Speaker 1: It's nice siding Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2: Well, fourteen people, innocent people lost their lives to this
Speaker 2: madman who decided it would be a great idea to
Speaker 2: race down Bourbon Street in his truck in mow down
Speaker 2: Americans who are simply trying to welcome in the new year.
Speaker 2: So it's only appropriate that we try to take a
Speaker 2: look at maybe the other side of the coin. And
Speaker 2: delighted to welcome back to Night's side. Former Assistant Secretary
Speaker 2: of State Robert Charles, who is the new Englander if
Speaker 2: I recall correctly, Robert a native of the state of Maine. Correct,
Speaker 2: How are you tonight?
Speaker 3: You are absolutely right, Dan, And we sometimes just need
Speaker 3: good news. And I am awfully glad to be brought
Speaker 3: on board to talk. And yes, I grew up in
Speaker 3: a little town of about five hundred in central Maine,
Speaker 3: and so of course I think we even talked about this.
Speaker 3: I listened, of course every night under my pillow to
Speaker 3: the transistor radio to the Red Sox, Enrico, the whole gang.
Speaker 3: Who were you know, part of the Red Sox in
Speaker 3: that era. But yeah, I grew up in Maine.
Speaker 2: Who is your favorite Red Sox player back in the day.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean really, I mean Ustromsky, of course he
Speaker 3: was my well look Enrico Petrocelli and Rice and there
Speaker 3: were great players back then. And I you know, the
Speaker 3: irony is, I think there's a little bit of enchantment
Speaker 3: that gets lost when you can access everything anytime of day.
Speaker 3: You know. I grew up in a family where with
Speaker 3: sisters and brother and my mother was a school teacher
Speaker 3: and she would put us to bed promptly at somewhere
Speaker 3: around eight or nine, and I would pay no attention
Speaker 3: to that and have a transistor radio listening to the
Speaker 3: Red Sox play under my pillow, and it was I
Speaker 3: don't know, there was something a little bit Norman rockwellish
Speaker 3: about that ears.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it's it's romantic in the best sense of
Speaker 2: the term, in that your remain and you got that
Speaker 2: transistor radio in your ears, so you're transported through the
Speaker 2: theater of the mind to Fenway Park or wherever the
Speaker 2: Red Sox happened to be playing, Yankee Stadium, Commissie Park,
Speaker 2: wherever in those days. And as long as you had that,
Speaker 2: even though you were a few hundred miles away from
Speaker 2: Fenway Park and a lot further away from you know,
Speaker 2: the balt In those days it was Memorial Stadium, not
Speaker 2: Camden Yards in Baltimore or where else. And you, nonetheless
Speaker 2: were transported. And that's what we do here on night
Speaker 2: side every night we try to do. But your life
Speaker 2: took you, and I think it's important to set out
Speaker 2: the world experience that you had. How did you find
Speaker 2: your way into government service? And obviously as a former
Speaker 2: assistant Secretary of State, that's pretty rarefied Aaron to function
Speaker 2: and tell us, tell us a little bit about how
Speaker 2: you got from a small town in Maine to the
Speaker 2: cards a power in Washington, DC.
Speaker 3: You know, I will tell you this. I think that
Speaker 3: God works in strange ways. And we grew up in
Speaker 3: an era where it was just assumed that if you
Speaker 3: worked hard and had some idea about what you might
Speaker 3: want to do, that the clouds would occasionally part. And
Speaker 3: what I learned, I mean, my father never finished college
Speaker 3: and my mother was an elementary school teacher, started at
Speaker 3: twelve thousand dollars a year and more or less raised
Speaker 3: four kids on her own, and we ended up in
Speaker 3: a situation where she prioritized education and she said, you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to do anything other than stay here
Speaker 3: in this town or nearby. You need to get an education.
Speaker 3: And so sometime around the middle of my high school years,
Speaker 3: I decided it was probably important to get a little
Speaker 3: more serious. I was a runner and some other stuff,
Speaker 3: but I I started to work hard. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to just tell you this as an inspiration
Speaker 3: for anybody listening with kids, grandkids or themselves. You have
Speaker 3: to first envision something that you would like to do.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter whether you're going to be an astronaut
Speaker 3: or you're going to be a pole vaulter in the
Speaker 3: Olympics something. And then you have to have in your
Speaker 3: brain and in your heart the belief, the true belief
Speaker 3: that no matter what anybody else says, you could actually
Speaker 3: do that. And then you have to work your tail off.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, sometimes luck comes, or you know,
Speaker 3: the blessings happen when you work hard. So what happened
Speaker 3: with me was I'd never had it. My father didn't
Speaker 3: finish college, had no links to Dartmouth College at all,
Speaker 3: but I had seen it once and I was just
Speaker 3: intrigued by this college in New Hampshire and beautiful place.
Speaker 3: And you know, I do remember there were people who
Speaker 3: even sort of laughed that I would try to apply
Speaker 3: to this, but I decided, what the heck, I'll just try,
Speaker 3: and so I applied and I got in by some
Speaker 3: strike of lightning. But ironically, and again this is this
Speaker 3: whole idea of don't give up. They didn't give me
Speaker 3: any money. I had no money, and they let me in,
Speaker 3: but I had no money, and in that era, that
Speaker 3: was the deal. So my mother, God bless her, and
Speaker 3: we just lost her last timer, but she said, look,
Speaker 3: take the family car and go over, and you're not
Speaker 3: a bad debater. Explain to them that you're a good investment.
Speaker 3: And so that's what I did. And they came through
Speaker 3: with loans, which I paid back every penny and wouldn't
Speaker 3: have done it any other way, and they came with
Speaker 3: those scholarships. And so then what happens is once you
Speaker 3: begin to realize you can turn the dial, you know,
Speaker 3: like cranking on some bolt that has been rusted shut.
Speaker 3: But then you get it to turn. Now you start
Speaker 3: really trying to turn it. And so I applied for
Speaker 3: a scholarship to Oxford and got it, and then to
Speaker 3: Columbia Law School and got it, and then I wanted
Speaker 3: to now for some people this will sound sort of hokey,
Speaker 3: but there's things called clerkships. And I wanted to clerk
Speaker 3: for a federal judge, a conservative because I am conservative
Speaker 3: was back then, and I you know, I didn't know
Speaker 3: I was until I realized everything I believed was what
Speaker 3: people call conservative.
Speaker 1: But I.
Speaker 3: Applied to three hundred judges. I figured out read every
Speaker 3: opinion that I could get recent opinion of those judges
Speaker 3: and found the ones that were more to my way
Speaker 3: of thinking, and applied to three hundred, got six interviews
Speaker 3: out of three hundred, and got one offer. And I
Speaker 3: therefore clerked on the US Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit,
Speaker 3: which is the largest circuit and just below the Supprise Court,
Speaker 3: and then.
Speaker 2: Very liberal circuit, as you know.
Speaker 3: Very liberal circuit. But I worked, and this shows you
Speaker 3: what kind of challenges I faced. I worked for a
Speaker 3: Reagan appointee who was a former US Marine, Robert Beezer,
Speaker 3: so it was an amazing experience. And then I come
Speaker 3: back and ended up with time again just knocking on
Speaker 3: doors the way you would if you were a local
Speaker 3: candidate for something, and I ended up working in the
Speaker 3: Reagan White House and then staying close to the Reagans
Speaker 3: until the end of both their lives, and worked in
Speaker 3: the Bush forty one White House and ended up running
Speaker 3: the largest part of the oversight committee for New Gingrich,
Speaker 3: bouncing back and forth between being a private sector litigator,
Speaker 3: which I hated. I basically was not motivated by money,
Speaker 3: so it really didn't light my fire. And then eventually
Speaker 3: I got a call one day from Colon Poland and
Speaker 3: I actually, I actually said, are you sure you have
Speaker 3: the right number? I mean, I had no link to
Speaker 3: cold and Powell, but it you know Helen. Anyway, I
Speaker 3: ended up talking with him and he said, no, You've
Speaker 3: written a lot. You are the guy that I'd like
Speaker 3: in this job. And so I ended up basically training
Speaker 3: all the Iraqi police, Afghan police, spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time I had spent time with law enforcement, and just
Speaker 3: basically got to apply abroad in seventy countries. All this
Speaker 3: learning that I had, and then as time passed, I
Speaker 3: rolled out of that into starting a little company that
Speaker 3: worked for five of the combatant commands and did some
Speaker 3: things for the military and also for nonprofits. I was
Speaker 3: really big on counter narcotics. I really believe kids. We
Speaker 3: got to work with the kids. We were given incredible
Speaker 3: benefits by the World War II and Korean War vets,
Speaker 3: many of whom were in this book. But we owe
Speaker 3: it to pass that baton forward. So I work with
Speaker 3: nonprofits and everything was going around along pretty well. I
Speaker 3: had joined the Navy as a reservist in intelligence because
Speaker 3: I had some background in intelligence, and nine to eleven happened.
Speaker 3: And the irony is that again, God puts you where
Speaker 3: he wants you on any given day, and if I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure of it before that day, I was sure
Speaker 3: of it on that day. Because I was meant to
Speaker 3: be in the Pentagon where the CNOIP wedge is, or
Speaker 3: fifteen of us that looked after bad guys and four
Speaker 3: hundred in the command center. That wedge was hit that
Speaker 3: day and I wasn't there. Instead, I boarded a plane
Speaker 3: forty five minutes before the plane that hit that Pentagon
Speaker 3: and in DC and spent all of nine to eleven
Speaker 3: in the air. So when I was done and realized
Speaker 3: I'd lost a lot of my shipmates, I just volunteered
Speaker 3: for active duty immediately, and then that gave me other
Speaker 3: kinds of understanding, and eventually I ended up in the
Speaker 3: position with Paul, and you know, life is a you
Speaker 3: have to accept what comes to your door. And some
Speaker 3: of it's bad and some of it's good. But the
Speaker 3: thing you have to keep doing. In my opinion, and
Speaker 3: I many of the people in this book, in fact,
Speaker 3: all the people in this book said yes to responsibility.
Speaker 3: And if we can just teach the lesson that when
Speaker 3: something comes to you and you can either stand up,
Speaker 3: take responsibility and do it, or you can look the
Speaker 3: other way. Take the chance, take take the dare, take
Speaker 3: the move, make it good, do something good with yourself,
Speaker 3: and then something will follow, and something will follow, and
Speaker 3: something will follow. So my journey out of the little
Speaker 3: town and I came back and I lived in that
Speaker 3: little town now. But that little journey was a lot
Speaker 3: like Jimmy Stewart's journey. You know, I've been a very
Speaker 3: blessed guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's funny. I actually rewatched The Wonderful
Speaker 2: Life a couple of nights ago, and it is still
Speaker 2: a great movie every time I watch it, and with
Speaker 2: a great moral, you know moral at the at the
Speaker 2: end that hey things, you know, what goes around comes around,
Speaker 2: I guess would be one way to describe it. In
Speaker 2: more more more recent parlance. I'm intrigued that you were
Speaker 2: able to work in the Reagan White House at such
Speaker 2: a young age. You were there really in you very
Speaker 2: early twenties. How did how did that work come along?
Speaker 2: How did that break come along?
Speaker 3: So that particular break, and I'm going to get to
Speaker 3: the break, but I want to tell you something about
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart. He's in this book because if you do
Speaker 3: a deep dive into his life, he's at the very
Speaker 3: end of the book with some of the founders. You know,
Speaker 3: that guy flew the missions of the kind that the
Speaker 3: brother is recognized for in the movie. He had flown
Speaker 3: those missions before that movie. Jimmy Stewart was a bona
Speaker 3: fidees War hero before he ever played the guy that
Speaker 3: stays at home. But my break came because again I'm
Speaker 3: not the irony is I was at Dartmouth and I,
Speaker 3: first of all, I was sure I was going to
Speaker 3: fail out, but my mother had reassured me, don't worry,
Speaker 3: you can always come home if you do. But then
Speaker 3: I worked hard and didn't and a moment came towards
Speaker 3: the very end where I could apply to work not
Speaker 3: in a white house that wasn't available, but it was.
Speaker 3: You know, everything is a step, step to step to step.
Speaker 3: I was allowed. I Dartmouth had a program where you
Speaker 3: could write your own program up, take some initiative, and
Speaker 3: if they liked it, they had some corporate funders that
Speaker 3: would fund it, so sort of anonymously. And so I
Speaker 3: wanted to work in a piece of the US House
Speaker 3: that was kind of a caucus or a committee that
Speaker 3: was working on legal issues, because I thought in that
Speaker 3: moment that I was going to become a lawyer. So
Speaker 3: I just ended up with an internship, an unpaid everyday internship,
Speaker 3: and I worked my butt off in that internship and
Speaker 3: published a paper which then led somebody who knew that group.
Speaker 3: When Reagan won in nineteen eighty, he got there just
Speaker 3: like you're going to see all these offices populated by people.
Speaker 3: They're populated by the president's choice, but the number two,
Speaker 3: number three, number five in that line are not there.
Speaker 3: And so what I did is I was given a
Speaker 3: chance by a guy who Roger Porter, who later taught
Speaker 3: at the Kennedy School. I never knew anything about Harvard,
Speaker 3: never knew anything about this stuff, but he said, how
Speaker 3: would you like to come? I don't have a deputy.
Speaker 3: How would you just like to come and work. I
Speaker 3: saw the work you did for this little caucus, so
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, of course I'll come and work. Of course.
Speaker 3: And I dropped everything and came and work.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I know one thing.
Speaker 2: Lead Roger Porter is, yeah, that's what a break? Well
Speaker 2: what Robin? I got to take a quick break. My
Speaker 2: guest is Robert Charles. He's a former Assistant Secretary of
Speaker 2: State for International Narcotics and Laurence Forcement Affairs. He worked
Speaker 2: under the George W. Bush Bush as I call it
Speaker 2: Bush forty three administration in that capacity. He's had a
Speaker 2: fascinating career, uh and has written a book called Cherish America,
Speaker 2: which I want to dive into, and I'm hoping that
Speaker 2: some of you might want to. No one probably has
Speaker 2: had an opportunity to read the book yet. I don't
Speaker 2: expect you to do a book report. However, maybe some
Speaker 2: of you, once we get going here, might be able
Speaker 2: to recommend some other Americans that if Robert were to
Speaker 2: do a sequel book that he might include. So we'll
Speaker 2: have some fun with this, I promise. If you'd like
Speaker 2: to talk with Robert Charles six one seven, two, four, six, one, seven, nine,
Speaker 2: ten thirty. Those are the two best numbers to reach
Speaker 2: us at. My name is Dan Ray. This is night Side,
Speaker 2: and we're talking to a person who has been blessed
Speaker 2: uh in his life. Uh, and he is now blessing
Speaker 2: others uh. And a book is entitled Cherish America. And
Speaker 2: if anyone tonight who live here a dozen Cherish America,
Speaker 2: well your head is not screwed on straight, particularly after
Speaker 2: what transpired on Bourbon Street in New Orleans just about
Speaker 2: twenty eight hours ago. Now we're coming back on night Side.
Speaker 2: We'll be back right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the window World,
Speaker 1: Nice Sight Studios. I' WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: With me is Robert Charles. His book is entitled Cherish America.
Speaker 2: And I want to get right into the book. The
Speaker 2: book came out in October. If I'm not mistaken, Am
Speaker 2: I right or wrong on that?
Speaker 3: Robert, Yes, sir, yep, it was released again. Yep.
Speaker 2: So this is a new book that is out there.
Speaker 2: Give us just a little bit of the cast of
Speaker 2: characters who we would get some insight in if we
Speaker 2: were to take the opportunity to read the book. At
Speaker 2: his entirety and then I'd like to just get to
Speaker 2: some of the stories that are in the book. Obviously
Speaker 2: we can't tell them all. But who gets this profile here?
Speaker 2: Who are you talking about in this book?
Speaker 3: Absolutely Dan. So let me start by saying I never
Speaker 3: intended to write this book the way it ended up
Speaker 3: getting written. It was six years in the process, hundreds
Speaker 3: of hours of interviews, and notably it's called Cherish America Stories.
Speaker 3: The subtitle is Stories of courage, Character and Kindness. And
Speaker 3: what I sort of stumbled upon as I sat down,
Speaker 3: thinking I needed to write a few of these stories
Speaker 3: down is I began to realize that in many ways,
Speaker 3: and maybe all of our lives are like this, we
Speaker 3: just don't know it. But there's a Forrest Gump element
Speaker 3: to my life story, which is that I have crossed
Speaker 3: paths with people who did truly extraordinary things, and they
Speaker 3: were pieces of my life. And I didn't know that
Speaker 3: they had done some of these things until later on,
Speaker 3: and I began to pull on threads. So the book
Speaker 3: actually is divided into four sections, and the first one
Speaker 3: has about twenty two stories, including everybody, and this section
Speaker 3: is called Courageous Souls, and it is gripping sort of
Speaker 3: Agatha Christie's style, stories about and they're all true about
Speaker 3: law enforcement officers who did something extraordinary, pilots, military pilots
Speaker 3: who did something extraordinary, teachers or nurses, infantry officers, and
Speaker 3: those that you wouldn't expect, people who have disabilities, and
Speaker 3: other things that just make your jaw drop when you
Speaker 3: see what they've done with who they are just at
Speaker 3: the lead in. So then the second section is places
Speaker 3: in Time. The cast of characters in that first section,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you some of the stories and you know
Speaker 3: in short and they'll stop you in their tracks because
Speaker 3: they did me. And then places in time, including places
Speaker 3: like Arlington, where I have a lot of relatives buried,
Speaker 3: and an extraordinary day there that ended with a shaft
Speaker 3: of light on a stone which just blew me away,
Speaker 3: and I've got photographs in the book. And then getting
Speaker 3: out of communists Poland when I got myself in trouble
Speaker 3: there walking alone on the beaches of Normandy, and the
Speaker 3: sort of granular feeling the living of the moment of
Speaker 3: being there. I think people come away feeling it a
Speaker 3: lot more strongly when they read that story. And then
Speaker 3: some other tougher ones I privately in my twenties walked
Speaker 3: through Auschwitz and had notes about all of that. And
Speaker 3: then gradually the third piece is Glimpses of History, which
Speaker 3: are private stories that have never been told, but include
Speaker 3: very personal stories having worked a couple of years with
Speaker 3: Colin Powell about what kind of a leader he really was,
Speaker 3: what kind of a person inside out, and they're they're
Speaker 3: pretty compelling stories. People have never heard them, and there
Speaker 3: I think you come away with a much higher level
Speaker 3: of understanding and respect for who he was, even if
Speaker 3: you went in with a high understanding. And then Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 3: who I had the privilege of staying up with after
Speaker 3: the White House and tell some stories about both he
Speaker 3: and his wife, who I Nancy Reagan, who came and
Speaker 3: helped me in Washington on counter narcotics shoes with some testimony.
Speaker 3: And then the Bushes and a couple of sort of
Speaker 3: serendipitous events. One is that Roger Porter actually and I
Speaker 3: were at an event with Gorbachev at one point and
Speaker 3: it was a multi day event, and at one point
Speaker 3: in that event, I asked Gorbachev whether he believed in God,
Speaker 3: and his answer was fascinating. And then my other part
Speaker 3: of my life which is an odd ball. But turn
Speaker 3: of again serendipity is I did oversight of NASA for
Speaker 3: a number of years when I was with Congress, and
Speaker 3: in that process, over time back in the nineties, got
Speaker 3: to know very well Walt Cunningham who was Apollo seven,
Speaker 3: Gene Cernon who was seventeen, and Buzz Aldrin, who I
Speaker 3: have ended up working three or four times a week
Speaker 3: with for the last twenty five years. And so there
Speaker 3: are stories, you know, the Buzz stories are ones which
Speaker 3: will just grab you because maybe six years ago, five
Speaker 3: years ago, I said, Buzz, we talk all the time,
Speaker 3: and you're telling me things. I've read all your books,
Speaker 3: and I've seen the clips, and I've read the transcripts,
Speaker 3: and you're telling me things that are not in any
Speaker 3: of those books. And I think you ought to write
Speaker 3: another book. And he said, I don't, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: in my nineties. I'm not interested in writing another book.
Speaker 3: And so I said, well, here's what we're going to do. Then,
Speaker 3: I'm going to turn on the tape recorder and eventually
Speaker 3: we're going to pull some of these stories together. How
Speaker 3: they got off the moon is absolutely gripping, and most
Speaker 3: people have no idea that they almost did not get
Speaker 3: off the moon. They had other near death experiences in
Speaker 3: things like Gemini twelve and some of the other Gemini missions.
Speaker 3: So his stories are just absolutely riveting. And eventually I
Speaker 3: didn't originally think of it, but when it was all
Speaker 3: said and done and he'd read the manuscript, he offered
Speaker 3: to write the forward for this book. So his forward
Speaker 3: in this book again words You're not going to see
Speaker 3: anywhere else. He has a very clear understanding of what
Speaker 3: makes America great, and he really portrayed it. And then
Speaker 3: the last section includes deep dives into it's called where
Speaker 3: They Stood, some deep dives after reading hundreds of letters
Speaker 3: of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Ben Franklin and
Speaker 3: some other more modern heroes like Jimmy Stewart. Deep dives
Speaker 3: into some things that you don't know about people that
Speaker 3: you think you know. So I will tell you that
Speaker 3: the bulk of the story of the book is these
Speaker 3: gripping stories about people who in a moment, and literally
Speaker 3: it's fifty six stories, but in a moment needed to
Speaker 3: show courage, very often real courage, and didn't know if
Speaker 3: they had the power to do it, but leaned in
Speaker 3: and did it. And some of these are things that
Speaker 3: lasted a lifetime. Some of them happened in a thirty
Speaker 3: second block. I mean, the first story in the book
Speaker 3: is a guy, a law enforcement officer who later worked
Speaker 3: for me, who he worked the night shift when he
Speaker 3: was young and in the Charlotte area, and he was
Speaker 3: coming home one morning early and saw smoke curling out
Speaker 3: of trailer. And the bottom line on that story is
Speaker 3: he just did some extraordinary things and ended up saving
Speaker 3: two little children's lives. And so unique was his selflessness.
Speaker 3: And I think of it that way that everybody else
Speaker 3: in this book, from you know, from the law enforcement
Speaker 3: officers to the military personnel, to Scott Hamilton, who was
Speaker 3: the Olympic skater that I've known, and what motivated them.
Speaker 3: Their names are in this book, the last names. Rick
Speaker 3: didn't want his last name in the book. His story
Speaker 3: is so gripping. And then several teachers, I mean, just one,
Speaker 3: two and three. One is a story about my history
Speaker 3: teacher in high school. And again it seems odd that
Speaker 3: one life could touch so many, but all of our
Speaker 3: lives are touched by and touch so many. This guy
Speaker 3: was an infantry officer one hundred and first airborne in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: His stories there are gripping. But when he came back,
Speaker 3: there was no Internet, and he realized that all these guys,
Speaker 3: thousands of them, had no way to compare. Their story
Speaker 3: is to relate to each other, to get together, and
Speaker 3: so he started kind of a newsletter. And you know,
Speaker 3: I asked him at one point, tell me some of
Speaker 3: the things that happened as a result of that. And again,
Speaker 3: I've known him for decades. So he started to roll
Speaker 3: him out and showed me documents, and you know, one
Speaker 3: of the most moving stories is one day he got
Speaker 3: a call from a guy who said, I'm looking for
Speaker 3: a guy named Jack. And my teacher, David Cook, said
Speaker 3: Jack who, he said, I don't know, just Jack. But
Speaker 3: here's the story. In the middle of a firefight, a
Speaker 3: guy is wandering across the open running actually across an
Speaker 3: open plane under fire, and stumbles on a medic who's
Speaker 3: working on four guys. He's actually working on three. The
Speaker 3: fourth one he's let go. And so this guy recognized
Speaker 3: the fourth one and said, why aren't you working on
Speaker 3: this guy? He said, he's white, he's bled out, there's
Speaker 3: nothing left. He said, well, and he recognized him. They've
Speaker 3: been drinking beers a couple of weeks earlier in a
Speaker 3: local place, which is described in the book, and he said, well,
Speaker 3: what if I could He said, you won't find any veins?
Speaker 3: He said, what if I could find a vein? He said,
Speaker 3: you find a vein, I'll put plasma in there. Well,
Speaker 3: this guy hunts and finally finds a vein in the ankle,
Speaker 3: brings the guy. They bring him around forty years later.
Speaker 3: The guy who called looking for Jack is the guy
Speaker 3: who was saved, who was looking for the guy who
Speaker 3: saved him, and my teacher Dave put the two of
Speaker 3: them together, so really powerful stuff. Another my eighth grade
Speaker 3: math teacher was lit guy.
Speaker 2: Let me pause you there for second, Robert, only because
Speaker 2: we got to take a news break at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the hour. We come back, we'll talk more about
Speaker 2: those stories. I want to know what Govi Schev had
Speaker 2: to say about God, and I want to share a
Speaker 2: couple of stories with you as well. My guest is
Speaker 2: Robert Charles, a former Assistant Secretary of State, has written
Speaker 2: a book called Cherish America. I would say Cherish America
Speaker 2: also cherish Americans, because we're very lucky to have been
Speaker 2: placed here, very lucky to have found this place if
Speaker 2: we hadn't been placed here. And it is amazing how
Speaker 2: many people do not appreciate the fact that they live
Speaker 2: in the most powerful country in the world, but also
Speaker 2: I think the most compassionate. That's part of the theme
Speaker 2: I want to hit on the other side of the
Speaker 2: news break, my guess, Robert Charles, feel free to join
Speaker 2: the conversation if you'd like. Six one, seven, two, five, four,
Speaker 2: ten thirty six one seven, nine, three, one ten thirty
Speaker 2: Back on night Side right after.
Speaker 1: This, You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ
Speaker 1: Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2: With me is Robert Charles, a native of Maine, lives
Speaker 2: up in Maine, has served this country in a number
Speaker 2: of capacities, including that as an assistant Secretary of State.
Speaker 2: You mentioned meeting Gorbachev and you asked him what he
Speaker 2: thought about God. I'd love to know what he said. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is an interesting story because the second
Speaker 3: half of this book is people that you know the
Speaker 3: names of but you don't know the behind the scenes stories,
Speaker 3: and the my first half is unsung heroes. So on Gorbachev,
Speaker 3: it was actually a remarkable moment because I don't even
Speaker 3: really know why I asked him, other than I had
Speaker 3: always wondered if Reagan and I do have private stories
Speaker 3: about Reagan in the book, if Reagan had in some
Speaker 3: ways felt or sensed something about Gorbachev that allowed him
Speaker 3: to kind of open a shaft of light into the man.
Speaker 3: And eventually, I mean Gorbachev's stays very standoffish in the
Speaker 3: first years and eventually becomes almost an adoring I mean,
Speaker 3: he almost adores Reagan. And so the answer to the
Speaker 3: question really has two bullet points. The first is that,
Speaker 3: when asked directly, he sort of circularly but nevertheless, very
Speaker 3: revealingly said that he grew up in a home in
Speaker 3: which his grandmother and his grandfather were really decisive influences,
Speaker 3: and that his grand father was as a Communist and
Speaker 3: his grandmother was a devout Orthodox Christian, and these were
Speaker 3: the two big influences on his life. In fact, so
Speaker 3: powerful were they that his grandfather kept a picture of
Speaker 3: Lenin on the mantlepiece, and on the mantlepiece beside that
Speaker 3: was an icon of Christ. And so I plumbed it
Speaker 3: a little further, and I will just tell you again,
Speaker 3: sometimes you get an exclamation point when you were only
Speaker 3: looking for a period. The exact things he said are
Speaker 3: very revealing and suggests to me that this man there
Speaker 3: was more to him than most people understood, but Reagan
Speaker 3: understood it. But the two things that really come the
Speaker 3: data points that I want to mention, are that he
Speaker 3: actually referred, if you go back to transcripts privately, a
Speaker 3: couple of times about the intercession of God in the
Speaker 3: peace process that eventually brought the Soviet Union down. And
Speaker 3: the other thing is years afterwards, when Reagan died, I
Speaker 3: had worked for or Gingrich and I was invited to
Speaker 3: come kind of go down a little staircase when they
Speaker 3: first had Reagan lying in state and come down and
Speaker 3: they stop me at the bottom of the little marble staircase.
Speaker 3: It comes from the Speaker's office down to where a
Speaker 3: body would lie in state in the Capitol, and they
Speaker 3: stopped me, and the capitol police just stopped me, and
Speaker 3: I was just by myself, and this little man came
Speaker 3: in and walked over and bowed his head at the
Speaker 3: casket for I don't know a minute, two minutes maybe three,
Speaker 3: and then retreated privately, no press, nothing, And that little
Speaker 3: man was Gorbachev. So it's fascinating. That is one story,
Speaker 3: and that's the course on the more. You know, I
Speaker 3: could tell you private stories about Colin Powell and his
Speaker 3: personal attention to people, Reagan's personal attention to people. But
Speaker 3: I actually think the more many of the more compelling
Speaker 3: stories are on the front end with I was going
Speaker 3: to mention my eighth grade math teacher was the first
Speaker 3: guy to ever give an orger and to someone, and
Speaker 3: he gave it to his brother. Never happened before. The
Speaker 3: two boys were both Korean War vets. They only had
Speaker 3: each other. Parents were gone, and Ron decided to give
Speaker 3: his see if they'd never done it before. They said
Speaker 3: it couldn't be done. And then they called him back
Speaker 3: and said, actually, your brother's an identical twin. Maybe if
Speaker 3: it would ever work, it would work then. And that
Speaker 3: story is just gripping. And then another friend of mine
Speaker 3: is one of the F sixteen pilots. There were only
Speaker 3: two armed F sixteens on nine to eleven, and Jeff
Speaker 3: Cashman was one of the two. He and his wingman.
Speaker 3: All the pictures you see of New York are taken
Speaker 3: by Jeff and his wingman. The two burning towers, And
Speaker 3: I asked Jeff, you know, i'd known him for decades.
Speaker 3: Twenty years later, after nine to eleven, I asked him,
Speaker 3: how do you feel about all this? How do you
Speaker 3: feel about what happened and what he didn't get there
Speaker 3: in time? But you know, his answers are gripping, They're
Speaker 3: really something you'd be amazed at. And then there are
Speaker 3: several genuine rescues, military rescues.
Speaker 2: One of my close friends was Cashman based on kit Cot.
Speaker 3: Nope, he was based out of Vermont. The squadron got there,
Speaker 3: it was fully armed out of Vermont. They did have
Speaker 3: other planes that got up out of Andrews, but they
Speaker 3: were unarmed. There were only two armed planes. And that's
Speaker 3: because when the first tower was hit, Jeff, we didn't
Speaker 3: have cell phones and that kind of stuff back then,
Speaker 3: and his wife called him and said they hit one
Speaker 3: of the towers, and he thought that was odd. He said,
Speaker 3: that's not going to be a mistake. And so he
Speaker 3: got two F sixteen's fully armed, so that when National
Speaker 3: Command authorities actually called him and said can you get
Speaker 3: two planes in the air, how long will it take you?
Speaker 3: He said thirty seconds, actually said ninety seconds. They said no, no,
Speaker 3: fully armed missiles everything he said, I were fully armed,
Speaker 3: and so they got up and gave chase. And it's
Speaker 3: a fascinating story. A couple of these are gripping in
Speaker 3: the sense that Coastguard is involved, a one hundred first
Speaker 3: Airborne are involved. A good friend of mine is a
Speaker 3: black Hawk pilot who had forty one saves to his
Speaker 3: unit's name, and one of those missions and just absolutely
Speaker 3: will make you cry. It's unbelievable the risks they took
Speaker 3: to get in and save this special operator, and they
Speaker 3: saved them, but they you know, they almost they almost
Speaker 3: went down together with a revealing tanker. Anyway, just amazing stories,
Speaker 3: and that's why I think this book. Honestly, from the
Speaker 3: age of twelve to one hundred and twelve, these are
Speaker 3: the kinds of stories you want to read. They remind
Speaker 3: you that not only are their heroes at your elbow
Speaker 3: when you're grocery shopping or on the street, and they
Speaker 3: don't talk about it, but there is a hero in you.
Speaker 3: And when you read these stories, one of the things
Speaker 3: that happens with me. And I've gone back through the
Speaker 3: interviews and I read them again and tear up and
Speaker 3: think to myself, Okay, I just want to fortify myself
Speaker 3: if I was ever in a situation like this, would
Speaker 3: I do what they did? You know? Would I rush
Speaker 3: in and save those two kids? Would I? You know,
Speaker 3: I would I put pedal to the metal with odds
Speaker 3: of you know, one hundred to one that I'm not
Speaker 3: going to get there and some of these and would
Speaker 3: I do it? And that's that's one of the beauties
Speaker 3: of this book is it highlights this can do American spirit.
Speaker 3: F fifteen pilots, guys that were in Vietnam, guys that
Speaker 3: were more recently in combat, and then people who are
Speaker 3: doing things in the civilian world. A twenty two year
Speaker 3: old nurse and how she managed an unbelievable pile of
Speaker 3: responsibility during COVID and what did she do and how
Speaker 3: did she do it and how did she feel afterwards?
Speaker 3: Really gripping stuff.
Speaker 2: The book is entitled Cherish America. And by the way,
Speaker 2: you mentioned being inside of communist Poland. I had that
Speaker 2: experience as well as a television reporter in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: and it really opened my eyes. Jerozelski was still in
Speaker 2: power and we were over there for ten days, and
Speaker 2: I could write a book about that also a few
Speaker 2: year or so later, I was had at the opportunity
Speaker 2: while while I was in Poland, I should say, to
Speaker 2: visit Auschwitz, and that was a very important experience in
Speaker 2: my life. When we get back, I want to tell
Speaker 2: you about an American hero that I think you know about,
Speaker 2: but the most courageous individual that I've ever met. And
Speaker 2: I'd love to get your reaction to who I think
Speaker 2: is in that category. We as we've met many of
Speaker 2: the same people believe it or yeah, and I can
Speaker 2: identify with you. But I invite our callers to join
Speaker 2: the conversation if they want to ask a question of
Speaker 2: Robert Charles, or if they want to talk about someone
Speaker 2: who they consider to be an American hero. Again, the
Speaker 2: book is Cherish America, and I just think that at
Speaker 2: this time, all of us in this country who are
Speaker 2: blessed enough to be here, need to understand that we
Speaker 2: need to cherish this country, because if we do not
Speaker 2: cherish this country, there are forces about not only around
Speaker 2: the world but in our own country who would like
Speaker 2: to bring this country down. And that's why I think
Speaker 2: this interview was particularly well timed. It was timed in
Speaker 2: advance of what happened in New Orleans on January the
Speaker 2: morning of January first. My name is Dan Ray. This
Speaker 2: is Nightside. If you'd like to join the conversation, feel free,
Speaker 2: don't be intimidated. Six one seven thirty six one seven
Speaker 2: nine three one ten thirty Coming back after this one Nightside.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray, Mine from the Window World
Speaker 1: Nightside Studios on WBZ, the news Radio.
Speaker 2: My guess is Robert Charles, whose book is Cherished America.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you if you remember because you
Speaker 2: were younger, but the most courageous guy that I've ever met,
Speaker 2: and I've met a lot of courageous people, Robert is
Speaker 2: a guy named Lloyd Pete Booker. He was the commander
Speaker 2: of the USS Pueblo, which was it's the only American
Speaker 2: rule from held in captivity of another country. It's being
Speaker 2: held at peter Pang, North Korea. He had a crew
Speaker 2: of eighty three men which they were basically pulled off
Speaker 2: the high seas off the coast of Korea, North Korea,
Speaker 2: and they suffered eleven months of horrific captivity from January
Speaker 2: twenty third, nineteen sixty eight to December twenty third, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight. And Booker brought all of his crew through
Speaker 2: that and the night that he was forced to write
Speaker 2: a quote unquote confession, you know, in against the terms
Speaker 2: of the uniform.
Speaker 3: Do you the convention? Yeah? Well no, yes, yes, military, yes, right,
Speaker 3: and you.
Speaker 2: Know which is anything beyond name, rank and serial number.
Speaker 2: And they promised them that they would start killing his
Speaker 2: youngest member of his crew the next morning if he
Speaker 2: did not write a letter of confession. So he's an
Speaker 2: interesting guy. He's he's passed now, but I became one
Speaker 2: of my closest friends in the world. He was an
Speaker 2: orphan from from Idaho, grew up in Father flanagainst Boystown,
Speaker 2: went to University of Nebraska. It was a mustang, meaning
Speaker 2: when you become the community US Naval vessel, your mustang
Speaker 2: unless you went to Annapolis. He did not go to Annapolis.
Speaker 2: So he was small enough to know that the North
Speaker 2: Koreans in nineteen sixty eight, this is now, you know,
Speaker 2: many many years ago, over fifty years ago, were blind
Speaker 2: to the outside world. And he remembered the word peon,
Speaker 2: which is an ode of praise p A e a n.
Speaker 2: And he wrote a confession essentially in which he said
Speaker 2: it would be his greatest honor to Peon. Kimmel's sung
Speaker 2: basically turned the noun into a verb, and yeah, it
Speaker 2: was just amazing. And of course the North Koreans released
Speaker 2: that they looked at their Korean American dictionary and thought
Speaker 2: that they didn't understand that that it was a noun
Speaker 2: and not a verb. He used it as a verb. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I got to know him, one of the most courageous
Speaker 2: people I've ever known in my life. They attempted a
Speaker 2: court martial and when he came back and John Chaffey,
Speaker 2: who was the detective of navy, said no, that's not
Speaker 2: going to happen. And he actually led the d mining
Speaker 2: of Hyphong Harbor in nineteen seventy five. And I remember
Speaker 2: talking with the time and I said, I hope you're
Speaker 2: going to leave a few live ones there. Pete's named
Speaker 2: Pete Poker, and he said, you can count on that,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Man. One of the things you're pointing out, which I
Speaker 3: think your listeners will appreciate because they know it, is
Speaker 3: that we are the last generation to know some of
Speaker 3: those great brave men in person from World War Two
Speaker 3: in Korea and many many people have family members, the parents, grandparents,
Speaker 3: and I think one of the points of this book
Speaker 3: was not even to be individual these are truly gripping
Speaker 3: individual stories, but to remind people of their own memories
Speaker 3: of people that sacrifice for us and that they admire.
Speaker 3: And yes, there are World War Two vets in this store,
Speaker 3: in this book, and there's some really remarkable people. But
Speaker 3: I will tell you that more often than not, people
Speaker 3: read these stories and then come back to me with
Speaker 3: members of their own families, and many of them have
Speaker 3: done absolutely spectacular things that were for America, and they
Speaker 3: are not written down anywhere. And you know, you know,
Speaker 3: that's one of the reasons you've got to get a
Speaker 3: book like Cherish America to remind you that these people exist.
Speaker 2: Well, you know Booker's experience. He was not a Korean
Speaker 2: War veteran, because of course, the armist that's been signed
Speaker 2: in the early well in the mid fifties, and the
Speaker 2: Pueblo was not captured until the actually was in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight. January sixty eight, at the height of the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. Let me get some phone calls in here
Speaker 2: real quickly if we can. I'm going to move everybody
Speaker 2: quickly here. Let me go to Kristin in Wakefield. Kristin
Speaker 2: first with Robert Charles, go right ahead, Kristin.
Speaker 5: Thank you, mister Childs, mister Ray. I'm so happy to
Speaker 5: hear that you are speaking of this book Terurish America.
Speaker 5: I had actually asked for this book at the library
Speaker 5: and I've made a few attempts and unfortunately the librarians
Speaker 5: have not been able to locate a book in circulation.
Speaker 5: And I think it's important for everyone to read and
Speaker 5: I would love to read it.
Speaker 3: Well, you can get it on Amazon, but I'm with you,
Speaker 3: it should it's beginning to roll out. Dan, That's that's
Speaker 3: what I'll say.
Speaker 2: And Kristin, Yeah, okay, Kristiny, that book is available. And
Speaker 2: as a citizen of Wakefield, as I'm sure you know,
Speaker 2: at a public library, you have a right to go
Speaker 2: in and request the book, and I have, I.
Speaker 5: Will and I'll try again. And I'm very happy to
Speaker 5: hear that you're showcasing this book, and I hope others
Speaker 5: will pursue it as well.
Speaker 2: Well. Absolutely, Thanks very much, Christina. That's a great suggestion.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Happy New Year. Nancy and Rosslyndale. Nancy next, on Nightside
Speaker 2: with my guest Robert Charles. Go right ahead, Nancy.
Speaker 6: Hi, Hello, Nancy, Yeah, Hi Charles. You know what I
Speaker 6: want to tell you that I listened to this program
Speaker 6: all the time, and I haven't listened to it in
Speaker 6: a little while.
Speaker 7: I am so.
Speaker 6: Inspired by what you have said in your memories of
Speaker 6: these things and that you have documented them.
Speaker 7: Since I've been listening to this.
Speaker 6: Program tonight, I have ordered the book on Nightline, I
Speaker 6: mean Amazon, and I just I admire the fact that
Speaker 6: you are not only looking at what people do in
Speaker 6: the military, but what people do in everyday life. You
Speaker 6: know what you're earlier, what you said earlier about would
Speaker 6: I do that or wouldn't I do that?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: Often, you know, like my dad was the captain of
Speaker 7: the marine and and my uncle Paul was in Vietnam
Speaker 7: and I didn't even know he was in Vietnam because
Speaker 7: he never talked upon her until my cousin died. You know.
Speaker 6: But you know, I I.
Speaker 7: I like to think that I would run into the fire.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: What, what what what I've heard tonight? God bless you.
Speaker 3: Nancy. Yeah, Nancy, I just want to thank you because
Speaker 3: the spirit that you're talking about we have heroes in
Speaker 3: our lives, and very often we don't know it. Uh,
Speaker 3: they don't you know these stories? A lot of these
Speaker 3: people would never have told these stories unless they were
Speaker 3: encouraged to tell them. And I will just tell you
Speaker 3: we one of the reasons I wrote these down. And
Speaker 3: perhaps your uncle and your and your father will kind
Speaker 3: of this comes to mind with them. There was a
Speaker 3: book my kids read growing up in high school, I
Speaker 3: think called What Is History? The only thing I remember
Speaker 3: reading it along with them was that if you took
Speaker 3: all the books in all the libraries in all the
Speaker 3: world and you put them all together in one pile,
Speaker 3: they represent less than one half of a percent of
Speaker 3: what actually happened. And so in the end, if you
Speaker 3: don't write it down, if we don't remember that these
Speaker 3: heroes exist in our past, we'll forget them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Nancia, I hate to do this year.
Speaker 2: I want to get one more call.
Speaker 4: Can I say one more thing, Nancy?
Speaker 2: I want to get one other call in. Would you
Speaker 2: be kind enough to give one other person to say something? Okay,
Speaker 2: thank you, Nancy? If we go to Joe and Lynn, Joe,
Speaker 2: I only got about twenty seconds, thirty seconds for you.
Speaker 4: What can you do with a happy New year? Mister Charles,
Speaker 4: I'd like to ask use your book in audible audio
Speaker 4: for the blind, that I'm not as happy with America
Speaker 4: as you are, because I'm visually impairing that a lot
Speaker 4: of problems. I'd love to read your book as it
Speaker 4: on our boy. If not, please, the answer is, I'm.
Speaker 3: Going to work to get it on and I will try,
Speaker 3: and I it's in the plan. I will tell you
Speaker 3: there are stories about disabled Americans in this book, and
Speaker 3: it will make you cry to see how courageous, how
Speaker 3: courageous we are as a people.
Speaker 4: Well, the reason I mentioned it because some of us
Speaker 4: have fallen through the cracks. Thank you and take care.
Speaker 2: Thanks Robert Charles enjoyed it a lot. Cherish America. Uh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to give people an opportunity the next hour
Speaker 2: maybe to talk a little bit. I hope you'll be
Speaker 2: able to listen up in Maine about what they cherish
Speaker 2: will America. I want to. I want to carry a
Speaker 2: love the theme on for the rest of the evening. Robert,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 3: So much, so much, look forward to me and God
Speaker 3: bless you. Okay, bye bye now back catch you by back.
Speaker 2: Catch Okay, here comes the eleven o'clock news. I'm going
Speaker 2: to ask you to plumb your mind right now and
Speaker 2: particularly a view of what happened in New Orleans earlier
Speaker 2: this week. What is it about America that you cherish?
Speaker 2: That's my question. I suspect my audience will rise to
Speaker 2: the challenge. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty
Speaker 2: six one seven, nine three one ten thirty back on
Speaker 2: nights Side right after this