Would you agree or disagree with that assessment?
McDOUGAL: No, I don’t agree at this point in time. I believe the scientific returns of human space flight are good science, but not great science. Given the resources required, one has to question whether the scientific return at this point in time is worth the risk of human life. I believe most of the science can be done using robotic devices and would not involve human risk.
BUZZ ALDRIN, astronaut, January 2, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Is there a need for manned space expeditions, or can robots handle most of the needs of such flights?
ALDRIN: There will always be a need for an appropriate mix between scientific robotic missions as precursors and augmenters for manned flight. I expect in the future a balance will be established and funded as world and domestic conditions permit.
BRUCE BETTS, Planetary Society Project Director, January 2, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What is the Planetary Society and what its objectives? Who is involved with it, and how do people become involved with the Planetary Society?
BETTS: The Planetary Society is the largest space interest group in the world with 100,000 members in 130 countries. Our objectives are in inspire and engage the public in planetary exploration and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It was started in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman. One of our projects, Red Rover Goes to Mars, is an official part of the Mars Exploration Rover mission.
CZIKOWSKY: What are the scientific projects that scientists are attempting to discover with the next few Mars landings?
BETTS: We have only successfully landed on Mars in three locations. Mars has about the same land area as the land portions (excluding the oceans) of Earth. Landers give us ground truth that enables better interpretation of our orbital data. In the case of Spirit and probably the next U.S. lander, many of the scientific questions revolve around liquid water and life: were there liquid water environments in Mars past that may have been suitable for the development of life? Where is the water now on Mars? Etc.
WALTER CUNNINGHAM, former NASA astronaut, August 9, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: How exhilarating is it to be in outer space? How nerve wrecking is it knowing that there are so many things that can go wrong? In sum, is it an emotional roller coaster, or does your training help keep things even through the journey?
CUNNINGHAM: It is exhilarating, but in my day, little time to enjoy the experience until late in the mission. Too busy. I get the impression that there is more time to smell the roses on today’s missions.
I did not worry about things going wrong on Apollo 7. No one knew the spacecraft like I did. We thought we could handle almost anything. You only worry about something not working when that particular thing is critical to your survival. Those seconds (or minutes) only amounted to 5 or 6 minutes on Apollo 7.
ANDREW SMITH, author, September 1, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There was a report that Mr. Aldrin was scheduled to walk on the moon first and that the order was reversed. Is there any truth to this?
SMITH: Actually, the BBC’s Space Correspondent at that time, Reg Turnill, confirms tha this was true. Aldrin was originally slated to leave the ship first, in accordance with Naval tradition and space program precedent up to that point.
CZIKOWSKY: As astronaut spoke here recently, and he answered someone’s questions about UFOs by stating he never saw a UFO. Yet, the person asking the question insisted that other astronauts had reported seeing UFOs in space. Have there been any reports of astronauts seeing unidentified phenomenon while in space?
SMITH: If I remember correctly, there was talk of one of the Mercury astronauts, Gordon Cooper, having seen a UFO. I think he later denied or retracted this. The moonwalker Edger Mitchell did tell me that he believed there had been a cover-up of UFOs at a very high government level-even though he’s never seen one himself.
JOHN GLENN, former NASA astronaut, May 5, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: There were published reports that several astronauts reported seeing unidentified report that several astronauts seeing unidentified objects while in space (not to say they these are alien craft, but that there may possibly be things in space that have not yet been identified.) Do you have a response?
GLENN: I’m an agnostic when it comes to UFOs. I just don’t know. I have never seen anything myself in my flying in airplanes or space that I thought could not be explained, but I certainly do not try to argue with other people about what they’ve seen. Gordon Cooper, who passed away a couple of years, was very convinced that he had some contact with UFOs and I didn’t try to argue with him. There are literally millions of places in the universe where the conditions are such that some kind of life could have developed. Whether it will be intelligent life as we know it, so some growth like moss or other forms of growth, is unknown. I would be very surprised if there was not someplace where there is life of some kind, not necessarily life as we know it here on Earth.
MICHAEL J. BRAUKUS, NASA Exploration Office Spokesperson, June 22,2006
CZIKOWSKY: When do you see a person landing on Mars?
BRAUKUS: First humans have to return to the moon. It’s on the moon that we will develop the knowledge and the technology for long-term space explorations. Once we are comfortable that we can handle the challenges of an extended mission of more than a year, we will set off for Mars. That probably will be several years after we return to the moon, which is no later than 2020.
MARC KAUFMAN, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 10, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: How does one stay healthy in space? How easy of difficult is it to exercise properly and to eat food that is kept fresh and edible?
KAUFMAN: The exercise part seems to be manageable, and fairly frequent deliveries of fresh food to the space station has kept astronauts / cosmonauts pretty healthy. But when it comes to lowered immunity and bone loss, I think challenges clearly remain.
IVAN OETRICH, Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Programs Vice President, February 20, 2008
C ZIKOWSKY: What are the approximate odds that this satellite (falling to Earth) will be shot down, and how embarrassing would it be if we shoot and miss?
OETRICH: The odds that the satellite will be intercepted are high. Although it is traveling fast, the satellite is in a fairly predictable orbit even at the last stage. So the interceptor will know when it is coming. BUT, you can’t “shoot down” a satellite. It is not like a hunter with a gun shooting down a duck. BANG! It falls to the ground. The satellite is in orbit and following a trajectory and when the 40 pound interceptor hits the 5,000 pound satellite, it will break the satellite into pieces but those pieces will travel, on average, in pretty much the same orbit. Some will come down sooner than the satellite would have and some later. The “shooting down” image is in all the news reports but is nothing like shooting down an airplane.
AFGHANISTAN
MASUDA SULTAN, Young Afghan-World Alliance President, February 8, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What led you to form your Afghan-World Alliance? What are the messages you want to get out to the public?
SULTAN: We formed Young Afghan World Alliance in August after my trip to Kandahar. What I saw there was unbelievable---there was so much poverty and sadness. Not only that, people were living in constant fear of the Taliban. We decided we MUST take action. Everyone who had been to Afghanistan seems to feel the same way.
What we are seeking to do is raise awareness about the plight of the Afghan people, foster understanding between Afghans and Americans, and what we would love to do is build a school in Kandahar (former stronghold of the Taliban000and no coincidence that it was). This school will offer a world-class education, an opportunity for children that show potential in the public education system.
MACK OWENS, U.S. Naval College Strategy and Forces Planning Professor, March 4, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Some state our objective in Afghanistan should be finding Osama bin Laden. Others see a need to create political and economic stability within Afghanistan along with a government that respects its own people. What do you see as the role for our commitment of American troops within Afghanistan? What should be their objectives and when should troops be withdrawn, in your opinion?
OWENS: I think we need to do both. I believe that an international peace keeping force is necessary to ensure stability in Afghanistan. I don’t think we should necessarily provide the force, but we should participate and coordinate the effort. I believe we’ll have some presence in Afghanistan for some time.
BARNETT RUBIN, New York University Center on International Cooperation Director, June 25, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: How much authority and loyalty will this national government have over the various localities? Do residents tend to follow their local leaders more, and how much relevance do the people place on national leaders? Finally, how unified is the nation behind this national leadership: are there significant parts of the country that can be expected to be uncooperative?
RUBIN: This answer will also deal with a question about international “peacekeepers”. (Technically, the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, is not a peacekeeping force, because it is not enforcing or monitoring an agreement and it is not organized by the U.N.)
Even before the conflict, the central government was weak in Afghanistan, but it had no real competitors either. For almost 25 years now, the government structures have been destroyed, and people either fought against them or allied with them to their own advantage, or threats, and to attract foreign aid (also a survival strategy). Power became more or less fragmented (hence the title of my book, “The Fragmentation of Afghanistan”.
Today the central government does not control the rest of the country directly, In some areas (above all Heart) powerful regional warlords have consolidated power by controlling economic resources (keeping the customs revenue, drug trade, emeralds, etc.) and using this along with U.S. aid to build up militias. The government cannot pay people because it has little money, there is no functioning banking system, the roads have disintegrated, and road security is perilous (so you can’t safely transport cash in large amounts). This is not the result of any real surveys, but my impression is that people generally would prefer to have orderly, legal rule by the central government than rule by guns, even if the guns are wielded by people of the same ethnic and regional background. But no one is willing to disarm if they are afraid of being attacked by someone else and they do not see an alternative.
Extension of ISAF would be very helpful to this process.. Nonetheless, I am told that some major warlords (Haji Qadir from the east, Khalili from the center, and Dostum from the north) have agreed in principle to hand over revenues to the government. Ismail Khan still refuses, and he has the most.
But these people do not challenge the government’s legitimacy. That challenge, if it comes, is most likely to come either from Qandahar (also represented slightly in the government) or the Panjshiris themselves. The latter are split, and the conflict over the Qanoonis appointment may be just the beginning.
TAMIN ANSARY, author, September 6, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What is the life of farmers in Afghanistan like? It appears to be a very hard life. How much of the agricultural crop is converted into illegal substances? It was recently reported the United States would not spray to kill such crops so as not to disrupt the local economies and destroy the lives of Afghan famers. Would it be possible for the U.S. to subsidize Afghan famers for destroyed crops or to subsidize converting to other crops? Would Afghan farmers agree to such a thing?
ANSARY: Farmers have a hard life now because of the drought (which is entering its seventh year, I believe) and because so much of their agricultural land is laced with landmines. The traditional irrigation systems have also been destroyed, and in their place, everyone who can is digging “deep wells”, which could lead to an ecologically catastrophe in years to come. With so little cultivable land, a lot of farmers can only survive by planting opium, because a small amount of that can provide as much money as a whole farm’s worth of wheat used to provide. The solution to all this in the long run is to clear the landmines and rebuild the irrigation systems. In the short term, yes, some subsidizing might be in order.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you find greater acceptance and/or less discrimination of who you are in American or in Afghanistan? What differences do you see in the two cultures towards tolerance towards others?
ANSARY: Throughout my life I have found more tolerance for my crazy, mixed-up cultural identity and general individual strangeness in America than in Afghanistan. But when I went back to Afghanistan this summer, I was gratified to see that everyone I met, really everywhere---in the city, in the countryside---just accepted me as an Afghan, simply because I said I was one, and because I could speak the language. Still, I think tolerance towards others is a central---and precious---premise of American life and one reason why I value this country so much.
CZIKOWSKY: Please tell us more about Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. How large is his following and what are his capabilities in striking back at the United States? Does he sponsor terrorism?
ANSARY: In the Eighties, Hekmatyar led one of the two largest Mujahideen parties, Hizb-i-Islam. The other---and his deadly rival---was Jamiat-i-Isllam, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. Hekmatyar was most effective at getting money from foreign donors, and people tell me his was the most disciplined and well-organized party. Numbers I don’t know. When I was in Pakistan, he put out one of those “night letters” (i.e. anonymous board-sides pasted to walls during the night) in which he said he believed he could drive the Americans out of Afghanistan by killing 600 of them.
CZIKOWSKY: What is needed to “win the peace” in Afghanistan? What steps do you see as necessary to stabilize the country behind a government respected by its people and trusted by the international community?
ANSARY: The International Community, with the U.S. taking a part, should stay in Afghanistan as peacekeepers. Those countries that have pledged to Afghanistan in the meeting in Japan earlier this year should start delivering some of that money. Outside forces should agree to let Afghanistan determine its own course and find its own way culturally, and should police each other to make sure that all parties comply with this agreement---that would be a good start.
WILLIAM L. NASH, Retired United States Army Major General, September 11, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What will it take to create a stable government in Afghanistan that has popular support? What role should the United States have in creating such a stable government?
NASH: I’ll take the second one first. It’s my judgment that the U.S. must provide political, economic, and security leadership in the rebuilding. The most important ingredient is time. Time in terms of development programs that address the democratic issues in a country that has little tradition of democracy. In terms of the economic infrastructure. In terms of indigenous security by and for the people of Afghanistan. Associated with time is patience because all will not be smooth and we must be determined to succeed.
When I say time, I think we should think in terms of five to ten years as a minimum. We’ve been in Bosnia for nearly seven years now. Building democracy and a secure environment is not a quick fix.
ZAMA COURSEN-NEFF and JOHN SIFTON, co-authors, Human Rights Watch, December 19, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: We hear the reports about the mistreatment, first about the Taliban and now this. Yet, without seeing it on film (which sometimes the press does get and show us), it is hard to understand exactly what is happening. Would you please provide some exact examples of what is happening?
NEFF and SIFTON: In Western Afghanistan, the local leader, Ismail Kahn, has censored women’s groups, intimidated outspoken women leaders, and sidelined women from his administration in Herat. Restrictions on the right to work mean that many women will never be able to use their education. The Herat government has even recruited schoolboys to spy on girls and women and report on so-called un-Islamic behavior. In some instances, police under Ismail Khan’s command have questioned women and girls seen alone with men, even taxi drivers, and arrested those who are not related. Men caught in such circumstances are usually taken to jail; women are brought to a hospital, where police force doctors to conduct medical exams on the women to determine whether they have had recent sexual intercourse, or if unmarried, whether they are virgins.
Our report contains additional stories about abuses across the country that have occurred over the last year. We are concerned not only about Ismail Khan, but about many other local leaders.
MARC KAUFMAN, Washington Post Foreign Correspondent, March 26, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How does one destroy the roots of terrorism within Afghanistan? Some have claimed if we could help eliminate the poverty and improve the economy of the country, the economic conditions that breed terrorism would be removed. Yet, more recent terrorists were found to be from middle classes, and even have families. What can the United States do to best help rebuild Afghanistan and win the public support that will remove the conditions that tend to breed future generations of terrorists?
KAUFMAN: The roots of terrorism are deep in Afghanistan and, alas, the U.S. helped plant them. What the mujahideen fighters did to the Afghan government of the 1970s and the Soviet army would now be considered terrorism, but that whole effort was bankrolled by the U.S. This is one of the terrible ironies of the whole Afghan-Taliban-al Qaeda story-that so many other nations (and self-proclaimed leaders) have used Afghanistan for their own purposes, and the Afghans have suffered so much for it. But remember-none of the men who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11 were Afghan, and there does not seem to be any groundswell of support for Islamic militants in the country now. This is a wide-open place, where security posts are less than impressive and there are always back ways into every city, yet the number of attacks has remained quite small. There were two attacks in Kabul in December that seemed to be suicide attacks, and a few more in other parts of the country. But that kind of action is, generally speaking, not in the Afghan character right now.
JOHN FEFFER, Editor, Foreign Policy in Focus, August 13, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What is the latest news on achieving political and economic stability in Afghanistan? A short time ago, this was a priority and it seems to have since been a lesser concern. The press reports I have read indicate that American assistance has dropped and that Afghanistan appears to be in disarray. Is this so? How bad, or good, are things in Afghanistan? Are we delivering on our commitments to the people of Afghanistan? Is there something we should be doing different? (And I won’t even ask about not finding Bin Laden.)
FEFFER: A good question. As you have probably read, the Taliban remains a political and military force in Afghanistan, the central government is weak, and U.S. aid has been minimal. George Bush promised early on that the U.S. government on his watch would not engage in nation-building. Alas, this seems to be the case—the U.S. government has made promises to rebuild Afghanistan but has not delivered the goods. The reasons are many for this. The administration has certainly been distracted by the war in Iraq. We’re also dealing with a large budget deficit that promises only to get larger. But perhaps the deeper issue, which Ahmed Rashid addresses in his chapter in “Power Trip”, is that the U.S. has fundamentally misinterpreted the politics of Central Asia. The administration is supporting strong-arm leaders in the region in order to stabilize U.S. influence there. But instead we’re only strengthening Islamic fundamentalism.
What can we do that’s different? A very tough question. Certainly we should not promise nation-building without supplying the funds to make it work. Even critics on the right—such as Miall Ferguson—have criticized Washington for trying to maintain an empire on the cheap. But it’s not only money. As in Iraq, we have to support indigenous political institutions that represent the various tendencies in Afghani society. And these institutions have to be independent rather than simply handmaidens of U.S. policy in the region.
CZIKOWSKY: We often get so involved in the details of policy that I think it helps to step back sometimes and consider our more general philosophy of foreign policy. We are a nation which, at least to many foreigners, is a military power and which is respected or feared for our military capabilities. When we provide assistance, it is often in response to our economic interests and economic development is generally targeted to assisting foreign nations develop products and industries which are involved in international trade. The benefits often then indirectly help the country’s residents as their economy strengthens.
While we do provide some direct humanitarian assistance, and our recent increased commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa is an example, humanitarian assistance is a relatively small portion of our foreign assistance. My question: if we substantially changed our foreign assistance strategy and targeted it towards helping the economic welfare and health of people across the world, wouldn’t we not only achieve more benefits to more people, yet provide us with an image of humanitarian benefactors that makes the world more comfortable with the United States? This would benefit us in reducing some (although certainly not all) breeding grounds for future terrorists and reduce the fears of some nations that they must arm against us (and, thus, we reciprocate by arming against them). Further, with a more productive and healthier populace worldwide, we would have stronger markets for our goods and, with our image improved, American goods would receive warmer welcomes. I know this is a general outlook, yet it seems to be one that has been ignored by the current administration. Do you have any comments on whether we could use greater humanitarian assistance to ease some long term international difficulties?
FEFFER: Your argument is a very compelling one and should, if we took seriously the rhetoric of the current administration, appeal to the “compassionate conservatism” of George Bush. As you rightly point out and as we discuss in the conclusion of “Power Trip”, the U.S. currently provides only a fraction of 1 percent of outlays to foreign assistance (even though according to a recent poll, Americans believe that we give away as much as 20 percent!)
In the wake of 9/11, Congress too concluded that an increase in foreign aid was vital in addressing the economic and political conditions that underpin the support of terrorism. But the current administration has largely ignored Congressional advice.
Much of the U.S. foreign assistance is military. The large portion of non-military aid is tied to purchases of U.S. products and the opening of foreign markets to U.S. goods. In both cases, the U.S. government uses aid to reward allies that support U.S. foreign policy (e.g., support exemptions for U.S. soldiers from the jurisdiction of the ICC).
So I would support an increase in foreign assistance, but also a transformation of that assistance so that it better answers the basic needs of people around the world.
By the way, for a good summary of the hazards of U.S. development assistance, check out “Betraying the National Interest” by Francis Moore Lappe. Although the book came out in the 1980s, our foreign assistance programs still suffer many of the same flaws that the book outlines.
SARAH CHAYES, Afghans for Civil Society Kandahar Director, October 31, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What is the current political situation in Afghanistan? To what degree are tribal warlords regaining influence? How strong or weak is the central government?
CHAYES: It would take a book to answer this one. But in brief, tribal warlords have been regaining influence steadily since the fall of the Taliban, due to their disproportionate control over weapons and money. The central government remains very weak, and the ordinary people feel a bit left in the lurch.
CRAIG CHARNEY, Charney Research President, July 30, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What do people in Afghanistan think of the United States? I know there are numerous factions with different views. Yet, is there a sense of disappointment that we pledged to help rebuild the country and then seemed to have turned our attention elsewhere, or is there still hope and a belief that Americans will return and offer constructive assistance, or is there a sense that Americans should have as little as possible to do in Afghanistan?
CHARNEY: In very broad terms: most Afghans like the U.S. The majority are favorable to the U.S. and the U.S. military in Afghanistan. However, this is not true in the two regions that have seen most of the trouble, the South and Northwest, where pluralities are unfavorable to both.
International assistance and the U.N. are generally quite popular in Afghanistan. Although there are some complaints that aid workers live too high off the hog, the main complaint is that people want more help. They are clear they do not want the U.S. or U.N. out, to judge by what we saw in our research.
TRAVIS FOX, washingtonpost.com videographer and PHILIP KENNICOTT, Washington Post staff writer, October 8, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: How do candidates and political parties reach voters in Afghanistan? Does the public seem well informed about the candidates? Is support for candidates essentially divided along support within different communities, or are candidates making appeals across a broad base of the Afghan population?
FOX and KENNICOTT: Everyone we’ve talked to certainly is aware of the election and is planning to vote. It’s been difficult to get at many of the reasons why each voter selected a particular candidate. In terns of getting the message out: There are campaign posters plastered everywhere we’ve been. Radio is widely listened to in this largely illiterate country and it is the primary source of news about the election, Television plays a much smaller role as do newspapers.
SAM KILEY, PBS Frontline/ World Producer. April 11, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: How many countries have sent troops for NATO in Afghanistan? What proportion of the troops are American and what proportion are British?
KILEY: There are 37 nations that have contributed troops to Afghanistan. The troop numbers keep changing, but I think there are about 15,000 U.S. troops in the NATO command, the largest force, the second largest force is British with around 2,500 followed closely by the Canadians. But I discovered that among the most admired troops were the 40 soldiers contributed by Estonia who were such ferocious fighters they were attached to the British to keep an eye on them.
CZIKOWSKY: Isn’t this a village by village struggle? Do the villagers really care who governs them by force?
KILEY: Most Afghan villages in the remote areas probably neither know nor care who is in power in Kabul so long as they are left in peace. The problem is that very few are. NATO and the Afghan government want to win this war to prevent Afghanistan returning to Taliban rule and becoming a base once again used by international terrorists. The Taliban wants to win because they believe that the Afghan government is a collection of traders in the pay of foreign infidels.
KAREN DeYOUNG, Washington Post Associate Editor, January 29, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Afghanistan strikes me a country that is a collection of strong local leaders. Has the country been more or less able to function as a cohesive unit in recent years, or is it collapsing as an organized unit? About what percent of the communities fall under different types of leadership?
DeYOUNG: Afghanistan has never functioned as an organized unit. It’s a collection of tribes that at times in the past have managed to co-exist. It’s not a question of collapsing but rather of trying to create something that hasn’t existed.
CZIKOWSKY: What led you to form your Afghan-World Alliance? What are the messages you want to get out to the public?
SULTAN: We formed Young Afghan World Alliance in August after my trip to Kandahar. What I saw there was unbelievable---there was so much poverty and sadness. Not only that, people were living in constant fear of the Taliban. We decided we MUST take action. Everyone who had been to Afghanistan seems to feel the same way.
What we are seeking to do is raise awareness about the plight of the Afghan people, foster understanding between Afghans and Americans, and what we would love to do is build a school in Kandahar (former stronghold of the Taliban000and no coincidence that it was). This school will offer a world-class education, an opportunity for children that show potential in the public education system.
MACK OWENS, U.S. Naval College Strategy and Forces Planning Professor, March 4, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Some state our objective in Afghanistan should be finding Osama bin Laden. Others see a need to create political and economic stability within Afghanistan along with a government that respects its own people. What do you see as the role for our commitment of American troops within Afghanistan? What should be their objectives and when should troops be withdrawn, in your opinion?
OWENS: I think we need to do both. I believe that an international peace keeping force is necessary to ensure stability in Afghanistan. I don’t think we should necessarily provide the force, but we should participate and coordinate the effort. I believe we’ll have some presence in Afghanistan for some time.
BARNETT RUBIN, New York University Center on International Cooperation Director, June 25, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: How much authority and loyalty will this national government have over the various localities? Do residents tend to follow their local leaders more, and how much relevance do the people place on national leaders? Finally, how unified is the nation behind this national leadership: are there significant parts of the country that can be expected to be uncooperative?
RUBIN: This answer will also deal with a question about international “peacekeepers”. (Technically, the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, is not a peacekeeping force, because it is not enforcing or monitoring an agreement and it is not organized by the U.N.)
Even before the conflict, the central government was weak in Afghanistan, but it had no real competitors either. For almost 25 years now, the government structures have been destroyed, and people either fought against them or allied with them to their own advantage, or threats, and to attract foreign aid (also a survival strategy). Power became more or less fragmented (hence the title of my book, “The Fragmentation of Afghanistan”.
Today the central government does not control the rest of the country directly, In some areas (above all Heart) powerful regional warlords have consolidated power by controlling economic resources (keeping the customs revenue, drug trade, emeralds, etc.) and using this along with U.S. aid to build up militias. The government cannot pay people because it has little money, there is no functioning banking system, the roads have disintegrated, and road security is perilous (so you can’t safely transport cash in large amounts). This is not the result of any real surveys, but my impression is that people generally would prefer to have orderly, legal rule by the central government than rule by guns, even if the guns are wielded by people of the same ethnic and regional background. But no one is willing to disarm if they are afraid of being attacked by someone else and they do not see an alternative.
Extension of ISAF would be very helpful to this process.. Nonetheless, I am told that some major warlords (Haji Qadir from the east, Khalili from the center, and Dostum from the north) have agreed in principle to hand over revenues to the government. Ismail Khan still refuses, and he has the most.
But these people do not challenge the government’s legitimacy. That challenge, if it comes, is most likely to come either from Qandahar (also represented slightly in the government) or the Panjshiris themselves. The latter are split, and the conflict over the Qanoonis appointment may be just the beginning.
TAMIN ANSARY, author, September 6, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What is the life of farmers in Afghanistan like? It appears to be a very hard life. How much of the agricultural crop is converted into illegal substances? It was recently reported the United States would not spray to kill such crops so as not to disrupt the local economies and destroy the lives of Afghan famers. Would it be possible for the U.S. to subsidize Afghan famers for destroyed crops or to subsidize converting to other crops? Would Afghan farmers agree to such a thing?
ANSARY: Farmers have a hard life now because of the drought (which is entering its seventh year, I believe) and because so much of their agricultural land is laced with landmines. The traditional irrigation systems have also been destroyed, and in their place, everyone who can is digging “deep wells”, which could lead to an ecologically catastrophe in years to come. With so little cultivable land, a lot of farmers can only survive by planting opium, because a small amount of that can provide as much money as a whole farm’s worth of wheat used to provide. The solution to all this in the long run is to clear the landmines and rebuild the irrigation systems. In the short term, yes, some subsidizing might be in order.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you find greater acceptance and/or less discrimination of who you are in American or in Afghanistan? What differences do you see in the two cultures towards tolerance towards others?
ANSARY: Throughout my life I have found more tolerance for my crazy, mixed-up cultural identity and general individual strangeness in America than in Afghanistan. But when I went back to Afghanistan this summer, I was gratified to see that everyone I met, really everywhere---in the city, in the countryside---just accepted me as an Afghan, simply because I said I was one, and because I could speak the language. Still, I think tolerance towards others is a central---and precious---premise of American life and one reason why I value this country so much.
CZIKOWSKY: Please tell us more about Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. How large is his following and what are his capabilities in striking back at the United States? Does he sponsor terrorism?
ANSARY: In the Eighties, Hekmatyar led one of the two largest Mujahideen parties, Hizb-i-Islam. The other---and his deadly rival---was Jamiat-i-Isllam, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. Hekmatyar was most effective at getting money from foreign donors, and people tell me his was the most disciplined and well-organized party. Numbers I don’t know. When I was in Pakistan, he put out one of those “night letters” (i.e. anonymous board-sides pasted to walls during the night) in which he said he believed he could drive the Americans out of Afghanistan by killing 600 of them.
CZIKOWSKY: What is needed to “win the peace” in Afghanistan? What steps do you see as necessary to stabilize the country behind a government respected by its people and trusted by the international community?
ANSARY: The International Community, with the U.S. taking a part, should stay in Afghanistan as peacekeepers. Those countries that have pledged to Afghanistan in the meeting in Japan earlier this year should start delivering some of that money. Outside forces should agree to let Afghanistan determine its own course and find its own way culturally, and should police each other to make sure that all parties comply with this agreement---that would be a good start.
WILLIAM L. NASH, Retired United States Army Major General, September 11, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What will it take to create a stable government in Afghanistan that has popular support? What role should the United States have in creating such a stable government?
NASH: I’ll take the second one first. It’s my judgment that the U.S. must provide political, economic, and security leadership in the rebuilding. The most important ingredient is time. Time in terms of development programs that address the democratic issues in a country that has little tradition of democracy. In terms of the economic infrastructure. In terms of indigenous security by and for the people of Afghanistan. Associated with time is patience because all will not be smooth and we must be determined to succeed.
When I say time, I think we should think in terms of five to ten years as a minimum. We’ve been in Bosnia for nearly seven years now. Building democracy and a secure environment is not a quick fix.
ZAMA COURSEN-NEFF and JOHN SIFTON, co-authors, Human Rights Watch, December 19, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: We hear the reports about the mistreatment, first about the Taliban and now this. Yet, without seeing it on film (which sometimes the press does get and show us), it is hard to understand exactly what is happening. Would you please provide some exact examples of what is happening?
NEFF and SIFTON: In Western Afghanistan, the local leader, Ismail Kahn, has censored women’s groups, intimidated outspoken women leaders, and sidelined women from his administration in Herat. Restrictions on the right to work mean that many women will never be able to use their education. The Herat government has even recruited schoolboys to spy on girls and women and report on so-called un-Islamic behavior. In some instances, police under Ismail Khan’s command have questioned women and girls seen alone with men, even taxi drivers, and arrested those who are not related. Men caught in such circumstances are usually taken to jail; women are brought to a hospital, where police force doctors to conduct medical exams on the women to determine whether they have had recent sexual intercourse, or if unmarried, whether they are virgins.
Our report contains additional stories about abuses across the country that have occurred over the last year. We are concerned not only about Ismail Khan, but about many other local leaders.
MARC KAUFMAN, Washington Post Foreign Correspondent, March 26, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How does one destroy the roots of terrorism within Afghanistan? Some have claimed if we could help eliminate the poverty and improve the economy of the country, the economic conditions that breed terrorism would be removed. Yet, more recent terrorists were found to be from middle classes, and even have families. What can the United States do to best help rebuild Afghanistan and win the public support that will remove the conditions that tend to breed future generations of terrorists?
KAUFMAN: The roots of terrorism are deep in Afghanistan and, alas, the U.S. helped plant them. What the mujahideen fighters did to the Afghan government of the 1970s and the Soviet army would now be considered terrorism, but that whole effort was bankrolled by the U.S. This is one of the terrible ironies of the whole Afghan-Taliban-al Qaeda story-that so many other nations (and self-proclaimed leaders) have used Afghanistan for their own purposes, and the Afghans have suffered so much for it. But remember-none of the men who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11 were Afghan, and there does not seem to be any groundswell of support for Islamic militants in the country now. This is a wide-open place, where security posts are less than impressive and there are always back ways into every city, yet the number of attacks has remained quite small. There were two attacks in Kabul in December that seemed to be suicide attacks, and a few more in other parts of the country. But that kind of action is, generally speaking, not in the Afghan character right now.
JOHN FEFFER, Editor, Foreign Policy in Focus, August 13, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What is the latest news on achieving political and economic stability in Afghanistan? A short time ago, this was a priority and it seems to have since been a lesser concern. The press reports I have read indicate that American assistance has dropped and that Afghanistan appears to be in disarray. Is this so? How bad, or good, are things in Afghanistan? Are we delivering on our commitments to the people of Afghanistan? Is there something we should be doing different? (And I won’t even ask about not finding Bin Laden.)
FEFFER: A good question. As you have probably read, the Taliban remains a political and military force in Afghanistan, the central government is weak, and U.S. aid has been minimal. George Bush promised early on that the U.S. government on his watch would not engage in nation-building. Alas, this seems to be the case—the U.S. government has made promises to rebuild Afghanistan but has not delivered the goods. The reasons are many for this. The administration has certainly been distracted by the war in Iraq. We’re also dealing with a large budget deficit that promises only to get larger. But perhaps the deeper issue, which Ahmed Rashid addresses in his chapter in “Power Trip”, is that the U.S. has fundamentally misinterpreted the politics of Central Asia. The administration is supporting strong-arm leaders in the region in order to stabilize U.S. influence there. But instead we’re only strengthening Islamic fundamentalism.
What can we do that’s different? A very tough question. Certainly we should not promise nation-building without supplying the funds to make it work. Even critics on the right—such as Miall Ferguson—have criticized Washington for trying to maintain an empire on the cheap. But it’s not only money. As in Iraq, we have to support indigenous political institutions that represent the various tendencies in Afghani society. And these institutions have to be independent rather than simply handmaidens of U.S. policy in the region.
CZIKOWSKY: We often get so involved in the details of policy that I think it helps to step back sometimes and consider our more general philosophy of foreign policy. We are a nation which, at least to many foreigners, is a military power and which is respected or feared for our military capabilities. When we provide assistance, it is often in response to our economic interests and economic development is generally targeted to assisting foreign nations develop products and industries which are involved in international trade. The benefits often then indirectly help the country’s residents as their economy strengthens.
While we do provide some direct humanitarian assistance, and our recent increased commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa is an example, humanitarian assistance is a relatively small portion of our foreign assistance. My question: if we substantially changed our foreign assistance strategy and targeted it towards helping the economic welfare and health of people across the world, wouldn’t we not only achieve more benefits to more people, yet provide us with an image of humanitarian benefactors that makes the world more comfortable with the United States? This would benefit us in reducing some (although certainly not all) breeding grounds for future terrorists and reduce the fears of some nations that they must arm against us (and, thus, we reciprocate by arming against them). Further, with a more productive and healthier populace worldwide, we would have stronger markets for our goods and, with our image improved, American goods would receive warmer welcomes. I know this is a general outlook, yet it seems to be one that has been ignored by the current administration. Do you have any comments on whether we could use greater humanitarian assistance to ease some long term international difficulties?
FEFFER: Your argument is a very compelling one and should, if we took seriously the rhetoric of the current administration, appeal to the “compassionate conservatism” of George Bush. As you rightly point out and as we discuss in the conclusion of “Power Trip”, the U.S. currently provides only a fraction of 1 percent of outlays to foreign assistance (even though according to a recent poll, Americans believe that we give away as much as 20 percent!)
In the wake of 9/11, Congress too concluded that an increase in foreign aid was vital in addressing the economic and political conditions that underpin the support of terrorism. But the current administration has largely ignored Congressional advice.
Much of the U.S. foreign assistance is military. The large portion of non-military aid is tied to purchases of U.S. products and the opening of foreign markets to U.S. goods. In both cases, the U.S. government uses aid to reward allies that support U.S. foreign policy (e.g., support exemptions for U.S. soldiers from the jurisdiction of the ICC).
So I would support an increase in foreign assistance, but also a transformation of that assistance so that it better answers the basic needs of people around the world.
By the way, for a good summary of the hazards of U.S. development assistance, check out “Betraying the National Interest” by Francis Moore Lappe. Although the book came out in the 1980s, our foreign assistance programs still suffer many of the same flaws that the book outlines.
SARAH CHAYES, Afghans for Civil Society Kandahar Director, October 31, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: What is the current political situation in Afghanistan? To what degree are tribal warlords regaining influence? How strong or weak is the central government?
CHAYES: It would take a book to answer this one. But in brief, tribal warlords have been regaining influence steadily since the fall of the Taliban, due to their disproportionate control over weapons and money. The central government remains very weak, and the ordinary people feel a bit left in the lurch.
CRAIG CHARNEY, Charney Research President, July 30, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What do people in Afghanistan think of the United States? I know there are numerous factions with different views. Yet, is there a sense of disappointment that we pledged to help rebuild the country and then seemed to have turned our attention elsewhere, or is there still hope and a belief that Americans will return and offer constructive assistance, or is there a sense that Americans should have as little as possible to do in Afghanistan?
CHARNEY: In very broad terms: most Afghans like the U.S. The majority are favorable to the U.S. and the U.S. military in Afghanistan. However, this is not true in the two regions that have seen most of the trouble, the South and Northwest, where pluralities are unfavorable to both.
International assistance and the U.N. are generally quite popular in Afghanistan. Although there are some complaints that aid workers live too high off the hog, the main complaint is that people want more help. They are clear they do not want the U.S. or U.N. out, to judge by what we saw in our research.
TRAVIS FOX, washingtonpost.com videographer and PHILIP KENNICOTT, Washington Post staff writer, October 8, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: How do candidates and political parties reach voters in Afghanistan? Does the public seem well informed about the candidates? Is support for candidates essentially divided along support within different communities, or are candidates making appeals across a broad base of the Afghan population?
FOX and KENNICOTT: Everyone we’ve talked to certainly is aware of the election and is planning to vote. It’s been difficult to get at many of the reasons why each voter selected a particular candidate. In terns of getting the message out: There are campaign posters plastered everywhere we’ve been. Radio is widely listened to in this largely illiterate country and it is the primary source of news about the election, Television plays a much smaller role as do newspapers.
SAM KILEY, PBS Frontline/ World Producer. April 11, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: How many countries have sent troops for NATO in Afghanistan? What proportion of the troops are American and what proportion are British?
KILEY: There are 37 nations that have contributed troops to Afghanistan. The troop numbers keep changing, but I think there are about 15,000 U.S. troops in the NATO command, the largest force, the second largest force is British with around 2,500 followed closely by the Canadians. But I discovered that among the most admired troops were the 40 soldiers contributed by Estonia who were such ferocious fighters they were attached to the British to keep an eye on them.
CZIKOWSKY: Isn’t this a village by village struggle? Do the villagers really care who governs them by force?
KILEY: Most Afghan villages in the remote areas probably neither know nor care who is in power in Kabul so long as they are left in peace. The problem is that very few are. NATO and the Afghan government want to win this war to prevent Afghanistan returning to Taliban rule and becoming a base once again used by international terrorists. The Taliban wants to win because they believe that the Afghan government is a collection of traders in the pay of foreign infidels.
KAREN DeYOUNG, Washington Post Associate Editor, January 29, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Afghanistan strikes me a country that is a collection of strong local leaders. Has the country been more or less able to function as a cohesive unit in recent years, or is it collapsing as an organized unit? About what percent of the communities fall under different types of leadership?
DeYOUNG: Afghanistan has never functioned as an organized unit. It’s a collection of tribes that at times in the past have managed to co-exist. It’s not a question of collapsing but rather of trying to create something that hasn’t existed.
AMERICAN HISTORY
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, IV, Frederick Douglass Organization, Inc. Founder, MARK E. MITCHELL, historian, and COLE GOODWIN, Temple Visitors Center of The Church of Jesus Christ Publicity Coordinator, March 12, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Exhibits like yours are important as we all need to remember important historical events. Over time, I find encouragement in young people willing to explore historical events in greater detail, and discouragement in the reality that the passage of time requires teaching smaller glimpses of each historical event. Many young people have very limited knowledge of the history of slavery. Other than visiting exhibits such as yours, what would you recommend parents and teachers to do provide expanded teaching of slavery’s history?
DOUGLASS, MITCHELL, and GOODWIN: Parents and grandparents need to sit down with their children and grandchildren and tell them what they know and experienced. Much of Black history was passed on orally and we recommend getting out a video recorder and taping conversations for posterity. We mustn’t let Black history be forgotten! I myself have learned more in the last ten years than my textbooks ever told me.
There are some great documentaries on the History and Discovery Channels, and many new books have come out on parts of Black history. Shut off the video games and get the kids to pick up a biography of Frederick Douglass or some other person or event in Black history!
HARVEY FROMMER, author, and MYRNA KATZ FROMMER, author, May 13, 2002
CZIKOWSKY:As one who was born in Manhattan in the mid-20th century I look forward to your book (“It Happened in Manhattan”). How much did the Yankees dynasty of that period energize the city? To me, there must have been a great sense of pride to be in a city that was on top of the economic, cultural, and athletic spectrums. I realize this is subjective, yet how would you compare the “feel” of being a New Yorker then to being a New Yorker today?
HARVEY FROMMER: A great question. New York City today, especially after 9/11 and with the economy not what it was, has taken a hit and is somewhat sad. Mid-century New York with the Yankees winning year after year, with players like Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Elston Howard on the scene and Casey Stengel running the team was a time of great glow that also locked into the cresting economic, cultural, and social scenes.
But if New Yorkers are anything, they are resilient and tough. The Big Apple will come back; in fact, it is coming back as anyone who has been there lately can see. New York City has turned a corner for the better.
CZIKOWSKY: What are your thoughts on Robert Moses?
MYRNA KATZ FROMMER: Robert Moses was a complex man who accomplished much but every time I see the Cross Bronx Expressway I rue the day he got the power to change New York. We have a story about some women taking him on when he wanted to create a thoroughfare through Washington Square Park. He dismissed the group of women who came to a hearing on the proposal as “nothing but a bunch of mothers”. But those mothers’ efforts resulted in Washington Square Park being closed to traffic and a cross-town expressway that would have destroyed a lower Manhattan neighborhood being voted down.
The consequence of this last action was the creation of a new place: SoHo.
CZIKOWSKY: This may not be worthy of your book, yet Larry David has a good George Steinbrenner story. He was so angry over one of Steinbrenner’s trade, he lured Steinbrenner into taping an episode of “Seinfeld” which required him to miss opening day and then they never used the footage.
HARVEY FROMMER and MYRNA KATZ FROMMER You’re right. It’s not worthy of our book.
JOHN PEARCE. James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library Director, and DANIEL PRESTON, editor, July 17, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Just for fun: what do you think the United States and the Louisiana Purchase area would be like today if the Louisiana Purchase was never completed?
PEARCE and PRESTON: Always delighted to have some fun with history! If the Louisiana Purchase had never been completed, then the Louisiana Territory might have been developed as French colonies---or even Spanish000and the whole of North America would look quite different. Among other things, that would mean less (or no) access to the raw materials of that area. Also, we would not be the great continent---wide republic---and its hard to imagine us as an example for other republics to emulate---although that may just be “narrow thinking” on my part.
PETER KRASS, author, October 3, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Does your book (“Carnegie”) cover the Homestead strike? If so, have you found any new information on the events of this strike?
KRASS: I do cover Homestead and offer some new insights. First off, contrary to legend, Carnegie was not hiding in Scotland---perhaps more condemning, he actually helped direct the campaign against the union right up until July 4—violennce struck July 6. This is based on letters not available to prior Carnegie biographers.
Also, letters that have come to light in the last few years show that Frick and Carnegie were very unsure of themselves when it came to dealing with Homestead which only compounded problems.
Consider: the Homestead men struck over wage cuts but only 300 some men of almost 4,000 were affected. Why did all the other workers join the fight then? For the answer you’ll need to read the book.
BILL MINUTAGLIO, author, February 12, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Have you discovered any new documents or information regarding the relationship between Andrew Jackson and Lafitte? Or, are you providing a new interpretation on new documents?
MINUTAGLIO: Thanks for asking—I’m doing both. Have you read Stephen Harrigan’s “Gates of the Alamo”? It’s an interesting exercise in revisiting existing documents but adding some new interpretations, approaches.
WALTER ISAACSON, author, July 9, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Benjamin Franklin proposed the colonies create a Governor General to coordinate their activities. It is interesting that Benjamin Franklin saw the need for federalist cooperation long before all the states could realize this need. What were some of the debates over Benjamin Franklin’s proposal for a Governor General?
ISAACSON: Franklin came up with the first plan for a federal union in 1954, when he went to Albany with representatives of the other colonies to deal with the Indians. His plan—a shared sovereignty between the states and a national government—became the model for what we have today. But the colonies did not agree back in 1754, because they were jealous of their rights, so it went nowhere until the 1770s.
CZIKOWSKY: Benjamin Franklin, the father of the University of Pennsylvania, among others, was quite a notable scientist. How would the world view him if it had to consider him only for his scientific endeavors?
ISAACSON: He was the best scientist of his century. He came up with the most important discovery that lightning was a flow of a single fluid, not different fluids. And he showed that lightning was an electric discharge and invented a rod to tame it. That was the most important invention of the century.
GWENDOLYN WRIGHT and ELYSE LURAY, filmmakers, July 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Harrisburg is gathering a rather large collection of historic artifacts from Western states. Do you think there would be a large demand for tourists to come to Harrisburg to see artifacts from another part of the country? Does this open an opportunity to people who might not be able to travel so far? After all, we see objects from around the world in American museums. Will the public accept museums of pieces from other parts of the nation?
LURAY: Absolutely, I would travel anywhere in the country to see artifacts from other countries.
Harrisburg has great artifacts in itself—they already have wonderful history, furniture, quilts, Americana and I would encourage them to continue to preserve their early Americana antiques and collectibles.
As an appraiser and collect, I would travel anywhere for a good collection and when you are into collecting, you will find it normal to find things that are not indicative to that area.
WRIGHT: People would travel across the country for interesting collections. People are drawn to interesting collections that tell stories.
CZIKOWSKY: During the Revolutionary War, the Americans were so certain the British would attack the Connecticut River that they fortified it so heavily the British never attacked. There is a sign on the river banks reading “On this spot in 1776, absolutely nothing happened.” Still, there are many historical artifacts showing how people lived. What types of things more interest historians: furniture, paintings, documents, what?
LURAY: Historians are interested in any type of history regardless if it is an artifacts, book, etc. and not one is more important than another. Each object has a story to tell even if the values are different, the history isn’t.
EDWARD KLEIN, author, July 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: John Kennedy, Jr. wanted to be an actor, and even dated an actress Daryl Hannah for awhile. How good an actor was he, according to people who saw him? Obviously, his name had drawing power. Did he have talent, or the potential to develop talent?
KLEIN: Yes, he did. In fact, one director described him as one of the most talented young actors of his generation. I think John would have made a brilliant actor and that it was a shame his mother didn’t allow him to follow his star.
CZIKOWSKY: You mention in your book that John Kennedy, Jr. was seeking marriage counseling. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to learn if it would be successful. Based on your knowledge of the parties, could the marriage have been saved through counseling?
KLEIN: I think it might have been. In addition, John Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York, was acting as a counselor to try to save this famous Catholic marriage. Furthermore, John had political ambitions and he surely would have preferred to stay married. It is impossible to predict these things, but I think there is a possibility that these two young people, despite all their difficulties, might have worked things out.
CZIKOWSKY: One Bush gets caught conducting illegal behavior with savings and loans. One Bush is arrested due to a drug habit. Two Bush daughters engage in underage drinking. Is this the beginnings of a curse on the Bush Dynasty? KLEIN: You’ll have to wait for the publication of Kitty Kelley’s forthcoming family biography of the Bushes, which I’m confident will answer your questions.
CZIKOWSKY: It is easy to speculate about what could have been. Yet, do you believe John Kennedy, Jr. would have run for Governor? If he did, how do you think he would have done? How would Governor Pataki have responded to a Kennedy campaign, and who have been the likely winner of a Pataki-Kennedy race?
KLEIN: I know from my sources that Sen. Ted Kennedy and John, Jr. were seriously discussing his running for the Democratic nomination of Governor of New York state. Gov. Pataki heard about this and was known to have remarked that John Kennedy, Jr. was the only potential Democratic opponent he really feared. Despite his lack of political experience, John would have made a formidable candidate, not only thanks to his good looks and famous name, but also because of his charm and public poise. I think he would have given Mr. Pataki a real run for his money and could well have won the Governorship thanks to his almost universal popularity.
LAUREN KESSLER, author, August 25, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How did you find research material (regarding KGB spy Elizabeth Bentley)? What sources did you find? Are there many people still living who knew her and, if so, were you able to conduct many interviews?
KESSLER: Elizabeth Bentley has an enormous FBI file that like many of the files for the Cold War period is now quite accessible. You no longer need to file a FOIA request from the FBI. That is a very big file—maybe 200,000 documents, so that’s one major source. Another major source is the Venona material—which was probably the best kept counter-espionage document in U.S. history. It is a couple of thousand decrypted cablegrams sent between Soviet embassies in the U.S. to Moscow. This was started by Army intelligence in 1941 and kept secret to 1996. At any rate, these documents mention Bentley by her code name and a number of her sources and establish what was going on. Anyone can find these at www.nsa.gov. They’re right there.
There are also a number of other documents—including the files of the Rosenbergs, Nathan Gregory, who are part of this espionage network. And of course, Bentley testified at a very large number of Congressional hearings, criminal trials, and grand juries and all that is available.
Bentley died in 1963. She was an only child. Her parents died before her and she had no children. So very direct contracts these many years later was not possible. I was able to interview a lot of octogenarian communists who were contemporaries and knew of her or interacted with her. I believe I interviewed every FBI agent still alive who was involved with the case.
ZACHARY KARABELL, author, August 25, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: John Kennedy provided the vision on civil rights, yet it was left to Lyndon Johnson to get that vision enacted. How might President Kennedy, had he lived, have fared in getting the Civil Rights Act enacted?
KARABELL: I think that Kennedy might have accepted a more watered-down bill than Johnson did. There were so many powerful Southern Democratic Senators in 1964-1964 that getting a meaningful bill through Congress was a serious challenge, and Kennedy did not have the personal sway that Johnson did. LBJ also could use the mantle of the martyred President, and that helped him get the bill passed. So my best guess is that there would have been a civil rights bill, but not one as revolutionary as the one that LBJ got passed.
CZIKOWSKY: I The decision for John Kennedy to telephone Martin Luther King, who was imprisoned, in the middle of the 1960 elections was another telling moment in the development of Kennedy’s appreciation of the importance of civil rights. There were fears among some of his advisors that doing so could hurt him in the election. It was a Pennsylvanian, Harris Wofford, who pushed hard for the call to be made. What did Kennedy think of King in the time period between 1960 and the 1963 civil rights march?
KARABELL: In our book, which is coming out in late September and is called “Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice”, we discuss that phone call and how it helped Kennedy win Black votes in the 1960 election. But after that, Kennedy kept his distance from King, and he and his advisers tended to view King as a nuisance who was pushing too hard for too much too fast. Only with the Birmingham protests in the spring of 1963 and then with the march did JFK come to accept King as a valuable ally on civil rights reform.
JOEL KOTKIN, Senior Fellow, Pepperdine University, September 9, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Your comment regarding how one needs to consider what we call a city is very appropriate. Some cities, such as Indianapolis, are essentially the former inner city that has merged with its suburbs. Similarly, Los Angeles is a city with suburbs. New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia are basically not included with their suburbs. How are city-suburbs such as Indianapolis and middle sized towns near them doing compared to the middle sized towns closer to traditional cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.?
KOTKIN: There is no one template. L.A. for example is becoming not a city with suburbs, but a multi-polared urban archipelago.
N.Y is more traditional and is doing much better than some other places, although not as well as in the late 1990s.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have comments on the debate on height limits? An editorial in this month’s Governing magazine mentions how the low heights of buildings makes Paris an attractive city. On the other extreme, what would New York be without tall buildings? Do medium size cities lose their sense of community when they allow tall buildings, or do you think that tall buildings are an important part of their economic vitality?
KOTKIN: I think it’s a case by case issue.
Frankly, I think N.Y. would be better off if it had maintained more of its pre-1950s structures, particularly in lower Manhattan.
DAVID VON DREHLE, author, October 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: After the (Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911), the public and officials were shocked. How did the press handle the story?
VON DREHLE: The press played a surprisingly minor role in the legislation that came out of the fire. I expected to see more than I found. In fact, as I say in the book, with a few weeks after the fire, the leading paper in the city—the New York World—ran a story in its back pages reporting that interest in the fire and in workplace safety was evaporating.
Likewise, coverage of the trial of the Triangle owners—they were indicted on a charge of manslaughter and stood trial in December 191100was amazingly brief and cursory.
The energy for reform came almost entirely from Tammany Hall, seeking to strengthen its connection to a new generation of immigrant workers.
FRANCES STEAD SELLERS, journalist, November 3, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: In American Studies, and many other scholarly studies related to race and ethnicity, there are raging debates between scholars (i.e. romantics) who seek to preserve identities and traditions and scholars (i.e. advocates of the melting pot theories) who believe we should concentrate on an evolving future that blends past experiences. Why can’t we do both: learn, respect, and honor our traditional pasts while allowing society to evolve?
SELLERS: You are absolutely right. We should both honour our past and build a common future. Our differing traditions benefit from borrowing from each other. But traditions should not be used to justify injustice. There’s where universal values are more important than tradition.
And, in my view, the fact that a raging debate exists about the balance between preserving identifies and evolving identities is a good thing.
TRACY TRAGOS, filmmaker, November 11, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: I understand the desire and interest to learn about our roots and who are ancestors were. Yet, often as people search for these connections, people always ask “why bother? How is knowing this going to change any part of your life?” Let me pose these questions to you: does your life change from better knowing your roots?
TRAGOS: Oh boy, that was a question asked by so many—my mother, my husband—even by me at real low times—“what’s the point? It’s not going to change the ending, so why go there?” But to me, in the end, there was a point. And in some small way I think I have changed the ending—it’s not that my father (a solider who died in the Viet Nam War) comes back to life, that he doesn’t die in the end—it’s that for the first time in my life, I have a sense of my father and he gets to live on in me, in a way that he never has before. All the quirky, small, silly stuff that made him human gives me a better sense of myself, and who I am, his daughter. Yes, my life changed in huge ways for having a deeper knowledge of my roots, my history, my father, and myself.
CZIKOWSKY: How did you pick the title ”Be Good, Smile Pretty?”
TRAGOS: “Be Good, Smile Pretty” came from the way my father sometimes signed his letters to my mother. It resonated with me, because it felt like his voice…and advice he might have given me if he had lived…
I also thought the phrase spoke to how my mother reacted to my father’s death—the way she shut-down and walled off the painful emotions of grief in an effort to survive.
ERROL MORRIS, director. December 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: There have been many who questioned the morality of bombing civilians during war. What were Mr. (Robert) McNamara’s moral questions about the war against Japan? Was it the bombing campaign, or something else?
MORRIS: McNamara’s moral questions involved “proportionality…”
I have read many accounts of the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of them mention the fire-bombing of the sixty-seven Japanese cities which preceded the use of nuclear weapons.
Gen. Curtis LeMay (who McNamara reported to during the war) is one of the few military officers in 1945 who questioned the use of nuclear weapons. He realized that he had already effectively destroyed Japan.
To paraphrase McNamara, “why was it necessary to use nuclear weapons when we had already destroyed Japan…”
CZIKOWSKY: Who was the obscure State Department official who spoke up to President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis? What did he say, and what implications did that have?
MORRIS: Llewelyn Thompson, ex-Ambassador to the Soviet Union. McNamara’s point: During a crucial moment in the Executive Committee discussions on the Cuban missile crisis, Thompson, based on his personal knowledge of Khruschev, urged Kennedy to continue to negotiate. It is a lesson in the film: EMPHATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY. That is, try to understand what your enemy’s underlying motivation might be. Try to see it through their eyes…A lesson that has obvious benefits for the current time.
ELIZABETH DEANE, producer, January 13, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What were the differences in being a slave versus being a tenant farmer? Obviously, a tenant farmer had the freedom to seek economic opportunity elsewhere. Yet, in terms of everyday life, weren’t most tenant farmers just as poor and had to struggle just as much as before?
DEANE: At first sharecropping looked like an ok deal—a reasonable solution to a big problem. But over time, it evolved into something much as you describe.
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., Harvard University Humanities Professor, February 4, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Do you see any major regional differences in racial attitudes? I ask because there is a perception in speaking to Southerners that the attitudes are vastly different than, say, here in Pennsylvania. Is there any documentation to this, or is it primarily myth?
GATES: During my travels around the country to make the film series it seemed to me that attitudes toward race were remarkably similar. I did not encounter major regional differences. The legacy of racism in the South, because of the history of slavery, makes racial progress more dramatic than in the north.
MICHAEL DOBBS, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 5, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: I haven’t read your book (“Saboteurs”), yet I remember reading about this. My recollection and impression is that, fortunately for us, the Germans (in World War II) did a poor job training the saboteurs for life on their own. Is it true they spent too much time enjoying the life of freedom away from war and drank so heavily that one of them gave the mission away in a drunker stupor?
DOBBS: The saboteurs received about three weeks’ basic training in the handling of explosives, detonators, etc. I think this was a story of dual incompetence. The Germans were certainly incompetent, but so were the Americans. The Coast Guard let the saboteurs get away from Amagansett beach, after running into them the night they landed. The FBI failed to follow up obvious leads. In the end, the Germans turned out to be more incompetent than the Americans.
CZIKOWSKY: Does international law say anything about such cases involving saboteurs? If so, what does it say?
DOBBS: Saboteurs do not benefit from the normal rights accorded to uniformed soldiers under the Geneva Convention. They are not considered prisoners of war. That said, however, the Geneva conventions still ban inhumane and degrading treatment of any prisoners. After these saboteurs were arrested, The German government protested their executions, but the protest was brushed aside by Roosevelt.
DAVID HACKETT FISCHER, author, March 30, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Did you ever see any of the reenactments of Washington’s Crossing? If so, what did you think of them?
FISCHER: Yes, I was present in 2000 at a very large reenactment and have formed high respect for reactors for their close and serious respect for history. Very interesting to me were the Hessian and British reenactors as well as those in American uniforms.
WALTER A. McDOUGALL, University of Pennsylvania History Professor, April 26, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Would you say one of the great American ideals was that we learned to settle religious differences peacefully? Instead of going to battle over theological differences, (Lyme, Ct.) is a perfect example of the new American way. When part of the community disagreed with the town’s dominant religious teachings, they left to form Lyme, N.H. or to form Lyme, Ohio. Under the old European example, they would have taken up arms.
McDOUGALL: The American experiment in “free exercise of religion” is indeed one of the most important sources of what made American exceptional, at least in the 18th and 19th centuries (Europe eventually drifted into tolerance as faith itself declined there). I cite Bob Dylan’s line; “I heard the Sermon on the Mount and knew it was too complex. It didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects.” That is a stunning poetic inversion, because of course the Sermon on the Mount is chilling in its
* simplicity *, whereas the reflections of a broken glass are wild and kaleidoscopic. So are the effects of religious liberty in America: effects that are psychological, social, economic, and political as well as spiritual. Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago has traced all America’s great reform movements to religious revivals or “Great Awakenings”. I think he exaggerates somewhat, but the first revival in the 1730-40s did help sow the seeds for independence from Britain, the second in the 1830-40s certainly drove the abolitionist movement, and the third from around 1880-1920 inspired the Social Gospel, Progressive Era reforms, and (I must say) that crusading foreign policy culminating in Woodrow Wilson.
BERNARDINE DOHRN, Former Weather Underground Member, April 28, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What were your personal thoughts on September 11, 2001? I know you never did or contemplated something at that scale. Yet, did you think what the terrorists might have been thinking, and what was your personal reaction to the horrific results?
DOHRN: My response was, I am guessing, like yours. Stunned, horrified, racing to try to take in the implications, the reality, the violation on such a massive scale.
Since we were not terrorists and killed no one, and the apparent perpetrators of September 11 were right wing, religious zealots, I don’t feel qualified to even imagine what they were thinking.
What astounds me is that our Administration appears, unlike the rest of us who were in mourning for weeks, to have been racing to put out every piece of reactionary legislation and military aggression they ever dreamed of. Yikes.
RON CHERNOW, author, May 10, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What was the closest opportunity that might have brought Alexander Hamilton to the Presidency, and where did events go wrong for Mr. Hamilton?
CHERNOW: Excellent question. Let me start by saying that all of the founders came out of the Revolution with deservedly large egos and reputations. And there was a kind of hierarchy based on age. Washington was unanimously elected the first President and there was never any question about that. It was assumed at the time of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In terms of age and stature, John Adams was next in line and Hamilton made no attempt to enter the 1796 election. His first real chance would have been in the 1800 election, but he marred—nay, ruined—his chances through two events. He published a scathing open letter about John Adams that split the Federalist Party and damaged Hamilton more than Adams. He had also published the 95 page pamphlet about the Maria Reynolds affairs, which led people to question his judgement. In other words, Hamilton had committed political suicide once too often. By the 1804 election, he was dead.
GORDON S. WOOD, author, June 1, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How do you think religious differences affected Benjamin Franklin opposed to other revolutionary leaders? There have been scholars who have placed great emphasis pm the Quaker background of Philadelphia in general as opposed to the more activist Protestantism found in Boston. Do you have any thoughts on how religious differences affected Franklin and his cohorts?
WOOD: Franklin was not a Quaker but he lived a good part of his life in the Quaker dominated city of Philadelphia. I think Franklin found the great diversity of religions to lead him to believe that no one of them was all-important. He was not an emotionally religious man. He valued religion for its usefulness in keeping moral.
ART SPIEGELMAN, author, October 26, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: A friend evacuated one of the Towers on September 11 and he distributed some of the most disturbing photographs he took of what it was like to evacuate with people jumping to their deaths and smoke and debris all around you, We all have memories of where were at 9 am, September 11, 2001. Where were you, and what are your memories and thoughts from that day?
SPIEGELMAN: It really is the narrative of the book “”In the Shadow of the Towers”. Early on the morning of September 11, my wife Francois and I were heading out to vote in a New York primary when The Plane roared over our heads and smashied into the Trade Towers, ten blocks from ourselves. We ran down just as various people were running out of Ground Zero to find our 14 year old daughter, who had just started going to Stuyvesant High School three days before, virtually next door to the towers. It took awhile to find her amongst 3,000 students in the panicked building. While we were inside, the first tower fell. We got out just in time for the second tower to fall just behind us, and outran the toxic cloud of rubble, then went uptown to pick up our son.
And then a 9/11 that lasted six months for me before turning into September 12 began, I got stuck in September 11. Other people started turning calendar pages. During that period, I started thinking about how to find the bits of brain I’d left in the rubble, by starting the series of pages that became this book.
ROBERT McNEIL, author, January 13, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Do regional dialects exist? Ayep.
McNEIL: Yes, they certainly survive despite the general impression that our immersion in broadcast media is homogenizing the language. Not only do dialects survive, some are growing more distinctive, for instance in the cities around the Great Lakes, in California, and among African Americans in the inner cities. Some dialects are dying out, due not to medial but the movement of people. Some examples of disappearing dialects are Gullah, the “Hillbilly” dialect of Appalachia and in the Sea Islands off the Carolinas.
CZIKOWSKY: Why do regional dialects remain? We move around, we communicate with others more, and yet our distinct language differences remain. What prevents people from blending towards a uniform way of pronouncing words?
McNEIL: Regional dialects remain because they are deeply embedded in our psyches and our identities. They may also be an unconscious way of defending ourselves against the forces of globalization and uniformity in our clothing, food chains, and media. This local sense of identity is a powerful force and is connected to our desire to be like the people we live among. One linguist, Carmen Fought, says: “We want to talk like the people we want to be like.”
MARTIN SHERWIN, author, April 12, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There were some physicists who, before the first atomic bomb was ever exploded, theorized that the nuclear chair reaction would continue indefinitely until the entire world and perhaps the entire universe was destroyed. Obviously, this theory was wrong and obviously Mr. (Robert) Oppenheimer discounted this theory. Yet, how confident and on what basis was Mr. Oppenheimer able to ascertain that a nuclear reaction indeed would fade out over a certain space and, indeed, did he think afterwards it was a mistake to place so many people close to the initial tests after radiation illnesses resulted?
SHERWIN: There are two stories that we tell in “American Prometheus” that are relevant. In 1942 Teller did some calculations indicating that an atomic bomb might lead to a chain reaction in the atmosphere. Oppenheimer immediately took this news to Arthur Compton at Chicago and they discussed it. Hans Bethe redid Teller’s calculations and proved that he had made errors (which was not unusual as it turns out). Then before the Los Alamos tests (allegedly) Fermi took side bets that New Mexico would be incinerated. (Frankly, I don’t believe that story despite the fact that it has been told and retold.) I don’t believe that anyone was so close to the test of July 16 that they were affected by radiation.
COURTLAND MILLOY, Washington Post Columnist, May 31, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Often, cities tear down things to enhance economic development and to improve our lives. Yet, cherishes memories are replaced. Are there any particular buildings and places you recall, even though insignificant to others, that you miss most?
MILLOY: There have been so many buildings torn down that it’s hard to remember what used to be where. I do remember that the Pick Lee Hotel was located next door to the Washington Post when I came here in May 1975. It had a nice bar, and it was okay for reporters to tie on a few after work back in those days. Fine watering hoe, it was. I also miss a barbeque joint that used to be up on 14th Street called Pig in the Pit; ribs tasted much better than the name sounds. Also, there were lots of strip joints on 14th Street—not that I went to any of them, but they did add a certain flavor to the area. That was before the FBI building was constructed nearby and those places had to go.
EDWARD J. RENEHAN, JR., author, June 21, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Jay Gould lived in a period before some of what he did became illegal. Thus, it may be difficult for us to judge him based on our sense of legality. Yet, isn’t it fair to still consider many of his business practices unethical? Even if they were permitted or were more common, wasn’t he aware that there were many ethical questions involved in what he was doing?
RENEHAN: Of course Jay was aware that there were many ethical questions involved in what he was doing; but he also knew that EVERYONE against whom he competed—the Daniel Drews and Cornelius Vanderbilts—were engaged in EXACTLY the same types of stock pools, bear-raids, etc. with which he involved himself. There was absolutely no percentage in being a Boy Scout on Wall Street in Jay’s day; to behave ethically in all matters was to lose. I do not make the case in my book that Jay was a saint, only that he was not the over-arching villain, the financial vampire, that has been rumored for so long. The ruses and gambits of Wall Street that occupied Jay were not ones that he exercised alone, although he may well have exercised them much more expertly than most of his rivals.
TUKUFU ZUBERI, University of Pennsylvania Sociology Professor, July 26, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There were some deep family divisions regarding supporting the Revolutionary War, especially at the beginning when even some later pro-war leaders were still arguing for negotiations with England. I know it pained Benjamin Frankly that his son became a loyalist Governor of New Jersey. How brutal did the infighting get?
ZUBERI: You are correct, many families were split regarding support for the Revolutionary War or continued loyalty to the British Empire. Tens of thousands of the North American population actually fought for the British.
JOSEPH ELLIS, author, September 19, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There have been so many books written about George Washington, and I have read several of them. What new ground does your book (“His Excellency”) cover or explore?
ELLIS: My access to the modern edition of the Washington papers added much to my scholarship, particular a fresh interpretation of the formative years of Washington’s life, especially the French and Indian War. It also offers a different explanation to the reasons why Washington is committed to American independence—why he loses so many battles but wins the war and his strategic insights.
Also, the book offers the fullest explanation of his position on two important issues---slavery and the issues surrounding Native Americans.
LAUREN WILCOX, freelance author, September 19, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: As someone interested in history, I found the comment that everything in Las Vegas is torn down before it can become historic. Which historic buildings, if any, did you find? (would the Golden Nugget be the closest, which means it will soon be torn down?)
WILCOX: Thanks for the question. I thought it was an interesting comment, too. It made me think about what made something historic---that a building would have been part of a town’s daily life long enough to be associated with an era that maybe isn’t there anymore, or is disappearing. I visited an official historic structure, the old Mormon Fort, built by the town’s first settlers on the site of an old spring (which is no longer there). The fort was interesting because it was such a drab, unassuming, utilitarian piece of architecture in a town full of buildings that are just the opposite, but it feels very remove from the Las Vegas you or I would recognize. I did feel that the buildings I liked the best and responded to the most---like the Golden Nugget or other iconic old structures---are not, on the whole, what Las Vegas focuses on, and the whole thrust of the city’s development is not about the past at all. Obviously, there are some drawbacks to this, from a preservation perspective, but it does give the city’s growth a real (if sort of manic) energy, too.
JAMES W. LOEWEN, author, October 25, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There is definite economic segregation with zoning and building laws to create de facto racial segregation. It is interesting that this was literally stated policy during the past century. How were you able to document all this? Were was information about these practices kept?
LOEWEN: There is half a chapter in “Sundown Towns” telling how. Briefly, I often had to rely on oral history. This is a topic where oral history can be more accurate than written. Anna, Il., for example, drove out its Black population in 1909 and has been known from that day to this as “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed—ANNA”. In 1954 it published a fat coffee table history, “Anna. Il., A Century of Progress”, 450 pages, a paragraph on every single local business, even the Dairy Queen. But not one word on 1909, on the origin of the slang meaning for “Anna”, not one word on Anna as a sundown town. Conversely, people will TELL you about it, with details, verbally, face-to-face.
CZIKOWSKY: Have you looked at the subject of racial segregation within communities? For instance, I recall researchers claiming that Philadelphia was one of the most racially segregated cities in America even though, in total, it appeared to be an ethnically diverse city. There were whole blocks that were not only racially segregated yet often 90 percent or more of its residents were ethnically segregated.
LOEWEN: Sometimes I treat “sundown neighborhoods”, especially when these are huge. West Lawn, Chicago, for example, depending on how it is bounded, has 25,000 to 101,000 residents. But there are other books, good ones, on the segregation within cities. What is amazing, and what I tried to remedy, is the complete lack of treatment of entire towns that excluded Blacks totally. Large cities like Appletom, Wisconsin, for gosh sakes!
JEROME KARABEL, University of California, Berkeley Sociology Professor, November 2, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Although the Ivy League wasn’t created until the 1950s, didn’t some of the other Ivies have decent records towards accepting Jewish students, even if religious discrimination existed to some degree. Didn’t Penn have a high percent of Jewish students throughout most of the 20th century? KARABEL: You are correct about Penn, which did indeed have a high percentage of Jewish students throughout the 20th century. Among the Ivy League colleges, Penn is the only one that clearly never had a policy of discriminating against Jews. Scholars are not sure why this was so, but some have speculated that it had to do with the influence of Quakers on Penn’s Board of Trustees.
KARENNA GORE SCHIFF, author and daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, February 27, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Which First Ladies do you admire, and why?
SCHIFF: I didn’t profile any First Ladies (in “Lighting the Way”) but can recommend a book to you—“Hidden Power” by Kati Marton—if you are interested in that subject in depth. However there is one First Lady who weaves throughout the stories in “Lighting the Way” and had a huge impact—Eleanor Roosevelt. Alice Hamilton was actually one of her role models and she was also close to Viginia Durr. She and Frances Perkins were allies but had a difficult friendship. E.R. was a real public servant in her own right—fighting segregation, working to alleviate poverty, giving voice to the less powerful. I admire her tremendously.
CZIKOWSKY: I know there are so many great women that to pick any few means that a lot of remarkable women are left off the list. As more women are going to college now than ever before, what do you think of the inspirations that people such as Margaret Mead, Jane Goodall, and so many others have brought to the world?
SCHIFF: I think that both Mead and Goodall are inspirational and fascinating. I’m afraid I’m not an expert on either one but would love to learn more about them. Certainly the fact that women have done such wonderful things in many different fields—science, arts, business—is great and can inspire young women choosing their own paths. This book is really about women who were political and I hope you enjoy it.
CZIKOWSKY: Who are some of the inspirational women of today who you believe are helping to change and improve the world?
SCHIFF: The last chapter of “Lighting the Way” is about Gretchen Buchenholz, a child advocate who is changing the world for the better. Her friend Marian Wright Edelman is another who is leading the charge to solve the day care crisis. And then there is Susan Solomon, a scientist who is working on global environmental issues.
WILLIAM BENNETT, former U.S. Education Secretary, June 13, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: You wrote the following; “Until the 1950s or so the Republican Party was a much greater hope for freedom and equality.” Do you concede that the Democratic Party has been the political party producing greater hope and equality since the 1950s?
BENNETT: Great question. Obviously, I don’t, however I do give credit to Kennedy and Johnson for important civil rights legislation and to great champions of equal rights such as Hubert Humphrey, and of course Dr. King. But civil rights legislation of the ‘60s would not have passed without Republicans like Dirksen, and of course was opposed by Democrats like Robert Byrd and William Fulbright. And today equality and color blindness is championed by conservatives with many liberals want to apportion, admit, and reward using racial preference.
SALLY QUINN, Washington Post Staff Writer, November 22, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Have you considered the origins of Thanksgiving from the perspective of the Native Americans who heard the celebratory noise and came to inquire what the commotion was amongst the Pilgrims, and then assisted in the gathering of additional food when they saw the Pilgrims had meager food? What attachments did the natives attach to the first Thanksgiving, and how do they feel about subsequent celebrations of what would lead to the loss of their lands? Have there been surveys as to how current descendants fell as to how Thanksgiving is represented?
QUINN: I think most of us do understand that the Native Americans came to help out the Pilgrims and I refer you to Chief Lyons who talks about Thanksgiving from his point of view. None of us feels good about the things that happened to the Indians after that first Thanksgiving. That’s why it is appropriate to remember them and their kindness toward the settlers there. It’s also a good time to ponder how people can learn to understand each other and respect their differences, not just here but all over the world.
MICHAEL K. HONEY., author, January 16, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Had Martin Luther King, Jr. lived, what was next on his activist agenda after the Memphis sanitation strike? HONEY: King was in the midst of his Poor People’s Campaign. He went to Memphis because he was called there by the local movement. If he had lived, his next stop was Washington, D.C., where he hoped to encamp thousands of poor people to lobby the government. The demand was to redirect military spending to housing, health care, job training, and a living income for those who did not have jobs. He proposed to abolish poverty directly. This was a form of income redistribution—away from the military, to the people.
HEATHER EWING, author, April 24, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Why did James Smithson leave his collection to a country he had never visited?
EWING: That’s the big question! I hope that my book shows that by uncovering the story of Smithson’s life—and placing him back in the context of the English Enlightenment, in the coffeehouses of London and in Paris during the French Revolution—that it’s possible to begin to understand the ideals behind such an extraordinary bequest.
Also, I get the sense that Smithson would have come to the U.S.A. if he could have…it turns out that he loather sea travel, since it made him so ill. In the early 1800s he waited four whole years on the continent, hoping for a break in the Napoleonic Wars so he could go home to England via the Channel rather than what he called the “wild and endlessly circuitous” route of the North Sea.
CZIKOWSKY: I understand most of Mr. Smithson’s works were destroyed in a fire. Did most of his rocks survive, or was the fire so bad they were destroyed?
EWING: That’s right. Smithson’s effects—his personal possessions like his tea set and his umbrella, his chemistry equipment, and his huge mineral collection (which was considered one of the finest in the U.S. in the 1840s)—were all kept in the Regents’ Room of the Castle. Everything in that room was destroyed, except for a safe that contained some of the institution’s financial records. The mineral specimens were all very small, so they were lost entirely.
His library of books, however, along with some notes of his mineral catalogues, were saved, since they were in a different part of the building. So we have a sense of what was in his mineral collection from these notes. The library was very helpful to me in my work—he annotated some of the books, so I studied those notes very carefully for clues about his thinking.
BENJAMIN WOOLLEY, author, May 9, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I have heard the allegations of cannibalism (at the James settlement. What exactly is the evidence that someone engaged in cannibalism?
WOOLLEY: During what’s known as the ‘Starving Time’, the English were, according to one account, reduced to eating the corpse buried in a makeshift grave, and one of the settlers apparently murdered his wife, salted her flesh, and stored it in barrels, though he was found out and ‘burned’.
JOHN FERLING, author, August 14, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Many soldiers signed for the military (during the Revolutionary War) for a set term and when the term was up they left and went back to their families and their jobs. Often this was necessary as their families needed them. How did the Revolution impact families and how did the military work with the problem of rotating soldiers?
FERLING: In the first two years of the war, men enlisted for only one year. That was no way to wage a war, as General Washington repeatedly told Congress in 1775 and 1776. Indeed, few of these men reenlisted, leaving Washington to recruit a new army in the fact of the enemy army. After the string of defeats in the New York campaign, Congress finally awakened to reality and, beginning in 1777, men were asked to enlist for three years or the duration of the war. The evidence suggests that the composition of the army changed dramatically once Congress went over to a standing arm concept. Previously, the men in the army had represented a reasonably good cross section of America’s male inhabitants. But from 1777 onward a far greater percentage of the men tended to be single, property-less, and from the lower socio-economic strata of society. A substantial percentage (up to twenty-five percent in some states) were immigrants.
As there men were in the service for the long haul, they were separated from loved ones for extended periods. During the winter months, however, when fighting slowed or stopped altogether, the Continental army was generous with furloughs (if for no other reason than it meant fewer mouths to feed during times of scarcity.)
JAY WINIK, author, November 1, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What perspectives or facts does your book (“The Great Upheaval”) present that have not been explored in previous works?
WINKI: What I wanted to do was to bring alive the world as the Founders themselves actually saw it—and that wasn’t just the thirteen colonies or the young United States, it was a global world. As a result, “The Great Upheaval” presents an entirely fresh take on this period. Conventional scholarship has long isolated the story of America’s founding decade from the rest of the globe, but this misses a key part of the picture. Our Founding Fathers were all-consumed, and rightly so, by events in Europe and on the global stage—from the increasing anarchy and bloodshed of the French Revolution that swept the continent, to Russia’s dismemberment of the ancient Kingdom of Poland. I’ve come to believe that the best way to understand the events in the young America, e.g. the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Act, is to see them in this larger context. I sought to restore this lost part of the historical story; it’s an extraordinary tale.
RICK PERLSTEIN. Campaign for America’s Future Senior Fellow, February 4, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Did you examine the general values of the generations (in his book “Nixonland”)? I have read commentary where the youth of the 1960s rebelled against the fear of their parents who went through the Depression and World War II and how ironically many of the children of couples who got married in the 1960s have taken the message of the 1960s and more freedom and openness and become more conservative in attitudes than their parents.
PERLSTEIN: The main factor, I think, was economic. The economy was prosperous and unflappable like it had been probably in no other society in human history. Many young people could afford personal experimentation in a way unimaginable to today’s students, saddled as they are with massive student debt (remember that at Berkely, one of the epicenters of the student uprising, tuition was free!).
By the same token, this increased the resentment of the less-privileged young people for the dalliances of counterculture and antiwar folks who were seen, accurately, as for the most part more financially comfortable than “traditional” young people. It wasn’t uncommon for working class youth to hear “come back when you have that draft thing out of the way”, they heard at the factory gates, while richer kids had no problems getting out of the military obligations.
A lot of the resentments were class resentments. Fortune magazine did a huge poll of college students’ attitudes in 1969 (like I said, the society worshipped youth, can you imagine a business magazine devoting a whole issue to such a survey now) and the respondents from the more prestigious tier of schools were considerably more left-leaning than the lower tier.
STEVE WALDMAN, beliefnet.com editor-in-chief, March 11, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I find it interesting that the founding fathers were so disrespectful of the Catholic religion when it was the mostly Catholic French who came to their assistance. Did the interactions with the French help redefine any of their beliefs regarding Catholicism?
WALDMAN: What happened was the Colonists were deeply disrespectful of Catholics going into the revolution. But some of the leaders—especially George Washington---came to the conclusion that this was very counterproductive, exactly for the reason you mentioned. They needed to attract France as an ally. So Washington banned the practice of burning effigies of the Pope (which he called “monstrous”) and cracked down on anti-Catholic activities in general. After that, the public denunciations of Catholics became less frequent.
SHIWANI SRIVASTAVA, The Root Contributor, September 3, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I recall that after September 11 that anyone wearing a turban was suspect. People in government buildings wearing turbans were often questioned, and I had an American born friend who wore a turban who was questioned by police for taking a photograph in a garage. How does the Indian American population feel about the Patriot Act and Governor Jindal’s support of the Patriot Act?
SRIVASTAVA: I actually wrote a story on violence against the Siks (flowers of Sikhism, a South Asian religion in which men wear turbans) following 2/11, and the violence against this community was staggering. I’d also like to call attention to your point that Indian/South Asian Americans can be Hindu, Muslin, and a variety of other religions. Thanks for mentioning that. And yes, they have been unfairly profiled and taken into custody as a direct result of the Patriot Act, which Jindal supported making permanent. I think this is probably the biggest bone that the community would have to pick with Jindal.
But, as in important aside, it also shouldn’t dissolve into an us-versus-them mentality in terms of “oh, you should be racially profiling THOSE Muslims”. The point is, many of these people imprisoned under the Patriot Act (South Asian, Middle Eastern, whatever) were completely innocent and given no trial, which makes in inherently unconstitutional.
JULIE BECKMAN, Pentagon Memorial Designer, September 12, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: What were some of the designs you considered and rejected, and why were they rejected?
BECKMAN: Keith Kaseman and I always believed that the Memorial should be both individual and collective at the same time. We wanted to create a comfortable place where family members, friends—or even strangers—could come for 10 minutes or 2 hours. A place to sit, shade, and the sound of water were all criteria that we intended to incorporate. Very early in the design process, we considered one single water feature—like a large reflecting pool—with the individual markers surrounding it. We also, for only a brief moment, considered designing the Memorial units to be different from each other to emphasize their individuality—but quickly knew that it would be both logistically difficult to produce 184 uniquely designed pieces, but it also could be conceived as representing the individual which we never intended to do. We simply wanted to create a special place on the planet dedicated to each life lost.
RONALD KESSLER, former Washington Post Investigative Reporter, December 28, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: When did you learn Mark Felt was Deep Throat?
KESSLER: Of course, I could never be absolutely sure but I was convinced that Mark Felt was Deep Throat and I wrote that in my 2002 book called “The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI”, based primarily on the fact that I went to interview Felt in 2001 for the book and when I arrived at his home, his daughter Joan greeted me. She said “You know this guy Bob Woodward was out here about a year ago and he came in a white limousine and had the limousine park ten blocks away. He then walked to our house.”
She wasn’t quite sure who Woodward was but I knew that Woodward never would’ve taken that precaution unless he was still concealing his relationship with Felt.
In addition to that, Felt was in the perfect position to know the details of the FBI’s investigation. And another tip-off was that Felt’s instructions to Woodward on how they should meet were classic instructions used in spy work and I knew that Felt had spent more of his career in the FBI counterintelligence, which has to do with these signals that spooks give each other.
CZIKOWSKY: Exhibits like yours are important as we all need to remember important historical events. Over time, I find encouragement in young people willing to explore historical events in greater detail, and discouragement in the reality that the passage of time requires teaching smaller glimpses of each historical event. Many young people have very limited knowledge of the history of slavery. Other than visiting exhibits such as yours, what would you recommend parents and teachers to do provide expanded teaching of slavery’s history?
DOUGLASS, MITCHELL, and GOODWIN: Parents and grandparents need to sit down with their children and grandchildren and tell them what they know and experienced. Much of Black history was passed on orally and we recommend getting out a video recorder and taping conversations for posterity. We mustn’t let Black history be forgotten! I myself have learned more in the last ten years than my textbooks ever told me.
There are some great documentaries on the History and Discovery Channels, and many new books have come out on parts of Black history. Shut off the video games and get the kids to pick up a biography of Frederick Douglass or some other person or event in Black history!
HARVEY FROMMER, author, and MYRNA KATZ FROMMER, author, May 13, 2002
CZIKOWSKY:As one who was born in Manhattan in the mid-20th century I look forward to your book (“It Happened in Manhattan”). How much did the Yankees dynasty of that period energize the city? To me, there must have been a great sense of pride to be in a city that was on top of the economic, cultural, and athletic spectrums. I realize this is subjective, yet how would you compare the “feel” of being a New Yorker then to being a New Yorker today?
HARVEY FROMMER: A great question. New York City today, especially after 9/11 and with the economy not what it was, has taken a hit and is somewhat sad. Mid-century New York with the Yankees winning year after year, with players like Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Elston Howard on the scene and Casey Stengel running the team was a time of great glow that also locked into the cresting economic, cultural, and social scenes.
But if New Yorkers are anything, they are resilient and tough. The Big Apple will come back; in fact, it is coming back as anyone who has been there lately can see. New York City has turned a corner for the better.
CZIKOWSKY: What are your thoughts on Robert Moses?
MYRNA KATZ FROMMER: Robert Moses was a complex man who accomplished much but every time I see the Cross Bronx Expressway I rue the day he got the power to change New York. We have a story about some women taking him on when he wanted to create a thoroughfare through Washington Square Park. He dismissed the group of women who came to a hearing on the proposal as “nothing but a bunch of mothers”. But those mothers’ efforts resulted in Washington Square Park being closed to traffic and a cross-town expressway that would have destroyed a lower Manhattan neighborhood being voted down.
The consequence of this last action was the creation of a new place: SoHo.
CZIKOWSKY: This may not be worthy of your book, yet Larry David has a good George Steinbrenner story. He was so angry over one of Steinbrenner’s trade, he lured Steinbrenner into taping an episode of “Seinfeld” which required him to miss opening day and then they never used the footage.
HARVEY FROMMER and MYRNA KATZ FROMMER You’re right. It’s not worthy of our book.
JOHN PEARCE. James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library Director, and DANIEL PRESTON, editor, July 17, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Just for fun: what do you think the United States and the Louisiana Purchase area would be like today if the Louisiana Purchase was never completed?
PEARCE and PRESTON: Always delighted to have some fun with history! If the Louisiana Purchase had never been completed, then the Louisiana Territory might have been developed as French colonies---or even Spanish000and the whole of North America would look quite different. Among other things, that would mean less (or no) access to the raw materials of that area. Also, we would not be the great continent---wide republic---and its hard to imagine us as an example for other republics to emulate---although that may just be “narrow thinking” on my part.
PETER KRASS, author, October 3, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Does your book (“Carnegie”) cover the Homestead strike? If so, have you found any new information on the events of this strike?
KRASS: I do cover Homestead and offer some new insights. First off, contrary to legend, Carnegie was not hiding in Scotland---perhaps more condemning, he actually helped direct the campaign against the union right up until July 4—violennce struck July 6. This is based on letters not available to prior Carnegie biographers.
Also, letters that have come to light in the last few years show that Frick and Carnegie were very unsure of themselves when it came to dealing with Homestead which only compounded problems.
Consider: the Homestead men struck over wage cuts but only 300 some men of almost 4,000 were affected. Why did all the other workers join the fight then? For the answer you’ll need to read the book.
BILL MINUTAGLIO, author, February 12, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Have you discovered any new documents or information regarding the relationship between Andrew Jackson and Lafitte? Or, are you providing a new interpretation on new documents?
MINUTAGLIO: Thanks for asking—I’m doing both. Have you read Stephen Harrigan’s “Gates of the Alamo”? It’s an interesting exercise in revisiting existing documents but adding some new interpretations, approaches.
WALTER ISAACSON, author, July 9, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Benjamin Franklin proposed the colonies create a Governor General to coordinate their activities. It is interesting that Benjamin Franklin saw the need for federalist cooperation long before all the states could realize this need. What were some of the debates over Benjamin Franklin’s proposal for a Governor General?
ISAACSON: Franklin came up with the first plan for a federal union in 1954, when he went to Albany with representatives of the other colonies to deal with the Indians. His plan—a shared sovereignty between the states and a national government—became the model for what we have today. But the colonies did not agree back in 1754, because they were jealous of their rights, so it went nowhere until the 1770s.
CZIKOWSKY: Benjamin Franklin, the father of the University of Pennsylvania, among others, was quite a notable scientist. How would the world view him if it had to consider him only for his scientific endeavors?
ISAACSON: He was the best scientist of his century. He came up with the most important discovery that lightning was a flow of a single fluid, not different fluids. And he showed that lightning was an electric discharge and invented a rod to tame it. That was the most important invention of the century.
GWENDOLYN WRIGHT and ELYSE LURAY, filmmakers, July 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Harrisburg is gathering a rather large collection of historic artifacts from Western states. Do you think there would be a large demand for tourists to come to Harrisburg to see artifacts from another part of the country? Does this open an opportunity to people who might not be able to travel so far? After all, we see objects from around the world in American museums. Will the public accept museums of pieces from other parts of the nation?
LURAY: Absolutely, I would travel anywhere in the country to see artifacts from other countries.
Harrisburg has great artifacts in itself—they already have wonderful history, furniture, quilts, Americana and I would encourage them to continue to preserve their early Americana antiques and collectibles.
As an appraiser and collect, I would travel anywhere for a good collection and when you are into collecting, you will find it normal to find things that are not indicative to that area.
WRIGHT: People would travel across the country for interesting collections. People are drawn to interesting collections that tell stories.
CZIKOWSKY: During the Revolutionary War, the Americans were so certain the British would attack the Connecticut River that they fortified it so heavily the British never attacked. There is a sign on the river banks reading “On this spot in 1776, absolutely nothing happened.” Still, there are many historical artifacts showing how people lived. What types of things more interest historians: furniture, paintings, documents, what?
LURAY: Historians are interested in any type of history regardless if it is an artifacts, book, etc. and not one is more important than another. Each object has a story to tell even if the values are different, the history isn’t.
EDWARD KLEIN, author, July 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: John Kennedy, Jr. wanted to be an actor, and even dated an actress Daryl Hannah for awhile. How good an actor was he, according to people who saw him? Obviously, his name had drawing power. Did he have talent, or the potential to develop talent?
KLEIN: Yes, he did. In fact, one director described him as one of the most talented young actors of his generation. I think John would have made a brilliant actor and that it was a shame his mother didn’t allow him to follow his star.
CZIKOWSKY: You mention in your book that John Kennedy, Jr. was seeking marriage counseling. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to learn if it would be successful. Based on your knowledge of the parties, could the marriage have been saved through counseling?
KLEIN: I think it might have been. In addition, John Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York, was acting as a counselor to try to save this famous Catholic marriage. Furthermore, John had political ambitions and he surely would have preferred to stay married. It is impossible to predict these things, but I think there is a possibility that these two young people, despite all their difficulties, might have worked things out.
CZIKOWSKY: One Bush gets caught conducting illegal behavior with savings and loans. One Bush is arrested due to a drug habit. Two Bush daughters engage in underage drinking. Is this the beginnings of a curse on the Bush Dynasty? KLEIN: You’ll have to wait for the publication of Kitty Kelley’s forthcoming family biography of the Bushes, which I’m confident will answer your questions.
CZIKOWSKY: It is easy to speculate about what could have been. Yet, do you believe John Kennedy, Jr. would have run for Governor? If he did, how do you think he would have done? How would Governor Pataki have responded to a Kennedy campaign, and who have been the likely winner of a Pataki-Kennedy race?
KLEIN: I know from my sources that Sen. Ted Kennedy and John, Jr. were seriously discussing his running for the Democratic nomination of Governor of New York state. Gov. Pataki heard about this and was known to have remarked that John Kennedy, Jr. was the only potential Democratic opponent he really feared. Despite his lack of political experience, John would have made a formidable candidate, not only thanks to his good looks and famous name, but also because of his charm and public poise. I think he would have given Mr. Pataki a real run for his money and could well have won the Governorship thanks to his almost universal popularity.
LAUREN KESSLER, author, August 25, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How did you find research material (regarding KGB spy Elizabeth Bentley)? What sources did you find? Are there many people still living who knew her and, if so, were you able to conduct many interviews?
KESSLER: Elizabeth Bentley has an enormous FBI file that like many of the files for the Cold War period is now quite accessible. You no longer need to file a FOIA request from the FBI. That is a very big file—maybe 200,000 documents, so that’s one major source. Another major source is the Venona material—which was probably the best kept counter-espionage document in U.S. history. It is a couple of thousand decrypted cablegrams sent between Soviet embassies in the U.S. to Moscow. This was started by Army intelligence in 1941 and kept secret to 1996. At any rate, these documents mention Bentley by her code name and a number of her sources and establish what was going on. Anyone can find these at www.nsa.gov. They’re right there.
There are also a number of other documents—including the files of the Rosenbergs, Nathan Gregory, who are part of this espionage network. And of course, Bentley testified at a very large number of Congressional hearings, criminal trials, and grand juries and all that is available.
Bentley died in 1963. She was an only child. Her parents died before her and she had no children. So very direct contracts these many years later was not possible. I was able to interview a lot of octogenarian communists who were contemporaries and knew of her or interacted with her. I believe I interviewed every FBI agent still alive who was involved with the case.
ZACHARY KARABELL, author, August 25, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: John Kennedy provided the vision on civil rights, yet it was left to Lyndon Johnson to get that vision enacted. How might President Kennedy, had he lived, have fared in getting the Civil Rights Act enacted?
KARABELL: I think that Kennedy might have accepted a more watered-down bill than Johnson did. There were so many powerful Southern Democratic Senators in 1964-1964 that getting a meaningful bill through Congress was a serious challenge, and Kennedy did not have the personal sway that Johnson did. LBJ also could use the mantle of the martyred President, and that helped him get the bill passed. So my best guess is that there would have been a civil rights bill, but not one as revolutionary as the one that LBJ got passed.
CZIKOWSKY: I The decision for John Kennedy to telephone Martin Luther King, who was imprisoned, in the middle of the 1960 elections was another telling moment in the development of Kennedy’s appreciation of the importance of civil rights. There were fears among some of his advisors that doing so could hurt him in the election. It was a Pennsylvanian, Harris Wofford, who pushed hard for the call to be made. What did Kennedy think of King in the time period between 1960 and the 1963 civil rights march?
KARABELL: In our book, which is coming out in late September and is called “Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice”, we discuss that phone call and how it helped Kennedy win Black votes in the 1960 election. But after that, Kennedy kept his distance from King, and he and his advisers tended to view King as a nuisance who was pushing too hard for too much too fast. Only with the Birmingham protests in the spring of 1963 and then with the march did JFK come to accept King as a valuable ally on civil rights reform.
JOEL KOTKIN, Senior Fellow, Pepperdine University, September 9, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Your comment regarding how one needs to consider what we call a city is very appropriate. Some cities, such as Indianapolis, are essentially the former inner city that has merged with its suburbs. Similarly, Los Angeles is a city with suburbs. New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia are basically not included with their suburbs. How are city-suburbs such as Indianapolis and middle sized towns near them doing compared to the middle sized towns closer to traditional cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.?
KOTKIN: There is no one template. L.A. for example is becoming not a city with suburbs, but a multi-polared urban archipelago.
N.Y is more traditional and is doing much better than some other places, although not as well as in the late 1990s.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have comments on the debate on height limits? An editorial in this month’s Governing magazine mentions how the low heights of buildings makes Paris an attractive city. On the other extreme, what would New York be without tall buildings? Do medium size cities lose their sense of community when they allow tall buildings, or do you think that tall buildings are an important part of their economic vitality?
KOTKIN: I think it’s a case by case issue.
Frankly, I think N.Y. would be better off if it had maintained more of its pre-1950s structures, particularly in lower Manhattan.
DAVID VON DREHLE, author, October 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: After the (Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911), the public and officials were shocked. How did the press handle the story?
VON DREHLE: The press played a surprisingly minor role in the legislation that came out of the fire. I expected to see more than I found. In fact, as I say in the book, with a few weeks after the fire, the leading paper in the city—the New York World—ran a story in its back pages reporting that interest in the fire and in workplace safety was evaporating.
Likewise, coverage of the trial of the Triangle owners—they were indicted on a charge of manslaughter and stood trial in December 191100was amazingly brief and cursory.
The energy for reform came almost entirely from Tammany Hall, seeking to strengthen its connection to a new generation of immigrant workers.
FRANCES STEAD SELLERS, journalist, November 3, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: In American Studies, and many other scholarly studies related to race and ethnicity, there are raging debates between scholars (i.e. romantics) who seek to preserve identities and traditions and scholars (i.e. advocates of the melting pot theories) who believe we should concentrate on an evolving future that blends past experiences. Why can’t we do both: learn, respect, and honor our traditional pasts while allowing society to evolve?
SELLERS: You are absolutely right. We should both honour our past and build a common future. Our differing traditions benefit from borrowing from each other. But traditions should not be used to justify injustice. There’s where universal values are more important than tradition.
And, in my view, the fact that a raging debate exists about the balance between preserving identifies and evolving identities is a good thing.
TRACY TRAGOS, filmmaker, November 11, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: I understand the desire and interest to learn about our roots and who are ancestors were. Yet, often as people search for these connections, people always ask “why bother? How is knowing this going to change any part of your life?” Let me pose these questions to you: does your life change from better knowing your roots?
TRAGOS: Oh boy, that was a question asked by so many—my mother, my husband—even by me at real low times—“what’s the point? It’s not going to change the ending, so why go there?” But to me, in the end, there was a point. And in some small way I think I have changed the ending—it’s not that my father (a solider who died in the Viet Nam War) comes back to life, that he doesn’t die in the end—it’s that for the first time in my life, I have a sense of my father and he gets to live on in me, in a way that he never has before. All the quirky, small, silly stuff that made him human gives me a better sense of myself, and who I am, his daughter. Yes, my life changed in huge ways for having a deeper knowledge of my roots, my history, my father, and myself.
CZIKOWSKY: How did you pick the title ”Be Good, Smile Pretty?”
TRAGOS: “Be Good, Smile Pretty” came from the way my father sometimes signed his letters to my mother. It resonated with me, because it felt like his voice…and advice he might have given me if he had lived…
I also thought the phrase spoke to how my mother reacted to my father’s death—the way she shut-down and walled off the painful emotions of grief in an effort to survive.
ERROL MORRIS, director. December 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: There have been many who questioned the morality of bombing civilians during war. What were Mr. (Robert) McNamara’s moral questions about the war against Japan? Was it the bombing campaign, or something else?
MORRIS: McNamara’s moral questions involved “proportionality…”
I have read many accounts of the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of them mention the fire-bombing of the sixty-seven Japanese cities which preceded the use of nuclear weapons.
Gen. Curtis LeMay (who McNamara reported to during the war) is one of the few military officers in 1945 who questioned the use of nuclear weapons. He realized that he had already effectively destroyed Japan.
To paraphrase McNamara, “why was it necessary to use nuclear weapons when we had already destroyed Japan…”
CZIKOWSKY: Who was the obscure State Department official who spoke up to President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis? What did he say, and what implications did that have?
MORRIS: Llewelyn Thompson, ex-Ambassador to the Soviet Union. McNamara’s point: During a crucial moment in the Executive Committee discussions on the Cuban missile crisis, Thompson, based on his personal knowledge of Khruschev, urged Kennedy to continue to negotiate. It is a lesson in the film: EMPHATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY. That is, try to understand what your enemy’s underlying motivation might be. Try to see it through their eyes…A lesson that has obvious benefits for the current time.
ELIZABETH DEANE, producer, January 13, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What were the differences in being a slave versus being a tenant farmer? Obviously, a tenant farmer had the freedom to seek economic opportunity elsewhere. Yet, in terms of everyday life, weren’t most tenant farmers just as poor and had to struggle just as much as before?
DEANE: At first sharecropping looked like an ok deal—a reasonable solution to a big problem. But over time, it evolved into something much as you describe.
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., Harvard University Humanities Professor, February 4, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Do you see any major regional differences in racial attitudes? I ask because there is a perception in speaking to Southerners that the attitudes are vastly different than, say, here in Pennsylvania. Is there any documentation to this, or is it primarily myth?
GATES: During my travels around the country to make the film series it seemed to me that attitudes toward race were remarkably similar. I did not encounter major regional differences. The legacy of racism in the South, because of the history of slavery, makes racial progress more dramatic than in the north.
MICHAEL DOBBS, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 5, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: I haven’t read your book (“Saboteurs”), yet I remember reading about this. My recollection and impression is that, fortunately for us, the Germans (in World War II) did a poor job training the saboteurs for life on their own. Is it true they spent too much time enjoying the life of freedom away from war and drank so heavily that one of them gave the mission away in a drunker stupor?
DOBBS: The saboteurs received about three weeks’ basic training in the handling of explosives, detonators, etc. I think this was a story of dual incompetence. The Germans were certainly incompetent, but so were the Americans. The Coast Guard let the saboteurs get away from Amagansett beach, after running into them the night they landed. The FBI failed to follow up obvious leads. In the end, the Germans turned out to be more incompetent than the Americans.
CZIKOWSKY: Does international law say anything about such cases involving saboteurs? If so, what does it say?
DOBBS: Saboteurs do not benefit from the normal rights accorded to uniformed soldiers under the Geneva Convention. They are not considered prisoners of war. That said, however, the Geneva conventions still ban inhumane and degrading treatment of any prisoners. After these saboteurs were arrested, The German government protested their executions, but the protest was brushed aside by Roosevelt.
DAVID HACKETT FISCHER, author, March 30, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Did you ever see any of the reenactments of Washington’s Crossing? If so, what did you think of them?
FISCHER: Yes, I was present in 2000 at a very large reenactment and have formed high respect for reactors for their close and serious respect for history. Very interesting to me were the Hessian and British reenactors as well as those in American uniforms.
WALTER A. McDOUGALL, University of Pennsylvania History Professor, April 26, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Would you say one of the great American ideals was that we learned to settle religious differences peacefully? Instead of going to battle over theological differences, (Lyme, Ct.) is a perfect example of the new American way. When part of the community disagreed with the town’s dominant religious teachings, they left to form Lyme, N.H. or to form Lyme, Ohio. Under the old European example, they would have taken up arms.
McDOUGALL: The American experiment in “free exercise of religion” is indeed one of the most important sources of what made American exceptional, at least in the 18th and 19th centuries (Europe eventually drifted into tolerance as faith itself declined there). I cite Bob Dylan’s line; “I heard the Sermon on the Mount and knew it was too complex. It didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects.” That is a stunning poetic inversion, because of course the Sermon on the Mount is chilling in its
* simplicity *, whereas the reflections of a broken glass are wild and kaleidoscopic. So are the effects of religious liberty in America: effects that are psychological, social, economic, and political as well as spiritual. Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago has traced all America’s great reform movements to religious revivals or “Great Awakenings”. I think he exaggerates somewhat, but the first revival in the 1730-40s did help sow the seeds for independence from Britain, the second in the 1830-40s certainly drove the abolitionist movement, and the third from around 1880-1920 inspired the Social Gospel, Progressive Era reforms, and (I must say) that crusading foreign policy culminating in Woodrow Wilson.
BERNARDINE DOHRN, Former Weather Underground Member, April 28, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What were your personal thoughts on September 11, 2001? I know you never did or contemplated something at that scale. Yet, did you think what the terrorists might have been thinking, and what was your personal reaction to the horrific results?
DOHRN: My response was, I am guessing, like yours. Stunned, horrified, racing to try to take in the implications, the reality, the violation on such a massive scale.
Since we were not terrorists and killed no one, and the apparent perpetrators of September 11 were right wing, religious zealots, I don’t feel qualified to even imagine what they were thinking.
What astounds me is that our Administration appears, unlike the rest of us who were in mourning for weeks, to have been racing to put out every piece of reactionary legislation and military aggression they ever dreamed of. Yikes.
RON CHERNOW, author, May 10, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What was the closest opportunity that might have brought Alexander Hamilton to the Presidency, and where did events go wrong for Mr. Hamilton?
CHERNOW: Excellent question. Let me start by saying that all of the founders came out of the Revolution with deservedly large egos and reputations. And there was a kind of hierarchy based on age. Washington was unanimously elected the first President and there was never any question about that. It was assumed at the time of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In terms of age and stature, John Adams was next in line and Hamilton made no attempt to enter the 1796 election. His first real chance would have been in the 1800 election, but he marred—nay, ruined—his chances through two events. He published a scathing open letter about John Adams that split the Federalist Party and damaged Hamilton more than Adams. He had also published the 95 page pamphlet about the Maria Reynolds affairs, which led people to question his judgement. In other words, Hamilton had committed political suicide once too often. By the 1804 election, he was dead.
GORDON S. WOOD, author, June 1, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How do you think religious differences affected Benjamin Franklin opposed to other revolutionary leaders? There have been scholars who have placed great emphasis pm the Quaker background of Philadelphia in general as opposed to the more activist Protestantism found in Boston. Do you have any thoughts on how religious differences affected Franklin and his cohorts?
WOOD: Franklin was not a Quaker but he lived a good part of his life in the Quaker dominated city of Philadelphia. I think Franklin found the great diversity of religions to lead him to believe that no one of them was all-important. He was not an emotionally religious man. He valued religion for its usefulness in keeping moral.
ART SPIEGELMAN, author, October 26, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: A friend evacuated one of the Towers on September 11 and he distributed some of the most disturbing photographs he took of what it was like to evacuate with people jumping to their deaths and smoke and debris all around you, We all have memories of where were at 9 am, September 11, 2001. Where were you, and what are your memories and thoughts from that day?
SPIEGELMAN: It really is the narrative of the book “”In the Shadow of the Towers”. Early on the morning of September 11, my wife Francois and I were heading out to vote in a New York primary when The Plane roared over our heads and smashied into the Trade Towers, ten blocks from ourselves. We ran down just as various people were running out of Ground Zero to find our 14 year old daughter, who had just started going to Stuyvesant High School three days before, virtually next door to the towers. It took awhile to find her amongst 3,000 students in the panicked building. While we were inside, the first tower fell. We got out just in time for the second tower to fall just behind us, and outran the toxic cloud of rubble, then went uptown to pick up our son.
And then a 9/11 that lasted six months for me before turning into September 12 began, I got stuck in September 11. Other people started turning calendar pages. During that period, I started thinking about how to find the bits of brain I’d left in the rubble, by starting the series of pages that became this book.
ROBERT McNEIL, author, January 13, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Do regional dialects exist? Ayep.
McNEIL: Yes, they certainly survive despite the general impression that our immersion in broadcast media is homogenizing the language. Not only do dialects survive, some are growing more distinctive, for instance in the cities around the Great Lakes, in California, and among African Americans in the inner cities. Some dialects are dying out, due not to medial but the movement of people. Some examples of disappearing dialects are Gullah, the “Hillbilly” dialect of Appalachia and in the Sea Islands off the Carolinas.
CZIKOWSKY: Why do regional dialects remain? We move around, we communicate with others more, and yet our distinct language differences remain. What prevents people from blending towards a uniform way of pronouncing words?
McNEIL: Regional dialects remain because they are deeply embedded in our psyches and our identities. They may also be an unconscious way of defending ourselves against the forces of globalization and uniformity in our clothing, food chains, and media. This local sense of identity is a powerful force and is connected to our desire to be like the people we live among. One linguist, Carmen Fought, says: “We want to talk like the people we want to be like.”
MARTIN SHERWIN, author, April 12, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There were some physicists who, before the first atomic bomb was ever exploded, theorized that the nuclear chair reaction would continue indefinitely until the entire world and perhaps the entire universe was destroyed. Obviously, this theory was wrong and obviously Mr. (Robert) Oppenheimer discounted this theory. Yet, how confident and on what basis was Mr. Oppenheimer able to ascertain that a nuclear reaction indeed would fade out over a certain space and, indeed, did he think afterwards it was a mistake to place so many people close to the initial tests after radiation illnesses resulted?
SHERWIN: There are two stories that we tell in “American Prometheus” that are relevant. In 1942 Teller did some calculations indicating that an atomic bomb might lead to a chain reaction in the atmosphere. Oppenheimer immediately took this news to Arthur Compton at Chicago and they discussed it. Hans Bethe redid Teller’s calculations and proved that he had made errors (which was not unusual as it turns out). Then before the Los Alamos tests (allegedly) Fermi took side bets that New Mexico would be incinerated. (Frankly, I don’t believe that story despite the fact that it has been told and retold.) I don’t believe that anyone was so close to the test of July 16 that they were affected by radiation.
COURTLAND MILLOY, Washington Post Columnist, May 31, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Often, cities tear down things to enhance economic development and to improve our lives. Yet, cherishes memories are replaced. Are there any particular buildings and places you recall, even though insignificant to others, that you miss most?
MILLOY: There have been so many buildings torn down that it’s hard to remember what used to be where. I do remember that the Pick Lee Hotel was located next door to the Washington Post when I came here in May 1975. It had a nice bar, and it was okay for reporters to tie on a few after work back in those days. Fine watering hoe, it was. I also miss a barbeque joint that used to be up on 14th Street called Pig in the Pit; ribs tasted much better than the name sounds. Also, there were lots of strip joints on 14th Street—not that I went to any of them, but they did add a certain flavor to the area. That was before the FBI building was constructed nearby and those places had to go.
EDWARD J. RENEHAN, JR., author, June 21, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Jay Gould lived in a period before some of what he did became illegal. Thus, it may be difficult for us to judge him based on our sense of legality. Yet, isn’t it fair to still consider many of his business practices unethical? Even if they were permitted or were more common, wasn’t he aware that there were many ethical questions involved in what he was doing?
RENEHAN: Of course Jay was aware that there were many ethical questions involved in what he was doing; but he also knew that EVERYONE against whom he competed—the Daniel Drews and Cornelius Vanderbilts—were engaged in EXACTLY the same types of stock pools, bear-raids, etc. with which he involved himself. There was absolutely no percentage in being a Boy Scout on Wall Street in Jay’s day; to behave ethically in all matters was to lose. I do not make the case in my book that Jay was a saint, only that he was not the over-arching villain, the financial vampire, that has been rumored for so long. The ruses and gambits of Wall Street that occupied Jay were not ones that he exercised alone, although he may well have exercised them much more expertly than most of his rivals.
TUKUFU ZUBERI, University of Pennsylvania Sociology Professor, July 26, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There were some deep family divisions regarding supporting the Revolutionary War, especially at the beginning when even some later pro-war leaders were still arguing for negotiations with England. I know it pained Benjamin Frankly that his son became a loyalist Governor of New Jersey. How brutal did the infighting get?
ZUBERI: You are correct, many families were split regarding support for the Revolutionary War or continued loyalty to the British Empire. Tens of thousands of the North American population actually fought for the British.
JOSEPH ELLIS, author, September 19, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There have been so many books written about George Washington, and I have read several of them. What new ground does your book (“His Excellency”) cover or explore?
ELLIS: My access to the modern edition of the Washington papers added much to my scholarship, particular a fresh interpretation of the formative years of Washington’s life, especially the French and Indian War. It also offers a different explanation to the reasons why Washington is committed to American independence—why he loses so many battles but wins the war and his strategic insights.
Also, the book offers the fullest explanation of his position on two important issues---slavery and the issues surrounding Native Americans.
LAUREN WILCOX, freelance author, September 19, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: As someone interested in history, I found the comment that everything in Las Vegas is torn down before it can become historic. Which historic buildings, if any, did you find? (would the Golden Nugget be the closest, which means it will soon be torn down?)
WILCOX: Thanks for the question. I thought it was an interesting comment, too. It made me think about what made something historic---that a building would have been part of a town’s daily life long enough to be associated with an era that maybe isn’t there anymore, or is disappearing. I visited an official historic structure, the old Mormon Fort, built by the town’s first settlers on the site of an old spring (which is no longer there). The fort was interesting because it was such a drab, unassuming, utilitarian piece of architecture in a town full of buildings that are just the opposite, but it feels very remove from the Las Vegas you or I would recognize. I did feel that the buildings I liked the best and responded to the most---like the Golden Nugget or other iconic old structures---are not, on the whole, what Las Vegas focuses on, and the whole thrust of the city’s development is not about the past at all. Obviously, there are some drawbacks to this, from a preservation perspective, but it does give the city’s growth a real (if sort of manic) energy, too.
JAMES W. LOEWEN, author, October 25, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There is definite economic segregation with zoning and building laws to create de facto racial segregation. It is interesting that this was literally stated policy during the past century. How were you able to document all this? Were was information about these practices kept?
LOEWEN: There is half a chapter in “Sundown Towns” telling how. Briefly, I often had to rely on oral history. This is a topic where oral history can be more accurate than written. Anna, Il., for example, drove out its Black population in 1909 and has been known from that day to this as “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed—ANNA”. In 1954 it published a fat coffee table history, “Anna. Il., A Century of Progress”, 450 pages, a paragraph on every single local business, even the Dairy Queen. But not one word on 1909, on the origin of the slang meaning for “Anna”, not one word on Anna as a sundown town. Conversely, people will TELL you about it, with details, verbally, face-to-face.
CZIKOWSKY: Have you looked at the subject of racial segregation within communities? For instance, I recall researchers claiming that Philadelphia was one of the most racially segregated cities in America even though, in total, it appeared to be an ethnically diverse city. There were whole blocks that were not only racially segregated yet often 90 percent or more of its residents were ethnically segregated.
LOEWEN: Sometimes I treat “sundown neighborhoods”, especially when these are huge. West Lawn, Chicago, for example, depending on how it is bounded, has 25,000 to 101,000 residents. But there are other books, good ones, on the segregation within cities. What is amazing, and what I tried to remedy, is the complete lack of treatment of entire towns that excluded Blacks totally. Large cities like Appletom, Wisconsin, for gosh sakes!
JEROME KARABEL, University of California, Berkeley Sociology Professor, November 2, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Although the Ivy League wasn’t created until the 1950s, didn’t some of the other Ivies have decent records towards accepting Jewish students, even if religious discrimination existed to some degree. Didn’t Penn have a high percent of Jewish students throughout most of the 20th century? KARABEL: You are correct about Penn, which did indeed have a high percentage of Jewish students throughout the 20th century. Among the Ivy League colleges, Penn is the only one that clearly never had a policy of discriminating against Jews. Scholars are not sure why this was so, but some have speculated that it had to do with the influence of Quakers on Penn’s Board of Trustees.
KARENNA GORE SCHIFF, author and daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, February 27, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Which First Ladies do you admire, and why?
SCHIFF: I didn’t profile any First Ladies (in “Lighting the Way”) but can recommend a book to you—“Hidden Power” by Kati Marton—if you are interested in that subject in depth. However there is one First Lady who weaves throughout the stories in “Lighting the Way” and had a huge impact—Eleanor Roosevelt. Alice Hamilton was actually one of her role models and she was also close to Viginia Durr. She and Frances Perkins were allies but had a difficult friendship. E.R. was a real public servant in her own right—fighting segregation, working to alleviate poverty, giving voice to the less powerful. I admire her tremendously.
CZIKOWSKY: I know there are so many great women that to pick any few means that a lot of remarkable women are left off the list. As more women are going to college now than ever before, what do you think of the inspirations that people such as Margaret Mead, Jane Goodall, and so many others have brought to the world?
SCHIFF: I think that both Mead and Goodall are inspirational and fascinating. I’m afraid I’m not an expert on either one but would love to learn more about them. Certainly the fact that women have done such wonderful things in many different fields—science, arts, business—is great and can inspire young women choosing their own paths. This book is really about women who were political and I hope you enjoy it.
CZIKOWSKY: Who are some of the inspirational women of today who you believe are helping to change and improve the world?
SCHIFF: The last chapter of “Lighting the Way” is about Gretchen Buchenholz, a child advocate who is changing the world for the better. Her friend Marian Wright Edelman is another who is leading the charge to solve the day care crisis. And then there is Susan Solomon, a scientist who is working on global environmental issues.
WILLIAM BENNETT, former U.S. Education Secretary, June 13, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: You wrote the following; “Until the 1950s or so the Republican Party was a much greater hope for freedom and equality.” Do you concede that the Democratic Party has been the political party producing greater hope and equality since the 1950s?
BENNETT: Great question. Obviously, I don’t, however I do give credit to Kennedy and Johnson for important civil rights legislation and to great champions of equal rights such as Hubert Humphrey, and of course Dr. King. But civil rights legislation of the ‘60s would not have passed without Republicans like Dirksen, and of course was opposed by Democrats like Robert Byrd and William Fulbright. And today equality and color blindness is championed by conservatives with many liberals want to apportion, admit, and reward using racial preference.
SALLY QUINN, Washington Post Staff Writer, November 22, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Have you considered the origins of Thanksgiving from the perspective of the Native Americans who heard the celebratory noise and came to inquire what the commotion was amongst the Pilgrims, and then assisted in the gathering of additional food when they saw the Pilgrims had meager food? What attachments did the natives attach to the first Thanksgiving, and how do they feel about subsequent celebrations of what would lead to the loss of their lands? Have there been surveys as to how current descendants fell as to how Thanksgiving is represented?
QUINN: I think most of us do understand that the Native Americans came to help out the Pilgrims and I refer you to Chief Lyons who talks about Thanksgiving from his point of view. None of us feels good about the things that happened to the Indians after that first Thanksgiving. That’s why it is appropriate to remember them and their kindness toward the settlers there. It’s also a good time to ponder how people can learn to understand each other and respect their differences, not just here but all over the world.
MICHAEL K. HONEY., author, January 16, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Had Martin Luther King, Jr. lived, what was next on his activist agenda after the Memphis sanitation strike? HONEY: King was in the midst of his Poor People’s Campaign. He went to Memphis because he was called there by the local movement. If he had lived, his next stop was Washington, D.C., where he hoped to encamp thousands of poor people to lobby the government. The demand was to redirect military spending to housing, health care, job training, and a living income for those who did not have jobs. He proposed to abolish poverty directly. This was a form of income redistribution—away from the military, to the people.
HEATHER EWING, author, April 24, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Why did James Smithson leave his collection to a country he had never visited?
EWING: That’s the big question! I hope that my book shows that by uncovering the story of Smithson’s life—and placing him back in the context of the English Enlightenment, in the coffeehouses of London and in Paris during the French Revolution—that it’s possible to begin to understand the ideals behind such an extraordinary bequest.
Also, I get the sense that Smithson would have come to the U.S.A. if he could have…it turns out that he loather sea travel, since it made him so ill. In the early 1800s he waited four whole years on the continent, hoping for a break in the Napoleonic Wars so he could go home to England via the Channel rather than what he called the “wild and endlessly circuitous” route of the North Sea.
CZIKOWSKY: I understand most of Mr. Smithson’s works were destroyed in a fire. Did most of his rocks survive, or was the fire so bad they were destroyed?
EWING: That’s right. Smithson’s effects—his personal possessions like his tea set and his umbrella, his chemistry equipment, and his huge mineral collection (which was considered one of the finest in the U.S. in the 1840s)—were all kept in the Regents’ Room of the Castle. Everything in that room was destroyed, except for a safe that contained some of the institution’s financial records. The mineral specimens were all very small, so they were lost entirely.
His library of books, however, along with some notes of his mineral catalogues, were saved, since they were in a different part of the building. So we have a sense of what was in his mineral collection from these notes. The library was very helpful to me in my work—he annotated some of the books, so I studied those notes very carefully for clues about his thinking.
BENJAMIN WOOLLEY, author, May 9, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I have heard the allegations of cannibalism (at the James settlement. What exactly is the evidence that someone engaged in cannibalism?
WOOLLEY: During what’s known as the ‘Starving Time’, the English were, according to one account, reduced to eating the corpse buried in a makeshift grave, and one of the settlers apparently murdered his wife, salted her flesh, and stored it in barrels, though he was found out and ‘burned’.
JOHN FERLING, author, August 14, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Many soldiers signed for the military (during the Revolutionary War) for a set term and when the term was up they left and went back to their families and their jobs. Often this was necessary as their families needed them. How did the Revolution impact families and how did the military work with the problem of rotating soldiers?
FERLING: In the first two years of the war, men enlisted for only one year. That was no way to wage a war, as General Washington repeatedly told Congress in 1775 and 1776. Indeed, few of these men reenlisted, leaving Washington to recruit a new army in the fact of the enemy army. After the string of defeats in the New York campaign, Congress finally awakened to reality and, beginning in 1777, men were asked to enlist for three years or the duration of the war. The evidence suggests that the composition of the army changed dramatically once Congress went over to a standing arm concept. Previously, the men in the army had represented a reasonably good cross section of America’s male inhabitants. But from 1777 onward a far greater percentage of the men tended to be single, property-less, and from the lower socio-economic strata of society. A substantial percentage (up to twenty-five percent in some states) were immigrants.
As there men were in the service for the long haul, they were separated from loved ones for extended periods. During the winter months, however, when fighting slowed or stopped altogether, the Continental army was generous with furloughs (if for no other reason than it meant fewer mouths to feed during times of scarcity.)
JAY WINIK, author, November 1, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What perspectives or facts does your book (“The Great Upheaval”) present that have not been explored in previous works?
WINKI: What I wanted to do was to bring alive the world as the Founders themselves actually saw it—and that wasn’t just the thirteen colonies or the young United States, it was a global world. As a result, “The Great Upheaval” presents an entirely fresh take on this period. Conventional scholarship has long isolated the story of America’s founding decade from the rest of the globe, but this misses a key part of the picture. Our Founding Fathers were all-consumed, and rightly so, by events in Europe and on the global stage—from the increasing anarchy and bloodshed of the French Revolution that swept the continent, to Russia’s dismemberment of the ancient Kingdom of Poland. I’ve come to believe that the best way to understand the events in the young America, e.g. the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Act, is to see them in this larger context. I sought to restore this lost part of the historical story; it’s an extraordinary tale.
RICK PERLSTEIN. Campaign for America’s Future Senior Fellow, February 4, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Did you examine the general values of the generations (in his book “Nixonland”)? I have read commentary where the youth of the 1960s rebelled against the fear of their parents who went through the Depression and World War II and how ironically many of the children of couples who got married in the 1960s have taken the message of the 1960s and more freedom and openness and become more conservative in attitudes than their parents.
PERLSTEIN: The main factor, I think, was economic. The economy was prosperous and unflappable like it had been probably in no other society in human history. Many young people could afford personal experimentation in a way unimaginable to today’s students, saddled as they are with massive student debt (remember that at Berkely, one of the epicenters of the student uprising, tuition was free!).
By the same token, this increased the resentment of the less-privileged young people for the dalliances of counterculture and antiwar folks who were seen, accurately, as for the most part more financially comfortable than “traditional” young people. It wasn’t uncommon for working class youth to hear “come back when you have that draft thing out of the way”, they heard at the factory gates, while richer kids had no problems getting out of the military obligations.
A lot of the resentments were class resentments. Fortune magazine did a huge poll of college students’ attitudes in 1969 (like I said, the society worshipped youth, can you imagine a business magazine devoting a whole issue to such a survey now) and the respondents from the more prestigious tier of schools were considerably more left-leaning than the lower tier.
STEVE WALDMAN, beliefnet.com editor-in-chief, March 11, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I find it interesting that the founding fathers were so disrespectful of the Catholic religion when it was the mostly Catholic French who came to their assistance. Did the interactions with the French help redefine any of their beliefs regarding Catholicism?
WALDMAN: What happened was the Colonists were deeply disrespectful of Catholics going into the revolution. But some of the leaders—especially George Washington---came to the conclusion that this was very counterproductive, exactly for the reason you mentioned. They needed to attract France as an ally. So Washington banned the practice of burning effigies of the Pope (which he called “monstrous”) and cracked down on anti-Catholic activities in general. After that, the public denunciations of Catholics became less frequent.
SHIWANI SRIVASTAVA, The Root Contributor, September 3, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I recall that after September 11 that anyone wearing a turban was suspect. People in government buildings wearing turbans were often questioned, and I had an American born friend who wore a turban who was questioned by police for taking a photograph in a garage. How does the Indian American population feel about the Patriot Act and Governor Jindal’s support of the Patriot Act?
SRIVASTAVA: I actually wrote a story on violence against the Siks (flowers of Sikhism, a South Asian religion in which men wear turbans) following 2/11, and the violence against this community was staggering. I’d also like to call attention to your point that Indian/South Asian Americans can be Hindu, Muslin, and a variety of other religions. Thanks for mentioning that. And yes, they have been unfairly profiled and taken into custody as a direct result of the Patriot Act, which Jindal supported making permanent. I think this is probably the biggest bone that the community would have to pick with Jindal.
But, as in important aside, it also shouldn’t dissolve into an us-versus-them mentality in terms of “oh, you should be racially profiling THOSE Muslims”. The point is, many of these people imprisoned under the Patriot Act (South Asian, Middle Eastern, whatever) were completely innocent and given no trial, which makes in inherently unconstitutional.
JULIE BECKMAN, Pentagon Memorial Designer, September 12, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: What were some of the designs you considered and rejected, and why were they rejected?
BECKMAN: Keith Kaseman and I always believed that the Memorial should be both individual and collective at the same time. We wanted to create a comfortable place where family members, friends—or even strangers—could come for 10 minutes or 2 hours. A place to sit, shade, and the sound of water were all criteria that we intended to incorporate. Very early in the design process, we considered one single water feature—like a large reflecting pool—with the individual markers surrounding it. We also, for only a brief moment, considered designing the Memorial units to be different from each other to emphasize their individuality—but quickly knew that it would be both logistically difficult to produce 184 uniquely designed pieces, but it also could be conceived as representing the individual which we never intended to do. We simply wanted to create a special place on the planet dedicated to each life lost.
RONALD KESSLER, former Washington Post Investigative Reporter, December 28, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: When did you learn Mark Felt was Deep Throat?
KESSLER: Of course, I could never be absolutely sure but I was convinced that Mark Felt was Deep Throat and I wrote that in my 2002 book called “The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI”, based primarily on the fact that I went to interview Felt in 2001 for the book and when I arrived at his home, his daughter Joan greeted me. She said “You know this guy Bob Woodward was out here about a year ago and he came in a white limousine and had the limousine park ten blocks away. He then walked to our house.”
She wasn’t quite sure who Woodward was but I knew that Woodward never would’ve taken that precaution unless he was still concealing his relationship with Felt.
In addition to that, Felt was in the perfect position to know the details of the FBI’s investigation. And another tip-off was that Felt’s instructions to Woodward on how they should meet were classic instructions used in spy work and I knew that Felt had spent more of his career in the FBI counterintelligence, which has to do with these signals that spooks give each other.
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