college involved. And, and, you know, I went there for a year and I dropped out.  And around that time in 1991, my uncle and aunt decided to move to California in order to pursue the Cambodian American dream, which was to own a donut shop and to make enough money so that they can send their kids to college. And I went along with them. And, you know, I was there, tried to work and helped out at the donut shop. And then I work as a janitor. I, I am, I clean people's bathtubs and toilets and offices and so on for quite a bit. I'm telling you this long story. It's connected to Long Beach. And it really has to do with, with an important moment in my life. And which was an accident. I decided to go to the library. I went to the Dana branch of the Long Beach library. And that was where I discovered literature. That was where I discovered the importance of books and imagination and thinking about my possible selves and what I could do with my life. So, you know, so I like to read a poem that sort of captures this particular moment, how the library won and how books, literature saved me. So I'll read that. And for today's event, and I'll read poems from my first three books, and maybe talk a little bit about, you know, where these poems came from. And that's sort of, you know, now I'll do that. And it was a little too long. I like Eric to interrupt me and said, Well, we're in a quarter of two or quarter of 11. And, and you need some Q&A. And I would love to talk and answer any of your questions that you have. Okay, so let me let's look at the first poem. This is from rule. This one page 72. How everything changed. I was a college dropped out working in Southern California, scrubbing, washing, mopping, emptying trash cans, or private homes, synagogue, local schools and offices in the Long Beach sip jar. Nothing backbreaking, just losing a couple of hours of sleep each night. One morning, out of boredom, I decided to visit the local library, the kind where old ladies push steel book carts, past little children playing, mothers gossiping, the kind where you can disappear quickly into a corner. It was in one such corner, hidden away from the sights and sounds of suburban mothers and their children, where I pick a random book off the shelf. A book of poems by that drunken old man, a book filled with social misfits and outcasts, drunks and prostitutes, barflies, cockroaches and vomit. At that moment, I felt my first breath. I was gasping for air. I felt my own sweet suffering and others. Loneliness was extinguished and compassion bloomed in my chest.  So that moment of being awakened by literature, that was the moment that changed my life. And from there, I went back to college, first Long Beach City College in Cal State, then the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Then I got my first job. I was like a winning the lottery as an assistant professor at Union College up in Schenectady, New York. I do consider myself very lucky, the whole sort of trajectory of it all. And in the process of discovering books, there's this sort of need to tell my own stories, and I didn't know how to do that. So I kept on reading books. And in the process of that, I also began to ask my uncles and aunts and grandmother what life is like for them. Okay. To answer Amber's question, Charles Bikowski was that first reader. And from there, he introduced me to other poets and writers and artists and philosophers. Bikowski's language was simple and accessible from the gut, pretty honest stuff. And that was something that I needed at that time. So I'll read some more poems from the collection. This one is about fishing. I was in Long Beach and at one point I would ride my bike down to the pier, and there was people fishing off the Long Beach pier and also San Pedro. So this poem is about fishing and about my uncles and aunts and other immigrants and refugees fishing. And I was always amazed their ability to survive and to maintain some of the livelihood that they had in Cambodia. Okay. So I'll read that poem, Fishing for Treay Plateau, also from this book, Grew. Fishing for Treay Plateau. You might have seen them fishing on the shores of Cape Cod Canal.  Or maybe you've seen them lining up all three sides of a pier in Salem, their wrists jerking in a language that bewitches the squids below. They are not the only ones. Other Cambodians and Vietnamese, once enemies, fish side by side on the same American pier. Other immigrants, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, speaking languages I can't understand, come together on this spot, sacred rods in hands beckoning the squid. Or maybe you've seen them under a bridge fishing the Providence River. Looking for Treay Plateau, a type of mackerel they used to eat in the refugee camp in Thailand. Sometimes my aunts and uncles run into an old friend from those long ago days. They talk about the lack of food, of sneaking out at night to fish, and of running, always running from the Thai police. They exchange phone numbers, share fishing secrets, and set up a time and place where they'll fish together again. When they get home, my aunts gut the fish, clean them, fry them, and put them in a boiling stew of galanggal, lemongrass, and cat fur leaves. My uncles and aunts sit in the circle on the floor, eat and tell stories of how this fish got away, or how one of them got caught by the Thai police. No matter how hard they try, they can never understand why my cousin and I ever bother with fishing. Why we catch and release food, as if it's some sport, and the difference in generations when it comes to fishing. I think maybe one more poem about my uncles and aunts. When I begin to think about my past and my history and my culture, and what my uncles and aunts went through, there's a sense of pride, absolutely pride, and even love for them.  But when you reach a certain age, when you start to look back, then you realize that you have a certain perspective, a one that changed quite a bit. So this one is, I know Tony G is here, and I don't want to talk too much about my life story, but I do need to provide a little bit of context here and there. This is about first snow, also from this book rule. First snow, we huddle behind the back door of our sponsor's house. My uncle, the bravest, because he spoke a little English, went out. My grandmother, Anne's, and I watched him through the kitchen window. He bent down, reached for the whiteness of this new world, and put some in his mouth. He looked back at us and smiled. We can make snow cones with this. America, the miraculous, our savior, you were the land of dreams then. So this next poem is very important to me. It's the only sort of potent memory that I have of my mom, and this is one of her and her funeral. I like to read this poem because it gives you a sense of how I became a writer and poet and thinker, or the kind of poet that I am. I'm a poet of loss and grief, and I used literature to rebuild what was lost from history, from politics, from migration. And so this is a poem about my memory of my mother and her funeral. Under the tamarin tree, the child sits on the lap of his aunt under the old tamarin tree outside the family home. The tree stands still quiet indifferent. The house sways on stilts. Mungs and saffron ropes and nuns with shave heads. Lips darken with beetle-nut stain. Sit chanting prayers for the child's mother. Incent perfumes to hot dry air. Dear emerges a strange familiar song between the child and his aunt that day. A distant one, melodic but harsh, as if the strings had run too tight. Each time the child hears prayers coming from the house, he cries. Each time he cries, the aunt, the girl herself, pinches the boy's thigh in the process of John, under the tamarin tree, is from the book rule, my first book of poems. In the process of talking to my grandmother aunts, and usually my aunts, my uncles don't talk much about the past. I learn about this kind of stuff. And I also, there's a moment when my aunt asks me, she's like, how did you have that memory? You were so young.  Anyway, a couple more poems from the, from Grew. This is called Inheritance, also from Grew. It's an interesting story, and I was talking to Eric about this earlier, how the older generations don't feel comfortable talking about the painful past, about the Khmer Roo, and what happens for us, so a younger generation. I'm considered a 1.5 generation, meaning that I came here at a certain age, and, you know, not, not young, but eight or nine years old, and I grew up here. But we are seen as the bridge generation, where we serve as a bridge between the first and the second generation of immigrants, in this case of Cambodian refugees. The point you had to do with, you know, there's a kind of absent, there's a kind of absent and present of that past, and the more I discover about this past, the more I feel nothing but pride, and there's nothing to be ashamed of, pride, in terms of our ability to survive, my uncles and aunts and grandparents, and to rebuild their lives and make families. I find that quite impressive. So this is the poem about the Khmer Roo, and what that world is like, and it, and I call it inheritance, it is our inheritance, something that we need to acknowledge, know, accept, and take it as part of our identity, okay. Inheritance, my uncles, aunts, and grandmother all agree, it was a difficult time, people starving, you don't trust the children, you don't trust your neighbors, friends, even your family. But this can't be, it must be something I read, something I taught, pointed, pointed out in a lecture, maybe discovered in a conversation with a survivor, a man with ashen hair and toothless smile, in an apartment complex in Lowell, Massachusetts.  I'd like to read the title poem from this book, this is a photograph, I don't know if you can see this, of my parents' wedding, under the Khmeru time, we hid our past, so this photograph was buried, and then somehow miraculously, my uncle or my aunt or my grandmother gave me this photo, you see the duct tape there, I'm not sure why, I think it's because, well, this is an uncle he was, you know, we try to protect his identity, anyway, enough of that, you can get a sense of what happened. I'd like to read this, maybe final poem, even though I have a lot of poems to read from this book, this one is called Gru, and it's the title poem, you know, there's something I'd like you to sort of, for those of you who are listening, I wouldn't be here reading to you these poems, I wouldn't be here being a poet, being a professor if I had not helped, you know, from guides, strangers and family members, and really, my sort of concoit success is based on the kindness of people, so one of the people is my grandmother, and this poem, this book is dedicated to her, and, you know, she passed away before the book came out, so that was one of the big things that got to me, she didn't get a chance to see the fruit of her love, so I'll read this book here, this poem, there's more to read from, but I think I got to make sure that we're okay with time, Gru, we were talking about survival when my uncle told me this, when you were young, we had nothing to eat, your grandmother saved for you the thickest part of her rice gruel, tasting that cloudy mixture of salt, water and grain, you cried out, this is better than beef curry, all my life I told myself I never knew suffering, other under the regime only love, this is still true, anyway I think I messed up with that reading, but I think it's fine, some of the stuff is getting to me, so I got to get through some of these poems as quickly as I can, I like to read a couple of poems from my second collection, this collection of poems called, and so I was blessed, is based on my trips to Vietnam, the first one was to see my father's side of the family, they are Khmer people from Khmer Graum and the Mekong Delta, it's where I gather stories about my father and his family, it's also about my trip to Vietnam as a tourist and as a faculty leader for the Vietnam term abroad or Union College and Hobart William Smith, I think I'll read two or three poems from this, the first one is this sort of very long poem called, searching for father in Khmer Graum, the seven part of the Mekong Delta, and let me see here, I think I'll read two sections of it, I'll do my best to read it without choking up, 11, your father, my aunt said, was generous, his heart as big as the sky, she opened wide her arms, her body lean to the weight of memories, he invited friends over, bought them dinners, he was a good big brother, he used to come up behind us, wrap his arms around our shoulders tightly, as she told the story, she wrapped her arms around herself, head tilted, eyes closed, weeping, my uncles sat in their corners blinking, staring at the chicken, pecking the dirt floor, 12, this is the story that they told me about my father and what he did for me, my father walked up to the Khmer Ru, I got to read this one now, my father walked up to the Khmer Ru after they killed the children and opened their stomachs to eat the livers, my father got down on his knees, clapped hands overhead, and begged them for a sliver of a victim's liver, so that I would not starve, while everyone was sleeping, my father snucked into the kitchen, stole a branch of coconuts, and buried them in the woods, each time I cried from hunger, he disappeared into the night, dug up a coconut, gave me the juice to drink, and with dirt encrusted fingers spoon out the flesh for me, his only child, so when I was doing the term abroad in Vietnam, it was very painful, it was the first time I became a father to this beautiful daughter who is now seven years old, so the poem is about me leading this term abroad, program of me as a son visiting his father's village, meeting his father's family for the first time, but it's also me being a father missing my own daughter, as I was in Vietnam for three, four months, that's quite a long time, so there are some poems about my daughter in this collection, song for Stella, my wife is in her third trimester, this is when every position is uncomfortable, sitting, standing, lying sideways, or on her back, she finds herself out of breath, walking up a few steps of stairs, at night I pick up my guitar, sit in front of the computer, turn to web pages with lyrics and chords, I strum, my wife sings to our unborn daughter, but I'm not a good keeper of time, I switch chords too soon or too late, and my wife already annoyed with the discomfort of sitting glares, she likes order, structure, constancy, she endures my inconsistency, closing her eyes, she focuses only on our daughter, who at first breath will recognize our sounds, I might be in trouble reading that one about my wife, so we'll see if she checks out this video, maybe three more poems just because of time, okay, this is third book of poems, it's called The Doctor Will Fix It, this is actually my daughter dressed up as a doctor, and having children for me is a good way to heal myself in the act of caring and loving my children, I don't know what psychologists, how they would analyze or talk about this, but it's a good way for me somehow to give my kids what I didn't have, and that way is somehow healing, I don't know if that makes sense, it's just true to me, so I'll read a couple poems from this book, it's all about my daughter, and my daughter, it was written around 2017-2018 when Trump became president, and there's a lot of stuff that deals with gender, with immigration, with the current political climate at that particular time, anyway, so I'll read some of these poems here, Moon in Khmer, you are a light when the sun is punched out and darkness reigns, you are the antidote to what came before, black blood, black heart, hands tied, kneeling before a ditch of human bones, your laughter pierces the silence of night that bore witness to the ones blood soaked land, your existence is resistant to the genocide that orphaned your father and drove his family out of the homeland, you are love against the hate of the Khmeru, this is the meaning of the name Janda, this is how to defeat both, and I do believe in that too, this idea that because the Khmeru was threatened by love, by family love, as they rebuilt a new society in a new year called year zero, so for me to be able to have family kids is a kind of resistance, it's a kind of way to defeat the Khmeru, a lot of stuff I could read from here, let me just go one more poem and then I have to do Q&A, I'd like to hear your thoughts, I really don't know how old I am, when we came to America, my uncle in Thailand, we were refugees and he created birthdays for all of us, and we kind of put all of us close in age, cousins and uncles and so on, so that we can be one big family in the refugee application, so when my wife began to celebrate my birthday for our daughter's sake, I always feel a little weird because it's not really my birthday, this is the poem about that and it's the last poem because I want to hear your questions, on the anniversary of my fake birthday, when the Khmeru put a plastic bag on the neighbor's head, kicked and dragged him away, his last breath extinguished, his broken body thrown in a ditch with other corpses, some with blood still warm and others decomposed from the hot sun, your birthday was the least of anyone's concerns, what concerns your uncle, aunts and grandparents was survival, which meant catching and killing a black snake to supplement the Mika ration of rice, water, and morning glories, they call lunch and dinner, what was glorious was hiding the food to share later in the darkwood family, logeye blowing on the embers to cook the snakes chewy meat, your uncles and aunts looked on quietly like hungry ghosts, your birthday was the least of anyone's concern, what concern your uncle at the refugee camp was making sure no one got separated, your birthday was invented to fit the refugee story, a paper family glued together, a neighbor turned into an uncle and the neighbor's daughter became a sister, when you have a family of your own 30 years later, your five-year-old daughter can't go to sleep on the night before your birthday, reminds you the next morning of the celebration to enjoy, squeals and sweet delight when she sees the cake with my little pony candle she and her mom have picked out and decorated, you ask her to help you blow out the candles and you eat the triple chocolate cake that your daughter loves, all you ever want on this day is to see her radiate, you play along this birthday game because you want her to have a normal life, anyway I don't think I'm going to finish reading that one, let's do some questions, I think that's it for my reading. Thank you so much Mr. Tuan, I'm you know just hearing you read your poems it's just so beautiful and so captivating and I know you talked about this earlier but we really feel your you know your emotion as you're reading your experience and I do think as hard as it is you know just telling your story is so important to just sort of preserve the history and and it really is reflected in your in your stories and I just want to thank you so much for for sharing with us, it means so much and it's so brave and inspiring that you do that and and again just thank you so much. I do want to say really quickly that we do have if you haven't picked up a copy of Mr. Tuan's books, we do have a copy of Gruel and so I was blessed in our Long Beach collection, every branch should have a copy so you're more than welcome to check out a copy and again thank you to Alex Pham who's in the chat for helping put this together and and sending over the the books, they've all been processed and we do have a copy so thank you so much and definitely you know if you haven't had a chance to come up and read they're just they're just wonderful reads and we're also recording the session so if there's anything that we might have missed or you might have missed it's going to be upload into our YouTube channel so we can always go back and refer to so I just wanted to make sure to put that out there before you know forgetting but I do want to ask, I'm going to go and start with if you don't mind the first question, there is a poem, it's a shorter poem and it's on page 43 of Gruel and you and I Mr. Tuan we were talking about it earlier, it's called Saturday Morning in Mildon, Massachusetts 1986 and if you don't mind if I read just it's a short poem so it's Saturday morning grocery shopping at the only Asian market in the city putting back fish sauce and soy sauce picking up milk bread and cereal, I told grandma to be quiet because Stephanie and her mother were there too and I couldn't help but notice the word only sort of being emphasized when referring to you know only Asian market and I wanted to ask if you could talk a little bit about the importance of diversity and how that's reflected in the importance of having diversity more you know businesses for for our community and and what that means to you. Absolutely you know when I when I was young growing up in the east coast in the 1980s there was a lack of diversity as a result when you don't see people who look like you not not only on tv and movies but at school you feel undervalued or not valued you feel alone and embarrassed and ashamed and the poem ends with you know this with the speaker in the poem feeling very embarrassed of eating Asian food in this case represented in the the fish sauce and just because he saw Stephanie her mom being there he was embarrassed of what he eats he was probably embarrassed of his own grandmother you know when I when I came to Long Beach California in the early 90s 91 what was amazing about that experience was it was so diverse in people and cultures in food and language and I didn't feel different I felt like finally I was at home and that was very special and Long Beach you know you know I started this reading with that poem about discovering Bukowski in a library but Long Beach was it's really about my birth my rebirth and Long Beach you know was the place where I had my first breath of someone who feels and could express himself and someone who feels at home so it is important in terms of this kind of events and this is why I do this and I asked you know Alexin to give all my books to the libraries in Long Beach in LA I want those kids who had my you know history or kids who just feel like they're different to pick up these books and say oh my goodness his name looks familiar or I could relate to this story and to see the possibilities of himself on what they can do with with their lives and this is really what what is about for me you know at the end of the day if there's a kid in Lowell in Riviera in Malden and Long Beach in LA they pick up this book or something of mine and they're moved by it and they said I don't have to do this or do that I could be something else then that's success for me as a writer I'll be very happy with that pretty pretty much so I don't know if that answers your question there Eric but diversity in a very personal sort of level that's what it means to me I think that's yeah I know that definitely answers it 100 percent you know to see yourself in you know in the community and to have it feels like it's in the home and and I hear that just hearing you talk it's so genuine and and thank you again that answers the question and also you were talking about family and in your poems there's a lot of reference to you know your your parents and your grandma and even your cousins your cousins parents um in the let for example in the poem lessons with cousins where you talk about you know teaching them to be strong because it's a cruel world you know and I I I see that you know I think that's that's so important and I and I I can see the longing though even though there was sort of a you know like arguments at a young age and as you mentioned earlier you know you grow to appreciate that because they're your family at the end of the day absolutely absolutely and my definition of strength changes uh now strength has to do with you know with love and tenderness and you know giving yourself um it's it has shifted and that was a funny poem you know lessons because when you grew up in the east coast at that time it was about survival and survival is not through arts and literature and kindness but through kind of physical toughness it was tough it was tough yeah and Alex also survived my cousin survived and he's fine he's I'm happy with all of them you know they did well for them so yeah this this room here is one of their you know it's my cousin's room they loan me this room so I can have a quiet time to read and and have this kind of conversation now again going back to and this will be my last question before we open up because I definitely want to um you know now have you telling this your your story obviously it's it's very raw and emotional um have you have by any member of your family before feeling ready to share your story have you received any sort of like pushback for many family members like well maybe this is not a good time I mean has has that ever come up you know when I when this book came out um I gave each uncle and aunt a copy and when I visited them I noticed the book has not been open and I don't blame them I don't blame them number one English isn't their first language and then two is you know they're busy with work and taking care of their own families you know um and I think now my aunt um my aunt is the sister who took care of my mom before she passed away I think she's very proud um I have a novel that's based on my life coming uh you know coming out and she's always asking when is the novel coming out when is the novel coming out um but in terms of like you know writing and sharing on a public forum and you know in books and journals articles and so on stories and poems about real people you know I think the the person that I sort of talk to the most is my wife I have to I have to get it clear by her if there's a poem about her you know and that's that's really important you know I also asked my aunts not really my uncle we don't have that kind of conversation that kind of relationship but I you know I asked my aunts how she feels about you know this sort of thing I think I think they're happy and I think that that's a big a big relief and you know Eric do you I don't know if you remember reading the poem um let me see it um this what we talked no I forgot the name of the poem but this about uh it might be an invitation you know about uh you know in the ethics the ethics of uh of sharing personal stories oh yes um I think it deals with that a little bit in gruel there yeah but I think overall my my special my aunts I think they're they're pretty happy and pleased and excited but I know that some of them don't read and that's part of that you know who they are and part of their culture not their Cambodian culture but in terms of who they are where they came from you know as as immigrants and refugees and you know I'm I think I see my myself as you know I write out of love I I don't write out of anger or you know sense of justice but a kind of admiration for the elders who came before me I I hope the poems sort of exude that that there's no sort of you know you know what happened to me when I was young was was awful and you didn't do what you're supposed to do nothing like that was out of admiration and love for them yeah and that's definitely reflected throughout the poems um yeah I know it's it's just beautiful to read and um and now I want to see if anybody else has any any questions we'd love to open the floor um for and invite for questions um you can either if you'd like to raise your hand or you're welcome to type it in the chat box as well um and I'll check the um the chat to see if I see any hands up I think I see Nancy's hand yeah I it's interesting you know I think um I guess kind of two questions it's first of all I just I love the work I have all the books I highly recommend them um it's so moving um just that juxtaposition of the horror of the past and then the love and hope going forward is so inspirational and I imagine you know your audience really relates to the trauma but as a non you know someone who didn't have that trauma I just still find it very connecting to the capacity of people to survive and to thrive so it's very powerful you know to everybody and I wonder if you do find it easy to connect to some of your students who have had trauma do you feel like there's a an easier connection there and support that's also gratifying maybe yeah uh you know the the the first poems that I read is sort of my understanding of literature is is one that has to do with empathy and compassion um and uh yeah well we all we all go through these difficulties in life um that's just the way it is and right now my students and as a parent I shifted my perspective how to teach I kind of see my students as like someone else's kids does that make sense Nancy you know it's just like I wanted to to to treat them well the way I would want my kids to be treated by their teachers that that's that's one and two it's a tough it's a tough world right now with the pandemic with the economy so I I I do what I can with you know my attempt to be generous and kind when I when I when I teach and I wanted to bring out issues that are relatable to them and on that sort of yeah on that kind of level and it's been it's been a pleasure I've been lucked out I've lucked out you know Nancy is uh an alumna from union college and this is where I this is how we get connected so it's and Nancy is also a wonderful poet her book is coming out is it this summer um next week I think oh goodness can you send out links I know I will I'll I'll I'll be I'll be I'll be talking thank you well I love you too we'll talk early yeah no it's great I we kind of connected through the poetry world but I noticed his connection to union college and we've also had a chance to actually meet in person when I was traveling I'm from LA so it's just been really exciting time and just a discovery and I also imagine the students as kind of learning about something so firsthand that is really impactful you know so I'm very plugged in thank you and we do have a question from Robbie Robbie did you want to go ahead and unmute yourself yes but I see that someone else had a question first and that was John Hicks oh John yes John you're welcome to unmute yourself or if you want to write the question in the chat box no problem I'm doing a poem right now about adapting what do you do you consider be the hardest thing about adapting to your new life when you had to come here and I I have a very kind of different journey than maybe some immigrants and refugees and I'm I think for me being an orphan was the most difficult thing growing up and this has nothing to do with sort of you know American culture or Cambodian culture had to do with you know growing up and seeing my uncles and aunts and with their kids yeah that was tough to be an outsider in my own family now it might be the toughest there the language barrier I didn't think that was a big thing eventually kids adapt and you pick up the language you know but the different cultures was very difficult in terms of you know you have the sort of what your uncles and aunts and grandparents expect you to to be and what the American culture and American kids expect you to be in terms of what is normal I think that was a big one too but being an orphan is really up there in terms of you know the difficulty of of going through it all and the second is that you know the idea of you know your parents your uncles and aunts they want you to succeed and what we need to succeed is to you know listen and respect your elders and authority figures and become a doctor engineer or scientist or whatever all that crap I mean it's not that crap but it's very painful I sit that crowd because it's an emotional kind of you know baggage for me and I didn't want any of that I before that I just wanted to understand where I came from and why we're here like you know I want to know what happened so that was a big that was that was a big one you know for them is you know we don't talk about it because but it does leak through you know at you know that poem about fishing and how they talked about the things and it just leaks through them with food and drinks and you can hear remnants of what happened or the grill poem you know while cleaning up after a barbecue party they start talking about my grandmother it leaks through but it doesn't it doesn't it's not full so you have to you have to pick up these pieces and piece them together to create a narrative but they want you to you know this is just me and my sort of personal experience I don't know what other people's experiences are but focus on the present and be successful in the more in the most stereotypical manner doctors and your lawyers and so on but don't think about the past but for me I just I needed that to understand myself so being an orphan and then that that culture the two different cultures and not even it's just yeah it's just me needing needing to know I don't know that answer your question but there are at least two things there that were pretty important for me that was that was great thank you thank you thank you Robbie thank you Robbie Robbie you have a question thank you John well yeah it's kind of a big issue I see that even now when you've written and rewritten and publish these poems and put them together into a book it's really hard for you to deal with what they bring up in you so did you you know as someone who has written and writes personal trauma poems and has suffered PTSD in response to writing them I wondered whether you had to deal with any big upcropping of that of those feelings having written those poems and gone over these things in your mind I think I think the emotions that that are not controllable after writing the poems and you know so you you go through this process of like you know weeping and heavy sadness and an effort feeling good about it in terms of there's a kind of a burden that's been released so that's like really private you know you know writing that writing the poems and and going through that and editing is easier but as you can see with today's reading I don't know when the moment I'm going to kind of break down you know usually it's about my grandmother or my mom or my dad but this time it's about my daughter and that will sort of control over that there's two three lines that I didn't finish in that poem and there's I think it's available in the what's the name the journal of American poetry or something like that it's there if you're interested in finishing that poem but I just couldn't do it you know so I do go through this process of not being able to control my emotions because they came from real places these poems these stories and I it's not like I don't you know it's not performance I wish it was because that would have been easier for me like I know when when the stuff come out but but I I think and I hope like for today's reading I think one of the big things that I want to talk about is not only the issue of diversity but the important of of libraries and books how it they did save me they did save me change my life around I went back to college I got all my degrees you know it changed me and that's why when when Alexis sort of contacted Eric is I don't want any money just donate the money to the Cambodian Association in Long Beach now I just I just wanted to share this an important story and we we don't value the library we don't value this you know literature and arts that we that we should we should because this is this thing that happened to me and and I'll do this whenever I have a chance to do this I you know to bring this message to the public how important it is so you know thank you Eric and thank you to that Dana Branch Public Library up in North Long Beach East Market Street you know I remember that library and I remember downtown downtown Long Beach library too and I've looked and I've looked at the the the website my god the building is so beautiful the new building structure it's quite gorgeous I didn't even recognize it but the point is the library has been an important part of my life I've written poems about it how it changed me and this is just one of the poems awesome and and Alex has a thank you Mr. Duane and thank you for your question Robbie and Alex has a question now hello everyone first of all let me just give a shout out to Joanna Belfer she is an amazing person also a book owner a bell account of books she's actually connected Eric to me because she and I worked on previous projects and I know her so that's how this all came about so my question BK is I remember when I was reading the book one of the things that really was a fact of this stood out for me because I was a child when we came here as immigrant so I don't know the history of my own country Vietnam but I think one of the things that um here in the west we tend to only focus on you know the great world war two and the Holocaust and all the atrocities and I feel like there are a lot of atrocities you know in genocide and what not in Asia and so I wonder to what extent I'm not sure if this is the right way to phrase it like how we can share more of this information no matter how gruesome and cruel it may be because I feel like why haven't we learned the horrors of war so that we don't have any more wars and there's always these excuses you know like I know for a long time there are many people and I think there were many and they the genocide their millions were not recognized so they still isn't recognized by the UN because of Turkey and this taboo so I feel like the same thing with Cambodia with Vietnam even with China I've read some account where during the revolution there were atrocities similar to this that were committed and it was a way to control people um this fear and make them give up and I think you know these types of poems no matter how difficult and challenging that may be for the poet to write I think that sort of first-hand eyewitness testimony gives so much power and so much authenticity to um the readers but also hopefully as a reminder as as a history um that we don't see in this if that makes sense so I wonder in your memoir that you're writing to what extent that you know you discuss these sort of things um can you remind me the the question again I'm still trying to grapple the poem that you're reading about you know your father and how he approached the the Khmer and you know made that horrible um decision to ask for you know the liver of one of the murdered child so I feel like those type of atrocities it tends to be ignore especially when it's in the south or in Asia and we only look at the effects of the great war of World War II and in the Holocaust and I these are some of the lessons that we need to remember in the history books but they tend to be forgotten because if somehow you know I feel like Asia we're just they just don't look at these things yeah yeah that you write about it and you try to bring the history I think that's the and the other sort of aim in terms of writing um you know because I I do want um Cambodian kids children to be informed in the work of our history um and in the process of thinking about writing children's book for my kids in terms of you know wanting them to know about our culture and custom not just the the genocide there um and um you know I think I I've looked at it and I think at least for me to think about is the sort of the community that we're in you know I think Long Beach this this this is good this is very good for the Khmer community there um and serving the community serving the students the children the families there um so I I think of it that way in terms of uh you know of of like the local communities and and you know the kind of stories that would serve them but I but you're right though there is a sense of a kind of monolithic narrative of you know of what is you know what we you know what is on the canon or what is on the the syllabus for this kind of literature and it is excluded it is excluded uh you know when we talk about you know we you know we teach a course in the Vietnam War I think we you know we talked about you know the the Vietnamese perspective the north the south the refugees the villagers uh and uh you know with a 10 week term a union is hard for me to bring in the Cambodian and the Laosian and the Hmong but that's also part of that story is is connected uh there um you know um but I think yeah I think our job is to to look around us and see what's needed and um you know and um yeah with with union you know we don't have a lot of uh Southeast Asian students so I'm sort of trying to to to bring in and this is Nancy's earlier question to bring in um you know stories about and and by Asian and Asian American writers and poets and to um the students there uh I don't know I don't know if I'm answering your question uh so directly but at least for me to think about the community and and and who we're serving because you know yeah Long Beach is is a great example that Lowell's the same thing Lowell is beautiful in terms of you know the kind of resources that are available to serve the Khmer community there and so on anyway I'm I'm rambling um I I hope that somewhat answer your question um a little bit Alex that's a very difficult question for me to think about and you know grapple my but anyway okay um thank you guys so much we did have a question from Chan also okay um okay Chan okay hello uh good morning everyone uh I'm sorry for the camera doesn't work because I just have the eye surgery and I could not uh stare at the screen well um today I'm very happy this is my thanksgiving gift for Dr. Tuan to hear your powerful inspirational and motivational poem that wrap up all the story from the path from the killing fear and as a refugee here in Long Beach and the United States and all resiliency and success that we come up you know to bounce back and be successful I'm so proud of you as a Cambodian mother yeah and I was a high school teacher before the war so I taught in the second prominent high school where you control and plumping until the war took over so and I stopped my foot here as a refugee in Long Beach it's a 1980 I remain here until now I put a route I deliver the service and then connect it and get involved in the community and I'm very touched that you say that Long Beach is different yes Long Beach is special if you need because I travel to a lot of states and a lot of places to see my friend that I met in a camp I told them that I came to visit but I go back to my Long Beach that's why I stay here so for 28 years I set up an annual scholarship to award the selected Cambodian children that graduate from any high school in LBUSD and they prosper they got a higher degree become MD, PhD and a lot of them only have college degrees so I would like to invite you to be our guest speaker for the Class of 2023 on Saturday June the 3rd to let all those kids know that it's not the end of the world yet yeah with your strife and thrive you can make it look at you because I work with kids I witnessed all the violence in the killing field and also in the refugee camp and when I came in here the kid dealing with a lot of gang violence and all those I see all that's what I stopped in as a former educator to help the kid to find the solution to find the light that they miss and I would like you to help me to give the message that you just read become my heart filled with thanks and filled with the enlightenment that you need to transfer to all those kids and for the library folk I would like to echo his sentiment my kid when we came here we were so poor right I didn't speak English but the library was the source especially the main library we didn't have anything during the 80s but main library and right now I'm very very grateful to have my 20 library that have also the Cambodian language publication a lot of books because right now after 42 years in Long Beach a lot of one point of five generations no longer speak my don't talk about reading or writing by speaking they didn't speak anymore but I'm very grateful to have my 20 library have a lot of my book in there so I'm working right now to partner with the elementary school with the elementary school to provide some my class for the young children so they can get it and I have a conversation with their parent and with their grandparent because grandparent cannot communicate with their kid anymore because grandparents speak my and the grandchildren speak English so the communication is no longer there so again thank you so much and thank you Eric and Christina for making it possible uh I love it very empowering. I would love to do it but everything has to be on zoom I you know I teach around that time at union so I could definitely do it on zoom uh and oh my English is all my thing I was a friend school and I yeah yeah I didn't friend school before in the past and when I came here I learned only I speak only thank you and hello and then I met one teacher that spoke French she in Wilson high school she said that I waste my time in her class stop coming to her class and I didn't know where to go I kept coming to her class and then she asked the principal that she need to take time off from the class so had to have the self take care of her place and she drove me to Long Beach City College that's what she talked to somebody that I never forget him but I never remember his name because American name right yeah to care of me that's what I graduated from Long Beach City College so I'm very happy that you are the alumnus of the Long Beach City College so we will talk more I graduated from Long Beach City College in mid 80 that's what I become who I am today and I came back to the Long Beach City that I call home and to the community at large not I did not just so the Cambodian children I saw a diverse kid that needs education I'm so good but I'm very happy so you can call me um yeah of course yeah I will send email and of course uh uh you will teach on Saturday will be in the zoom because right now zoom available technology is very beneficial for us so even though I'm a dinosaur I'm still enjoying okay um uh I think we're we're running out of time but this is such a wonderful enriching experience and I've learned a lot from from your questions you know so uh thanks again Eric and thanks again Alex and Pham and uh everybody else Nancy and John and and Robbie and all of you I you know I just I just do stuff on Facebook and Twitter and I'm just so happy that people are responding to it authentically sincerely so I appreciate that thank you that's a great experience thank you so much and just listening to your conversation with everyone and Chan thank you also for your question and for sharing your story um this has just been such a great opportunity and you know we do have at the Mark Twain Library um a really good extensive collection of uh books in Kamai so definitely come and and check it out we're going to be having a story time next week in Kamai so we're really excited about that and shout out to Christina who's the senior librarian at um Kamai she's also in the conversation in the chat yeah and so we're really excited you know we've been working on this together and it's just so it's such an honor to meet you and to work with you and thank you again Mr. Twain for your wonderful wonderful stories but uh yeah I have to uh get ready to go and drive back to New York it's going to be a long three and a half hour four hour drive good with kids all right thanks everybody take good care be safe be very very much take care everyone thank you thank you thank you bye bye bye take care bye Robbie bye John bye send me the link there Eric and I'll share it on Facebook and Twitter okay and I'll email um I have everyone's email too in the chat so I'll send I'll forward it to everyone in the chat yeah and um John you just send that give give uh give uh John Hopson my email if she needs it all right take care everybody bye drive safe thank you thank you bye bye bye bye thank you bye bye


Welcome. I'm Elizabeth Christian. I am CEO of Elizabeth Christian Public Relations and a Vice Chair of the LBJ Foundation. On behalf of the LBJ Foundation and the LBJ Library, it's my pleasure to welcome you here tonight for an evening with. Tonight, we are really lucky to have with us Carol Linnig. Ms. Linnig has just written a book about the Secret Service and our good friend Evan Smith, CEO and founder of the Texas Tribune, is going to be interviewing her tonight about this. What we know is that Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson had the highest possible esteem for the Secret Service. Dwight Eisenhower called them soldiers without a uniform. And yet, over the last couple of decades, the reputation of the Secret Service has taken a beating. I'm hoping that Evan and Carol can really get down to what has happened with the service and what can be done to fix it. So now please join me in welcoming Carol Linnig and Evan Smith. Carol, good to be with you. Congratulations on the book. Thank you.  Well, it's my pleasure. Look, the book is great. It's not only a great read, but I learned a lot. Honestly, I'm embarrassed as a political junkie and a history buff. I feel like I should have known more of this than I did. Let me off the hook. How much of this did you know before researching this book? I have to say, you know, I really got into this beat by accident looking at something in 2012, a terrible scandal. I was really shocked. Almost every time I delved into another presidency and there was something new to learn. Sometimes it was heroism. Sometimes it was, you know, security debacle. Yeah. Now, as you say, this was an outgrowth of your reporting for the post on a presidential trip to South America in 2012. We'll get to that. I want to ask you generally, what about that story struck a chord? Obviously, not everything you write for the paper has a book in it. The Secret Service story, I mean, when I was drawn into this in 2012 at least, it was just the two sides of this coin.  But as I did more and more reporting about them, I was finding out there was a lot of seriously concerning stuff, you know, that they are willing to take a bullet for the president, but a lot of time they were dodging a bullet. A lot of time they were covering up not the secrets of the president, but their own mishaps, their own, their own misconduct. Something I was left thinking about was the media environment where we're in today. You know, the Carolinics of the world tell us everything. So we don't have to wonder whether we're getting the whole story. We see both the visible part of the iceberg and the submerged part. But you know, in times past, when there were not Carolinics and there were not as many places to get news, there were not as many enterprising reporters. I wonder if that's partly what saved these guys in the old days is that there was just no one to do the digging and to report on this because as you say, all this stuff was there and you're revealing it in a way that for us, we're hearing for the first time. But I think it's because nobody was there to tell us before, right? I mean, I think there were some excellent reporters back in the day, but there is also a little bit of a gentleman's agreement. You know, we didn't cover presidents in the sort of microscopic, proctological way we do now. You know, President Kennedy, a lot of reporters knew that he was often trotting off on business trips, really partially to meet women. Right, business trips. Yeah, that were not his wife. And a lot of people knew what was happening behind that curtain, that what he was doing in the swimming pool at the White House when Jackie was away. But we, you know, the Secret Service agents saw something really, really disconcerting because while they weren't judging him morally, they were judging him on a security reason. They felt like he was taking his life in his own hands. The way he was interacting with people he didn't know, the women that were unscreened that were, you know, on the other side of the door at a hotel room that the agents couldn't see or screen. Or in some cases, being ushered into the White House by a friend of the President's. I mean, that's something we'll come to, the Kennedy story is one of many that I want to be sure we get into here. But let me stay still kind of far back from this and ask generally, as you say yourself in the prologue, you didn't go into this with a conclusion about the Secret Service intending to prove it right or yourself right with your reporting. But you did go into it with a point of view. And again, that was shaped in large part by the 2012 experience. Absolutely. You know, I thought, Evan, when I dug into the Cartagena Mass, which again, you know, I was asked to help because I'm a digger and I convinced people to talk to me and tell me their truths. Yeah, I thought that was going to be the biggest deal in the world. The most humiliating scandal in a hundred years for the Secret Service. But those agents that I met over and over again, so many different ones that I met as a result of that reporting and their family members and their friends and officers, they had a much more horrifying story to tell that was more important than boys gone wild in South America.  Right. And so in some ways, telling the story is the best way for them to cleanse themselves or cleanse their guilt and maybe to cleanse the Secret Service, right, getting it out there. They really didn't believe that their leadership and they'd been through several directors. They didn't believe their leadership was listening to them. Yeah, they believe that, you know, the alpha male DNA of this agency is both amazingly capable of doing heroic and unthinkable things, such sacrifice with their lives. But that DNA also doesn't admit weakness, doesn't admit that the agency is stretched too thin and that its security system is really Swiss cheese right now. Yeah, well, multiple things can be true at once. They can be both heroes and also be in need of some kind of fix. So you interviewed 180 people roughly for this book. And it sounds to me like many of them were happy to talk to you as long as you didn't identify them. How do you feel about the need to rely as you did for this book on anonymous sources? Well, unfortunately, in this instance, it was absolutely necessary. Agents who are currently on duty and officers will lose their jobs if they speak to me without permission. And so I have to admit and say with great sadness that there are agents who have lost their jobs for talking to me. So anonymity is is crucial for them. And on top of that, even former agents wanted to be on background because of the backlash that they would get from sort of the alumni network that still wants to burnish the image of a perfect impenetrable secret service and is not willing to look out for the current team that is, you know, fighting really against the odds and needs help. Well, as a working reporter, and especially for a paper like The Post, where you are called upon to rely on anonymous sources to tell us all things that we absolutely need to know, you understand the tension there because so many people distrust the media if they see anonymous sources, then they're given permission not to believe what they're reading. And you just have to accept that as part of the bargain. Yes, although in this book and in my reporting, but especially in this book, it is the beneficiary of copious documents. For example, in the Cartagena episode, I can tell you down to the number of mojitos and beers that certain agents had because someone gave me all the internal investigation documents. So many of these agents submitted to me their calendars, their schedules, their contemporaneous texts and notes. And then they were backed up by, again, internal documents. So you alluded to what the premise of this book is that this storied organization is stretched too thin that it's drowning in new missions. There are great security risks. There's distrust between leadership and rank and file. I would also add, as we see repeatedly, like so much of government, they're operating off of outdated technology, outmoded technology that doesn't keep up with what they maybe need in the modern world. There's a frat boy culture. There is an aspect of this in which the service has been drawn into political matters and you want to hope that the service is apolitical, but maybe that's too much to ask and that people hate working there. That's kind of the part that I thought was most remarkable. You say it finds itself in a state of unprecedented peril. Shouldn't we all fear for the country under those circumstances? I mean, the Secret Service, leave aside the myth of the Secret Service as a practical matter. They're protecting the most important people in this country. And if they're in this bad of shape, shouldn't we all be concerned? You couldn't have said it better. I mean, and indeed, you voice exactly what my sources told me, agent after agent, officer after officer. Why did they come to me? Why did they risk their careers? Why did they put something on the line like this? Because all of the warning signs that they know from history were flaring before Kennedy was killed are flaring now outdated technology, stretched to thin staff, people back in the day. And I interviewed luckily some of Kennedy's agents. A few of them died in the course of me working on this project. They said they knew they were treading water. They knew they were in trouble. They knew they couldn't keep up. And that's what agents are telling us now. Are we going to wait and see until another disaster? Are we going to pay attention and do something for them? Of course, that's 50 years ago. I mean, that's the thing that's extraordinary is that it's been allowed to continue despite the fact that it is absolutely not a not a new problem. So as I'm reading this book, I'm thinking to myself, what does success look like for the Secret Service? What is the job of these brave men and women? Dick Kaiser, who is the special agent in charge of protection, a special agent for Nixon and Ford says in the book, is quoted as saying in the book, for me, it's just you've got to keep them safe. Right. I mean, this reduces to the old hashtag you had one job. The one job of these guys is you got to keep the principles safe. Really, nothing else is more important than that. And it's so vital. I mean, the reason the agency matters to me after learning so much about it is it's vital to the democracy, right? If the president is killed, everyone who was alive at the time remembers Kennedy's death. Well, if you think it was a gut punch to the country, you can't imagine how bad it was for the Secret Service because it was Job 1. But on top of on top, this is one of the things that's the problem with the mission. On top of Job 1, there are 40 more people that the Secret Service protects. You know, the agency is now protecting vice president's stepchildren and president's grandchildren and on top of cabinet secretaries. So, you know, it's a huge mission, plus they're doing cybersecurity and hacking and financial crimes. They're they're protecting Super Bowls. They're protecting Olympics.  They're they're still there. So as one DHS, forgive me, as one senior cabinet member told me this agency needs a refresh about mission. We have to we have to match up its mission and the tools with what we actually the money and the tools we give them because right now they cannot accomplish what they're given. Yeah, I mean, you're talking about the as you take that off the how broad the mission is and how many things that's come to incorporate. It's easy to forget that back when the Secret Service came into existence, it really started as a counterfeit squad, right? And at the time of Abraham Lincoln and it evolved only after McKinley was assassinated into the into the body that we know it is the entity that it is today. Initially, the purpose of the Secret Service was not to protect the principles. It was much more mundane.  And, you know, we've got to deal with counter two thirds, I think, of the paper floating around after in the last year of the Civil War was fake. So, you know, there's a myth that the Secret Service was authorized by President Lincoln the day that he was shot. Actually, the ideal was discussed with his Secretary of Treasury and and then launched not long after his assassination. But three more presidents would be assassinated before the Secret Service would take over the role of guarding the principle, guarding the person who's the the leader of the free world. And the reason was we're so American, right? We don't want a Praetorian Guard. We don't want a Royal Palace. The public were coiled at that. And presidents didn't think that the taxpayers slash voting public would cotton to this. But, you know, after McKinley was killed in forgive me, in upstate New York, in Buffalo, finally, people started to say, you know what, this many presidents killed. Maybe we should actually protect them. There were so many things I learned from your book about the service. That's one of them. Another is that the service has grown so much over the last six decades from 300 agents and a five million dollar budget to 7000 agents and a two point two billion dollar annual budget, extraordinary growth. I didn't know that the first and only Secret Service officer to die while protecting a president was during an assassination attempt on Harry Truman. I'm not even sure I knew that there was an assassination attempt, Carol, on Harry Truman. Leslie Cauffield goes down in history now as the one and only, right? And you just mentioned, you know, that the mission of the service has has been expanded to do things like protect the vice president. The idea that that was not part of this charge from the very beginning is extraordinary. I mean, could you imagine Kamala Harris in this country at this moment without a protective detail? No, I can't. I can't, you know, it took the assassination of Robert Kennedy while he was campaigning and looking like he was heading to become president for Lyndon B Johnson, actually, to just announce overnight. And then that's actually a really chilling moment. Literally in the middle of the night calls up the director of the Secret Service and says, I want details on every single candidate candidate right now. Right. So candidates got protection. There's family members, as you say. I mean, all the protection of the service has been expanded to so many people. You know, Carol, I didn't know until I read this book that Arthur Bremmer, who shot George Wallace, actually had wanted to kill Richard Nixon first and was and was thwarted.  Like, you know, he, Bremmer wrote in his in his in his journal that he was trying to get Nixon, but it was too tricky.  He was struggling because those Secret Service men, he said, they just made it too hard for him to get a close enough shot. So good for them. You know, Kennedy Kennedy's assassination really made them rebuild that agency from the ground up, rigorous training, amazing security net. But it's been slipping for the last couple of decades. I was not aware of something that you refer to in this book called the Exceptional Case Study Project. This is where an analysis was done of 83 people who attacked or came close to attacking prominent American public figures between 1949 and 1996. They're not all presidents, but that's an awful lot of instances of attempts. Many more than I knew or than I think we probably remember. And the point made, among others in this study, is that many of them were about wanting fame. This was not about political ideologies, right? So so something we learn about the Secret Service in this book for sure is that they've really got a much tougher job than even we know, because there are so many more attempts that we probably read about, right? So many. I mean, even before Obama, President Obama was running for office, Barack Obama, who kind of set the record for the number of threats.   And everybody has to be taken seriously. That's the point is you don't know whether somebody who just sends an email is a serious threat or not. You've got to investigate everything. A number of times in this book, Carol, we hear more agents, more agents, more agents. We need more agents. And there are a number of anecdotes that you recount in which the service itself or others go to Congress and they go to they say, we need more agents. The problem is we're understaffed. Is that necessarily after all your reporting? Have you concluded the answer to a better Secret Service? Is it volume more agents would make for a better service? In some ways, yes, but in other ways, it's too simplistic. Yeah. As we as you pointed out, the mission is enormous. It's gotten larger and larger. We keep adding to the pile of what the Secret Service is responsible for. On the other hand, right, you can't not protect Kamala Harris. You can't not protect the vice president and the president's family, right? You have to protect those people. So those duties are understandable. But the mission creep is enormous. The other thing is technology. They are so like late 1900s in terms of what they have for tools at their disposal. Some things have been upgraded, but, you know, even in 2017, when Donald Trump was just a few months into his presidency, you know, they had another jumper incident where the person got over five different fences and was on the grounds for 15 minutes without being interrupted. Jiggled the door on the east wing to get in and wandered around. Again, no one catching him. Why? Because the cameras, the fence line, the the alarms, the sensors, so many parts of it were failing. So, you know, this can't be the most protected 18-acre compound if all those things were on the fritz. Well, so there's that problem. I mean, it's not simply about the number of Asians, but you also have this kind of more. I think of this kind of more work a day problem, which is that sometimes the people who are being protected by the Secret Service don't want them around. You know, I kept thinking to myself while I was reading this book, the number of people who protect these who refuse to be protected or don't want to be protected. I mean, you use the case of John Kennedy, which is the most extreme case of somebody who was trying to cut and run or to leave his details so he could go off and have his adventures. But there are other people in this book who seem to object. I mean, President Johnson, right, who just don't really like the imposition of the even though they know that the purpose of having them around is to protect them, they would just assume not be protected. That's another point of tension. Absolutely.  President Johnson, it makes me chuckle a little bit because he actually threatened and one time did shoot out the tire of a Secret Service agent's car, a follow up car behind him on his farm in Texas. And he kept threatening to shoot it because he said, you know, you guys need to get back away from me.  You're getting in the way. Right. Exactly. But there was another thing about Johnson and Kennedy, too, in terms of them wanting these agents away, separate from John F. Kennedy's, you know, romantic. That's right. Yeah, but separate from that. The other reason was they didn't think the American public wanted a lot of Secret Service guards around their president. They wanted to feel like they were every man who who waded into a crowd, normal Joe, say hello to their voters.  And they thought taxpayers would be ticked off about it. So Linda B. Johnson, for example, constantly trying to cut the Secret Service budget or at least his detail because he thought voters didn't like it. But isn't there something fundamentally ridiculous about that?  I mean, the fact is that the job of the Secret Service is to protect the president. And I mean, I find it remarkable that the taxpayers won't like this argument holds any water. I'm a little bit more sympathetic to the argument that, well, we want to have private lives. And so whether it's John Kennedy or Michelle Obama, we want the Secret Service to leave us to have our private lives and not to impose in the way that they might. I mean, it has the word secret in it, but of course they do work for us. So that tension, that idea that the culture of the place may be steeped in deference and discretion, but at the same time, they may also reveal the secrets of a president or of the first family is that's going to be a concern, no matter what, right? And you know, there have been some presidents that have had better relationships with the Secret Service than others, right? So, you know, the Bushes had an incredible relationship with their Secret Service details, treated them like family. Barbara Bush always running out with some hot coffee. Bringing food, right. Bringing the food from the leftover from the party. Right. I mean, even to the point of telling a detail leader for her husband that she wanted him to wear, you know, her husband's hat and mittens because it was cold outside. Very motherly attention and actually welcomed, right? But when the Clintons arrived, they weren't so sure about these agents looking out for them. And in fact, within the first few weeks, a story leaked in the papers about Hillary Clinton and throwing a lamp, her husband, in an argument, right?  And I don't want them in our, I don't want them right up on the second floor of our house. They're gonna need to stay downstairs. Well, and in fact, the issue of the Secret Service's relationship with the Clintons and this notion of deference and all that comes to a head during the Star Investigation, right? When the question of whether the Secret Service will tell what they saw on the Lewinsky matter. I mean, again, it hadn't occurred to me that the Secret Service would be put in the position of having to play that kind of role. Maybe I knew it at the time, but I forgot it. But again, your book in extraordinary detail, it's such a compelling story. Let's get into some presidencies if you don't mind and let's talk about some of the stuff that you present to us. Obviously, the Kennedy assassination is the one that a lot of people think about. We have this image of the Secret Service in Dealey Plaza and we think about everything that happened on that day and after. Again, under the heading of I think maybe I knew this but I forgot it or maybe I just didn't know it. I didn't fully appreciate that Jackie Kennedy blamed the Secret Service. Bill Greer, the driver of the limousine who was an agent in the service, you have Jackie in this book saying basically if only he had done XYZ differently, maybe that wouldn't have happened. That's extraordinary to me.  Is holding on to her husband's brain parts as they arrive at Parkland Hospital.  Holding them and hands them to a doctor when she gets into the emergency room. You can't put this president back together again. There were some doctors who thought there was a chance but not many but she is this amazing figure of like I'm gonna hold it together for the country which she did for many, many days. But in her private moments, she shares that tap on the break that Bill Greer, the agent of the limo in which she is riding with her husband, that tap on the break in the plaza upon hearing the first shot come through the right side of everybody's ears is likely the reason that Hink forgive me is likely the reason that Oswald was able to get a third and fatal shot that went directly into the jaw and ear of the president and did result in a part of his brain splattering on the backseat. Right, but of course the contrast to that would be the assassination attempt, the assassination of Ronald Reagan where unlike Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan after the fact says the agent saved him. I mean, she believed that actually the system worked exactly as it was supposed to. So rather than recriminations, she felt like had it not been for the agents that he might have actually he might have actually succumbed. Absolutely, and you know what? That heroic moment, so many levels of heroism and smart split second trigger reflexes on the part of the Secret Service that is the result of the rebuilding after the gut punch of Kennedy's death. You know, the director Rowley put everything that he has into getting the money, getting the agents, getting the technology, all of that upgrade happens and his choices and the choices of the directors that follow him are completely vindicated by the split second decision of Tim McCarthy to throw his arms up and his chest up and take incoming bullets from John Hinckley or the split second decision of Reagan's detail leader on that square outside the Hilton. As soon as he hears shots, there's no like tap the breaker, let's look. He puts his hand on his shoulders and shoves the president's car. Shoves him into the car, 70 year old man shoves him into the car, lands on top of him. Reagan actually at one point thinks before he knows that he's been shot, he thinks that his rib is broken because he's having problems breathing. And that's in part because the guy smothered him essentially in the car, but he saved his life. He saved his life and the agent behind him, Ray Shaddick, who literally folded up, I don't know if he was gonna break the legs or not, but he folded up the legs of the agent behind him, Jerry Parr, who was on top of the president so that they could slam the limo door shut and evacuate immediately.  They went so fast that the agent who was driving was saying a mantra to himself, oh my God, I hope I don't run over Timmy. Timmy was, of course, Tim McCarthy who took the bullets. Who took the bullets and fell. Chaos on that day, extraordinary, how much worse it could have been. But everybody made great decisions. The fact that Hinckley was able to be 11 feet from the president, that was a failure. That's what they did wrong, but what they did right, so overshadowed what they did wrong. So I wanna come back to Reagan in a second. I thought the Reagan and Kennedy contrast was interesting. I wanna go back to Nixon because to me, the really interesting takeaway from your writing about Nixon and the service was the degree to which Nixon politicized or attempted to politicize the service. By my count, the big grievous offenses or attempted offenses were, first of all, he wanted to use the secret service to entrap Ted Kennedy because he feared Kennedy as a political threat, either in the 72 election or he wanted to even disable him potentially for 76. Nixon's relying on the service to take on a number of expenses that were not really legitimately renovation expenses at Nixon's private properties. And then also Nixon's attempt to use secret service members to remove protesters, to basically disable the ability of Americans to protest peacefully, if not loudly, against their government. I mean, it reminded me, Carol, of what happened during the Trump years. And it reminded me of the same. I mean, there were so many eerie parallels between Nixon and Trump just regarding the secret service. This idea of we're gonna, we're going to handle anti-war protesters and anti-Nixon protesters by sickening the secret service on them and using them kind of as a tool. President Nixon's view of the secret service was very much like President Trump's in that this is another tool of my power. Not they're protecting me, but these are, but more like these are my goons. And Donald Trump deployed them the same at Lafayette Square on June 1, and nobody can forget the President's wish, President Trump's wish, to look as the law and order president, the tough guy. Look tough, right? Yeah, look tough, don't look weak. And Nixon wanted to do the same. When he was running for reelection, he wanted to have these images of these sort of vicious savage protesters fighting with the secret service so that those could be the images in the news pages. And that could show the voters who was gonna keep them safe, President Nixon. Yeah, so come back to Reagan. Again, something I maybe knew, but your book reminded me is that the President Reagan, when he was shot, lost nearly half the blood in his body. I remember being in middle school when President Reagan was shot and hearing about it and knowing enough to know that it was a big deal. But at the same time, never thinking that he almost died. I mean, lost nearly half the blood in his body. It is a stunning, stunning thing and hats off to the George Washington University doctors and the surgeon that put him back together again. I mean, they dealt with a lot of challenges, but part of the reason, Evan, that you maybe weren't aware of it at the time is because the secret service in the White House were seriously keeping that under wraps. How close he came to death was very much a... Only something we learn later, right? Yes, so hidden. And the surgeons dug out a devastating bullet out of the side of his lung, which was hidden behind a rib, so it was really hard for them to find. Yeah. You mentioned how things changed over these different instances, with every moment, I mean, I'll use the example of Jonathan Wackrow, who's quoted a couple of times in the book, was a presidential detail agent who says every time the service is tested, it gets better, right? So the assumption is they go through JFK. Well, after JFK, now they're gonna check the security of buildings along the motorcade route to prevent sniper fire, and there are gonna be no more open-top convertibles. After the Wallace assassination attempt, we're gonna change policies regarding rope lines. After the Reagan assassination attempt, now we're gonna add magnometers and we're gonna have covered arrivals. All of this seems smart and normal. Like to a civilian, I'm thinking, of course, but then of course I'm thinking back to the capital insurrection, where after the capital insurrection, just a couple of months ago, Nancy Pelosi and the security detail in the house, the Capitol Police, we're gonna add metal detectors, right? And it's such a point of controversy, right? As if the answer to every question is subject verb liberty, as opposed to, these are the leaders of our country and we have to protect them. So as much as we see the security protocols evolve over time, it's not without controversy, right? And why?  The problem here is security mixed with politics, right? Nancy Pelosi has never really wanted and has really pretty much resisted a fence around the Capitol. Why? It looks terrible. The President Trump didn't like the new fence design that they were envisioning to try to prevent these jumper incidents that were so humiliating. He said it looked like a prison. People, Kennedy didn't want detail agents on the back of his car when they were riding in motorcades.  And if it had come- And had they been, it might have actually prevented Oswald from having a good shot at the President, right? 100%. I think that they would have had a fighting chance to prevent his death. And as Clint Hill has said to me and others, he would have taken that bullet. He would have gotten in between it and the President. Now we don't want that, but that is what they signed up for. And all of these security issues, when you mix them with politics and people's political impression, you don't get a pure security answer. Yeah. Well, it's always a tension between freedom and security, right? I mean, this is always gonna be the tension whether it's with the Secret Service or the Capitol fencing, right?  So I've just moved, I hit this point in the book where I was like, where did everything go wrong? The problems you identify had been a plague on the Secret Service for years. And again, we may not have known about them as much out here in the world, but there was a US news story that you referred to in 2002 that details this long history of bad behavior of all kinds by agents. And yet I can't help but note that your chapter on the Obama years is titled, The Wheels Come Off, as if somehow the wheels had been on previously. But it was really in the Obama years that we really see the problems up close, right? And they seem, if anything, to get worse. They absolutely got worse. So there are two things going on at the same time. One is that after Clinton's presidency, there is an effort, especially by President Clinton to keep agents away from him, right? And as they get further and further away from him, their ability to secure him reduces. And it's the advent of the TV president, right? You don't want the agents in the shot, keep them a little bit further away. We want a visage of a strong independent president, nobody protecting him, nobody needs to be there. So that starts a downward cycle in terms of the rigor of their security. There's also the misconduct is allowed and because of an arrogance and secrecy and lack of transparency in the culture of the Secret Service. If they can keep classified programs that are important to protect the president's secret, they seem to believe they can also keep their weaknesses and some of their humiliating episodes a secret. And both of those things come to a horrible head during President Obama's two administrations, just episode after episode of both kinds, security gaffes and unbelievable bad boy behavior. So I was chronicling as I'm reading, I'm writing down everything bad that happens during the Obama years. And at a certain point I was like, I just have to stop because the volume of it was too much.  Remember that, of course, that President Obama is a special case in that he is the first black president ultimately. He received Secret Service protection. The earliest any candidate has received security in the history of the protective detail, right? That's right. You have the South America trip, the Cartagena trip that was the basis for your post story, which of course, because you own that subject Carol, you go into an excruciating detail in the book, the best kind of excruciating. And so you know every single thing, twist and turn that happened. You have the fence jumper who gets into the White House in 2014. I think his name is Ortega, is that right? That's right. This is a comedy of errors, except that it's not even a little bit funny. How like you referred to earlier with the Trump instance, how did this guy manage to escape being seen? You have the agents who drive drunk into the security barrier. And then for good measure, you have the leaking of Jason Chaffetz's failed secret service application. This is all within a period of a few years. And it's extraordinary to me that nothing really seems to improve during that period. The shocker is everybody in the Obama White House threw up their hands after the jumper and after another incident that followed like minutes after almost, which was an elevator guard who was allowed to get close to the president, with a weapon. And he actually had a weird history, didn't he? He had a history that would have suggested you don't want this person by conventional standards near the president. Anybody who's not absolutely clean should not have a weapon and be near the president. This person had been charged, although not convicted, but charged with some crimes that involved in use of a gun. It should have been a red flag. A red flag. Everybody should have been screened, bottom line, but after these two things happened, the Obama White House is like, okay, we're done. And they ask in pressure for the director's resignation, thinking that a new leader is gonna make things all the better.  But no, things do not get better. And nothing changes the status quo. And these two people, one of them the highest ranking member of the president's detail in charge of all of security at the White House, leaves a retirement party, drunk as a skunk, and comes back onto the White House compound with another inebriated person. They drive their government car onto the White House complex so they can collect another car over a suspicious package investigation. You know, this is not the behavior of people who are on their game at all times. Or a functional entity like this. I mean, that's the thing. You don't hear these stories and think, well, this place seems to be working out okay. I mean, I didn't even mention the bullets that pierce the residents of the White House. And Mrs. Obama goes bananas over this, right? Yes, if you're the first lady and you find out from the White House usher five days after the fact that the house that your children were in was shot at while you were away, it's not a good way to learn the information if you're a mom, much less the first lady. It's extraordinary. So we get into the Trump years and what are the big takeaways from the relationship between Trump and the secret? First of all, the cost, man, there were a lot of costs associated with the Trump administration that we either found out at the time in many cases, thanks to the reporting of your colleagues at the post, or we're finding out now, we're far in excess of what we knew and far in excess of what by normal standards they should have been. A whole lot of people were protected in the Trump years by the service, right? Significantly more than had been protected in the normal administration. Yes, in fact, it was breaking the bank. I mean, there were 42 people, including the president at one point, the head then of the Department of Homeland Security, John Kelly, who ended up being the chief of staff, tries to get some people to give up their details because they're not under any kind of security threat. He asked Steve Mnuchin, we don't have enough money to protect the president, can we have your detail? Steve Mnuchin goes bananas, wants to keep his detail. Others give them up, Kellyanne Conway gave up her detail because she cared, she wasn't thrilled about it, but she gave it up because it was the right thing to do. At a certain point, you gotta make choices. You mentioned the president wanting aesthetic changes, the defense and all that. He wanted to remove those, what are those, movable posts that sort of up and down. Yeah, yeah, the underground security gates that rise and fall. Rise and fall because he didn't like the fact that when you ran over them, they made kind of an unpleasant noise or it was a little jarring. I mean, to me, the thing that I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about because the president was so concerned about the look of the people around him for four years was his concern that there were overweight people on the security detail.  And he said it because he was concerned that they wouldn't be in the shape to protect him. So there was a physical aspect to it, but you can't help but think that the president who was like the casting director for his administration in chief, is thinking people who don't look the image that I want them to look back to what you said at the beginning of this conversation about the Hollywood image of the service, they were banished from his detail. You know, you've drawn such a beautiful through line for something that worries me about the service and part of the reason I wrote the book. President Trump takes over at a time when the service is recovering and trying to rebuild, trying to rebuild, right? They've gone through a horrific eight years, episode after episode after episode. But what does Donald Trump care about using them as a tool, optics over reality? He doesn't care about governing. He hasn't paid any attention to their financial straits, the short change nature. Instead, his travel bleeds them dry. $30 million is necessary in spring of 2017. He's only been president for a few weeks. They make it, the secret service makes an emergency request because they know they won't be able to keep up with even the basic bare minimum because president's going to Mar-a-Lago every other weekend to golf and travel. That is very unusual. It's not unusual for presidents to travel. It's unusual for them to have leisure travel that puts money in the pocket of their own company, taxpayer money. And there was quite a bit of concern about the Obama expenses associated with security, but in the very first few months of the Trump years, it seemed like Trump was going to far exceed what the worst, and as you point out, some of that money had to actually go to Trump-owned businesses. So it's our money to protect the president higher than we would normally expect to have to pay and ultimately ends up in the pockets of Trump associates. Yes, and so back to your great through line. Donald Trump arrives, the service needs help. It gets less and less help. It's more short changed, more blood dry, and the person in charge is focusing on the optics about whether or not they're fat or not. Although many agents have told me they think that the president misunderstood who he was talking about, that those were other people who had desks jobs, but whatever, the optics are more important. And the problem is then the service gets to, the service leadership gets to take a pass and not look harder at their bigger problems deeper within. You know, I think about the Obama and the Trump years related, separate, but related. You know, the fact that you had the first black president and the nature of the threats to the first black president and his family on the one hand, on the other hand, the challenge of the kinds of rallies and the kinds of rally goers in the Trump years. I mean, to me, those present real serious challenges, even for a secret service at its best, let alone a secret service that is short staffed and under budget. So true. Director Clancy, who was still director while, forgive me while Donald Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, gave an interview in which he said that it was the most chaotic campaign he'd ever seen in his life. And he was more careful in his language than others, but agents told me they had dubbed president Trump the chaos candidate because he was inciting violence at his own rallies. When protesters who were anti-Trump arrived, he would encourage his rally goers to physically attack them, saying that he would pay their legal bills. Pay their legal bills, we remember that, right? If you get in trouble, I'll pay your bills.   She is black. She is wearing a backpack. She has a phone and she is filming what's happening to her. And watching it from up above is horrifying because as men spit on her, call her names, racial epithets and almost push her to the ground. But they did so at Donald Trump's urging. Another way I want to ask you this question is the current political environment has to, from the services perspective, present more of a threat, the toxicity of it, the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories that you would have once dismissed as ridiculous and not even worth paying attention to. I mean, the kid who shot up the White House during the Obama administration, you was inspired by an Alex Jones movie, right? I mean, what must it be like today for the service having to deal with everything else now suddenly having to deal with these conspiracy theory fueled attacks or conspiracy theory inspired rallies that themselves then create more problems from a protective standpoint. Well, such a wise set of worries because look at what happened January 6th. Nobody imagined it. Nobody imagined it, but nobody really could have handled it other than several phalanxes of National Guard. We can't pretend that a slightly larger Capitol Police force could have handled that. Just a stunning display of the state in which our country is really nearly nearly civil war proportions. Right, and as you point out, there were a number of secret service agents who post insurrection, we learned sympathized or at least empathized with the one six rioters, which gets back to this question of whether the secret service can ever be properly apolitical, right?  The president's gonna choose or not choose to unlock that part of it, but they themselves may have political points of view and that complicates matters further. You know, a law enforcement agency in America is almost always going to trend conservative, but I was just gobsmacked to have sources and agents send me the screenshots of their colleagues who are on the presidential detail, you know, cheering for the patriots who had stormed the Capitol to stop the stolen election. If you have the most elite agency in protection in the world, allegedly, and some members are stoking the belief that Biden is not a legitimate president, how safe is the democracy? How safe is President Biden? Right, and of course, you don't write about Biden very much in this book. It's, you know, kind of the, there's some mention of the new president. Do you have any sense of what it's been like? Sort of if there's a paperback version of this book, which there will be theoretically the new material will be about the first period of the Biden administration and whether he was able to reset everything or whether it was more of the same. What is your, what's your sense? I have heard that a lot of senior former agents that were close to former Vice President Biden are trying to spread the word partially through my book, pointing to it, but also their own experience is to say, it's time, it's time to fix it. Let's not wait for a disaster. Are we not, are we gonna pay attention now or are we just gonna wait until something horrible happens? Right, which of course, if we get, and go back to the beginning of our conversation, it took three assassinations before the Secret Service really stepped up and stepped in. We hope that it's not gonna take another one before these problems get fixed. I really hope so. Carol, I love this book and it is so great to talk to you. And, you know, I feel like I really have learned an enormous amount, not only reading the book, but spending this time with you. Thank you so much for making time for me. I really love talking about it with you, Evan. Thank you. Thank you, Carol and Evan, that was really enlightening. I'm imagining that a lot of you would like to have a copy of this book, Zero Fail, The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. We do have signed book-plated copies available at our LBJ Store, which you can access at lbjstore.com. 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