The Fine Art of the Political Interview : And the inside stories behind the "Giants of Asia" conversations [1 ed.] 9789814677578, 9789814634267

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Insights from Award-Winning Journalist

Tom Plate

The Fine Art of the Political Interview and the Inside Stories behind the ‘Giants of Asia’ conversations

© 2015 Thomas Gordon Plate Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196 All interviews by Tom Plate are and originally were the copyright of Thomas Gordon Plate, or of the Pacific Perspectives Media Center, Professor Plate’s nonprofit in Los Angeles. Any other fragmentary usage, in prose or in generic pictures, is asserted via Creative Commons License and Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. All excerpts from Personal Impressions, the collection of essays of Sir Isaiah Berlin, are from the 1980 Viking Press edition edited by Henry Hardy, with an introduction by Noel Annan. The original book copyright was 1949. The added Introduction copyright ©1980 by Noel Annan. All fragments used from this book are permitted under Creative Commons License and Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Cover photo of Tom Plate by Jon Rou/Loyola Marymount University. Back cover photo by Ashley Plate. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300, Fax: (65) 6285 4871. E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Other Marshall Cavendish Offices Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA • Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand • Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Plate, Tom, author. The fine art of the political interview : and the inside stories behind the ‘Giants of Asia’ conversations / Tom Plate. – Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions,­[2015] pages cm Includes index. ISBN : 978-981-4634-26-7 (paperback) Interviewing in journalism. 2. Politicians – Asia - Interviews. I. Title. II. Plate, Tom. Giants of Asia. PN4784.I6 070.43 — dc23

OCN906658103

Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd

To all my journalistic counterparts in Asia, trying their best to bring to their own people, and to those of us looking in from far away, the truest and most important stories of their era and their lands and their citizens.

Contents

A Selection of Critical Praise for Tom Plate’s Books vii Author’s Notes xiii 1 • IN PRAISE OF CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN CONSENTING ADULTS • 01

“Wise men speak because they have something to say.” 2 • ON THE NATURE OF THE POLITICAL INTERVIEW • 11

“When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” 3 • ON SURVIVING THE CELEBRITY INTERVIEW • 23

“Don’t just stand there looking skinny!” 4 • ON WHY SOME INTERVIEWS ARE TOUGHER THAN OTHERS • 37

“…Hope you won’t do to our Tony what you did to their John!” 5 • ON KEEPING YOUR INTERVIEW CLOSE TO YOUR INSTINCTS • 57

“We finish tonight.” 6 • ON THE NEED FOR A KILLER QUESTION IN YOUR BACK POCKET • 75

“So now that you are the PM, will you legalize Viagra?”

7 • ON WHY THEY WANT TO TALK BUT FIND IT HARD TO SAY MUCH • 93

“Any South Korean foreign minister would have the credentials.” 8 • ON HIT AND RUN INTERVIEWS — AND SMART LADIES WHO LUNCH • 127

“Bray it again, Sam!” 9 • ON QUESTIONS YOU WISHED YOU HAD NEVER ASKED • 149

“These are for the CIA, right?” 10 • ON INTERVIEWING THE LONELY POLITICAL EXILE • 169

“When will you be leaving?” 11 • ON WHAT TO SAY WHEN THEY SAY THEY DIDN’T SAY THAT • 195

“We act as if nothing happened…” 12 • ON WHAT TO DO WHEN THE TABLES ARE TURNED • 205

“Whom do you like better, Mahathir or Lee Kuan Yew?”

CONCLUSION • 219 ON THE NEAR-PERFECT INTERVIEWER

“I’m ready for my close up.” Giving Thanks • 230 Index • 232 About the Author • 236

A Selection of Critical Praise for Tom Pl ate’s Book s

Confessions of an American Media Man (2006) “If Tom ‘tells all’ in his journalism classes in the same ‘Front Page’ style, half of UCLA should be auditing Professor Plate.” — James Brady in FORBES

Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew (2010) “I don’t agree with all of it, but that is to be expected [given] the Western journalist’s exaggeration of eccentricity. But on the whole, he got my point of view across.” — Lee Kuan Yew at the book’s official launch party “There are two types of courage among journalists. Some might risk their lives crossing paths with an IED on an arid back road in Afghanistan. Many fewer risk their reputation by going against the herd of conventional opinion. Tom Plate, America’s only syndicated columnist who focuses on Asia and a former editorial director of the Los Angeles Times, has taken the second risk in his Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew. And it has been a risk well worth taking.” — Columnist Nathan Gardels Huffington Post “This book is a fascinating read.... Lee Kuan Yew is a great teacher...” — Goh Chok Tong, former Singapore Prime Minister, 1990–2004

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“You have done a superb job of capturing the many faces of this extraordinary man, whom I have known and admired for some fifty years. That he is the first to be honored in the … ‘Giants of Asia’ series seems only right.” — Dr Henry A. Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, 1973–77 “… a scintillating insight into the private — and brutally candid — beliefs and thoughts of the 86-year-old Minister Mentor on a wide range of topics, from his temper and children to various countries and his ‘authoritarian’ ways. … These are captured in a writing style that is fast-paced and conversational over 24 chapters that are peppered with Mr Plate’s views.” — Zakir Hussain in The Straits Times (of Singapore)

Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad (2011) “As with Prof. Tom Plate’s first book on Lee Kuan Yew, do not expect a dull moment in this book.” — A reader’s rave review (India) “Plate’s books … demonstrate a fascinating insight into [political leaders’] thinking and offer some explanations for their policydecisions which continue to affect the social, political and economic circumstances in these two neighboring Southeast Asian countries.” — Ishtiaq Hossain, International Islamic University, Malaysia

A Selection of Critical Praise for Tom Plate’s Books ix

Conversations with Thaksin (2011) “… Plate’s ‘Gee shucks, did they really say that about you?’ style has a huge upside. His subjects open up to him in a way they may not have intended to, and the insights the reader gains into their characters are considerable; to the point that Plate’s books, for all their faults, will be incomparable tools for historians, biographers and anyone who ever wants to figure out what made these men, who do deserve to be called ‘Giants of Asia’, tick.” — Sholto Byrnes, The National (Abu Dhabi) “The author is able to provide the layman reader with a broad context of Thaksin the man and politician while zooming in an historian/ journalist approach to give depth to content. This book is easily accessible to readers using a clear journalistic style.” — Professor William J. Jones, Mahidol University International College, Thailand

Conversations with Ban Ki-moon (2011) “…candid, free-flowing, probing, thorough … Plate’s biggest achievement lies in his ability to contextualize and humanize a largerthan-life figure — an accomplishment to which every biographer aspires…” — Mia Warren in ASIAN REVIEW OF BOOKS “... This is a very readable book and, not surprisingly given the author, very well written.”  — Former Fletcher School Dean Stephen Bosworth, former U.S. special envoy to North Korea and U.S. ambassador to South Korea

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“Since Ban became Secretary General in 2007, many books have been published but without interviews or consultations with him. But this book is solely based on exclusive conversations with Ban…. It is full of inspiring quotes that reflect Ban’s philosophical thoughts…. The book elaborates on Plate’s up close and personal observations and touches on important international issues. It allows readers to know his personal, human side through his words.” — Chung Ah-young, The Korea Times “I have known Ban Ki-moon since we were both foreign ministers. I feel that I understand him even more now after I have read this unique book. The book takes the readers deep inside the inner thoughts of a man who has described his job as the most impossible job in the world. It also offers a rare look at the inner workings of the United Nations. This combination makes the book a ‘must read’ for students of multilateral diplomacy. This book is not a public relations exercise for anyone. Tom Plate is a tough and experienced interviewer, with a gentle touch.” — Kantathi Suphamongkhon, 39th Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand and Senior Fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)

In the Middle of the Future (2013) “Tom Plate is the only one who has the intellectual capacity to not treat each nook and corner of that huge land mass we sometimes haphazardly call ‘Asia’ as just one big chunk of landmass. He is the only one who has the insight to see all 50 shades of Asia. He is the only one

A Selection of Critical Praise for Tom Plate’s Books xi

who has the guts and wits to be nuanced and say it like it is. This is an important book — an indispensable one — that will take readers on a course of unlearning cerebral lethargy — all the cliches, and ‘they all look alike’ shallowness popular culture has created and reinforced. It will take away the cataract we suffer from when it comes to reading any print on Asia.” — Alice Wu, South China Morning Post

In the Middle of China’s Future (2014) “Plate has also gone beyond political elites to amplify the voices of ordinary Asians, to show how they are coming to terms with the dislocation and change that affect Americans as well in a globalized world. Plate appeals on page after page to Beijing to treat its political opponents with respect, not because the West demands this but because the Chinese deserve it. These are not novel arguments, but the strength of the book lies in the way the case is made consistently over 20 years, during which China’s relations with the West witnessed several downturns. These included the confrontation of the mid-1990s, when the U.S. Seventh Fleet intervened to keep the peace in the face of a Chinese military threat to Taiwan. Never, even during the height of such crises, did Plate waver in his commitment to the need for trust between two of the world’s greatest powers. In making a principled case for peace in the Pacific, Plate acts as a true friend of Asia. He is credible because he writes with the moral energy of a learned journalist intent on presenting a complex truth.”  — Asad Latif, Institute for Southeast Asian Studies Research Fellow, writing in The Straits Times (Singapore)

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“Tom Plate is one of the few Western journalists to get the [China] story right.” — Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore “This book is terrific. It calls for a journalism that respects the person interviewed and that goes beyond the Woodward-Bernstein process of revelation to a journalism of understanding apply at least as well to the domestic reporting we see in our papers and on-line. The insistence on listening as the major element of both journalism and foreign policy is something that is a cardinal truth. All this fine work is done in Tom Plate’s inimitable conversational style that draws the reader in.” — Barry Sanders, international lawyer and UCLA professor

Author’s Notes

1. Throughout this book I will refer — lovingly, and without any embarrassment whatsoever — to passages from Personal Impressions, the stellar collection of essays of Isaiah Berlin. Why? The late, great Oxford don peered deeply into the minds of the great men of his time, searching not for some hidden darkness but for the enlightenment offered. Berlin was the last man on the face of the earth to be fooled, but he was always looking for the way forward, not trapped by the wrongs of the past and reiterating them as if trapped in some intellectual prison. This is what I am trying to do in my interviews. This is why Personal Impressions has long served as a guidepost for me: It offers hope. As Berlin’s admirer, the late Noel Annan (provost of King’s College, Cambridge 1956–66, member of the House of Lords) wrote in the introduction to the 1980 edition: “Unlike some who have such a sharp eye he is not interested — none less so — in doing others down. He may not be totally un-censorious but, unlike many moralists, censoriousness is not a state of mind in which he finds pleasure. In the act of observing a crook or a charlatan, a dullard or a devious fellow, he enjoys discovering redeeming features. Redemption not condemnation, merits not failings, stimulate him to write; and when he writes he chooses those he wants to praise and particularizes only their good qualities.” Amen to that.

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2. The memoirist who can replicate from memory exact quotes decades later is always an absolute astonishment to me. I am not comfortable tendering documentary status to such instant recall. If I have the conversation written down in my files or otherwise recorded, then you will see it quoted directly, as in “We finish tonight” (Lee Kuan Yew chapter). Otherwise, if I am dead solid certain of the meaning but in all honesty unable to retrieve documentary digital exactitude out of my cranial memory bank or filed notes, you will see the quote in all italics.

1 In Pr aise of Conversations Between Consenting Adults

Social scientists have depersonalized acres of human experience so that history resembles a ranch on which herds move, driven they know not why by impersonal forces, munching their way across the prairie. — Noel Annan in the introduction to the 1980 edition of Isaiah Berlin’s Personal Impressions

“Wise Men Speak Because T h e y H av e S o m e t h i n g T o S a y. ”

Thank you for joining this journalistic expedition and excavation. My goal is to lay out for your inspection informal notions and insights into the nature of journalism and in particular the nature of the political leader — all in the spirit and context of the art form of the interview. Our literary archeology aims to lift up into the sunlight for your examination issues and strategies regarding both the formal, carefully planned interview session as well as those on-the-run interviews that make generally miserable the life of the practicing journalist. Serious journalism is a tough business and with political VIPs, you often have to take what you can get; often you cannot get what you really want; and all too infrequently does fate permit you a very considerable stretch of quarantined time in a very quiet setting, with the digital recorders activated, smart phones turned off and the former prime minister or president or UN Secretary General focused entirely

In Praise of Conversations Between Consenting Adults 3

on the task at hand, sipping calming tea or alert-making coffee, in a thoughtful, focused mood, entranced and engaged in a conversational back and forth on the issues of the day and remembrances of things past. This would be Interview Heaven, as you might imagine, and it is the rarest of setups. In my long career run, only a handful of VIP encounters played out this way, and four of them became the basis of the quartet of books bannered as ‘Giants of Asia’. The first, in 2009, was Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew; the most recent was Conversations with Ban Ki-moon — and in between we had two path-finding former prime ministers, Mahathir Mohamad and Thaksin Shinawatra. For this career journalist and professor, these were very special events — so much so that I thought of them less as interviews than as extended conversations between consenting adults than as bantering interviews between alpha adolescents. Ordinarily, journalists have to make do with far too little time and are forced to scavenge up what they can at the VIP scene before being shooed away for the grave annoyance that they seem. No matter: That is what we do, and to some extent what we are (yes, we can be an absolute total annoyance!); but we are used to this, live with it, work with it. Sometimes we get the full story, sometimes but a snippet or two. Ours is the profession of immediacy, approximation, imperfection. Expect substantially more of us and often you will be disappointed. On the other hand … you won’t be frustrated because of having to wait forever for judgment or perspective; we are not historians, we are, as it were, immediatists. The historian may still derive pleasure and profit from debating the origins of the Second World War. But that strikes us mere (but

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uber-practical) immediatists as rather like the very definition of old news — beating a dead horse that’s been lying on the side of the road for quite long enough, actually. In all decency, can’t someone please cart away the endless ‘origins of the Second World War’ controversy? I mean, isn’t it past time?! But while historians are doing their thing, poking and prowling amidst the remains of the last war or peace, we are searching for the inklings or origins of the next war — or peace. You choose which one is the more important or relevant to you. The VIP interview is our admissions card into the history of the present and a prime instrument for staking our claim to contemporary relevance. Consider: It is in the here and the now that you find out what they have to say. DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT? These journalistic forays, however imperfect they are or have to be, can help us understand our present times better and can serve to gift future historians with a solidly documented sense of our times in the actual real moment of our lives as we live them. True conversations might be thought of as mutual interviews instead of verbal warfare. Properly conducted, they bring out some of our best traits as human beings, especially our desire to communicate thoughtfulness and caring. So when you agree to enter into an adult conversation with another person, you presumably intend to contribute your good half and are committed to listen more than merely politely to the other half. This transaction assumes, of course, that both sides have something worth conversing about and well listening to. Or, as our beloved Plato put it: “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”

In Praise of Conversations Between Consenting Adults 5

Engaging in a conversation with another human being can be a defining aspect of a civilized society. Not truly listening to the other might be categorized as an aspect of the insult. In a sense it is a barbarism. And we know it when we see it, don’t we? Misunderstandings are inevitable if we don’t care enough to listen. Of course, many conversations are trivial and transactional and, basically, no more than utilitarian. We ask for a favor, banter with a waiter, flirt mindlessly with someone knowing full well that the flow of the words is going nowhere (and relaxed perhaps precisely for that reason). But other kinds of conversations have a deeper purpose and a more complex structure. More than 2,000 years ago, Plato skillfully exploited the convention of the conversation to illuminate profound points of philosophy. Novelists have worked with it to illuminate the story or even propel the whole story along. For the playwright of course, conversation is more or less the entire pure art. (In another life, my wish? To be Ibsen…) In the major political interviews of my career, I have in fact tried to view them more as somewhat intimate conversations between two persons rather than as jabbing or jarring exchanges between two combatants, each with preconceived ideas and attitudes and thus in the course of the conversation creating not enlightenment but increasing mutual rigidity and stupidity. Many Western-style journalistic interviews take the second form. In effect the ‘interview’ becomes an ‘exchange of views’ — more as an exchange of verbal gunfire that leads mainly to a battening down of positions, or at best static re-statements of previously held and indeed rather well known ones.

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Some interviewers view their interview-objects as no more than easy close-range stationary targets — potential kill on the road to glory. This is the post-Watergate model in which journalistic creation needs to be destructive in order to have merit. My view is different: Unless the interview subject is an historic evil in the manner of a Hitler or a Stalin or Pol Pot, an exclusionary, dismissive attitude and superiority complex limits your options, diminishes the range and imagination of questions, degrades the play of your mind, and lowers your stature. Human beings, even rehabilitating criminals, merit a measure of respect. Only those who are without sin among us should consider casting stones. And I, for one, know of no one like that, especially as I, generally speaking, do know myself. Running a nation’s foreign policy or reforming a health system or restructuring a national economy is not the same level of activity as lecturing to undergraduates or laying out the front page of a newspaper or choosing the cover shot for a magazine. Political leaders have hard jobs that often require hard choices, sometimes risking the potential political explosion, and perhaps, on occasion, committing a bit of outright razzmatazz deception. They might well be entitled to believe that their jobs are at least as difficult as we journalists believe ours to be. Political power and influence — its use, abuse, nature and style of use — has fascinated me ever since at a single-digit age I wrestled over whom my little home printing press would endorse for the U.S. presidency. Many on my block in Levittown, Long Island, seemed to lean toward the very articulate Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who talked the best talk. But after much anguish my LEVITTOWN BUGLE boldly (if conservatively) settled for World War II hero General Dwight Eisenhower, on the ground that the American hero of World War II walked the best walk. He would not have won, of course,

In Praise of Conversations Between Consenting Adults 7

without the backing of the LEVITTOWN BUGLE. I was sure of that, back then. This all happened when I was the grand old and selfconfident age of nine. Ever since that influential triumph, I have done my very best to try to keep my political-prognostic ego in check. I do hope you will appreciate this prodigious and saintly effort at self-restraint. It is not possible to overstate the impact of college life if your college was a very big deal to you emotionally as well as intellectually and your prior family life less than a Broadway hit. Amherst was my college and in fact this was my total reality at that age. At bucolic and intellectually rigorous Amherst I helped edit the student newspaper and was chosen by the Political Science Department to serve as student host whenever a political VIP guest visited campus. The ‘official greeter’ role must be in my blood: As a summer intern at the U.S. State Department, just after graduation from Amherst, before graduate school, I was asked to head up the Student Lecture Series. I loved it. Guest speakers included then Vice President Hubert Humphrey, National Security Council chief McGeorge Bundy and then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of the assassinated president. The invitation to RFK to address the 100 or so summer interns was my idea, and it was not popular with the pro-war Dean Rusk State Department where I was interning. An effort was made to deflect my invitation, but — like most college students who think they know everything! — I held my ground on high principle. Like many college students then, I was against the Vietnam War, in fact was the sole (anonymous) author of the Amherst College student newspaper’s official 1965 editorial opposing it — appearing

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well before the U.S. media so grindingly slowly began turning against; and so I had high regard for RFK, who had resigned as holdover Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson to run for and win the junior U.S. Senator seat from New York. In the process Bobby Kennedy emerged as an increasingly high-profile anti-war figure. Fortunately, no one at the State Department had the appetite to veto the invitation I had plotted, and when RFK showed up, I was, at the wizened age of 22, pretty much bowled over by the young politician’s vigor and directness. I had anticipated this, and had prepared a sophomorically sarcastic introduction for his speech, as if to shelter my obvious hero worship. Bobby Kennedy was quick to pick up on the irony of being brashly needled by the very punk kid whom he knew had pushed the State Deparment bureaucracy to invite him, and, as he took the podium of the Department’s auditorium, said to the interns, drolly but with a wickedly admiring smile, and right off, something like: I will tell you one thing. I am just very glad I don’t have to run for office against your leader. It is interesting that decades later I still feel the influence (as in inspiration) of this passing meeting with Robert Kennedy; Keizo Obuchi, the late prime minister of Japan, told people of a similar story when he was a college student. And Ban Ki-moon, now UN Secretary General, of course, met President John Kennedy at a young age and also felt something special that helped motivate him to enter pubic service. I never desired political office, though decades later in Los Angeles it once became a possibility; but nothing happened. I never returned to government after that summer stint in Washington, even though I loved writing speeches for State Department officials, who were

In Praise of Conversations Between Consenting Adults 9

thrilled to have a reasonably competent student fill-in given that their otherwise reliable staff speechwriters were all off on summer vacation. Speechwriting seemed worth doing, in fact — but only if you had someone worth doing it for. This was a big IF. Consider the case of a former professor of mine named Theodore Sorensen, JFK’s legendary speechwriter (“Ask not what your country can do for you…” “Never negotiate out of fear…”). One night, after his weekly Wednesday night “Presidential Leadership and Foreign Policy” seminar at Princeton, where I was a graduate student, Professor Sorensen stopped me in the hallway to say: You are a talented but still undisciplined writer; you could be a very good speechwriter some day. You should seriously consider it. That was a compliment, no? And decades later, at a Manhattan reception to celebrate my new book Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, Ted, then half-blind and moving very unsteadily, asked me: How come you never did any speechwriting? I had a ready answer, but it was a blunt one: Because, unlike you, I never liked a politician enough to fall in love with one. But you did. He thought for a few seconds, then nodded back in understanding and, I believed, agreement. Even so, I respect and in many cases admire certain political leaders, not to mention their speechwriters. They are not all crooks, some are brilliant and sometimes brave, and even some half-crooks have managed to have great effectiveness. So try not to judge others too much or too quickly — but rather listen to them carefully. Politics is a tough business, and not everyone around the world can do politics the American way, or (when we see how Congress conducts itself these days) should want to. In my political interviews the aim is always to try to lay out a conversation with a political VIP in a way that requires readers to pay close attention so as to make many of the judgments for themselves.

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Not that I am prepared to relegate myself to little more than a potted plant sitting quietly across the table; but utopian moral umbrage can get in the way of understanding. Without political leaders of special standing, there could be no politics worth following. Among the heroes/role models of my life are Iain Macleod, Robert Kennedy and Ted Sorensen. Others I do respect include John Major (less so Tony Blair), Wang Daohan and Junichiro Koizumi, plus all four leaders that are the focus of the ‘Giants of Asia’ series. In America today, the pickings seem disturbingly slim, but I do think history will eventually award good grades to Barack Obama, but not to George W. Bush — though, yes, very good ones to his father George H. Sr., an able president indeed. Clinton will get a pass on the Monica ‘monkey business’ — never expect too much from guys. I respect many political leaders. They have a very hard job, sometimes an impossible one. The movies they star in are the epics of actual modern political life — and theirs is not the easiest of parts to play. Happy endings have to be hard earned, not just cleverly scripted. This empathy is a basis of this book. I should be honest about this: I do not despise political leaders, as do many Western journalists. Many I respect and some I greatly admire. I do apologize for what may seem like an immense lapse in judgment or rather, perhaps, an effort to deal with and understand reality. Blame it all, if you will, on Robert Kennedy. But I never did get the long interview with him. This is a sadness. I honestly think my approach would have appealed to him. It could have been my greatest interview. But when I might have done it, I would have been too young to do it right. The fine art of interviewing, like fine wine, takes time for maturation.

2 On the Nature of the Political Interview

The journalist probes for the weak spot, inserts the banderilla, and so goads the wretched bull that he plunges to the doom of self-exposure. Professional interviewers regard this special skill with grave self-satisfaction. — Noel Annan in the introduction to Personal Impressions

“ W h e n T h e P r e s i d e n t D o e s I t, T h at M e a n s I t I s N o t I l l e g a l . ”

The idea — the ideal notion — of the perfect interview surely exists only in the mind and soul of the ambitious journalist and is more a reflection of the journalist’s vanity than attainable reality. Nor does the perfect interviewer exist, though if I am wrong, and one or more such journalists do exist somewhere in real time and space — on this planet and not Mars — that master is not I. Alas. It is really not (as my critics well understand!). Based on my experience, if the goal in interviewing the political VIP is perfection, then this is no task for the mere mortal. I do try — every time I try and I try hard; and, for some reason, interviewing political figures does come relatively easily to me. But it is always, basically, difficult. Does that make any sense? Maybe not or maybe by the end of this book it will. Another way to say this, perhaps, is that the best political interviews are a matter more of the magic of the art than the rigors of the science.

On the Nature of the Political Interview 13

There are rules and tips and we will see what they are but in the final analysis you need the touch of the poet more than the shove of the plumber to get close enough to elicit truth from power. The political VIP interview offers peculiar problems as well as major opportunities. They are but a snapshot of the historical moment, and they are difficult because the atmosphere around them is political, INTERVIEW TIP and politics is to transparency as freeway There are rules and traffic is to clean air. tips and we will see Perfect or near-perfect interviews what they are, but in only take place in more virtuous realms. Consider the case of the professionals the final analysis you of the hereafter. In confidentiality, the need the touch of the priest in hearing the enumerated sins of poet more than the his repentant sinner can achieve a kind shove of the plumber of perfection with a careful but respectful to get close enough to choreography of confession. The process elicit truth from power. can prove — in a manner of speaking — heavenly. Another possibility is the case of the shrink. In very strict confidentiality, as in that of the church confessional or the office couch, the cultivated psychiatrist in close psychological proximity with her trusting patient can achieve near-clinical perfection with clever protocols distilled from her own work and that of past shrink greats. The political VIP interview exists in an entirely different world and has an entirely different purpose. For starters, it is designed to be shared with everyone and their grandmother. If kept off the record or classified forever, it is of little use to anyone, except perhaps to the interviewer. The whole point of

14 The Fine Art of the Politic a l Interv iew

the political VIP interview is to birth all of it into the public realm for discussion and dissection and potential absorption. The last thing one would want to do with any secrets or special new insights revealed in the interview is to keep them secret. Not all political cultures find it equally valuable to publicize secrets but in a culture that depends on public education and discussion of political issues and personalities, the political interview can be invaluable. The responsibility of the interviewer to perform at a high level is substantial. The journalist has a socially important job to do; journalism can be vital to the public welfare. Interviewing people in political power is a serious business and the resulting interview or series of conversations can have palpable consequences. Methodologies are important but the core of the job is moral. The political interviewer may assume at one time or the other the tactical pose of the shrink or of the confessor but those are simply transitory techniques, not true roles. They are essentially private transactions. In effect the political interviewer is the representative of the citizen — reader or viewer or listener — who cannot possibly co-habit, of course, the same space and exist in the same time as the interview session. So there is a civic responsibility of representation. This role is no joke, and the interviewer needs to take this aspect of journalism seriously … though without losing her or his sense of humor — ever. If there is one useful tool not often taught, it is that a sense of humor can do more for the interviewer than the most thought-through interview strategy. Instead of a lot of notes, bring to the session some jokes. It is also possible to take the view that the interviewer in effect represents the interests of historians decades or even centuries hence who will be reaching back into their past and thus into our present to reconstruct and interpret, with proper tenor and accurate substance,

On the Nature of the Political Interview 15

the political issues and political personalities of our age. And so the extended interview or conversations, competently recorded digitally or in print, offer an incomparable fact-base and reality-check for the future observer of our present. Looked at in this way, am I suggesting that the political interview is one of the more significant contributions of the journalist? I am — yes, right, I am. Imagine that somehow the interview-arrow were to disappear from the journalist’s quiver — what would be left? Mainly … the deadline story that, within 24 hours, would be either dated or probably incomplete or possibly even at least partially wrong; the opinion essay or column whose opinion may or may not be rigorously tethered to reality; the gaudy gossip page whose noteworthy celebs of the moment may or may not, in the vast stretch of time and judgment of the INTERVIEW TIP gods, prove marginally worthy or even If there is one useful enduringly notable. tool not often taught, Without the fine art of the political interview, journalism would be reduced it is that a sense of to even less than the sums of its very humor can do more minor arts. for the interviewer The journalistic interview is vital than the most thoughtin almost any political culture short through interview of the truly closed-down totalitarian strategy. Instead of a nightmare, but of course it can take on different functions. In a successful lot of notes, bring to political society where the news media the session some jokes. is positioned as a partner of government rather than protean protagonist, the successful interview still remains vital. It can draw out the VIP subject in ways that are beyond the talent

16 The Fine Art of the Politic a l Interv iew

or instinct of the government or the VIP. It can help the government official explain a new policy approach with a vibrancy and clarity that otherwise might be lacking. In an adversarial political culture, such as the U.S., the successful interview may be pugilistic or what I call psychiatric, but either approach is acceptable, as long as it produces special results unobtainable any other way. What is dubious is an approach that mainly serves to spotlight the interviewer and overshadow the interviewee. This abuse of interview-power can take several forms but the obvious one is the wellknown smash-mouth approach, common in the West: hard-charging prosecutor with insinuations, accusations coming at you, hormones blazing. The aim is the thrill of the kill — banderilla! As long as the interviewer draws blood — so goeth the conceit of this technique — the truth has been drilled into. Without piercing questions, the truth will remain sealed. And that’s the only way for the shark to see the blood in the water and move in for the kill. But, more often than not, this can turn out to be American journalism at its feral worst. I put forward this thesis to a conference room full of journalists in Beijing. They were staffers at China Daily, the nation’s leading English language daily newspaper that is making international impact with various global editions. Its editors had invited me to present a seminar on ‘the art of the interview’. This I was happy to do — and in fact this riveting experience became the inspiration for this book. Many staffers attended the session in August 2014, encouraged by their bosses to take two hours off from their routine to exchange views on the craft of journalism with this visiting American. The newspaper’s invitation had been passed on to me through the All China Journalists Association, which had organized and sponsored the weeklong lecture

On the Nature of the Political Interview 17

trip to Shanghai, Xi’an and Beijing. China Daily was my last stop on this exhilarating but tiring tour. In some ways it was the most gratifying tour stop as well, and mixing it up with these journalists perked me up and tamed my jetlag. There is in my blood a love for newspapers in their classical, paperform that is deep and abiding. There remains something special about them, even in this age when more and more they seem the plodding prehistoric dinosaur losing serious ground every day to the modern quicksilver puma. In the case of China, whose media the government and the party hovers over carefully, newspapers still provide value. Even if their reporting options are limited in significant respects, in many other ways they are as free to serve their readers as any Western newspaper. And as the China media overall continues its gradual detoxification from dependency on state financing and goes cold turkey into the cruel competitive swirling waters of the market, the pressure on the editors to produce good, attractive and compelling journalism mounts. One way to achieve this quality is to hire good journalists, train them and keep them happily employed. The editors of China Daily take this view and act on it. I admire them for this and when an opportunity arose to make a very small contribution, I accepted readily. The afternoon seminar on ‘the art of the interview’ started it all off. And then in April of 2015 I offered a talk on ‘deadline writing’ via an Internet web-conference studio from my university office in Los Angeles directly to the newspaper’s conference room. LMU, my university, had kicked up my office with a state-of-theart skype-type studio that was resplendent in stereo sound, luxurious with wide-screen viewing and adroit with a mobile camera that could

18 The Fine Art of the Politic a l Interv iew

be moved around the office in search of the main action. For the skypestyle session, ‘younger’ journalists attended, in an effort organized by the paper’s Human Resources department and pushed by its top editors. Like journalists everywhere, the staffers in Beijing showed me an appetite and aptitude for explaining to their reading, listening or watching audience what is going on in the world around them. To do this takes technique as well as talent. They all have talent — no different from American journalists. But they operate with a different matrix of restrictions and set of out-of-bound markers than their American counterparts. So be it — no journalist, anywhere, is completely free. Some of us are bound by cultural bias and stereotypes, others by commercial restraints, others by government oversight. There is no free lunch or free newspaper. Instead of looking down on China’s journalists, American journalists should reflect on how well they do what they are allowed to do in the environment of their times and political culture they have, and reflect more on what we can do at our end for our own audience and at the same time do whatever we can to help our colleagues on the other side of the Pacific to do a better job for theirs. The first session, in summer 2014 for the talk on the ‘art of the interview’, was conducted inside the main conference room of China Daily (a 20-minute video cut is available on my university website: asiamedia.lmu.edu). I offered a short PowerPoint presentation with the assistance of Ms Xu Weiwei, a top journalist on the staff and the gifted Chinese translator of my book In the Middle of China’s Future. The atmosphere of the session was professional but not overly formal. I believe the journalists in attendance understood that I was honored

On the Nature of the Political Interview 19

as the guest of china daily in beijing, august 2014: Where the idea for this book on the political interview originated.

to have been invited to be with them and would try to do a good job and not bore them to death in the attempt. I could see that the Chinese journalists were more than familiar with the notion that excessive pushiness in the interview process was inappropriate. Their problem of course was precisely the opposite: that any pushiness by the interviewer of any kind was not widely or deeply appreciated in their political culture. In the Chinese media system, the press serves to advance the goals and perspectives of the party and the government, not to challenge them. A proper social comportment is required. With this said, true journalists are journalists in every part of the world I have visited. Their heart desires to tell the true story to the extent they comprehend it, and to the extent the political (or commercial) environment permits it. We American journalists have much in common. We may think we are better but it is better if we

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think otherwise. The downside of over-estimating who we are and what we do is a professional self-delusion. The Chinese journalists related readily to my declension of interview types as defined by time-availability. The most common and the least satisfying being the Deadline Interview; the medium-range opportunity being the Newspaper Feature or Magazine Interview, whether published online or on paper; and the potentially most satisfying being the Continued Conversation that permits issue redress and significant depth. In this category we submit for your consideration, of course, the ‘Giants of Asia’ book quartet — but more about them later. One of the truly famous examples of the Continued Conversation were the brilliant interviews in May 1977 by English journalist David Frost with disgraced former President Richard Nixon. And here’s the point: David took near-forever to come to the point: Frost: “Would you say that there are certain situations … where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation, and do something illegal?” Nixon: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” But that point was well worth waiting for, don’t you think? The Deadline Interview is the one that drives all us journalists crazy. It is journalism on the run, the most superficial and the most demeaning, and the least likely to produce utter and total journalistic accuracy, as it is probably the initial run at the story. But the Deadline

On the Nature of the Political Interview 21

Pointing to the historic Mao-Nixon meeting: In praise of the careful, ‘soft’ ‘David Frost’ approach to the famous Nixon interviews.

Interview looks to be the eternal curse, with us forever: With the omnipresence of the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, deadlines are in effect constantly upon us, and so the problem is not getting better, and in fact is getting drearily worse. But is there a silver journalistic lining within the Internet cloud? My hope is that the explosion of bad interviews and half-baked stories intensifies the need for the more serious journalistic effort. It means that as the Internet-only journalist becomes more than the counter clerk of the cup of bad instant coffee, time becomes less of the essence. The slow-brewed will become but a fond memory. Immediacy will always have its attractions — and sometimes a quick cup of bad coffee is all we require. But over all, context and explanation will be needed as more and more we are flooded, in effect, with data without dimension or perspective.

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The instantaneous electronic media is crushing some good journalism but paradoxically is recreating the need for it. This means the role of the interviewer and the impact of the near-perfect interview will prove greater than ever. Quality journalism now becomes even more vital amid the mind-numbing Internetworld’s asteroidal junk bombardment. And I think my Chinese colleagues at China Daily enjoyed my optimistic message. Then again, they may have discounted some of my Los Angeles sunshine due to the odd national characteristic of the American to remain optimistic, no matter what the perceived reality. I wish to thank my colleagues in Beijing for listening to me, if mainly out of politeness. I hope you have been, too. I may be wrong about my thesis that quality journalism is more important than ever; but I am not in doubt about it. And I greatly prefer to stay in denial about the alternative thesis.

3 On Surviving the Celebrity Interview

[On the other hand] … would it not be equally ludicrous to condemn those who liked noise … who preferred vehemence to reticence, pleasure to austerity, exuberance to melancholy, intellectual gaiety and the deflating of the establishment, the self-important and the pompous, to pietas and gravitas? — Noel Annan in the introduction to Personal Impressions

“ D o n ’ t J u s t S ta n d T h e r e Looking Skinny!”

In many respects the political interview is quite different from the entertainment or celebrity interview. The latter aims to promote a new movie or casting or collaboration or whatever; these media events take place every day in Los Angeles where I live. By contrast the political interview ranges over foreign policy, governing philosophy, even an entire political career. Like the Hollywood interview — yes, it can be deeply self-serving. But the issues in political conversations will range over a broader and (I would argue) deeper territory. To me, the political interview is in a league all its own. My perspicacious wife Andrea once pointed out something similar. The occasion was a private dinner for four hosted by Ban Ki-moon and his wife Soon-taek at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. They were in town to headline a Hollywood humanitarian event at which the United Nations Secretary General was, in fact, the

On Surviving the Celebrity Interview 25

star — along with former President Bill Clinton and screen celebs such as Orlando Bloom, Diane Lane, Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland and Hilary Swank, as well as movie directors Ron Howard, Jason Reitman and Ed Zwick. Ban, who probably has met and conferred with every major political leader of our time, at times can be as shy as a librarian and accepts that he is not the second coming of Nelson Mandela. He was worried about holding his own against such celebrity star power at the private party planned after the main event — a day of panels and talks on Hollywood and the United Nations. Andrea, a former actress, got a little cross with Ban, whom she likes a great deal but feels needed much better public-relations management, and advised him in strong terms that he was the “real deal” and the powder-puff celebs were anything but. With Soontaek all but cheering her on, Andrea rather firmly pointed out the difference between the Hollywood world and his world. She noted that when a Hollywood ‘shoot’ was over, the ‘casualties’ got up, dusted themselves off, went to the makeup room to clean up, and went home to resume their lives. But when Ban and the UN witness bodies at the side of the road — casualties of war or ethnic cleansing or starvation or a terrifying tsunami — those bodies do not ‘rise from the dead’. Your life is real, she said to Ban; their life is just a world of dreams that makes money. You will deservedly be the superstar tomorrow, she said in effect. Mrs Ban smiled warmly and appreciatively. Andrea, the Hollywood child, hit that non-macho male on the head with the hammer of reality. I agree with her and admire Ban and other political leaders who are dealing with harsh and pressing reality in real time. As for politically-active or cause-championing celebs, I have nothing against any of them, and greatly admire some of them,

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even when I may not agree with what they are doing; for example, the accomplished actor Richard Gere’s commitment to the Dalai Lama cannot be questioned in its sincerity, though his overall analysis of Tibet might be different from my own. And so I haven’t done many celebrity interviews, and whatever the actual number, I wish to do no more. But one I’ll never forget took place in London — and I must tell you about it, because it conveys an important point about the protocol of the interview. This happened some years ago when I was much younger and, looking back on it now, I didn’t know what in the world I was doing at the Connaught Hotel, or why in the world I had taken the daffy, unexpected assignment to interview a visiting Hollywood movie star. Even today I’m not sure why I was even asked. Everyone at the Daily Mail in London knew me as something of a snob from Los Angeles. I — me! — do prime ministers, not whacked out Hollyweirds. Yet my assigned target on this chilly cold day in 1981 was Shelley Winters, starring in Blake Edwards’ new comedy S.O.B. — an actress well known to the movie world as the thoroughly repulsive (and thus brilliant) wife in the disturbing Lolita film starring the incomparable English actor James Mason. And in fact Shelley Winters was having a hard enough time explaining the plot basics of the movie to me, much less any aspect of foreign policy. But — perhaps to her credit — the obviously intelligent actress wasn’t trying that hard. She knew that what she was doing was stupid (though, actually, the movie, a satire on stupid formulaic Hollywood, was not). Draped horizontally and almost defiantly across the generous expanse of an overstuffed Edwardian sofa, as if a semisleepy petulant Persian cat drowsy from excessive sleep, and swathed in robes as if all set and ready for a Rubens modeling gig, the two-time

On Surviving the Celebrity Interview 27

Oscar winner (The Diary of Anne Frank, A Patch of Blue) was clearly absorbed less by my questions than by the irritating competition my wife was presenting right before her eyes in the competitive weight department. The ‘annoying’ Andrea was a weight-watcher as severely religious as the Taliban, and Winters was clearly heavily agnostic; and petite at five feet one inch tall as the whale-ish Winters was anything but, Andrea repeatedly if politely kept refusing the offer to dive along with her open-mouth first into the large box of hotel chocolates that was occupying so much of Winters’ attention. But even without Andrea’s help, the chocolates, somehow, one after another, as relentless as raindrops dropping on Shelley’s head, kept vanishing as the ‘S.O.B.’ star kept gorging. Finally exasperated with herself, the actress nearly shouted at my wife: “Don’t just stand there looking skinny!” And so it was utterly impossible to dislike Shelley Winters, but in my view the article I wrote for the Daily Mail, a politically conservative tabloid newspaper that was then under the legendary editorship of my great European mentor Sir David English, would have been a sun-baked banana leaf of trivia had I not decided to go with her wild assertions of ‘communist infiltration in Hollywood’. Here we had a moral dilemma: In the interview, Winters was adamant that the West Coast mass-entertainment industry was creepycrawly with Commies. This was not something I would say of course (much less even try to verify); but it was something she would say — and did, without offering verification. Was her motive to make sure the interview got into the conservative Daily Mail and she felt her best chance of this was to go outrageous? Did this intelligent professional woman sense I was a hopelessly serious person and would only respond to a comment of gravity, however absurd? And was I — the interviewer

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— right to dutifully relay this insanity to readers simply on the ground that the interviewee had stated it exactly as I wrote it? Interestingly, decades later, in a conversation with former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a similar question was to arise (see page 166). This had to do with his insane charge that the attack on September 11, 2001, was not the work of Islamic terrorists. I absolutely hated the Hollywood piece — I just did not know what the heck to do with Shelley Winters! — and so did David English, who, after returning from vacation, all but strung up the newspaper’s Features editor for asking me to do it in the first place. “Why, it was undignified of our American visitor!” he thundered. Such was, and is, the bias of a great many journalists: That celebrity interviews are the bon-bons of the business but that interviewing the prime minister is the serious meat of true history. And it’s such an important piece of business that the ‘vegetarian’ journalist should stick to, well, Shelley Winters. As you can guess by now, I was more than okay with that distinction. And this book is based on that bias, too. Still, even in interviewing a celebrity — even a celebrity gangster — the wise interviewer needs a sense of humility, not a pugilistic sense of superiority. The very structure of the interview session suggests a measure of equality between the two parties, so at our hubristic worst, we are only equal. Trying for the knockout punch will only trigger the drawbridges of your subject to be drawn up high. Many years ago I interviewed a well-known, happily self-advertised gangster. I then lived in Manhattan, where I was a young writer and editor for New York Magazine. The subject lived in Los Angeles, recently released from a considerable prison stretch. He was Mickey Cohen, a

On Surviving the Celebrity Interview 29

known associate of Meyer Lansky of Miami who was widely viewed as a national leader of a major organized crime syndicate. In the interview, in his L.A. home, the interviewing approach took him by surprise because he did not expect that I would have brought to the task any manner of respect. But I did: For if you do not, you should not expect to get very far. The result of the two-hour interview that graced my book Crime Pays! (pages 170–78) was a rare in-depth interview from Cohen in his waning years. His best revelation might have been of a large, political fundraising banquet he organized and paid for. He told the story with a wry smile. “I threw a banquet INTERVIEW TIP … with Murray Chotiner … remember Murray Chotiner? [a long-time associate Even in interviewing and aide of Richard Nixon]. Now there a celebrity — even a wasn’t one legitimate person at this celebrity gangster — dinner. And Nixon got up to speak. Now the wise interviewer this is a fact of political life.” What I respected about Cohen was needs a sense of not what he did professionally but what humility, not a he knew about his chosen profession. If I pugilistic sense of knew what he knew, after all, then I would superiority. The not need to be interviewing him. By very structure of the respecting his knowledge, I encouraged interview session him to share more of it with me. One more story about showing suggests a measure of another non-political interview: So equality between the Sir David English was looking for an two parties, so at our interview story with a maverick member hubristic worst, we are of the Labour Party who wanted to split only equal. with his old party. It wasn’t the politics

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he was interested in; it was the human passion and self-doubt behind the political decision to defect from the political party of his father and of his grandfather and all his relatives and friends and family canine and so on and so on…. He found a veteran Laborite member of Parliament named Tom Bradley who agreed to talk to the Daily Mail … sent me up to Northampton to spend time with him and his wife and his son … very nice people … Andrea came along, liked them as well. Interview after interview and I still felt I was missing something … missing some key to his extraordinary decision to join a new party called the Social Democrats (not too leftie, not too rightie) … I needed a strong opening story for the piece, something very emotional … I could not quite get it from Member of Parliament Tom, or Mrs Tom … Ah! When an interview hits a dead end, interview someone else!… I began playing catch-ball with the 11-year-old son … sweet but withdrawn, never speaking much … He easily caught my curve ball, which was basically lame, but it did sort of curve — anyway, he could tell that I had respect for him. One afternoon when the parents were completely out of earshot we sat down in front of the fireplace, I was sensing the son wanted to say something about his father … When did you first realize your father was so upset that he was going to defect from his long-beloved party? … The son stared at the warmth of the fireplace, and then back at me … It was when he stopped planting the gladiolas … The kid stopped me dead… The boy further explained that every winter, in anticipation of the coming spring, Dad would go into the greenhouse and plant the gladiola bulbs … Planting, the annual English rite of spring … For his Dad, this was as regular as anything in the Bradley family tradition … But not this year! Not this time! Dad was too upset, too emotionally preoccupied with what he had to do… And thus was born the interview/profile: THE NIGHT

On Surviving the Celebrity Interview 31

TOM BRADLEY COULDN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE … Sir David proclaimed it an instant classic. I tell this story only to make a point: When confronted with a brick wall, you must try to go around it. There’s little chance you’ll be able to drive through it — probably you’ll just injure yourself … and maybe seriously. Go around; it is often the shortest distance between two points. Many years ago, back in 1969, the popartist Andy Warhol launched a strikingly different magazine. I may have been among its earliest admirers, even though it was all about interviews with celebrities and very lengthy interviews with very chatty celebrities. It was printed on very large double-depth newspaper stock, not glossy, but it had a very glam feel to it nonetheless. The fact that it interviewed only celebrities in the arts (movies, music, entertainment) and creative thinkers obviously had a lot to do with the feel. And it was called INTERVIEW. I was finishing up with Princeton, in the eponymous bucolic university village that was but an 80-minute train ride from Manhattan, where Warhol lived

INTERVIEW TIP When confronted with a brick wall, you must try to go around it. There’s little chance you’ll be able to drive through it — probably you’ll just injure yourself … and maybe seriously. Go around; it is often the shortest distance between two points.

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and where he was developing his pop art to feverish world attention. I was crazy for magazines of all kinds at that stage of my life — the more offbeat the better. INTERVIEW fit that bill. It was one of my favorites and even today, long after the death of the pop artist, still is. Working with the British journalist John Wilcock, master of the ‘underground magazine’, Warhol deliberately tricked the magazine up (and brought down his editorial costs) by having the interviews run as actual transcripts of conversations — and on their very first take or initial run-through. They were published in full and not edited much to speak of. They thus read in a most bumpy fashion but with the feel of exact authenticity. The interviewees were seen to talk to you in print in the way that a tomato-red Campbell soup can actually poked out documentary-style on the grocery aisle. No other magazine dared to run its interviews this way. PLAYBOY magazine, in its famous iconic interviews, published lengthy ones that were as manicured and sculpted as were its women centerfold models (back then the smoothing was done with the airbrush, today with Photoshop apps). They read much more smoothly than those in INTERVIEW but ... still … hmm … how real were the interviews? Not to mention, how real were the pictures and figures of those ladies? Warhol was onto something. He was onto the idea that the media gets in the way of reality by changing it — by, yes, editing it. Then it becomes media reality and by definition is unreal in a way; or, worse yet, morphs into a dominant unreal reality — the media picture. An exact word-for-word unvarnished transcript of an interview is relatively unmediated. In effect it is as immediate as an interview can be made to be in the sophisticated medium of print, without actually having only the aural recording to refer to. The way to tame

On Surviving the Celebrity Interview 33

sophisticated print, then, was to limit it as, for example, you might stash the airbrush back in the drawer before it ‘dressed up’ the nude photograph of Polly from the farm in Pomona to the point that, well, in a way it really wasn’t Polly any more, was it? INTERVIEW made a huge impact on my young psyche as I drifted away from my foreign policy studies, after receiving my professional policy masters degree, and slid into the less elevated world of commercial magazines. I even took an internship at NEWSWEEK. There, one learned all the tricks of print-polish that TIME Magazine under Henry Luce and his successors had developed to a profitable art. I admired many of the journalists at NEWSWEEK, they were invariably kind to me; but at that age I didn’t belong there. More of my soul was in the camp of Andy Warhol, who wanted the media to stay out of the way of truth. To him, the media was the dangerous brick wall that you had to go around to get to the truth. I never hovered long enough in Warhol’s presence while I was in New York to talk to him for more than ten seconds. I do wish I had worked for him. But more than anything, I wished I had interviewed him for a ‘Giants of Art’ book series or something. This is on my list of things I never did. And so the closest I have got, thanks to the invitation and support of my inspiring book editors in Singapore, was the ‘Giants of Asia’ series that focused on leading political figures. In the Warhol spirit, we broke the 50,000 words in effect in half, so that the political VIP got to have half of it in his own words. And I think this was one of the attractions that led Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir Mohamad, Thaksin Shinawatra and Ban Ki-moon to accept my invitation. That — and the fact that the series was titled ‘Giants of Asia’. Egomaniacs, after all, are only human.

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The downside of the pure-transcript INTERVIEW approach is that it will almost invariably produce a very bumpy read. Few of us in real conversation talk in complete sentences or enunciate like — well, Tony Blair or the late Lee Kuan Yew. We dribble into our ordinary discourse so many hmms and ahhs and looks and lame gerunds and lonesome participles that whole paragraphs and passages will resemble some Jackson Pollock splash that needed more work before it could go to the gallery opening. What’s more, the approach confuses verisimilitude with truth. Here’s what I mean. Former Prime Minister of Malaysia, in the eight hours of video I have of him, speaks clearly and intelligently on many issues. But if I had simply published a pure transcript, the reader’s interest would have flagged, and what would have been then evident was not intellect but a sort of dipsy dialect. Yet if you had sat in front of him during those conversations and felt it your obligation to convey to the reader the true reality of the man, then the pure transcript would have been, in effect, a misrepresentation. The problem was tougher with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and with Ban Kimoon, former South Korean foreign minister who was UN Secretary General when I did the book interviews. Both are whip sharp and articulate. But you would not have that impression by simply reading the transcription. After transcribing the tapes, you need to go through them and smooth them out for readability. In pure print you cannot read body language or feel that sixth sense of ESP, unless the writer provides those added values. And that is what you have to do if you expect the reader to stay with you for more than a sentence or two … much less for 25,000 words of He Says (as in each of the ‘Giants of Asia’ book). Always tell your interviewee in advance of why you are doing

On Surviving the Celebrity Interview 35

this. In fact that will put them at ease. But you have to tell your reader, too. I did this in the very beginning of each of the books on Mahathir, Thaksin and Ban. The first two had no problem when their books came out and they read everything over, but the Secretary General complained to aides and wondered ‘why Tom did that?!’ But if Tom hadn’t, the book wouldn’t have been readable. But to make it honestly readable, you have to give the reader an honest heads-up. Readers tend to be fair and understanding if you play it straight and level with them. Did Lee Kuan Yew complain when I explained my smoothingout philosophy? No he did not. Why not? Because he totally agreed with it and in fact asked for the original transcript to ‘pencil through it,’ as he put it. When he gave it back, in effect he had done this part of my job for me. Meaning was enhanced, not eviscerated. Even his pure quotes read like those of a polished book. But there haven’t been many like him.

4 On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others

In Braudel’s great work, The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II, the Spanish king makes his appearance only well into the second volume, and for the most part … does not cut much of a figure. This is not how Isaiah Berlin sees history. The foundation of the state of Israel [for example] was inherently improbable. That it came about was principally due, in Berlin’s view, to a great statesman, Chaim Weizmann. — Noel Annan in the introduction to Personal Impressions “ …H o p e Y o u W o n ’ t D o T o O u r T o n y W h at Y o u D i d T o T h e i r J o h n ! ”

That famous lady of Burma is notoriously reputed to be a bit lengthy in the answer department. “Professor Aung San Suu Kyi, you might call her,” said an Asian diplomat, though he greatly respects her. I had asked him what the experience of interviewing her for a possible ‘Giants of Asia’ book might be like. His reply was that — for one thing — she would be extremely uninterested in your input (but I am okay with that, as you know) and interested only in her own view, down to considerable detail. I never got to interview her for a book because I came around to the notion too late. When she was under house arrest in Myanmar and presumably semi-bored out of her mind — that was the ideal time to ask for five afternoons in a week out of her life. But I was bogged down with other ‘Giants’ and by the time I began to focus on this famous lady as a possible project, she had been freed of house arrest and had jumped quickly into the dirty pool of Burmese politics. It is an error I

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 39

regret — I am ok with long answers … as long as I have enough time. A footnote on Aung San Suu Kyi: David Piling and Michael Peel of the Financial Times conducted a newspaper interview with her in February 2015. It was excellent. I asked Piling about her reputed professorial long-windedness. David said the interview was conducted entirely on video and as a result the lady’s replies were quite peppy and to the point. And so she has become media-savvy. It apparently didn’t take her long to figure out how to play the game. (Hmmm … perhaps the routine practice of videoing interviews has its pluses.) Well, good for her. If you want to be successful in politics, you have to master the media — or all but eliminate it. Surely my more hilarious unexpected video experience happened with a diplomat who easily offers one of the sharpest minds. This would be George Yeo, former foreign minister of Singapore (2004–11), now in the private sector. The first time I interviewed him was probably the first time we had actually met. I showed up in his office with my portable Sony video recorder. This was in the late ‘90s when George was still Minister for Information and the Arts. His reputation for ferocious intelligence and straight talking was just starting to spread. So when I was on time for my appointment in his office on one of my first reporting trips to Southeast Asia, he had little idea what to expect. What he certainly didn’t expect was my plunking down the tiny video recorder and pressing the power button — ready to go on my first question. It was really funny! In equatorial Singapore, despite all the air-conditioning, men rarely wear ties, except on terribly special occasions. But when the Sony’s red light lit up, George said, “You’re using that?!!” When I said, “Sure, why not?”, he blushed and excused himself, backpedaled toward a small closet, and yanked out a tie. I had to smile: Only with his tie on, he felt, could he face a camera … as if

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Aung San Suu Kyi felt compelled to put on her succinctness when the cameras rolled. George Yeo offers an example of the easiest sort of interview because his ability to articulate is backed by intellect that works overtime at conceptualization. As with his former foreign ministry colleague Kishore Mahbubani, now dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, he is a serious student of public policy as well as a former policy maker. But he can, occasionally, prove delightfully unpredictable. Once a group of skeptical American journalists, herded into his office for an interview session, were barely seated when George fairly barked out before anyone could ask anything: “Okay, what do you want to talk about first? You want to ask me about caning or about chewing gum?” The American journos were thrown off balance (a few actually laughed) but by taking the initiative Yeo had them off balance — and respectful — for the hour. Within months that story was making journalistic rounds in Asia as well as America. Mahbubani is another diplomat and thinker who is easy to interview. One only needs to bring to a session with someone of his talent the self-confidence of a lot of homework and the capacity to actually listen very carefully. Westerners are not so talented at this. We tend to think we know the answers and generally cannot wait for our interview subject to finish so we can explain the way it really is. But Kishore is one of the very few Asian thinkers who has gotten the attention of Westerners, and is often spotlighted in magazines and journals as a prominent leading global influential. When he was Singapore’s ambassador to the United Nations, his insightful discourses and creative approaches to Security Council reform were widely noted. I once passed along a Kishore brilliancie-of-the-moment to my friend James Hoge, when he was editor of Foreign Affairs, the

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 41

once stuffy establishment journal that woke up under Hoge. Of Mahbubani, Jim commented: “We have all learned a lot from Kishore during the years.” The principle of respect has great utilitarian value. A well-known Asian diplomat told me that my views on Asia will get respect (though not always agreement, obviously) in part because there is no sense that I look down on anyone. Why should I? By what right would I? In your work there must be no racial or ethnic condescension. And there never should be — in real life, in the political interview. In truth, the time he told me this, I was thrown off balance: Why would anyone look down on Asians? But of course my question was quite naïve, especially in view of European colonialism of Asia. No, you’re right: Colonization was not a total evil. Some studies have been able to correlate the degree of economic progress after independence with the duration of the colonization and find that the longer the latter, the greater the former. But people will always want to be themselves, and in some sense or another want to rule themselves. Economic development is very important but so is political breathing space — a sort of civic secular spiritualism. For example, Westerners might wish to reflect on the fact that basically the people of Hong Kong had little right to vote on anything … until 1997. That’s when the Westerners (the British) departed and the Easterners (Beijing) took over. Isn’t that a lovely paradox? Now, in a basic way at least, and at last, they can vote. But now that they have a little bit of a voice, they want to roar — the well-known revolution of rising expectations. For its part, the new ‘landlord’ of Hong Kong is not a noted puredemocracy evangelist. It certainly doesn’t like to be told how to run its business. But Deng Xiaoping’s clever and cunning one-country,

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two-systems formula contains enough wiggle room to permit Beijing flexibility without abandoning core principles. So in time we shall see if his successors are as clever as he was. I am sorry but … I hate having to share an interview assignment. It’s not just Serious interviews can that arguably (inarguably?) I am an egomaniac. It’s that a serious interview be ruined by the socan be ruined by the so-called ‘team called ‘team effort’, effort’, however fraternally intended or however fraternally dutifully planned. In fact, I regard almost intended or dutifully all interviews in which you have to share planned. Interviews as mediocrities waiting to happen. in which you have to I can think of three reasons why this is the case. Too many cooks spoil share are mediocrities the broth; a measure of intimacy and waiting to happen. relaxation is harder to achieve when the VIP faces encirclement by pushy, hungry, untrustworthy journalists eager for a scrum; and I — for one — work a room best alone. Knowing that I have to share an interview with others can make me cranky and even nervous. Ordinarily I will not get nervous in a solo interview. But sometimes you do have to share, period. So you live with it. It’s not a perfect world. For example, in the office politics of a major newspaper with foreign bureaus, you just cannot storm into a bureau chief ’s territory and scarf up a VIP interview all for yourself. That would be professionally insulting and politically unwise. You must cut your colleague in on the action, unless, of course, you can’t stand him or don’t respect her and are prepared to risk all-out thermonuclear office-politics war.

INTERVIEW TIP

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 43

In the 90s, when I was then at the Los Angeles Times, from headquarters we were sometimes able to secure VIP interviews in capitals abroad that our local guys and girls couldn’t. Foreign governments always assume that the editors coming from such a long distance for the interview must carry special weight or have something really important up their sleeve. Always well in advance I would fax our bureau chief in London (for example) news of the appointment time of the interview, as well as a warm invitation to join in on the fun. One such came in 1993: From my (then) home office in Los Angeles, we called on contacts in the British foreign ministry to obtain agreement for an interview with Prime Minister John Major. And then, a year later, thanks to the kind agency of veteran Labour Party member of Parliament Gerald Kaufmann, fresh-faced, fast-rising Tony Blair agreed to an interview. In each case, once the interview was granted and a date set, I invited the L.A. Times bureau chief in London to join me. In the 90s, Bill Tuohy was the London bureau chief of the L.A. Times and one of the genuine nice guys of journalism. There are not that many of them: typically, journalists are like lawyers that frenzyfeed on the mean and adversarial. They are not usually my cup of tea (though there is always the exception). As friends they would compromise their grandmother’s computer password to AOL for an exclusive. If there is a general exception to this rule, it is with the hardy corps of American foreign correspondents. They really do comprise a band of brothers/sisters, and it is difficult to recall even one whom I have met that was either unmemorable or remotely untalented. And, with so many wars waging around the world, dreary decade after stupid

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dreary decade, almost all foreign correspondents at one time or the other will turn into war correspondents, if temporarily. This means many of then will face death, up close and personal. Perhaps because of all that risk, they tend to develop a sense of humor that goes far beyond rarified. To prove this I could relate more stories than space allows. A great book on these characters has never been done, as far as I know — but it should be. You’d probably die laughing. Bill Tuohy was the chap whose charm no one could escape. A distinguished veteran of various foreign postings — including Saigon, where his work was honored with nothing less than the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting — Bill retained a relentlessly warm sense of humor and the restless entrepreneurship that is the trademark of the born-to-be a foreign correspondent, the most difficult of all journalistic assignments. He became something of a legend, especially at BILL TUOHY: The well-dressed the L.A. Times. With very good reason: Famously, foreign correspondent. when a colleague from the L.A. Times was killed in the turmoil of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and Tehran was sealed off to the outside world, Bill somehow connived to rent a Lear jet and pull off, without clearance or permission, a surprise landing at totally shutdown, heavily protected Tehran international airport. Though he was instantly wrapped up into Revolutionary Guard custody, Bill managed to talk his way out of the arrest and negotiate for the remains of his colleague’s body. Ultimately an exhausted and shaken but triumphant Bill Tuohy and the remains both came to be loaded onto the Lear for return to the grieving family in the States.

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 45

I doubt that’s something I could ever have pulled off — a risky stunt right out the movie ARGO. But that was Bill Tuohy, who in leaving us in 2009, left behind a treasure trove of adventures and memories. For all his dash and achievement, Bill was humble in accepting the offer to join in on the fun of interviewing John Major, but insisted there had to be a clearly marked lead interviewer and a subordinate one; and as Tom Plate had secured these interviews in the first place, Tom would take the lead. Bill was also insistent that we meet beforehand to compare notes and plot out a basic interview strategy. The notion of a measure of detailed planning for what I viewed as an exercise more of art than science always makes me uneasy. But Bill knew his ego was as big as mine and so I accepted his recommendation of a graceful interview choreography that would avoid our stepping all over one another in full view of the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Many American reporters, drilled from their first cub assignment to be ruthlessly competitive, might be said to have no class at all; but Bill was one of our profession’s acknowledged class acts, and as we sat in a café an hour before our June 1994 interview with rising star Tony Blair — who would become Britain’s prime minister three years later — I was happy to be with him, and amused him by relating how the interview almost never came to be. Months ago, Blair’s people had agreed to the session, through political circles in London back to us in Los Angeles, even though Tony was not party leader at that point and the stolid, uninspiring but solidly entrenched John Smith was. I had based my pitch on a chance meeting two years before when I had had the luck to share — with the then youngish Blair — one of those black hackney cabs so famous in

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London, into which my friend Gerald Kaufman and I quickly zoomed, along with Blair, in mutual flee of a ferocious London downpour. Warmly and grandly, Kaufman introduced his mentee Blair as the inevitable successor to the incumbent PM, the Conservative Party leader; and Gerald introduced me as the journalist from Los Angeles who was about to interview PM Major. A year later I had an interview date with the man who would indeed succeed Major. As we sipped coffee and began to sketch out an interview ‘plan’, I related this background: During the exact time I was on British Air flying from Los Angeles to London, incumbent Labour Party leader John Smith was stricken with a fatal heart attack, meaning that a succession struggle would begin imminently, though not, as a note from Blair’s office at my hotel’s front desk explained, soon enough for me. This was because Labour Party protocol required WITH BLAIR IN HIS LONDON OFFICE: a decent interval — of a week Harder to pin down in an interview than to catch or so — for official reverential a hummingbird asleep. mourning, during which time no press interviews could be granted, even to an otherwise innocent American having flown in from far, far away. I protested raucously, I complained, I sort of wailed, etc. etc.; but somehow quickly fumbled onto a deal whereby the interview would go forward as scheduled, but would in no way be published in the L.A. Times until, when back in Los Angeles, I received the official green light from Blair’s office to do so. Somehow, trusting in my assurance — sort of unbelievable in retrospect, when it is considered that I am an

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 47

American journalist … but then again, I was not a fearsome, cutthroat British one — Blair consented to the interview, but only on those conditions. I was relating all this back-and-forth to Bill when a tall thin man suddenly loomed like a bending tree over our café table. It was Peter Mandelson, the Labour Party’s world-famous virtuoso spin-doctor. Leaning over, he whispered: “Tom Plate, Los Angeles Times, right?” We nodded. “I just hope you don’t do to our Tony what you did last year to their John [Major].” Bill and I had to smile as one at that. In the prior year’s interview, the prime minister had amazingly admitted that his party was bedeviled by such vicious internecine warfare that it had made errors that could not plausibly be blamed on Labour come the next election. The candid admission had led to a story in the prestigious Times of London following our publication. The general Fleet Street reaction was that an otherwise clueless American newspaper had caught the PM with his pants down. Well, we loved that, of course. But in my mind, the success of that interview was due less to our ‘interview strategy’ than to Major’s basic character. I had come a very long way to interview him. The prime minister — a decent and likable man — had wanted to reciprocate by giving a ‘good interview’. This is often the calling card of the superior political leader: the ambition to do a good job, whatever that job may be. The interview in the L.A. Times a year later with Blair was okay, but just okay. Major’s was better because Major was better, and Bill and I were then better: Instead of mapping out a detailed plan, we created enough psychological space for the PM to unwind a bit by the fireplace on the second floor sitting room of 10 Downing Street. Other factors

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INTERVIEWING BRITISH PM MAJOR: The author, then thinner and bearded, with Bill Tuohy at No. 10 Downing Street: An honest man makes an honest mistake — and the journalist gets the credit. So it goes…

were that we were interviewing the PM, rather than a mere challenger; and perhaps we were slightly more deferential, rendering our subject less guarded and defensive. Whereas in Blair’s then narrow, almost comically small office in the Labour Party’s semi-squalid quarters across from Parliament, our ‘planned’ and rehearsed attack probably alerted Blair’s superior sensors to the imminent danger of trouble-making journalists. The brilliant Blair was more than our match. I grade the John Major interview an ‘A’ but thought the Blair a ‘B’ at best. I believe it would have come out better if either I — or for that matter Bill — had worked it alone. Oh well. That’s my bias. But it is based on experience. I fear all group interview events and try to avoid them, politely when possible. Asian governments sometimes organize media trips for Western journalists. Tooling around my favorite part of the world

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 49

with fellow journalists is not how I think one develops fresh insights. A respected mainland Chinese professional organization once invited me to tour China with a group of other U.S. journalists. I declined, I believe politely. (A year later the organization invited me to come to the mainland and lecture and exchange views with media officials, university leaders and students. To come to China by myself. I accepted). Sometimes the White House brings in journalists from across the U.S. for a session with the president and so on. You have to go, of course, but I always regret it. No doubt a typically worthless experience of this sort was during the Carter Presidency. His media people organized a visit and a session with journalists “not from New York or Washington”. I was then an editor of the late and oft-lamented Herald Examiner in Los Angeles. I was editor of the editorial pages — a great job for me, then a young man. I was thrilled by the prospect of an hour with the president, even in the company of other journalists. As I say, I was a young man: but the White House session with Carter and a dozen other journalists from around the U.S. was about as interesting and revealing as an egg salad sandwich at a company picnic. I can illustrate another example of the limitations of the two-onone interview by comparing the 1999 experience with Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi in the old prime minister’s residence to one with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in the new PM residence in 2003. The interview with Obuchi, a non-charismatic man cruelly derided by the Japanese media as about as exciting as cold pizza, ran about 40 minutes — not a bad length for a one-off one on one. But it had to be shared with the then-Tokyo bureau chief of the L.A. Times. She was a superbly qualified journalist but, not to my taste, too taken with the ‘gotcha’ approach to journalism. Instead of trying to dig deep into the present, her preference was to focus on Obuchi’s semi-shady

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political godfather in the Liberal Democratic Party, a former prime minister implicated in an infamous scandal. In this way, the question to Obuchi in effect was: Are you corrupt too, since your rabbi was a known corrupter? I knew there was no way I was going to be able to persuade her to avoid asking a question that would (a) not get much of an answer and (b) poison the atmosphere. Indeed, when she asked (and I slumped), the prime minister’s reply was quick and unapologetic, but the effect was chilling; and instead of granting a conversation, the PM decided to answer only the questions we had been required to submit, and kept his head down in the response sheet aides had prepared. I was quietly furious but this is the way of too many American journalists: ask a ‘macho’ question to which no straight answer can possibly be elicited and watch the atmosphere chill to tundra North Dakota. But at least you have proven yourself a macho journalist, whether male or not. Unbelievable. Once someone suggested as a VIP for the ‘Giants’ series the famous but reclusive Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. I wasn’t especially enthusiastic about a book of conversations with a businessman who by reputation didn’t like to talk, and I had no particular line into this Chinese billionaire as I would wish to have with VIPS that I seek to secure. I also hated wasting time trying for a project that had a high probability of failure. Perhaps I might have gone to Lee Kuan Yew, who knew the Hong Kong mogul well enough; but I just couldn’t bring myself to ask for that kind of favor. And, in retrospect, I was quite right not to have done so. As it turned out, I received a polite letter of rejection from Li’s office in Hong Kong. And I don’t know about you, but I hate rejection, though by now I should be well accustomed to it.

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 51

Another non-performing interviewee was the Dalai Lama. An elegant and highly intelligent woman residing in Singapore was willing to approach his brain trust on my behalf in Dharamsala, India, if the Dalai Lama would merit placement in the pantheon of the ‘Giants of Asia’ series. In the rotation, the Tibetan spiritual leader would follow the head of the United Nations (Ban Ki-moon), the former controversial prime minister of Thailand (Thaksin Shinawatra), the former long-running prime minister of Malaysia (Mahathir Mohamad) and the founding prime minister of Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew), who was in office for more than three decades, and who died at the regal age of 91. The possibility was tempting because after UN Secretary General Ban, we had had some complex discussions about who would be next. I had a serious reservation about the Dalai Lama: China’s authorities hated him with passion, and if the book came into being, doors of access to the People’s Republic of China would slam shut with a vengeance. So that was a worry, especially because any government that figured out how to raise the living standards for 1.3 billion people deserved at least some measure of regard, Communist or not. And I really did want a Chinese figure in my series. We sent a suitably inscribed copy of Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, the first in the series that had enjoyed attention in Asia, to the Office of His Holiness in Dharamsala, and with it was my proposal that I come to India, at a time of his convenience, for a period of ten days, to space out five ‘conversation sessions’ with each running no more than two hours. Guess what? Word came back from Dalai Lama Central that he had in fact read the book on LKY and and was willing to do a book with me. And so an aide emailed us that the only problem would be

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finding a comfortable opening in his media schedule for the substantial series of interviews the book needed. I took that reply as suggesting something of a done deal and prepared for frantic action. But even though my wonderful and alert publisher had drawn up a formal contract, we could never get an actual start date from Dharamsala and as the months dragged on I began to believe we never would. I dashed off a polite letter pulling out of the project. I had to move on to other projects. Not every broken appointment is a broken promise of the morally suspect kind. Sometimes illness or family issues or uncontrollable political circumstances intrude and it just doesn’t or can’t happen. In 1994, as you know, I almost lost the interview with Tony Blair through no fault of his own. In 1997 or 1998 then Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was so angry with me, I thought he’d never engage in another interview. And in 2003 I showed up in Shanghai expecting my second interview in five years from a very important member of the Chinese political elite — and was shut completely out. But the excuse here was unassailable. Wang Daohan, then 85, was struggling for air in a Shanghai hospital. Even more poignantly, his wife was stationed at his room guarding against vulgarian intruders like me. I so admired Mrs Wang for that, and as I imagined Wang as a possible great man of China, I thought of the old saying about how behind every great man is an even greater woman. I never met Mrs Wang but wished I had been able to give her a big Western-style hug. And so there I was in the big city without the big VIP interview. An aide from his retinue in Shanghai, where Wang once presided as its mayor (preceding his protégé Jiang Zemin, later China’s president), came to my hotel to express his sincere regrets. In truth and inretrospect I should have been gracious and accepting, but I

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 53

was not — in a deliberately calculating way. I let my despair sail high across the lobby and complained, without class or empathy (hey, I was an American journalist, so the spoiled brat act was totally credible!). Finally I played my hole card (my Viagra option, as it were): Here are the questions on PRC relations with Taiwan I was planning to ask Wang…. Maybe when he is feeling better you could fax back his answers to my campus office? I knew this ploy was a wild long shot; Wang could have been on his deathbed for all I knew. And of course his aide was anything but encouraging. But I thought I knew Wang’s character from an earlier interview, back in 1998, when I sensed a more supple side of China than Western journalists usually get to see (at a certain age, men stop lying to themselves and to others; Wang was at that age when I interviewed him). I think he also sensed I rather liked him, which is why the second interview was initially INTERVIEW TIP scheduled. Anyway, the aide said he’d give Never give up. it a try but…. Two days later Wang’s replies to Sometimes a ‘no’ can the six questions banged into my fax be converted into machine in my campus office. The a positive for your answers were solid and substantive, and in fact of considerable interest to the State journalism with a Department in Washington, which had little bit of obnoxious asked me to forward them if and when and determined received. And so I did. entrepreneurship. And they made a very good column. So never give up. Sometimes a ‘no’ can be converted into a positive for your journalism with a little bit of obnoxious and determined entrepreneurship.

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But you can only do so much and sometimes a ‘no’ is a ‘no’, a dumb person is a dumb person, and that is that. In 1984 I offered both the Democratic and Republican candidates for the White House their picture on the cover of the weekly CBS magazine I edited in return for an exclusive one-on-one interview. This was the race between former Vice President Walter Mondale and first-term President Ronald Reagan that the incumbent was to win in a landslide. The magazine (then called Family Weekly) boasted a circulation of more than 13 million and a reliably estimated readership of 30 million. Questions would focus on social policy and family values, and the basic interview topics would be submitted in advance if requested. The handlers of the Republican candidate — then incumbent President Ronald Reagan running for a second term — answered my letter of proposal about a week later. An interview appointment in the Oval Office was scheduled for a month later. As the clock clicked closer to that session, I repeatedly called on the Democratic campaign people for an answer. Repeatedly, they said they’d get back to me. Still waiting, I went ahead and did the Oval Office interview with Reagan and put him on the cover, as promised. That November 1984 he carried 49 of 50 states. I still haven’t heard back from the Mondale people. Let me ask you just this one question: In a political culture as media-oriented as the United States, if you’re running for president of the U.S., why would you turn down major-league free media like this — the cover of a magazine with a print run of 13 million? So there was at least one very good reason the Reagan team won two straight presidential elections so handily: They well understood that the country in which they were campaigning was media-obsessed. And so to turn down free media, a politician and his campaign would need

On Why Some Interviews are Tougher Than Others 55

a very good reason for such an odd decision. In this instance there was only one explanation: sheer incompetence. It showed in the final result. It was the same with the two vice presidential candidates. We could never get a simple answer from the staff of Geraldine Ferraro, whereas incumbent Vice President George W. H. Bush was good to go from the outset. I took Andrea up to Kennebunkport over July 4, and while she bonded with personality-plus Barbara Bush I bantered with the Veep. Final telling note: When his interview was published in the magazine, Bush Sr. dispatched a personal note, thanking me for using it even though his opponent had failed to show. This was one smart politician.

5 On Keeping Your Interview Close to Your Instincts

He was respected by the most distinguished of his opponents, but he occupied no recognizable position and founded no school. Perhaps this was so because he simply said and wrote what seemed to him to be true…. He did not modify or shape his thought to fit into a system, he did not look for a unifying historical or metaphorical structure, he did not exaggerate or over-schematize in order to obtain attention for his ideas — so that those who looked for a system, an entire edifice of thought to attach themselves to, went away dissatisfied. — Sir Isaiah Berlin, writing about Oxford political philosopher John Petrov Plamenatz, in Personal Impressions

“ W e F i n i s h T o n i g h t. ”

I admit it. This is how I started this section on the true stories behind the first ‘Giants of Asia’ book, which was Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew — with a sense of insecurity! Looking back, it is so cruelly easy to second guess oneself. I should have asked this, why didn’t I probe that? But on serious review I do think (if I do say so myself ) that the valuable interview time with the late Lee Kuan Yew was used about as well as one could hope. What therefore was he like, as I was to experience him? No one, except perhaps the humblest monk or the massively masochistic, tends to take criticism well, and some people take it especially un-well. One of those is me. Another was Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of modern Singapore, infamous and feared

On Keeping Your Interview Close to Your Instincts 59

for having a bristling trap-door mind. He was no one’s fool and he handled know-it-all Western journalists with an air of barely disguised contempt, when he cared to deal with them at all. His motivation in consenting to the chore of an interview was, besides immense personal ego (mostly justified), the hope to enlarge and even ingratiate Singapore not only in the surrounding neighborhood of Southeast Asia but also in the West’s cluttered and preoccupied-with-Europe-and-Middle East mind as a smart player of major talent despite its dauntingly diminutive geopolitical size. (Big great things come in small packages, etc.) His interviews could be breathtakingly incisive and even splashed with originality, unusual for a politician — and I felt after the first few for my newspaper columns that any journalist who after an exclusive hour with him left without good material for a very good piece should accept his shortcomings as an interviewer and begin the search for a different line of work. Even after decades of interviewing, it is hard to think of many political leaders who were better at clear, concise and un-hedged articulation. He could not give a bad interview unless the questions he was asked were dreary tired ones, such as about caning as a punishment of criminals (inherited from the British) and chewing gum as a prohibited commodity of commerce (only to reduce the blanketing of Singapore with used gum!). Then he would switch off like an unplugged heat lamp and the room would get cold and the interview was finished and maybe you might feel you were, too. In the first decade of my column on Asia I travelled to Singapore as much as to any country in no small measure because of his willingness to see me — and that of some members of his cabinet; and because of the exceptional range of his views — and theirs — and

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LKY, then 72, in his office: The first interview, but many more interview opportunities were to come.

the cosmopolitan play of his mind. I insist he actually helped shape the initial direction of my column in ways that were all good. In fact I considered him a wise tutor in the real hardscrabble ways of the geopolitical world. Our first on-the-record interview was in 1996 at the Istana, but the resulting column about him and his tiny country that was published in the Los Angeles Times was viewed by my unenthusiastic editors (and not a few of my American journalistic colleagues, very withering in their criticism) as desperately short in the caning and chewing gum department. Lee Kuan Yew was known to have felt differently. The column’s emphasis on Singapore’s torrid modernization seemed to him spot-on, of course, and he was to state publicly at a reception in Washington a few months after its appearance that the author of that column was “very brave” to have broken with the Western journalistic tradition of trivializing his country. My own view was that the 1996 Singapore column was a personal Grand Canyon leap in my personal journey to Asia that tried hard to

On Keeping Your Interview Close to Your Instincts 61

reject sneering condescension and American provincialism and instead overtly to welcome the vast region’s rise to the top tier of the world stage with a maturity and magnanimity not all that common in Western journalism. I am absolutely certain I wasn’t remotely “very brave” (the true foreign correspondent is, braving all kinds of threats; not the newspaper columnist, ordering room service in the 5-star hotel); but I am also absolutely certain of what I was — nothing more than a journalist who actually goes to the place he is going to opine about, looks around and listens and shuts up most of the time, and grounds his commentary in verifiable fact. True professional newspaper journalism is not a blog (I hate blogs). It is a finding of fact set in a framework that can be verified. To be sure, intimidation of Singapore journalists was for his government as difficult as flicking flies off a dinner plate. (The veteran editor and former media czar-in-chief Cheong Yip Seng brilliantly described the Singapore power hierarchy in his invaluable 2012 book OB Markers: My Straits Times Story.) Western journalists, insolent and obnoxious but somewhat powerful in their countries, were a different species altogether and required a different kind of fly swatter. Lee — wearing the cap of ‘senior minister’ when I first met him, after 31 years as prime minister — welcomed all encounters, however, and would terminate an interview at the allotted 20 minutes if he were bored; or assessed your mind as a hopeless steel vault of unverified stereotypes; or if he suspected you had not done your basic homework, which included, in his mind, reading both lengthy volumes of his detailed autobiography and remembering almost every important detail in them. I had read the first, The Singapore Story, and had read it twice, in fact, and thought it quite wonderful; but was struggling to get through the second, From Third World to First, and was only halfway through it

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when we again met at Istana, the government house inherited from the British occupation, for a newspaper-column interview. At one turn I stumbled and asked a question the answer to which I would have had, had I finished the second half of the second book all the way through and recalled almost every detail. Lee quickly caught the lapse and shot back at me: So you haven’t read the second one? He cut short my impending impulse to lie under pressure with: No of course not. If you had you wouldn’t have asked that. There was a cold silence and I felt the Lee Kuan Yew chapter of my interviewing career slipping away. But Lee, after an irritated glance into the distance that could have flipped a small destroyer over on its belly, decided to proceed as if nothing had happened. Just like that. And so we completed another fine interview — of about 80 minutes — for another column. I did kick myself for not having finished his second book in time. Any interview that is truly important, such as one with the founder of a highly performing Southeast Asian country, requires total professional preparation at the 100 percent level. Anything less than that leaves too much to chance. My only excuse is that at the time I started to read it, the second volume seemed much less compelling than the first, and I had to push myself to finish it. By the summer of 2009, however, I had not only finished it but also had re-read it and found it compelling after all. The reason for pushing myself was the sudden and unexpected opportunity to spend more time conversing with Lee to produce a book of conversations in the start of a new series. The basic idea came from editor Violet Phoon of Marshall Cavendish, the Singapore-based publisher with offices in London and New York. I doubted all the pieces would fall together but Lee’s office surprised me with an agreement to meet for a couple

On Keeping Your Interview Close to Your Instincts 63

of afternoons of long interviews (but I had described them in my letter of proposal as ‘conversations’) to provide the basis of a book on him and his Singapore. His was a significant, though less than overwhelming, commitment of time. The interviews were to amount to the longest anyone could recall proffered for a Western journalist — but maybe short of what a true book might require? The book was to be Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew: How to Build a Nation, the first in the ‘Giants of Asia’ series. Once launched, it would hit the authoritative Straits Times bestseller list at #1, stay there for maybe ten weeks (I am proud to say), and remain on that Top Ten list for a run of maybe 40 weeks. Did that eventual outcome ever make me happy! But in fact the book almost never happened. There were two major bumps. The first hitch was his worrisome last-minute cancellation. The day before I was to fly to Singapore for the sessions — my bags all but packed, my second reading of the second volume (finally) completed! — the senior minister’s office in Singapore called to cancel. They said it was some kind of exercise bike mishap — well, maybe. My initial thought was totally paranoiac: That they had reconsidered the invitation and decided to rescind it completely (maybe Lee had second thoughts about the project? Maybe his press secretary didn’t relish explaining to her local journalists why they couldn’t get as much time as this idiot American from Los Angeles?). I worked successfully to repress these doubts because of one thing: Everything I knew about Lee Kuan Yew persuaded me he was absolutely a man of his word, whether accommodative or dismissive — he would tell it like it is and not waste time with games and stick to

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it and that would be it. And so, when about a week later, the sessions were rescheduled for the very end of July, I was fairly certain they were going to happen. Of course, if they were put off again, well, that would tell the tale and it would be the end of the book — if not perhaps the end of the world. But starting the ‘Giants’ book series with LKY seemed such a bright and right way to begin because of how respected the man had become, perhaps far more appreciated outside of Singapore than inside. Despite the initial cancellation, I hoped for the best and went ahead and took the Singapore flight anyway to start preliminary background reporting — talking to brainiacs like Minister George Yeo, and former UN ambassadors Tommy Koh and Kishore Mahbubani, among others in the inner circle. I also arranged to take the short hop from Changi International Airport up to Kuala Lumpur to visit with Dr Mahathir Mohamed, the former long-running Malaysian prime minister known for liking to talk, his combative attitude toward his neighbor Singapore and his tendency to spray insults out as if they were holiday gifts. After all, the book needed to include some measure of negativity about Lee — in part to balance my own views, which on the whole might be gauged as too positive (especially so for an American journalist). For what I did not want to do in the relatively little time allotted for the interviews would be to hook up with the ‘voice of Southeast Asia’ in a sparring match. This would be a huge waste of his time and mine, would use up too much psychological space and, besides, he would win, hands down, as I tended to be more polite in argumentation and he tended to be smarter. I would not be the journalist inserting the banderilla — it would the interview subject grabbing it out of my hands and shoving it down my throat! What’s more, all his defensive arguments (for the one-party system;

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for the government’s use of libel suits against critics; for its ‘nannystate’ social policies) had been aired over and over again. Everything in this dreary realm of discourse had been asked and answered as fully as they would ever be. The book needed to have a fresh feeling, with different views from Lee — in his own words first, and then context and commentary from his questioner. But I needed some negativity, and so I knew I could count on Dr M! Indeed, the former, long-running Malaysian PM was very happy to be the first up to strike a hammer on the Singapore icon. In Kuala Lumpur, in his office in Petronas Tower #1, from his top floor, Mahathir was to memorably opine to me, among other views: “He is a big frog in a small pond. He had ambitions to become Prime Minister of all Malaysia. He tries to lecture people but people dislike that…. But the fact remains that he is [only] the Mayor of Singapore. This is something he doesn’t like. You see, he wants to be something bigger than Singapore.” But were there enough ‘negatives’ in this book? Probably not. So should the interviewer have been ‘tougher’, more like a prosecutor at a trial than a psychiatrist by the couch? Definitely not. There are, as we know, different ways to approach interviews but almost invariably I prefer the David Frost technique: psychiatrist over prosecutor. That strategy is designed to relax the VIP in the hopes that a less wary subject will open up as never before — or at least will relax his guard enough to bring the reader into his or her world in a fresh and riveting way. On Lee’s own home turf. I wanted a book that felt like a fresh breeze, rather than a stale stick of chewing gum. So I avoided negativity relentlessly. But then a peculiar and unexpected thing happened during the second session. Lee, who had

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been struggling with bad health, was also struggling with impatience: When were the hard questions coming? We’re more than halfway through. At one point he even felt compelled to say, as an aside, that no question or issue was out of bounds, anything could be asked — so where were the inevitable negative questions? It must have been killing him! at THE Istana: Waiting for the first session to begin. I listened to his suggestion respectfully, nodded as if in agreement, but stayed the course I had plotted. A different plan than the obvious one was required to make the best use of the valuable but limited time the book had been allotted. Here was the chance to massage a series of unprecedented interviews to paint an impressionistic word picture of a national leader regarded by his peers across the globe as almost one of a kind (Plato meets Very Stern Daddy). I wasn’t going to presume to go into the bullring and try to banderilla one of the most intellectually equipped political figures of the second half of the 20th century. The choreographed effort would have soaked up the remains of the day. So I plotted to go another way entirely. But Lee was getting grumpy with me, he sensed my stubbornness, and he was anything but accustomed to his ‘suggestions’ being ignored. Halfway through the second long session he asked for a time-out and left the hall where we were taping to use the facilities, or so I thought. I waited — the two aides still silent, saying nothing — and we waited … and waited. I began to worry that Lee’s bad health had taken a turn for the worst. I peered over at his press secretary, Yeong Yoon Ying. This was a Chinese woman of the most remarkable intensity and command. She turned to me and said: The interview is over. Time to

On Keeping Your Interview Close to Your Instincts 67

With Lee Kuan Yew at THE Istana: His press secretary (right) keeping a close watch.

leave. It’s over. I was stunned. I had a 200-plus page book to fill and I had decided to devote the last of my time to issues of the family — his son, his daughter, his beloved but ailing wife. Personal questions were never asked of this man; so I would be more or less the first to ask them. I said, flatly but without waver: I can’t leave. I must have every minute that was promised. I flew from Los Angeles on the understanding that there would be four hours in two segments. (I had asked for that amount of time in order to maximize the chance that he would agree. The calculation was that, should I foolishly request more time and, in deference to a huge Straits Times book on his views that was in process, his answer would be no; ask for too little, and there would not be enough fresh material for a book, even a relatively short one. The median request of wisdom was for four hours — not much

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but enough given Lee’s special precision and articulate thoughtfulness. I had interviewed him enough times before to know that four hours with Lee is, if you ask the right questions and are not dumb, the equivalent of eight to ten of content with most anyone else.) The lady press secretary was not for INTERVIEW TIP turning: This interview is over. In such a confrontation, where the The high moral ground is a superb perch from interviewer does hold the high ground, the interviewer must keep holding onto that which to wage your ground tenaciously. There are no other side of the argument. arrows in your quiver at the moment (later Do not muck it up with you can always retaliate with negative collateral arguments; journalism, but that is later). The high and whatever happens, moral ground is a superb perch from which to wage your side of the argument. Do do not let it be not muck it up with collateral arguments; maneuvered away and whatever happens, do not let it be from you. maneuvered away from you. (You may not believe this but at that very moment, I had reflected back on what a veteran Washington Post newspaperman once told me when I was a summer intern between college semesters. He advised the journalist to play it cool if a subject showed up late for an interview or kept you waiting in reception well past the appointment time, that this was something you could use. He’d say something like: I tried to make them feel guilty like … why are you opposing the First Amendment? What are you hiding from the press? What secret stuff is going on here?) So I tried to make the press secretary feel guilty. I stared at her politely … but unyieldingly, and replied, something like: Then you will

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have to have security officers remove me. These sessions are not for a mere magazine article of a few thousand words. They are for a book. And a book can endure. Half-baked will not do. It will be a travesty to his legacy. We need every minute of this last hour. There was a very awkward pause. I wasn’t sure what would happen next. But I had convinced myself I had to move the line of questioning out of the policy arena and into sensitive and personal subjects of friends and family. So my sense was that Lee, with his 180 IQ or whatever it was, had either gotten irritated that I was not taking his advice on the line of questioning; or had realized personal questions hadn’t been asked and that was where I was going. I knew he disdained friend and family questions! And that was precisely where I was headed. I needed to elicit new stuff, not re-plow old ground. What he perhaps didn’t fully understand is that this was my book, not his; that I was an American journalist and thus was inherently insubordinate. I was honored to have what I viewed as a solid professional relationship with him — and much admired his son, the prime minister, and his daughter, the genius doctor; but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the book, which, if done properly, might possibly have a life outlasting us both. Out of nowhere Lee reappeared. And I will never forget his words: “We finish tonight.” I asked if he wished to postpone the final hour for a better day, perhaps when he was feeling better? “No, we finish tonight”. I said thank you. This was the LKY I knew. He keeps his word. Well, almost — and then yes … in the end he keeps his word. But you have to stand your ground.

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After the conversations a staffer had said Senior Minister Lee would attend the formal book launch party in Singapore planned for midMay 2010; but about ten days before, his office called to bow out. Why, I asked? He has a meeting to attend at the time, was the reply. I shot back via email: Meetings are meetings are meetings. This is a book. A book is forever. Tell the Senior Minister to cancel the damn meeting and come to the party. It will be fun, and I will appreciate it a great deal. He came. Kay Kuok, the charming and elegant proprietor of the host of the launch party, the Shangri-la Hotel, and I received Lee at the back VIP entrance. I was taken aback, stunned — he was moving so slowly, so painfully. I had never seen him like this and asked him how he was doing. “Degrading rapidly,” he replied. I shook my head in sadness. No matter how much we exercise, how well we eat, how few bad substances BOOK PARTY TIME: Between LKY we ingest, how moderately we consume alcohol, and Goh Sik Ngee, then CEO of Times we will all more or less end up this way, unless a Publishing Group, parent company of this book’s publisher. heart attack or something else gets to dagger us early. All those many millions of hours on the Stairmaster or stationary bike, and still, as you come up to the end, Mother Nature tenders you no extra credit. There really are no frequent-stairmaster miles to redeem for extra time when the time has come. Before the start of the book launch party, Madam YY (as she was known in Singapore) whispered into my ear that he would not want to speak and please don’t put him on the spot and ask him to do so. I shrugged and said fine, as you wish. Certainly I had enough ego

On Keeping Your Interview Close to Your Instincts 71

and verbal bombast to soak up almost any length of time, as Andrea, in the audience, would have been happy to testify over decades of marriage. But Madam Press Secretary apparently didn’t know her man as well as she perhaps had thought. In fact, the very minute my long Ciceronian discourse wound down, Lee, seated in front of me and apparently rather happy to be there, stood up and walked toward me. I was surprised. A swell of applause came from the invited guests. “Is it alright if I say a few words?” he whispered. Well, certainly — though I was so off-balance after that stern admonition from the press secretary. More than alright — please, go right ahead. Lee came to the microphone to warm applause. I wondered what he would say. I knew he could not have hated the book. By his request (standard practice for LKY) and by my agreement, he was permitted to review not the text of the book but all the direct quotations that might be used in the book, and this comprised about half the book. So by logic he couldn’t have hated all of it and if he had he would not have been at the party; besides, on such an elevated occasion he would not be rude. What he actually uttered at the party was, in fact, just “a few words”: “I don’t agree with all of it, but that is to be expected given the Western journalist’s exaggeration of eccentricity. But on the whole, he got my point of view across.” And then, amazingly for a political leader, sat down. Ah, I was right! He was not happy with all the personal stuff. The Singapore ideal: man (and woman) as MIT computer — flesh and blood irrelevant. Tally up the whole man into little more than the sum of his university test scores. I had guessed right.

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surprise statement: And at left is Cheong Yip Seng, longtime Straits Times editor and personal friend.

What little he said about the little book was more than good enough for me. If he had loved every single word, the book would have failed as journalism, however successful as an issue of government propaganda. Maybe he even wound up accepting that it was my book, not his. In fact, I think that is precisely why at close to the last minute he decided to come to the launch. He was celebrating one author’s attempt, however necessarily imperfect, at ‘getting’ the Lee Kuan Yew phenomenon. Which he knew was no easy thing to try to do. Even his own, two-volume, autobiography had only partially ‘gotten it.’ Sometimes it takes an outsider, even an American, to relate eccentricity to political character. Lee Kuan Yew was a fiercely and deeply charismatic man, not just the sum of all his quoted wisdoms. I cherish the interview time he allowed me to spend with him over the many years. Perhaps I might have a different view of him if I

On Keeping Your Interview Close to Your Instincts 73

had lived in Singapore, but it is just impossible to answer that. As an American journalist I found his freshness bracing and stimulating and his depth of reply unmatched. In truth I am indebted to all he taught me, especially about China, and believe that on the whole Singaporeans benefited enormously from his long rule, however strong-willed he could be, and accepting that not every short cut worked or every dictum deserved canonization. As he said to me in one of our talks, it would soon — very soon — be up to the next generation to chart the path into the future. In his years he felt he had done all that a mortal man could, to the best of his ability, while knowing, in fact, that he was not perfect. Only interviewers, you see, are perfect. But you knew that, right? Some months afterward, I cannot find the exact date in my diary, I paid him a quick visit. Five minutes maybe. Just to present him with a little gift and thank him for humoring me with the conversations for the book, which was still a few months from publication. I held in my hand a copy of the Hedgehog and the Fox, the short masterpiece by Berlin. I had referred to it enough times in my conversations with Lee Kuan Yew that I felt I owed him a fuller explanation. And I could not imagine anyone explaining it any better than Berlin. But I signed it with my name anyway. I had the book in my hands and while he was standing behind his desk, I pushed it in his direction. He said: “What’s this?” I said: “It’s a gift … that book by Isaiah Berlin I talked so much about.” “For me? It’s for me?!”

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THE LATE AUTHOR ISAIAH BERLIN ON THE COVER OF A RECENT PAPERBACK EDITION: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’

“Yes. That’s why I’m here.” He took the book from me, shook his head, smiled and looked at me. I will never forget the expression on his face. But I cannot quite describe it. It was as nothing I had quite ever seen before. It was as if it were the first gift he had ever received, as a child, even; and this made no sense at all, of course. He’s been showered with awards of all kinds all his life. I owed him much more than a book, of course. The dozen or so conversations and exchanges with him over 15 years surely meant more to me than to him. Sometimes the interviewer gets the better of the person being interviewed in a most unexpected but acceptable way.

6 On the Need for a Killer Question in Your Back Pocket

[Oxford philosopher] John Austin … took every problem as it came and … had a fine scorn for determinism as a doctrine which flew in the face of all experience; and this too Berlin found sympathetic. He does not see human beings as flies struggling vainly in the cobweb of historical causation, incapable of acting as free agents. — Noel Annan in his introduction to Personal Impressions

“ S o N o w T h at Y o u A r e T h e P M , Will You Legalize Viagra?”

Remember the Obuchi interview earlier (pages 49–50)? I now have a happier story for you. I present to you the 2003 interview with PM Junichiro Koizumi. By this time I — and my column on Asia — had been cut from the Los Angeles Times, pushed out along with many others by new ownership in one of those self-defeating frenzies of cost cutting that they teach so well at U.S. business schools. When a corporate management is in a brainless rush to slash and burn, as if reducing the quality of a product would have the result of increasing the demand for it, your only recourse is to get on with your life and do what you want with the rest of it. And what I wanted to do in 1999 was to continue my affair with Asia. On the plus side, I could now do the interviews in my preferred Lone Ranger style. Except for a feeling of personal obligation, such as a 2007 interview with Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore that I shared with my friend Professor Jeff Cole, then at the University of Southern

On the Need for a Killer Question in Your Back Pocket 77

California, I had no requirement to include anyone from The Times or anywhere else. And I didn’t. I think it’s better to work an interview alone and I can’t think of a journalist who disagrees with me. Koizumi had come into power on a campaign of reform and youth. He lured women into the cabinet with good positions and infused national politics with a strong sense of direction and political pizzazz. He packaged himself as a political rock star. In fact, the telegenic Koizumi was to serve at the top longer than any PM except for Eisatu Sato (1964–70) and, going junichiro koizumi: back even further, Shigeru Yoshida (1948–54). Media master. One key to Koizumi’s relatively long ride was his attentiveness to the management of the media. At home, at least at first, he had the press eating out of his hand, but the rest of the world was unconvinced, irreverently comparing the PM position in Japan to a revolving door for clowns. To cement his personal image for decisiveness and flamboyance, and to sharpen his country’s externalrelations image globally, he instructed aides to arrange one-on-one interviews with foreign journalists. This was how Koizumi became available for a 45-minute interview. A gifted Japanese diplomat was tasked to work behind the scenes with colleagues to line-up a string of foreign journalists for a series of one-on-ones. They would include the usual suspects, whether the editors of Western newsmagazines or foreign correspondents and columnists. My turn came second primarily because the first in the series boomeranged. The first in the series of interviewers was the editor-in-chief of a well-known international magazine that was as famous for its somewhat overly confident predictions and snapshot

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judgments as for its solid journalism and reporting. PM Koizumi was so irritated with that interviewer that he ended the session at the 20-minute mark and later berated his staff for the choice of someone so obviously “anti-Japanese”, as he put it. His staff worried that the project was to be abandoned but the PM insisted on more but asked if the next interviewer might be found who was more willing to listen than to preach. And that would be me. Beforehand, my high-level contact from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo pleaded with me to ignore the six questions I had already submitted to the PM’s office and respond more to the feeling of the moment. The Japanese diplomat had come to my hotel the night before to explain that Koizumi was easily bored, hated to have to handle any chore by rote, and would prefer to engage in an actual conversation rather than a stiff official exchange. The key for me, he said, was to lock onto the PM’s eyes at the first opportunity and don’t look away, or be the first to unlock (or Junichiro would become suspicious of evil intent…); and to be myself. This was a most unusual — and a most helpful — pre-interview briefing. Almost invariably, handlers fear spontaneity (fear, in fact, for their jobs, should things go awry and their angry boss transfer them to the Aleutians), and so seek to keep everything on the tried and true. But veteran Japanese diplomat Kazuo Kodama knew better and he had sized up Koizumi well. I followed his suggestions with dedication, even spoofing his ‘glorious locks’ by encouraging a comparison to my own, just as he strolled into the interview room the next day, and throwing him a ‘Viagra question’ 35 minutes later, at the end. What is a ‘Viagra question, you might ask? Generically, it is an off-the-wall shot of inquiry that has never been asked and, in the most proper protocol sense, perhaps never should be. Yet you absolutely

On the Need for a Killer Question in Your Back Pocket 79

THE KODAMAS AND THE PLATES: The Power of the VIP Assistant.

must have one of these stuck in the back of your mind. True, you may never get to use it. But if the space opens up to pop a Viagra question in, you must be ready. Remember the definition of luck? It’s where preparation meets opportunity. With this unusual Japanese prime minister, the opportunity came at the very point that the interview should have been over. I could sense his three staff minders on the couch getting restless and wanting it to wrap up. But the atmosphere had been good, Koizumi had been attentive and, indeed, interesting and he had never once referred to the written answers, as I had never once referred to my prepared questions. And so as the last question — “Could I ask just one more?”, the eternally hopeful question of the journalist — and what could the personality-plus PM say but yes if not risking to end this otherwise winning interview on a sour note? So what was my Viagra question? In this instance alone, it was actually about Viagra! I referred to a prior statement he’d made about the urgent need to legalize Viagra as one tool for combating Japan’s pathetically low birth rate. It came during a press conference when he was Minister of Health and Welfare about 15 years before this interview in 2003. So

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my question was simple, but wholly out of the blue: “So now that you are the prime minister, will you legalize Viagra?” How did Koizumi handle my innocent provocation? Gracefully. He found it genuinely amusing, but after chuckling took it seriously, saying in effect no retreat — his view was the same now as then: That Japan needed everything it could find in its tool kit to increase the sagging birth rate. I tried to reward him for his direct answer by suggesting that probably the vigorous bachelor PM didn’t himself require the erectile-dysfunction drug, but surely the three aides on the couch who looked like they hadn’t slept in weeks would benefit. To which he laughed and nodded a vigorous “hai”! It took homework to dig up Super K’s prior press conference comment regarding the national birth rate and Viagra. Imagine though if it had slipped through my fingers and it wasn’t in my back pocket to ask; worse INTERVIEW tip yet, if I had discovered it afterwards? The Always remember to self-anger would have been immense. ask for more time; This could not happen! How many always indicate you chances do you get to go one-on-one have one last question; with the PM of Japan? Answer: but always present the VIP one and this only if you are very lucky with an opportunity to indeed. The key to a Viagra question though appear full of largesse is that it must be truly original or at least and sincerity in the off-beat — and preferably in a sparkling pursuit of the truth … way. What’s your position on nuclear proliferation? just won’t do the trick. It’d by getting the political VIP to say yes to more. be totally anticlimactic, a dud. I picked this up from an interview

On the Need for a Killer Question in Your Back Pocket 81

decades before with another head of government. This was in 1984, a U.S. Presidential year, and my VIP interview was with incumbent Ronald Reagan. Yes, it was one-on-one, and as with the Koizumi interview, the supposed discussion topics had been submitted in advance. The White House had made clear that the President would answer only those questions — no free-wheeling discussion please, no room for freelance embarrassment. And his schedule that day in May was very cluttered — I had 20 minutes only. Twenty minutes!! What do you say to those ‘un-American’ conditions? When it’s an interview with the president of the United States, there is only one correct answer. You say: Sure, what time and Oval Office, right? But you show up prepared for anything. For you never know — maybe the usually convivial Gipper (the informal nickname for Reagan, from his Hollywood acting days) will be in an expansive mood, maybe a friendly staff member will decide to steal some minutes from the time allotted to the prime minister of Outer Slobobia for you, who knows? You simply must be prepared for almost anything. The Gipper was in an expansive mood. Instructed that I had but 20 minutes, I forwarded but five short pithy questions, but with a worried note. If each presidential answer averaged five minutes, boom, that would work well enough for my interview with the 40th President of the United States. My fear was that if the president rambled too long answering on any one question, the interview would look anorexic or stunted. I begged the staff to ‘instruct’ the Gipper to keep answers short. And short they were: He zipped through the questions on social policy like a train coming down the Alps. When the clock had counted out to 20 minutes, the president did not seem restless or display time-to-go body language. In that situation, do you say: Thank you

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Mr President for this interview, good-bye. Heck, no: You stay seated in the Oval Office until some palace guard kicks you out. But … what do you ask next? All your questions have been answered, right? No! Not if you have you have a Viagra Question in your back pocket. And I did. You HAVE to! Mr. President, in the area of family social policy, your daughter Patti (from his second wife, Nancy, and like son Ron a noted liberal on social issues) has said that she thinks a couple ought to live together for a good period of time before getting formally married. Isn’t that living in sin? As a noted social conservative, what do you think of this? It was a wicked question to ask. It put a policy question — of premarital sex — into an intimate context: his own daughter. I stole a glance at a White House aide in the corner and thought I saw him fade to white. But the Gipper was more than up to the challenge. “Mr Plate, all I can say is that I’m just sorry that spanking is out of fashion now.” You know what I said to myself: That this one quote — the very one not scripted — is the one that will make the newswires and newsmagazines. And that’s why it happened — from Time Magazine’s PEOPLE section to the Associated Press. Reagan went on some more on that general point — the need for observed social and religious norms and so on. But I knew as a journalist that I had my Viagra answer to the Viagra question. And have no doubt: You’re not at your best if you go into a VIP interview without having at least one off-the-wall, under-the-belt, out-of-the blue, who’d-dare-to-ask query in your back pocket to lay

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on your VIP. If you haven’t prepared that option, you’ll hate yourself in the morning. I promise.

INTERVIEW TIP Don’t go into a VIP interview without having at least one off-the-wall, underthe-belt, out-of-the blue, who’d-dare-toask query in your back pocket to lay on your VIP. If you haven’t prepared that option, you’ll hate yourself in the morning. I promise.

No journalist goes into an interview with a clean blank slate, except for the first-timer. And, more often than not, young journalists don’t get to do a VIP political interview precisely because they haven’t done any before. As in so many professions, this self-contained circle of denied opportunity is a dreary old story. You can’t get a big-time VIP interview until you’ve done a big-time VIP interview. But once you’ve somehow broken through the interview sound barrier, and you’re swirling around the VIP interviewing circuit, you carry with you a track record, and that record will be scrutinized by the staff of the VIP, if not also by the VIP, as carefully as a diligent employer would review a standard job application. In fact, the ‘job’ (of interviewing the staff ’s boss) may only be a short gig; but it is a huge hiring-decision (though part-time) by the press aide or the appointments secretary or the chief of staff, and you will be vetted as carefully as if everyone else’s job on the staff of the VIP depended on it. Which it might, if the resulting interview blows up in the boss’ face. Trust me, residual facial egg usually ends up on the staffer’s face, not the boss’. Which is precisely why the proposed interviewer will be thoroughly vetted as if a security risk.

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Thus, every interview you do offers both current immediacy and future currency. Especially in this techno-era of AppleGoogleEtc., none of your work is lost to history and everything you have written or broadcast or posted in one way or the other can and probably will have been scanned and entered into the almighty celestial Cyber cloud and can be called up immediately for review and dissection — negatively and/or positively … every single word (you may even be blamed for the headline that some editor too quickly wrote!). Perhaps no profession exhibits as much inherent transparency as journalism. This is the journo’s pride and strength, but also the professional vulnerability. Your best defense against unfair discrimination for a requested interview is to maintain a high quality of professional work. Your Prof must redundantly emphasize this obvious point over and over. Many of the people you will deal with on the interview trail are extremely competent professionals who are not easy to fool. In ten seconds they can recognize the difference between quality and shoddy work. The hapless if sincere proprietor of the half-baked Blog will never get in the door to see the prime minister. But if you are serious and relentlessly hard-working, you can maintain access even if you have left the brandname newspaper and, in effect, are working on your own. Decades ago, if a U.S. political column did not appear in The New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal, then basically it was not important, as it barely could be said to exist. This is no longer true in the AppleGoogleEtc new world order. All your literary laundry will be hung out for viewing — and reviewing. So it goes, you are who you are and your work will either play well on the pitch or it won’t. My own approach is to practice the kind of journalism that might be depicted as ‘reaching out’ or ‘including’,

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as opposed to ‘pushing away’ or ‘excluding’. Extreme nationalistic journalism (us against them) captures the latter class; a more openminded, cosmopolitan journalism the former. One flaw in any cosmopolitan journalism is that its extreme open-mindedness can be misunderstood as timidity; one false virtue of nationalistic journalism is its superficial muscularity. A case in point was a series of interviews granted in China in the late nineties, just a few years into my new journalism devoted to the subject of Asia and America. In general, trying to get access to present or former top officials of the People’s Republic of China is a miserably depressing experience. Going at it frontally is not a good idea. Just as Chinese diplomacy can be an exercise in extreme indirection, sometimes beyond recognition, so indirection the wisest approach to the gate of the heavenly piece. It’s hitting the proverbial brick wall to try to enter via the front door. It’s not going to happen. You have to go around in the back — and sometimes in a very low key way. If there is a trick to relating to the Chinese, besides showing respect while not kowtowing, it’s the use of indirection. A frontal approach (unless you know your interlocutor well, over a long period of time) will probably seem, ah, too Western (after all, China has been frontally invaded so it is instinctively wary of frontal approaches in general). The plot of my first China campaign was laid down brick by brick years ago. Here is how it went: Stage One: Plant the First Seed A formal letter was sent to the Los Angeles Consulate of the People’s Republic of China. The letter was decked out on the official stationery of the Los Angeles Times, where I then was a columnist (institutional

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affiliation is important to all governments, especially the Chinese; to them ‘freelance journalist’ sounds as if you’re tragically unemployed, even if your work products are bestselling books). The carefully crafted letter introduced myself, and my column, and proposed a meeting with the Consul General (the top guy in L.A.) for the purpose of an informal but on-the record chat. The goal, I said in the letter, would be to produce a column that sought to understand the perspective of China and its new efforts to open up to the outside world, to enter aggressively into the globalized economy, and to explain itself better to the U.S., while still listening to America with an appropriate measure of respect. The term used in my proposal was for an “exchange of views” (a term that is common coin in the diplomatic world and one that is always useful to the respectful and respected journalist). With some rapidity, especially for China, which like many governments sometimes moves with all the speed of a backlash of taffy, the consulate offered a specific date, meaning that my request had been officially approved back in Beijing. Otherwise it was not going to happen at any time. Stage Two: Add Some Sunshine I showed up to greet and meet the relatively newly arrived Consul General, Feng Shusen, formerly a provincial governor. Immediately, we hit it off, and I felt I had hit pay dirt. You could talk to him: More a politician than a foreign ministry type, Feng was expansive, pleasant and warmly patriotic. I am okay with that: People love their country, not someone else’s; national officials, whether from China or the U.S., will and should (up to a point) articulate and defend their national perspectives. Why is that so alarming or off-putting? After the meeting, an aide named Han Tao walked me out of the

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cavernous consulate to my parked car. I explained I generally get on with politicians better than uptight diplomats. We agreed to get lunch or dinner some time. Stage Three: Realize Initial Fruit The column appeared in the L.A. Times as a respectful depiction of Consul General Feng, and the new philosophy of opening up. It was the first article ever of this kind in the paper. I breathed a sigh of relief that the editors did not try to block it: If the column had not appeared, that would have been the end of the affair. Stage Four: Further Fertilization The slyly cunning and totally charming Han Tao, depicted by the consulate as its media-relations officer, accepted my invitation to dinner, wives included. We shared a table at a Wolfgang Puck café known as Chinois on Main, in Santa Monica, where at the next table, by sheer chance, was basketball mega-legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar and his wife. Han Tao queried who the famous tall man was; I said, “A very famous tall person.” He laughed. Over dinner the diplomat revealed that his boss Feng had been happy about the column — didn’t agree with every word, mind you, but thought it fair enough. Han further revealed that, like many provincial governors, Feng had cultivated and enjoyed good relations with Qian Qichen, the long-serving foreign minister of China. Qian was not only a terrific diplomat but a savvy politician. Feng wondered if he should go to bat for me with Qian and push for an interview with the foreign minister. This was a highly unusual offer but China was coming to realize that better relations with America would require more outreach to its media. Well, you know what my answer was to that invitation!

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Stage Five: Full Harvest The hour-long meeting with the foreign minister took place about 14 months after the column was published. It took that long. The venue was a private guest house in the famous Diaoyutai complex in Beijing, where three decades before President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were put up while secretly working to warm up relations with China. It turned out that Qian was very clever and quite funny, just as American officials told me he’d be. The interview proved vitally helpful in improving my understanding of China’s perspectives on world issues. I was grateful to Consul General Feng (who had the status of ambassador from China) for making it happen. Then again, qian qichen: Smart. Feng knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that the foreign minister had once worked as a journalist at Ta Kung Pao in Shanghai. He was known to get along well with journalists and during his career in the Foreign Ministry argued for the creation of a new position: that of official spokesman. And he won the argument. Guess who was to become the first Foreign Ministry spokesman in modern China’s history? Qian Qichen. Getting the big VIP interview and doing something positive with it seems to me both a personal privilege as well as a professional obligation. The last time I was to see Qian was in 2006 in a Los Angeles hotel ballroom, where he was promoting his book Ten Episodes in China’s Diplomacy after being warmly introduced by Warren Christopher. I thought to put a strong bid in with Christopher for a private interview but Qian, then 78, was then so frail; and his cherubic face seemed to have sunk back to an unhappy time. I did not press the request.

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After interviewing him in the Diaoyutai, I chugged down to Shanghai for an interview with Wang Daohan, one of the grand old men of the Communist Party. For this new interview, I was joined by Rone Tempest, the L.A. Times Beijing bureau chief. I was happy to have him with me, though the foreign ministry had insisted the unusual Qian session remain a one-on-one. Rone was a talented journalist and a warm person but at one point in Shanghai, before the interview, had this to say: Your interview style is not really very aggressive. Maybe it should be more aggressive. My heart sank. I was really hurt and I did not know what to say. I looked at it this way: INTERVIEW TIP He had been bureau chief and had not You’ll be meeting a been able to secure an interview with the brick wall if you try foreign minister, or with Wang, who was to enter via the front the venerable overseer of China’s fraught relationship with Taiwan. What good had door. It’s not going to been the interview-aggressiveness macho happen. You have to approach? But I said nothing. Rone, a go around in the back gentle and kind man, ended the awkward — and sometimes in silence: “On the other hand, you get to do a very low-key way. interviews.” If there is a trick to Hallelujah! Exactly my point. Get the interview in the first place. What relating to the Chinese, difference does it make if you are known besides showing for preferring the David Frost approach respect while not or the banderilla-bombast if you don’t get kowtowing, it’s the use to use either.

of indirection.

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Keeping our cool about China The Seattle Times (March 23, 2006)

LOS ANGELES — Is China only playing nice with us now in order to buy time and consolidate its power so that it has the capacity to hurt us later? You’d be surprised as to how many Americans think this — or maybe you wouldn’t! Who knows about China for sure? Unlike hindsight, paranoia isn’t always perfect, and neither are pundits. This column, for a decade now, has advocated the maximum degree of engagement with China. But punditry about Beijing’s true intentions is about as dicey as predicting the fertility of mating pandas. Optimists can look to the soothing presentations of Chinese high priests such as Qian Qichen. Qian recently dropped by Los Angeles to promote China’s views on foreign policy, as well as his book Ten Episodes in China’s Diplomacy. He is a highly influential former vice premier, who during the ‘90s was virtually the vicar of the articulation for Chinese foreign relations. His most recent articulation of Chinese foreign policy, in Los Angeles, spurned any mention of ‘communism’ or ‘socialism’ and, according to the silver-haired Qian, his country will threaten no one, take no prisoners (because there’ll be no war), and somehow make everyone wealthier as it gets wealthier (... OK, but watch your wallet, I say!). The overall idea under conveyance to the hotel-ballroom audience was that China and America need to emphasize the steady process of cool and reasoned diplomacy, exploiting the benefits of overlapping national interests, while minimizing and managing the disruptive, if not conflict-creating, impacts of differences in interests or perspectives.

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But is such a pastoral vision a realistic and sustainable formula for the Sino-U.S. relationship? Many Americans will doubt it, for it seems too good to be true. But the alternative is too depressing to bear: It’s an old-man’s grumpy vision of a bilateral relationship that puts China in the badguy role formerly held by the late Soviet Union (the ‘evil empire’) and triumphantly hands America the good-guy role of the world’s savior. Are the dynamics of world politics today so primitive that a new cold war is the only way forward? Sympathy for such a grim view — for turning back the clock, for taking sides, and for dividing the region into pro- or anti-red — is hard to find in Asia. Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ran just that idea up the Australian flagpole in trilateral talks that included otherwise amenable Japan, but found that the Aussies were notably unenthusiastic — an emotion that doesn’t come easily to them when Americans ask for help. So, too, India has almost zero interest in serving as a China counterweight, much less joining the anti-red team. It’s too weighed down by its own innumerable domestic problems (not to mention Kashmir and nuclear-armed Pakistan) to bother antagonizing anyone whose national interests might overlap with its own. Qian’s vision of pastoral persistence is a much better sell than Rice’s intimations of a new bipolar world. This is also the view in another excellent and timely book: Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics. Its author, David Shambaugh of George Washington University, is one of America’s most level-headed China experts. He is perhaps most famous for emphasizing that if we wish to make the Chinese into our enemy, they will become one. Like it or not, he notes, the new power balance in Asia has been shifting from Tokyo toward Beijing — and away from Washington.

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This shift is not complete and it needn’t become total or alarming. America still has a huge and vital role to play in Asia unless it misplays its cards, creates an enemy out of China and in the process alienates much of the rest of Asia. The key for us in the United States is to begin the process of serious and sustained public debate over what is an optimal ChineseAmerican relationship. Rather than seeking to enlist Asians in a China-hedging coalition, our national government needs to enlist the American people in a huge and historic national effort to understand how to maximize the harmony and minimize the friction. Public diplomacy — for the all-important China question — best begins at home, not abroad. We have to convince ourselves of what our vision is before we can convince anyone else of what their vision ought to be.

7 On Why The y Want to Talk But Find it Hard to Say Much

His disciplined habits, his belief in, and capacity for, hard, methodical work, in which much of his day was spent, his respect for professionalism and distaste for dilettantism, all these seemed, in some measure, defensive measures against ultimate self-distrust … [He] saw life as a series of hurdles, a succession of fences to take…. — Isaiah Berlin, on classical scholar and Oxford don Maurice Bowra (1938–70), in Personal Impressions “Any Sou th K orea n Foreig n M i ni s t e r Would Have The Creden t i a l s . ”

Let me begin this difficult section with the story of the first time Ban Ki-moon made an impression on your humble columnist. It was Seoul’s summer of 2005, on an oven-hot week. South Korea’s ordinarily low profile, hardworking, don’t make waves foreign minister was in the news every day: U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice was in town. And Ban, the unstoppable workaholic, was giving her the grand tour as the gallant escort. They were seen together at politically picturesque sites all over the peninsula. So I had picked a ridiculous week to be in Seoul for some quiet time with Ban, a well-respected diplomat, and never expected to get that interview with the foreign minister. Word was he was special in a very calm way. So I put through the request anyway. Understandably, the initial official response was negative. “He’s kind of busy this week,” came the droll reply. The American Secretary of State departed South Korea Friday but

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that night, as I was packing my bag for the flight home to Los Angeles the next day, the phone rang in the hotel room. “Can you meet with Foreign Minister Ban tomorrow for breakfast, downstairs at your hotel?” I was quite surprised. Astonished, really. The next morning, as Ban and two aides walked into the lobby of the Chosen Hotel, I met him with a big smile. I can just hear Mrs Ban now, I joked: “What? You spend the whole week with that Rice woman and you cannot be home even for a simple breakfast on Saturday??!! And for what? And who is this Tom Plate, he’s so important, you can’t even take in one meal at home with the family. I mean, he’s not exactly Tom Friedman of The New York Times!” And the man who came to breakfast on a Saturday would wind up becoming the eighth Secretary General. This is a poignant section to write for you because it concerns one fine gentleman — and one of the hardest working. This is the veteran South Korean diplomat and civil servant Ban Ki-moon, who in 2007 became only the eighth Secretary General of the United Nations in its 67-year history. This account starts five years before Conversations with Ban Ki-moon was published, as the fourth volume in the ‘Giants of Asia’ series. And thereon lies a tale worth telling, for the first time. I was happy about South Korean Foreign Minister Ban’s unanimous nomination by the UN Security Council, which preceded his unanimous election by the General Assembly in November 2006, for two reasons. I thought him then, as I do now, a capable and honest man, with high integrity and caring virtues. The other reason for my happiness — more personal and professional — is that in one of my columns on Asia, I had endorsed

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him for the job. This was in August 2006, and the Seattle Times on the West Coast published it first in the U.S. I agree with you if you view that the endorsement was on my part presumptuous. But on the other hand — please hear me out! Mr Ban had himself requested just that when I interviewed him, at his invitation, for lunch at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles, in May of 2006, about a year after our breakfast in Seoul. The Ritz Carlton is just a few miles from Los Angeles International Airport, and Ban was on a three-hour layover. We had met several times before, in Seoul, but never for this long: and we chatted about issues and personalities of international politics and he asked for my views on the recent round of North Korean missile launches, Korea-Japan relations, Seoul’s recovery of wartime operational control, and his candidacy for the post of the next UN Secretary General. It was only at the end, after about two hours, that he popped the question: Can I have your endorsement? Please. It would really help my candidacy. This took me by surprise, but perhaps it shouldn’t have. After all, the South Korean government had hardly shown the faintest blush of coy about the matter of who should replace Kofi Annan: It wanted its guy to get the big job, and they were shaking every tree in every forest they could think of for possible support. Agents from his campaign had even traveled to countries in Africa where, as far as anyone knew, an actual Korean had probably never been sighted. And so this formal interview of a VIP by a journalist was, in fact, a job interview! My initial instinct was to decline the invitation because, among other reasons, I had never endorsed anyone for anything in the column, which runs in newspapers here and there around the world. The very idea seemed pompous and impertinent. (Though I have done a few

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‘de-endorsement’ columns: A few years before, for example, a column had suggested that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori was so out of his depth, was sinking Japan’s world image and should step down soon. Which he did.) But one could not help being struck by Ban’s sincere and straightforward style. His pitch was direct to me, not general or theoretical: that having devoted the last two decades of my life to writing about Asia — and only about Asia — it might not seem remotely out of place if the column were to offer some sense of direction about the next UNSG; for it was Asia’s turn in the rotation for the job, and whoever would be chosen to succeed Kofi Annan would have to come from Asia. And I was the journalist in America who did Asia. So why should I duck the opportunity and head out for lunch? That was his point. And it was quite a fair point. So I had to promise Ban, after the last handshake of the luncheon, that I’d take a long look at his suggestion and try to do something — a vague promise at best, not a hard endorsement. And he seemed okay with that. Besides, what was he going to do? Beg? To this end — and in fact as a necessary part of a columnist’s due diligence — I quietly contacted sources here in the U.S. as well as in Asia. Now this process was made so much easier with the coronation many years ago of email and text messaging as the primary vehicle of international communication across extended time zones. You could ask for a former minister’s views on Ban in the afternoon without worrying about waking him up in the middle of the night. In this way I asked for their confidential input. I received more than a few replies. The consensus on Ban was positive and somewhat comforting: a good and competent human being, very solid integrity, well schooled — though not overloaded with such stunning charisma

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or dicey diplomatic daring that would annoy the five permanent members of the Security Council, but capable of handling them with a few years of valuable experience at the UN General Assembly under his belt. Regarding the charisma question: It may be odd to have this come from a career journalist but the media does have a very unhealthy addiction to charisma-overdose. Many bad leaders have had too much charisma (Hitler had oodles); some good ones have had little but work quietly behind the scenes effectively (the late Keizo Obuchi, the 84th prime minister of Japan). Charisma is nice to have if used for good ends but the media has become too dependent on it, as if some upscale addict leaning on lines of coke to pep up his workaholism. What did puzzle me was that Ban so obviously, achingly, wanted the job, globally known to be a nightmare because, well, the UN was a nightmare. Quickly — and perhaps too quickly — I simply came to the conclusion that he wanted to shine for his South Korea, once a mud-splattered Third World country now climbing fast up the international ladder of economic development. That, and personal ambition, had to be it. The psychology of endorsement for this columnist started by accepting that Ban was solid and competent — but who really liked him? “Any South Korean foreign minister would have the credentials for the job,” Lee Kuan Yew told to me, while explaining why no one from Singapore would campaign for the position. Personally, several accomplished Singaporeans I knew seemed rather ideal but LKY ruled them out in part because the position itself was so fraught with institutional impotence that it would only bring discredit to his little country (though maybe there were other, more personal reasons). Therefore — as I only half-jokingly suggested in the

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endorsement column I wrote — wasn’t Ban a bit crazy to covet this horrible job? In fact, Ban had worked at the UN before, in important positions, and well knew what he was getting into. He did feel that it would be a feather in the cap of his country (unlike Lee’s assessment of the dubious gain for Singapore) if he took the job and did it with honor and competence. If the world shouldn’t expect much in the way of dazzling stagecraft from him, neither should it expect anything remotely resembling misconduct. “One thing you won’t get with Ki-moon,” a top career Korean diplomat who had worked with him told me at the time, “is a scandal like you had with Kofi Annan. And, besides, no one works harder and longer hours than Ban, no one. No one in the world.” Another source pointed out that Washington and Beijing, despite all the tension between them, were both comfortable with Ban. This was an achievement in itself. Though hailing from South Korea (a U.S. ally since the 50s), Ban had been working hard to gain Beijing’s confidence. In his nearly four years as foreign minister he had visited with Chinese leaders often and bent over backwards to listen carefully to the Chinese perspective on all important issues. (During our conversations for the book Conversations with Ban Ki-moon, the thenUNSG said that, personally speaking, he was more comfortable with the less aggressive style of Chinese leaders than of American leaders. He admitted that this was an Asian kind of thing.) And so there we were, a few months later, huddled over a quiet dinner in mid-Manhattan on a Friday night (October 14, 2006), sipping sake at his favorite Japanese restaurant. This was the day after his election by the General Assembly, acting after he had received Security

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K or e an b a n b es t choice to he a d u. n.

The Seattle Times (August 22, 2006) LOS ANGELES — Asia, in the expected United Nations ritual of rotation by continent, is expected to provide the next UN Secretary General. And so there’s a mad scramble going on among ambitious Asian diplomats as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is stepping down later this year. One uses the word ‘mad’ advisedly as it would seem to me one would almost have to be out of one’s mind to want this terribly difficult job. The UN Secretariat is what it is — a tower of geopolitical babble — and the smart bet would be that it will never substantially reform from within. So what does it say about the core sanity of any candidate who would bid boldly to become the top dog in an asylum? It probably says at least two things. One is that the announced candidates — and there are now four of them, all hailing from Asia — are deeply and personally ambitious. But that’s not automatically bad. It also says that these candidates do not publicly endorse the pessimistic, resigned, negative view about the future of the UN Secretariat. And that may not be so bad, either. Optimism and ambition certainly characterize the candidacy of Ban Ki-moon, the current front-runner in the race to follow Annan. Ban, the foreign minister of South Korea, recently came out on top in the first informal straw poll conducted by the delegates to the UN Security Council. The other three hail from Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. These are only the announced candidates; lurking all across Asia is diplomatic talent galore, particularly, perhaps, in Singapore. What’s more, based on the track record of past succession struggles, it is the unannounced, dark-horse candidates that tend to win in the end.

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This could be the scenario yet again. But on this occasion, that might be a shame. There are good reasons why the South Korean foreign minister topped the Security Council informal vote on the first go-round, why his candidacy has triggered little if any serious opposition (so far at least), and why it may make sense to have this Korean in the spot. The reason is simple: Ban would probably be no bust. The career diplomat, whom I interviewed in Los Angeles recently, does his homework, really knows his stuff, works harder than anyone in the South Korean foreign ministry, is a straight-shooter, speaks several languages excellently, including English, is well liked by his diplomatic colleagues from Singapore to Tokyo to much of Africa and Latin America, gets along swimmingly with the top diplomats of both the United States as well as China — and he is a nice guy as well. So is Ban too good to be true? Well, let’s not hype this guy too much. For starters, he certainly lacks the showboat charisma of a Brahmin like Kofi Annan, and the fact that the Korean peninsula could be viewed as a volcano ready to erupt at any moment does nothing to soothe the nerves. What’s more, South Korea itself remains one of the least open markets of all the industrialized states and can be a nightmare to do business in. But it is easy to see why Ban is liked by everyone from Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former UN ambassador, to Condoleezza Rice herself. The U.S. Secretary of State has pointedly made it known that she likes, respects and is comfortable with Ban and this is not true of her attitude toward every diplomat from Asia, especially Thailand. Ban rightly terms the holder of the job our “chief global diplomat”, but he undiplomatically states that the UN Secretariat

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needs a very thorough housecleaning. Asked whether the numbertwo position at the UN, over which the Secretary General makes the call, might come from some top Western business school — whether Harvard or London or whatever — he nodded that this might be a “very good idea”. Thus, for Annan’s successor, the job will require not just getting along with the member-states of the organization (not to mention the always carping U.S. Congress) but openly not getting along with those inside the corridors of power at the UN until badly needed management and efficiency reforms are cemented in place. It’s a dirty job but, as we would say in the U.S., somebody’s got to do it. But is nice-guy Ban the one? No one is certain, and thus another American saying comes to mind: Nice guys finish last. But maybe not this time.

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Council recommendation. With us were our elegant, intellectual wives, Andrea and Soon-taek, who more or less kept to themselves, being more or less bored with politics and with the two of us — but not with old Hollywood movies, which they found of vast mutual interest, or with Japanese food, also a common cultural preference. Ban, a naturally gracious man, had confided to several aides that the endorsement column had been crucial to his candidacy. This was difficult to imagine, though perhaps it was a minor contributing factor, due to the happy timing: It appeared after the first UN Security Council vote, in which his name while topping the list was still a few votes short of the nine votes needed for recommendation to the UN General Assembly and thus just before the Security Council action that finally put him over the top. What is that commonplace saying about success: Timing is everything in life? The waiter placed celebratory wines in front of us but Ban obviously was no drinker, and your humble columnist no longer was. So we had a sober conversation. My policy with VIP interviews, where the project is a book of many interviews rather than a 40-minute hit-and-run, is to be extremely candid — but well short of brash or rude. In ten weeks Ban would become the world’s highest profile diplomat and how many private meals with him would be possible? So I tried not to waste his time or mine or fuss too much over the sushi. I came to the issue he must be nervous about — this extraordinary new job. How are you feeling about things? I’m really scared. He stared right at me. And maybe he looked scared. Who could blame him?

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Elaborate menus came to the table. Very nervous, he said, finally, honestly, from the heart. I tried to calm him by offering the thought that any measure of nervousness about this wretched job that would be his January 1, 2007 was a sure sign of intelligence and self-awareness. And that if he weren’t worried, there might be something seriously wrong with him — a missing survival gene. Ban, who has a nice sense of humor, didn’t laugh or smile but just nodded. Do you have any advice for me? This struck me as a possible trick question. (Mao once asked his people for criticisms and then took down names and punished every last critic severely!) So it put me a little off-balance. I shun offering advice to political VIPs and, thankfully, it is not often I am asked. But Ban had done just that — so another way of putting it was, who was I to deny him some harmless input? What’s more, I thought of several gentlemen on his staff whom I liked very much and I wanted to make a suggestion that might make their job easier. I went for it and, in fact, laid down a very strong and hard recommendation: Fire everyone at the UN in charge of your media relations, and get your own team. Your biggest problem won’t be the veto-wielding P5 on the Security Council, or even the hardened, craven UN bureaucracy, or corrupt or incompetent diplomats; your biggest problem will be the Western news media. His ears perked up, it seemed, but his eyes were wary. I don’t understand. I continued: The UN media operation will do a good job of protecting its own image and the overall institutional image, and so you will come as the second priority. You need your own media people.

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But why? How does one break it to a man that he has an image problem. Because you are not media-genic. You are very competent, the UN is lucky to have you, and you have much to contribute. But the Western media will eat you up. But I will be judged by my hard work and achievements. I sighed and shook my head. No, the media doesn’t care solely about that — really isn’t capable of making an objective evaluation, in fact. There was a silence. So what do you want me to do? You have to feed the media … leaks, background briefings. All your true friends and allies need to start working the media now. The campaign so brilliantly engineered by your Korean cabal has to continue. The battle for control of the UN has only begun. Ban shook his head again, slowly but resolutely. I gave it one last shot, my best one: Mr Secretary General-designate: the media is like a huge endless hungry shark. It needs to be fed daily. And if you don’t feed it something, and very regularly, it will start taking flesh bites out of you. It has a hunger that just won’t go away. Ban shook his head vigorously: They will judge me by my achievements. What a hard-headed Korean male, eh? Then if you think that, you really do not understand the Western news media. He had asked for my advice, and I gave it to him straight, as a caring person would and should. You could see the incoming UNSG had a stubborn streak though — or was it a principled unwillingness to cater to the superficial charisma of the media? The great Isaiah Berlin stood tall in his evaluations of other great men of his time. But whatever their faults — and all great women and

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men have huge ones — he tried to look up to them, never down on them. By accepting their faults, in fact, Berlin understood better their greatness. His noteworthy assessment of the famous L.B. Namier emphasized the empiricist British historian’s annoyance with “amateurism, journalistic prostitution, and obsession with doctrine”. Now this observation may seem odd, because Ban Ki-moon, whom I first met years ago in Seoul, was anything but British and in many ways was nothing but old-fashioned Korean, with a stolid personality that was far less Gangnam than graduate student (nerd division). So Berlin’s portrait of Namier, in the book collection of intellectually shimmering profiles titled Personal Impressions, reminded me of the Ki-moon that I have come to know. Ever the career foreign-service professional, Ban was sedulous about diplomatic detail and held in the highest realm of his intellect any and every negotiating nuance, as if with the reverence of a neurosurgeon assessing a brain scan or a theologian referencing a Vatican document. As for doctrine or international-relations theory, by contrast, Ban humored only the most general of generalizations. For example, the international act of negotiation, no matter what the circumstance, was always worth ginning up or hanging on with. There was no room for resignation or pessimism. Giving up was unthinkable — and might very conceivably be a symptom of either diplomatic incompetence or moral fatigue. He was privately stern about the public conduct of the diplomat: Public humility only and vulgar braggadocio of any kind might indicate character flaw. The best course for the virtuous diplomat was the Confucian way. Further, in a spiritual sense, humanitarian principles should always trump national interests and justly trigger international

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aid, administration or even intervention. There could be no logical exceptions to this rule, whose implementation could be bound only by the limitations of resources. As for journalism and the media, oh yes, he was also inclined toward the mindset of Namier: “Journalism — the desire to epater, to entertain, to be brilliant — was, in a man of learning, mere irresponsibility,” wrote Isaiah Berlin, adding: “ ‘Irresponsible’ was one of the most opprobrious terms in his vocabulary. His belief in the moral duties … generally was Kantian in its severity and genuineness.” The problem with this Olympian perspective for Ban was that his job wasn’t to be a distinguished lecturer at English universities or historian of pellucid and sweeping perspectives but more mundanely serving, humbly but very publicly, as the secular pope of a deeply sinful world, atop an inefficient and compromised institution made up of inherently flawed humans who sometimes engage in sin. Worse yet for this most modest of men among our diplomats, few jobs are more globally visible than that of United Nations Secretary General. Ban well understood this but seemed hesitant about fully facing up to the consequence. On the vast world stage, image can became reality and a weak image can become your destiny. Yet his core instincts did fully fit with his whispered instructions at the outset of his tenure — well rumored though not explicit in anything written or said. As a highly regarded foreign minister of a Southeast Asian state put it to me in a conversation, Ban would do just fine at the UN: “…But only if he understands that what is wanted is less a general [like the showboating Annan] and more of a secretary [i.e. someone who can gracefully accept a measure of dictation from the big powers]. Then he will be successful.” But if you foolishly pressed that view on Ban, he would react defensively,

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as if you hit his male Korean inner essence with a crude hot poker. He’d shoot back and ask why in the world would the five permanent members of the UN Security Council place someone in this vital job that was a weak figure. There is some truth here. The big powers will readily hand off tough and unrewarding jobs they don’t want to touch, but to a weak UNSG? But as my foreign minister source stated clearly (and other sources were to confirm), a low-profile, though workaholic SG, was exactly what was wanted, especially after the heated years of Kofi Annan, who did take on the big powers — though, in the final analysis, quite futilely. And so Ban’s immediate quiet deportment upon taking office confirmed my worst fears — that either the low public profile was part of his secret job description or it was his own preference, in which case he did not appreciate the feral nature of the news media. His handlers at the UN Secretariat in New York were of little help (unfairly perhaps, I sensed in them an institutional incompetence; but it may be that they were simply overwhelmed, because the client they inherited needed a major media makeover, not routine PR — and no one could do this unless the client knew he needed it). Exactly as I imagined, the media began slicing and dicing away at the new SG. It seemed animalistic to me, but just a few months into Ban’s first term, the Western media was predicting apocalypse. Consider the cover of Newsweek magazine, which graced Ban’s picture with the horrific “Why This Man Will Fail” (but I warned him this might happen, right?) On the other hand — while speaking of the apocalypse — take note that in 2013 the publisher of Newsweek announced it was pulling the plug on its print edition. By contrast by then Ban had been confirmed for his second term as UNSG by unanimous vote of the 193-member General Assembly. The American media, for its part,

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was largely indifferent, as if this caring and committed man barely existed. Voyeuristically, they just watched the carnage; I don’t think one newspaper or magazine in the U.S. had a significant kind word to say. And almost no one bothered to come to his defense. The New York Times, which could have been huge for him, did little. Only in the media of Asia were there any signs of love. Even there, upon the reappointment of their native son to a second term, the only major world newspaper I could find that carried significant mention was China Daily in Beijing, the center of one of the two national governments that undergirded his Security Council support. By contrast the British media, with offices in Manhattan, not to mention London, provided coverage of his first term, but such was generally nasty, and, arguably, racist (question: why does a world leader necessarily have to speak in public as if golden-tongued Tony Blair? Second question: and is slippery-tongued Blair now so universally viewed as a great leader?). In any event the coverage tipped toward the mean when there was any at all.

BAN WITH THE COVER OF NEWSWEEK PREDICTING HIS FAILURE: The Secretary General never understood the media’s need for relentless negativity.

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It was painful for me to watch the piranha attack — even from Los Angeles, where we are well used to the knee-jerk establishment news media on the East Coast. I not only could feel his pain, it pained me as well. Whatever his faults, this was a decent, caring, hard-working, thoughtful, honest gentleman. Is there no place for such a person in international political life? Must all occupants of that exalted position be the second coming of the dashing Dag Hammerskjold, the UN’s second SG who served from 1953 until a life-ending plane crash in 1963 that many suspected was political assassination. The news media has a pathological need for its regular charisma fix. Think of such as the media’s methadone. And so lo the foolish (or arrogant) public figure who just doesn’t have it in him or her or who just won’t offer it or just doesn’t get it — well, folks, it’s a media world and the media is writing contemporary history and making the contemporary performance evaluations. Ban was hurt, frustrated — suddenly worried. Whether coming from some scantily read blog or serious British newspaper, the criticism was getting under his Korean skin and his staff was beginning to duck whenever they saw him coming, so irritated and frustrated had he become. “What can I do about [specific name of British newspaper here deleted]?” Ban asked me plaintively in a phone call early in his first term. “They won’t let up.” I answered, very bluntly, using whatever verbal two-by four I could quickly get my hands on: “Here’s what you need to do. And this is just one example. Get a hold of your best friend or longtime colleague in London. Start leaking to him little bits of this and that — nothing dangerous but really newsworthy tidbits. Now have your man, or woman, do lunch with this English journalist regularly, maybe monthly. Feed that newspaper. Then you will have that grateful newspaper eating out of your hand, instead of nibbling

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off chunks of your flesh.” On the other end of the line, Ban said nothing, but through the awkward silence I could hear him demur. So I continued: “The media is a huge hungry shark. You either feed it, or it will start having you on its dinner plate.” I should have directed him to White House media managers; they know. I don’t think he got it. To this day I cannot totally settle my mind about Ban — his resistance to the idea that we live in a media-dominated world. Maybe he was under orders from Beijing and Washington to keep a low media profile? Were his handlers at the UN that inept? Or was it simply a matter of professional and personal honor that Ki-moon would undergo no media cosmetology in deep respect for the high honor bestowed on him? In any event the media had him locked in a barrel largely of his own making and was shooting at him murderously. He was practically leaking blood by the pint. “You are so right, Tom, to emphasize this point,” exclaimed a high-ranking level UN official who otherwise adored Ban. “Get him to fire his entire media team and hire a new one.” For when the UNSG’s image sags, it’s also a huge burden on his immediate loyal staff. But, to descend into stereotype, he was behaving as if he were little more than the stubborn Korean male. There was only one recourse left. I started defending him in my column. It was not that I was his soul brother and cared desperately about his fate; it was that the office of UNSG deserved respect and in it now was a good man from Asia with a caring soul whose true abilities might be all but invisible to a superficial media but nonetheless deserved respect and attention. So I wrote this in a syndicated column, here word for word in the Japan Times of Tokyo (June 10, 2011):

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“You don’t get a flashy showboat … but you do get an endlessly tireless and wholly competent worker…. But if Ban is not a big-time boat-rocker by temperament, he is a consummate professional by training and application. Like a lawyer who rarely ever shouts but has done enough homework to know his case like a fitting glove, the UN Secretary General impresses peers and foreign leaders alike. Peace does not come to those who think it will fall into their laps, like water from the moon. It comes to those who work at least as hard as those who plot for evil. Ban is a tough peace-wager who is no one’s fool. You may not get charisma, but neither will you get a spot of corruption — or of laziness. In South Korea late last week, this workaholic-for-peace was given a hero’s welcome. This modest man would be the first to agree that he is not yet a hero of any kind. But give him time.” So when the media wouldn’t (of course) give him a break, I decided it was time to break my post-inauguration silence. I wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane but I was America’s only regularly appearing syndicated columnist on Asia, the columns ran in major Asian newspapers (and a few mid-sized US ones), and those papers were well read by Western correspondents and government officials stationed in Asia. What’s more, now — thanks to the Internet — anyone could Google Tom Plate as readily as Tom Friedman … so … a few months later I wrote a second stout column about Ban. One day he telephoned. He was in his office on the 38th floor of the iconic UN Secretariat building. It was not a long conversation but it seemed, to me at least, heartfelt. He was so beaten up by the media

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at that point that he could hardly believe my columns, he told me, and could barely express his appreciation. I said he did not need to thank me, I had written them because I believed in them and believed that his contribution to the UN was important and well worth drawing attention to. Make sure you look me up the next time you are in New York, he ended up saying. I did just that, and one late Sunday morning found myself sitting for tea with the SG and his wife Soon-taek, a serious and thoughtful woman who exemplifies as well as anyone I have ever met the saying “Still Waters Run Deep”. The get-together was entirely social, it was not for an interview, but it had the effect of reminding me how likeable I found Ki-moon without any media intervention. At one point Ban asked what I was up to professionally and I explained that I had agreed with my Asia-based publisher Marshall Cavendish to start a series of books under the banner ‘Giants of Asia’. Ban asked if the name of the first ‘Giant’ had been selected and it was indeed — Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. He looked at his wife and he looked at me and asked if Lee in fact had agreed to sit for what I explained were a series of two-hour interviews. I nodded. He said: “That is an excellent choice. He is very respected throughout Asia.” He asked if a second had been selected and I said let me get through the first one first! This was in May of 2009 and the interviews with Lee were scheduled for July. I had an idea that, honestly, more or less just came to me. Nothing really planned. I said something like: You know, speaking of a ‘Giant of Asia’ — originally we imagined a series on nation-builders. But maybe that standard is too narrow. Maybe we should think of a kind of person who was a career diplomat in his home country, who rose to the top of his foreign service, who impressed everyone with his work habits and integrity,

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and then becomes — wow! — like, oh, Secretary General of the UN. That’d be a pretty giant-like deal for Asia ... don’t we think? It quickly dawns on an increasingly alert Ban that a new idea is hovering over him like a drone. I was sure his initial instinct would be to find some mannered way to duck. So I carefully explain that as the Lee Kuan Yew book will be titled Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew (and similarly any subsequent volumes with other political VIPs) approximately half the book’s 50,000 words will be his, not mine. The Singapore leader was committed to quite a lot of chatting indeed. Ban doesn’t strike anyone as overly chatty, and the nature of the world’s chief-diplomat job might make one leery of candor, not to mention controversy. I further explain that such a ‘Giants’ book would take at least several lengthy sessions (from 90 to 120 minutes) each, and this might be tough for him as he has a killer 24/7 job now, as by contrast Lee Kuan Yew arguably did not. I also noted that all conversations will be recorded, and while the transcript could be made available for review for errors or misstatements prior to publication, the author’s manuscript itself would not. To my surprise — for I assumed this would be an absolute horror of an idea for Ki-moon — he did not immediately say no but looked over at his wife Soon-taek and the two stared at each other for maybe six to eight ray-gun intense seconds (as if with an invisible energy transference that could have lit up Beverly Hills on a Friday night) and she almost imperceptibly nodded and Ban turned to me and said: I have never done anything like this before. And I’m not sure he’ll ever do anything quite like it again. You’ll see why. There were no books in English about Ban to bone up on, and my Korean was limited to maybe five words. But there were many worthy

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works about the United Nations, and the Dag Hammerskjold classics had to be read. I raced through them all to try to catch up. We started the first two-hour session as we finished the last — at his official residence on Sutton Place, up the stairs to the second floor reception room. It is bright, airy, filled with his photos from decades of service in the Korean foreign ministry, with the family albums clustered feng shui style on top of the black piano near the telephone that will ring from time to time for his attention. The first sessions were pleasant INTERVIEW TIP enough but difficult. I found Ban In the traveling pocket enormously warm and thoughtful but circus of recording as guarded as the Kremlin. Perhaps even more so: like a dog who had been oft- devices, take along two humiliated and never loved, every intimate micro video cameras approach instinctively causes him to and three thin digital shrink back. Having been disrespected by audio recorders. Your the media, Ban cannot even totally trust operational approach a member of the media he knows he can trust. I emphasize that I am a professor — needs to emphasize repeatedly — as if trying to wash the dirty numerical technical mass media makeup off! redundancy. Around him I array my traveling pocket circus of recording devices. There are two micro video cameras, each no bigger than a man’s wallet, and three thin digital audio recorders. I explain to the Secretary General that I am technologically incompetent and fear tech failure at every turn. My operational approach is — like NASA’s, the U.S. national space agency’s — numerical redundancy. I emphasize that everything we discuss, everything audible in this room, will be recorded, and is candidate for inclusion in the book. If

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ban in his manhattan home: He knew the mike was hot, but was nonetheless stunned when much was revealed.

at any time the SG wishes to go off the record, we will neutralize the devices. I emphasize again that a full and complete transcript prior to writing the book can be made available to him personally for final review, but not to the UN institutionally. As for the final version, he need only read the coming Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew. “If you want to know what the book on you will be like, it will be exactly like that. Half your words, and half mine.” My publisher had provided financing to underwrite four twohour sessions, over two separate trips from Los Angeles. But by session three it is clear that four meetings, even at two hours each, will not be enough. Ban is warm, thoughtful, helpful, smart and well informed and, like his ‘Giants’ predecessors Thaksin, Mahathir and Lee, he wants the book to be a good one. Both his relentless work ethic and soaring ambition would allow nothing less. He has read at least a few of my prior newspaper columns, and knows well what my work is like. Though he really doesn’t know me, I believe he trusts me; and though I don’t really know him, I believe I trust him. But there is a serious problem: Unlike the other three ‘Giants’ —

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who were in various states of post-graduate work, as it were — he is currently fully employed, the job he holds is one continuous toothache, and enormous responsibilities and equally enormous opportunities for missteps are stationed at every crossroad. He wants to be candid but underneath his surface tranquility are tidal undercurrents of worry and reserve. “Speech is granted to disguise one’s thoughts,” a famous 19th-century diplomat once advised us. It finally occurs to me that with INTERVIEW TIP regard to fullness of explication and Just as every person tendency toward speaking his mind, Ban is an individual, every Ki-moon is no Lee Kuan Yew. It will take many more sessions than expected. interview project is I remind myself that just as every person different. Nothing ends is an individual, every interview project the way you think it is different. Nothing ends the way you will when you start think it will when you start out. The only out. The only inflexible inflexible rule is to be always ready to rule is to be always exercise flexiblity. We are at session four when I break ready to exercise the news to him — that to make the book flexiblity. into a true set of revealing conversations, we will need a few more of them. After a pause — as each second ticked off my worry grew — Ban surprises me by nodding without objection. Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he is even starting to enjoy the sessions, almost couch and shrink. In fact, at the outset of session four, I ask him point-blank: “Are you starting to enjoy these sessions yet?” Again to my surprise, he nods: “Very much so.” To the mix of formal conversation sessions we agree to add the dash of a few nights out on the town: to Lincoln Center for the musical

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revival of South Pacific; to the Algonquin Hotel for some show tunes; to Café Carlyle for a jazz singer; to Chin Chin in mid-Manhattan for dinner. Whether the outings help relax the SG or not, I am not sure. But Mrs Ban seemed to appreciate them, especially when my wife Andrea was able to join us from Los Angeles. They hit it off well. And their presence helped remind Ban that neither one of us would be anywhere in life without them. The book was published in the fall of 2012. “The Quiet Korean: Ban Opens Up” ran the banner headline over the review by veteran UN watcher Barbara Crossette. The Asian Review of Books had this reaction: “In this candid portrait of the second Asian to serve as SG … Plate’s free-flowing, conversational style not only makes UN terminology digestible for readers but also reveals his strength as an interviewer, one who is all at once probing, thorough, playful, and concise… Above all, Plate’s biggest achievement lies in his ability to contextualize and humanize a larger-than-life figure — an accomplishment to which every biographer aspires — and to explain why, unlike some political contemporaries, the SG has retained such an inconspicuous standing relative to his weighty role and considerable achievements as the ‘secular Pope’. Along the way, Plate approaches his subject in an unconventional manner, a refreshing choice for those of us who have tired of slogging through run-of-the-mill biographies year after year. Ultimately, Plate’s Conversations reveal that while Ban may not have been an obvious choice for the position of SG, his record (and quiet re-election for a second term) already speak volumes about his legacy.” We include these delightfully self-serving reviews not only to brag but also to indicate that the critical response to the book (remember — first ever with a sitting SG) was, basically, that most people who read it, liked it.

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But not Ban. At first the book totally irritated him and on initial reading — I was reliably told — flung it in anger across the room. He was very uncomfortable with, and deeply disappointed with, the informal tone (as in the already-published Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, which it was strongly suggested that he read beforehand… ), and was annoyed with himself (intimates later told me) for dropping his guard and being too candid with the interviewer. In a few days I received a terse email from UN headquarters informing me of Ban’s deep displeasure, and of his decision not to attend the U.S. book launch party at the Princeton Club. That decision, I was informed, was final, period — and end of relationship. I was to learn later that Ban was embarrassed by things he’d said even as he knew all conversations were totally (and redundantly) miked up, and rather than blame himself for being a human being — or sucked into candor by a craven, veteran, exploitative Western journalist — struck out at the recorder of the candor. I was okay with this; as a journalist you learn the messenger is always the first to get the whipping. I worried more about Ban’s reputation than my own. Accused as I have been of being too soft and not probing with enough visible anger, this book was once again evidence that a slow, careful and soothing interviewing technique will often yield better, deeper results than even the best ‘60 Minutes’ frontal approach. In truth, I was quietly pleased that the conversations-methodology had yielded material that would not otherwise have surfaced. Some at UN headquarters in New York, stunned by Ban’s anger, quietly came to my defense. An aide whom Ban had designated as the UN point of contact with me was sympathetic to the view that rather than disrespecting Ban, the book was a fair-minded effort to bring to

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the reader a sense of who the UN boss really was. The aide called me privately to, in effect, relate his efforts to persuade his boss to give the book a second, more sympathetic reading. Ban had expected some kind of policy textbook, filled in part with speech excerpts, whereas “you tried to show him as a real person with an overwhelming job.” Another top aide, whom the UNSG greatly respected, told me he went to see Ban to speak up for the book. I also learned that Soon-taek, his wife, who was said to have loved the book, sat him down over the week between Christmas and New Year when even the UN shut down and explained to her husband that the book was an asset, not a detriment. I told the aides I was not at all offended, that the SG was under constant fierce pressure, and responded with a Kissinger-like approach: rather than spending time trying to figure out how we got into this mess, I recommended patience while we spend all the time we need to figure how to get out of it. I waited about a week before sending Ban a personal email that put the tension on a more objective, professional level. I proposed to make, in the second edition, changes in any part of the text that, on his honor as the secretary general of the United Nations, was making the job of the UN Secretary General to keep the peace and run the UN more difficult. I said that “on the honor of the secretary general”, I would make his changes (while crossing my fingers there weren’t too many). A quick check-in with my publisher confirmed that I had its support. The UN aide later told me my letter made sense to Ban, who thought it through and came back with a handful of “requested” changes, and they were made. Ban and his wife graced the book-launch party in New York a few months later in great spirits, and even today, I am told, the secretary general gifts copies of the book, personally

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inscribed, to visiting dignitaries to his office on the 38th floor of the UN Secretariat building. To sum up: It was an honor to have worked with Ban. And I view him as one of the finer human beings in public life. I also view him as perhaps the most difficult interview I have ever done. But, then again — who’s perfect? Still waters run deep, as the saying more or less goes: I hope and expect that when Ki-moon leaves office December 31, 2016, he will be liberated enough in his own skin to begin work on his own book — honest, blunt, detailed. I hope that is what he does with his immediate future. I pray that he will resist entreaties to run for the presidency of his South Korea, which is another horrible job. True, he may be fatally attracted to impossible employments as moth to flame; but I still have hope. He asked me once what I thought of that scenario, and I responded like this: No, don’t do it. Take the presidency of a Korean university or an important foundation, you have already had the premier job in the world. Or something like that. No insult to the people of South Korea intended, but your former foreign minister has worked with prodigious devotion as the successor to the flashy Kofi, and deserves a better next five years than the last ten. Serving in the Blue House is one of the most feral political occupations in global politics. Give this good man a break! A n U n p u b l i s h e d C o n v e r s at i o n w i t h B a n K i - m o o n i n h i s M a n h at ta n residence in 2012

Ban always struck me as full of deep-down quiet pride — like the great Kim Una, the fabulous Olympic skater. She and he like to let

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their work on the ice (as it were) do their bragging. Ever modest, Ban spoke to me for the book about what he felt he had accomplished early on in his term, but asked me not to use it in the book lest it seem like bragging. So it was — but that was then and this is now. Here is a conversation we had that did not make the book — but makes this one: “One structural, out-of-the-box change I made was when we divided UN peacekeeping operations into two. Within two months, I made it happen. There were strong resistance from the member states, and all were dead-seriously opposed. How come you are dividing this? At that time, to my mind, even though I’m not an expert in all those UN peacekeeping operations, but as a South Korean foreign minister who had been dealing with general management reform — I thought it was an impossible job the way it was set up. One person has to take care of 120,000 soldiers, including procurement, personnel, and political and military issues — one person taking care of all this? This is not possible. So I decided to divide into two hugely operational departments: peacekeeping operational department, and political, management and logistical things. “It’s working perfectly well now. Everybody appreciates it. This is one of my big achievements in terms of structural management. Everybody agrees this was a very good vision. So these days I can say, ‘Look, my vision was right.’ So nobody can challenge that. I’m very proud of what I did then.” Ban going on, reflecting in a quiet, almost withdrawn manner: “Then if I look back at all this, almost five years now, how I can be better, and how I can better serve this organization, I think that there are some areas for improvement. That, I admit. Sometimes I needed to be more assertive, aggressive. This might have been what the

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Western world wanted to see. When in such a case a large number of the member states would have thought that they were offended by my aggressiveness, but sometimes, it is necessary.” Even so, it is Ban’s view that much of the huff and puff from global diplomats is superficial. The real work, if any gets done, is 80 percent of the time done behind the scenes. The surface of the lake might in fact look placid and even boring, but underneath swirls the day-to-day work of the diplomat and the sometimes alleviating tides of diplomacy. By contrast, when you see a splashy surface, usually there is nothing going on beneath. It’s almost as if he believes modern media training would be deceptive, even morally wrong. Me saying: “As I understand the modalities of your diplomacy, you believe everyone should save face, there should be no public embarrassment, there should be a true win-win, and you like to work behind the scenes, off center and then when you come out, it is part of your diplomacy in a way to be as bland as possible, to say as little that could be embarrassing to any of the parties. But all of those elements are almost in a different physical dimension of time and space than that which the media can pick up, and so as a result a whole dimension — the fourth dimension of your diplomacy — has been missed by the media.” Ban nods, yes, that’s about right, adding: “But then there are certain occasions when you really need to speak with the leaders privately, which is one of the ways to convince all these difficult people to deal with reality.” He points to the 2010 example of the panel of inquiry on the Israeli shelling of a humanitarian flotilla out of Turkey bound for Palestine. The Israeli government finally consented to a full investigation of what Tel Aviv described as a pure exercise in national defense — but which

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many critics around the world regarded as an exercise in excessive use of force. Ban saying: “Well, it took about two and one-half months to complete — a time consuming, very sensitive, very frustrating process of negotiation. Of course I condemned strongly this military raid that killed nine people. But after that you have to engage in negotiation to be able to establish this panel of inquiry. There was adamant rejection from the Israeli side but at the same time there was an outcry from the international community that this should be investigated.” Ban fought behind (and to some unusual extent, in front of ) the cameras. The best accounts were reported by Al Jazeera, not the U.S. media. “There is always some conflict between real facts and there is always strong opposition from the parties concerned, and you have to convince them and you have to have certain level of satisfying the egos of all, while preserving the integrity and basic principles of the United Nations Charter. That’s what I did and this was unprecedented in the history of the UN, particularly when it comes to Israel. It agreed to this inquiry panel; and a year later, when there was another Gaza crisis, I was again able to constitute a board of inquiry investigating Israel’s attack on UN facilities and personnel. I was able to constitute this panel and I even got compensation from Israel in the amount of $10 million — again that was for the first time! That was the result of quiet diplomacy and persistence. This approach also allows you to have future fruitful conversations with all of the parties involved. So I have been able to receive trust and confidence from the Turkish side, from the Israeli side and also from the Arab side, in general. So they all trust me and all have shown confidence.”

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SEC RETARY GENERAL’S RE VI E W OF ‘ C ONVERSATIONS WITH B AN K I -MOON’

Remarks of His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, on the occasion of the book launch celebration at the Princeton Club of New York in March 2013 Ladies and Gentlemen: Frankly, I have been thinking deeply whether I should take part in this event myself, because it was not written by me and it was a book about me. However, simply out of my personal respect for and friendship with Tom Plate, whom I have known for a long time, I decided to come and share a few words on this interesting book. As a public servant, and particularly as Secretary General of the UN, I am concerned about feeding the people who are hungry, protecting the people who are vulnerable and preserving our environment and keeping the peace of the world. Rather than talk with fancy rhetoric, I find it much more important to work to help people who are suffering. In that regard, I think I am more a practitioner rather than a politician. That is why throughout my 43-year long public service, I have not been able to write a book on any subject, including my memoirs. In fact, there is plenty I could write about. For [various] reasons, however … I agreed to his proposal to write a book about me to let the world better understand my work and the UN. There are some 15 books written about me, mostly in Korean. I have had absolutely no contact with any of those authors. This was the first time I agreed to meet and have interviews with an author.

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As the title says, this book takes the form of a conversation. It is not a biography… As you all know, Tom Plate has been my friend for such a long time. So I had a lot of fun doing those interviews. However, when the book came out, I was surprised to find it a little bit ... funny … like the author, if I may say so! At first I was concerned that his humorous tone may misrepresent the serious work of the United Nations. But as I continued to read the book, I also realized that the secret trick of ‘Good Old Tom’ was to disarm you with his easy writing and to prime you to appreciate what kind of work I am doing at the UN, what kind of conviction and philosophy I have and what kind of person I am … So he is a light-hearted man but also artful in getting the messages across….”

8 On Hit and Run Interviews — and Smart Ladies Who Lunch

Bismark once said that there was no such thing as political intuition; political genius consisted in the ability to hear the distant hoofbeat of the horse of history — and then by superhuman effort to leap and catch the horseman by the coattails. — Isaiah Berlin in Personal Impressions

“ Bray It Aga in S a m!”

I don’t know a single (or even married … bad joke, right?) journalist who actually pines for the hit-and-run interview, though many are comfortable enough with them to not get too flustered when they pop up in their professional life. I am not one of those hearty souls. I positively hate them, try to avoid them, worry more than a little about their net negative effect on the public’s image and true understanding of the role of the journalist. After all, in the U.S., though of course not in that many other places, the governmental and political system absolutely require a credible press to inform the public — the ultimate sovereign — to make it all work. So if and when journalists become increasingly non-credible, the polity is severely handicapped. What a terrible image we have of them, especially of our TV journalists! I am glad I never was one. At TIME Magazine — once a smug arrogant club of print-preferring journalists who on the other hand could be a total joy to work with — we lost few opportunities

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to make fun of our TV news colleagues. One of my more notable moments during my two years at Rockefeller Center involved a media story I was editing on a television journalist. It focused in on an ABC White House correspondent whose main claim to fame was shouting out at the top of his considerable lungs a press question in the direction of Ronald Reagan as the president sought to exit the White House and board a noisy whirling helicopter. With cinematic hand motions of indelible impression, Reagan — the master of the TV image — would simply just smile and feign semi-deafness to create a visual trope for “no comment”. We titled the profile of ABC’s Sam Donaldson: “BRAY IT AGAIN SAM!” Hit-and-run journalism is one way to go if you have the stomach; hit-and-stay journalism is the better way if you can get the gig. The ‘Giants of Asia’ series was my claim to expertise in the latter category. But when you have to do the quick and dirty, you have to — but sometimes when you really have to, you can have a bit of wicked fun, too. And so I fondly recall that semi-magical time in Davos, Switzerland, at the end of the Clinton presidency in 2000. The president had just wound up a speech on globalization (becoming the first sitting American president to address the World Economic Forum), and the lady journalist from Asia sitting next to me in the main Davos hall was in rapture. I couldn’t FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON blame her. Clinton was in his policy- ON THE MOVE, AS USUAL: Getting even a 10-minute interview can be an wonk element here. achievement, and possibly even worthwhile.

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Earlier that day, Clinton had tendered a private chat with ‘Media Leaders’ in a Davos dacha, with daughter Chelsea tagging along charmingly. The 42nd president of the U.S. was so glib, so well informed, so all-inclusive in his personal style, he really was quite charming. The assembled Europe-based journalists had never been in the presence of anyone with quite the combination of Rhodes Scholar intellect and wolfish warmth. Britain’s Tony Blair was probably the close second, but he was a Brit, not an American — and there is an ocean of personality and body temperature difference between the two. At one point I asked a lady journalist from Le Monde from Paris what she thought of his performance. She swooned, saying: “He is so smart.” Yes, that too. I didn’t want to puncture the transatlantic balloon by raising any negatives. Later that day, Clinton was up on the center stage of the big hall in Davos, wrapping up his presentation, and I turned to my newfound friend from Asia and asked her if she’d like to have a snapshot of Clinton for her “dying mother”. She said, sure, but her mother wasn’t dying. I said, let us pretend for the next 15 minutes that she is. I knew that Clinton would not take quick leave of the hall but descend to the orchestra pit and search for hands to shake. When he reached our level, I somehow caught his eye and pointed to my friend and shouted, loudly, that her mom was dying in a Jakarta hospital and how about a quick pix with my friend, who has a dying Mum. Who could resist that pitch? Clinton was wary, of course (he is very smart), but when he caught the sight of my very comely companion, he zoomed over to us quicker than a politician breaking a promise. While I took some shots — pointedly overcoming oddly impossible mechanical trouble with the camera, to make the moment last as long as possible — I politely peppered him with a series of questions on

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globalization. I am rather sure the president caught on to my scam but, with such a beautiful woman on his arm, seemed to have become a fan of the scam! I got my exclusive interview. Okay, it only lasted eight minutes or so and it wasn’t going to garner a Pulitzer. But you use what you have and max it out as you are using it. Luck, they say, is where preparation meets opportunity. In this case I had thought hard about Clinton and what he was really like. It didn’t bother me as much as it bothered others that he liked women a lot, and it certainly didn’t bother me at all that he loved to talk — we journalists would always be all ears. So when the chance came to put those two elements together, boom — you make your own luck. I tried that very approach with Clinton a dozen years later, but it did not work that time. I briefly befriended a well-known actress at a large celebrity party in Los Angeles for UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon, and plotted to capture the by-now former president as he exited the event. I knew his royal exit procession would take near-forever, and on the way out I might get dribbled a few crumbs, especially with this actress on my arm, as in my Davos maneuver. No luck this time! What happened was that another actress Demi Moore introduced Clinton, and clung to him like a shadow. She looked fantastic, was dressed conservatively but stunningly, and seemed (at least to me, I may be wrong…) to have rubbed up against him as might an affectionate kitten more than once. But whatever she did or didn’t do, he only had eyes for her (hard to blame the guy), and when he exited by having a series of extended conversations with several well-heeled attendees (even out of office, Clinton always seems to be raising money for something or other), he had little need of anything additional that I could offer. I waited about an hour, but realized on this one, I had been beaten … in

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my view by Demi Moore, a formidable competitor. While the on-the-run Clinton interview was a little nerve-racking, it was also a hoot. I had met him a few times before and, with his legendary memory, suspected he might have vaguely remembered me in Davos in 2000. And in Los Angeles, back in 1992, after all, I had given him a bit of a hard time (more in jest than in anger) for pulling out of a last-minute meeting at the Los Angeles Times that his own staff had urgently requested. At the last minute some of us had delayed long-planned vacation departures. As I was ‘berating’ this prodigious American politician, my wife who was standing next to me, was getting all his attention. He was vaguely listening to me, but staring at Andrea! I could hardly blame him of course. She has always been hot! I decided to have a little fun with this: I sidled up to his California campaign manager — this was on the eve of the California presidential primary, which Clinton seemingly won by a half billion votes — and intimated that my wife had been hit on by his candidate, me saying: “I’m sure you get this all the time but…” “Oh no,” said California Campaign Chair Mickey Kantor, who had a robust sense of humor, as well as special smarts. “How can we make it up to you?” “Get me a one-onone interview and all is forgiven,” I said (and of course that is what one would say, would one not?). And he said, “You got it.” But I never did get it, and had to make do with the very minor (but somewhat imaginative, don’t you think?) Davos ploy. Clinton is a wildly skilled politician, of course, if with major human-being faults. (But don’t we all have them?) I raised this with the late Warren Christopher. He offered to answer it in a private conversation over lunch in Los Angeles, to which he had returned after leaving the Clinton administration as secretary of state. He had had enough, and Madeleine Albright was chafing for the job; and as

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Clinton’s first term (people do forget) was a nightmare, who knew how weird might be the second? It might be tough to take for an old-school gentleman like Chris. Besides, the central focus then was the economy (remember “It’s the economy, stupid”, the famous 1992 campaign slogan?), not foreign policy. And then came a roaring challenge from Congressional Republicans, led by the irrepressible Georgian college professor, Newt Gingrich, who became House Speaker after the 1994 elections that handed control of the House to the Republicans. This hadn’t happened in four decades and the Clinton crowd believed the way to capture the House back in two years was through the economy, not through the State Department. Amid this domestic tumult, international relations were relegated to a low spot on the list of President Clinton’s priorities. Christopher had a hard time getting significant and regular time with the president in the Oval Office — unless the problem was a high priority, especially for the news media. (Frustrated, by day’s end, Chris took to preparing and having couriered over to the Oval Office a one-page summary of the Secretary of State’s foreign policy ‘items’. It was all rather humiliating (by contrast, Henry Kissinger used to demand, and would get, close to an hour each morning with his president). Over lunch, Christopher, an international lawyer greatly respected in Los Angeles, and in many other places, a man who had been Deputy Secretary of State in the Carter administration, who had negotiated the Iranian hostage problem, and who had helped sort out some of police brutality issues in his home city, reminisced about his four years with Clinton. Christopher had no inappropriate tales to tell, of course, and even if he did he wouldn’t tell them. He was the soul of discretion and a master of indirection (not unlike Ban Ki-moon, in fact). The

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wonderful and brilliant Charlene Barshefsky, who succeeded Mickey Kantor as top trade boss, told me that Chris was hugely valuable to Clinton, though perhaps more outside of foreign policy than within it: He was like a grandfather to Clinton, who in a roomful of discussants on a tough issue would invariably turn last to his much-older Secretary of State to ask: “Chris, what is the best option here?” In the mid-90s the influential Joseph Nye, an admired and extremely polished professor on loan to the Clinton administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School, made a reasoned pitch for more focus on America abroad, and particularly in Asia. He wrote: “It has become fashionable to say that the world after the Cold War has moved beyond the age of power politics to the age of geo-economics.Such clichés reflect narrow analysis. Politics and economics are connected. International economic systems rest upon international political order.” Despite this strong intellectual appeal, foreign policy was more temporized than organized. A decade later Kantor — the former campaign manager, who was Clinton’s chief foreign trade negotiator from 1993–1996, and then secretary of commerce — told an audience of academics at UCLA that as China’s rise became an issue in the mid-90s, the White House had given very little attention to U.S. policy toward Beijing. “So we looked to newspaper columnists like Tom Plate in the Los Angeles Times,” he said, apparently seriously. “What else did we have for guidance?” Christopher admired the young leader’s ready intellect and boundless energy, but well knew of the morally challenged U.S. elections-process that throws its presidents into a fierce furnace of competition and sordid swamp of fund-raising, complete with preening public screen tests and private trips to money icons. “Let’s say this,” Christopher said, finally, after I pushed him as much as I could: “The process of becoming president is so unique and

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… [he was searching for a specific word but after a few seconds gave up] … that the very achievement of getting to the top not only greatly magnifies your virtues, but also greatly intensifies your flaws.” I always will wonder whether Chris, leaving office with dignity intact after Clinton’s first term, had a whiff of what was coming (the silly Monica Lewinsky scandal and the stupid impeachment plot) and knew himself well enough to know this nutty scene was not for him. What, after all, did he have to prove? I admired Chris and he always believed in the value of a column dedicated entirely to Asia appearing regularly in a major American newspaper, especially one on the West Coast. As Clinton’s Secretary of State he opened every door he could for me. And, always, he was quite the old-fashioned gentleman about everything.

INTERVIEW TIP Lunchtime ‘background’ interviews at a public restaurant can be beyond useful, but certain rules need to be observed. Overt note-taking is a no-no, as it only draws attention to the table where ‘something is happening’. Taping is difficult, though a large floral arrangement can be a big ally. And the interviewer has to be prepared, and willing to accept, that a waiter will bluster by and cut in just as your source is saying something like: “…and then the president’s adviser pulled a gun from out of his desk drawer and…”

Ladies who lunch … with newspaper editorial boards … are a special branch of the interview business. And the lunchtime interview is one

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of the best-known rituals of the American news media. Whether pushing a new book or a new government policy or a semi-urgent apologia pro vita sua, guests either visit the magazine or newspaper office for lunch or invite journalists to their hotel, if on a book tour, or to their home office for same. And of course now, in the age of digital journalism, we have the long-distance Skype-type interview. This is not my favorite option, of course, but the desperate journalist has to do what she or he has to do. The ambitious, perfectionist interviewer will not prefer this format if the invitation for lunch is for a group — as it most commonly is, whether for the newspaper’s editorial board or the magazine’s editors or the publication’s Washington bureau. Interviewing in even a clubby crowd is only a few notches less elegant than shouting at a VIP ducking into a whirring helicopter. The best advice I can offer for coping with such journalism is this: Always be the last to pose a query, not the first. Best to let your colleagues have their licks before you. Listen to their questions (most will be obvious, some hostile, maybe even one or two arguably stupid — probably all answered by the guest VIP in one way or the other days or months ago). Let your laid-back silent approach build the suspense a little, then pop your question — the one you feel most valuable to your readers and historians, perhaps a ‘Viagra’ question. Your reward for cool and patience will be to elicit the best answer. To get a heavyweight result, I always say, best to act like a heavyweight. Even if you are the ranking journalist at the luncheon session, do not be the first to ask a question but, shrewdly, the last. This tactic will almost always work. Here are some memorable luncheon interviews, ladies first!

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MA R G A R E T T H AT C H E R ( N o v e m b e r 1 9 9 3 )

Pit-stopping on a splashy international tour to promote her memoirs The Downing Street Years, Baroness Thatcher offered a very good hour of conversation at her hotel suite in Los INTERVIEW TIP Angeles. The former prime minister (1979–90) had been the longest-serving In a group session, British PM in the 20th century and always be the last to the only woman ever at the head of the pose a query, not the government of Great Britain. Politics first. Let your laidaside (as if political asides were ever back silent approach possible), she was not difficult to like, especially if you were a journalist who build the suspense liked your politician deliciously quotable a little, then pop and difficult in an interesting, dramatic your question. Your manner. Like her contemporary Ronald reward for cool and Reagan, she was the virtuoso of the sound patience will be to bite; but even more than her American elicit the best answer. counterpart, her bark often had real bite. She buried many a political opponent To get a heavyweight in the frenzied vortex of the British result, best to act like Parliament, wowing people with her a heavyweight. This fortitude and forthright — if often harsh tactic will almost — politics. always work. Just as skillfully and easily touting her book The Downing Street Years, she wowed the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times at the luncheon I hosted many years ago, especially in recounting ‘heroic’ British spine-fullness in standing up to the Argentineans, who for some odd reason resented unceasing British colonial rule over the Falklands, 300 miles off their coast. The

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re-imposition of British sovereignty on the archipelago Islas Malvinas, insisted the baroness, was vital, in order to preserve the principle of national sovereignty over your sovereign territory, however far-flung its whereabouts and morally questionable its dogged holding. You will find that whenever political leaders revert to justifying a political decision on the premium of principle, your skepticismantennae will probably flip up on its own, and your wallet will need to be buttoned up quickly. Pragmatic utilitarianism almost always trumps principle in the real world of politics. And so during the lunch, I made sure to hang back quietly, not push in with an early question, convinced that if only Thatcher were given enough rope … maybe we could have some fun. And it was looking hopeful. This extremely articulate lady was flying high on the Falklands ‘triumph’, so I had only to bide my time, keep my cool, and pull out my Viagra question. And indeed my turn came, and as by design (as chair of the luncheon meeting) I was the last to ask. And so I said something like: “So, Prime Minister [as I told her at the outset I preferred to call her this; Baroness Thatcher had the sound of mummies in a museum, far too stuffy for this dynamic lady!], let me see if I understand this. By the principle of the Falklands — a principled refusal to accept the redrawing boundaries by the unilateral military action of another sovereign state — you would, as prime minister, have reacted in precisely the same way had, say, Hong Kong handover negotiations with Beijing broken down and the People’s Liberation Army poured into that territory? I mean, as with the Falklands, you would have ordered the British Navy to set sail toward the South China Seas to push back the aggression on your sovereign territory? Have I got this right?” I knew this would get her. Eyes dancing, dressed in one of those hopelessly old-fashioned, high-necked Victorian dress shirt and jacket

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jobs, the former PM rotated slowly to her right to address me, eyes narrowing and focused, saying something like: “My dear sir,” she said, smiling in mock disdain, “No, that is not right. That is not what we would have done. You have to consider — we would have been creamed by the Chinese. You see, the Prime Minister cannot very well order British forces into a conflict in which they will lose. It is much better for her politically if she orders them into a conflict in which they will win.” She didn’t laugh during her response, because she did not intend for her answer to be humorous. She was telling it as it is. But a twinkle in her eyes permitted me the belief that inconsistencies in politics were not alien to even the more principled political leader. Love her or hate her, Thatcher was something else, wasn’t she? Her starchy spunk reminded me anew of why people respond to leaders like her and Lee Kuan Yew and Nicolas Sarkozy and Harry Truman and so on. They generally said what they thought and the heck with you if you didn’t see how right they were. BENAZIR BHUTTO ( D e c e m b e r 1 9 9 3 )

Here was another ‘iron lady’ of world politics — a dynastic dynamo from Asia. In this book, though, she serves us best as an example of a missed opportunity — or even an iron law of interviewing: If you don’t know what you are talking about, don’t say anything of substance, just be as charming and polite as possible. You see, at the time of the luncheon interview, again with a half dozen members of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, I had not YET plunged into the rich and complex world of Asia and its leaders and politics. I had not begun my long but pleasant march across Asia to see the 21st century bloom. I did not start until 1995. This meant

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that, for a long time, I was no more educated about the world’s fastestrising region than the average American newspaper editor. What this meant was that, back then, basically, I knew next to nothing. This was unfortunate because in retrospect a more informed editor would have had better questions to ask of this extremely interesting and complex woman. In fact I had none at all, but watched carefully as Shelby Coffey, a skilled and cosmopolitan editor, maneuvered the former Pakistani prime minister into reluctant admission that her country had problems and her uneven, unworthy rule had been one of them; and my then-boss did that with grace and dignity. By contrast, I, in my ignorance just stayed quiet and watched … her, Benazir Bhutto … in awe (frankly) of her intelligence, carriage and — sorry to use this overused word — charisma. It was hard not to believe that that woman — beautiful in a complex way (Asian Sophia Loren versus California bottle blonde), well spoken and firmly analytical in the Western sense (educated at Harvard and Oxford) — did not have deep down in her DNA a double helix measure of Pakistan’s full destiny. For in a metaphorical sense, the oldest daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was exactly that threatening possibility to any and all opponents in Pakistan. And so in 1997, with sickening inevitability, she was assassinated while back on the campaign trail, her native Pakistan, back then, as now, a troubled country that from this tragedy it has never recovered. Politics, alas, can be as dangerous and dirty as it is important and vital. Along with Korea’s Kim Dae Jong (not to mention China’s Deng Xiaoping), Bhutto is conspicuously missing from my book series ‘Giants of Asia’. If wishes became reality, if my prose had the power to leverage them from the grave, they would all be next on my list.

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Y I N G L U C K S H I N A W AT R A ( A u g u s t 2 0 1 4 )

One of the most interesting political ladies to interview is Yingluck Shinawatra, prime minister of her Thailand for almost three years (2011–14) before getting shoved out by the military. We chatted for about an hour over a meal in a hotel restaurant in Los Angeles, not far from where I live. Not unlike Benazir Bhutto, I thought there was something quite special about Yingluck Shinawatra. Our only prior connection of any consequence was an 80-minute Skype session three years before from her home in the north of Thailand to mine in Los Angeles. This was on the very night of her very last day of the smashingly successful campaign that was to catapult her to a position of which she had never dreamed and for which she never had pined and which now, perhaps, she has wished she had never had. My impression of her was of a strong energetic woman who might not be the second coming of Madam Curie in the intellectual innovation department (but … who is?) but whose instincts were solid and whose feet were well grounded. After the coup, she had suggested I come to Thailand, but, as the author of the book on her brother, I was loathe to do that. Through a private channel, I had put through a very discreet request for a “chat” (i.e., an interview) somewhere outside of the country, and after a period of time I heard back that she agreed and in fact was eager to meet. The military junta granted her a visa for travel, and she went to the U.S. to visit some friends and take in some sights, including (as if any other normal tourist) Universal Studios and so on. I told no one of course that the 28th prime minister of Thailand was in Los Angeles, or that I was meeting with Yingluck at the Intercontinental Hotel, where she was staying with her son and a personal aide. I waited for 10 minutes or so in the hotel lobby and when she

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strolled out of the elevator, she caught the eye of several men, who could see she was special but of course couldn’t place the face. It was no big deal, though: Los Angeles almost crawls with good-looking celebrities of all genders and so another very pretty face in the lobby of a five-star hotel will not stop pedestrian traffic. She hadn’t made herself up to stand out or glam up, but was dressed casually for the trip to Universal and whatever other sightseeing was planned. She looked rather L.A., actually. We recognized each other immediately, and hastened to a table in the main dining room of the modernistic hotel not far from where I make my home. I was eager to meet her, for obvious reasons, one being that if she wanted to write a book of her own, I would try to help her. I was pretty certain she had a great giant story to tell — of Thailand’s first woman PM, only two years into the historic job before being dismissed not by the voters but by the military fronting for the elite. A column titled “No Way to Treat a Lady” had appeared in several newspapers in Asia, and she had seen it, and liked it, of course, as she had Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, which she had brought to brother Thaksin to read. “I thought it was very fair, very carefully done,” she said at the outset of our café conversation. It was a pleasant way to start, of course, but in my blunt American style I explained that any serious book on her or by her would have to confront the ugly questions as well as lay out her achievements. What about the charge of widespread corruption in her government’s rice subsidy program, both costly and ineffective? What was the extent of her brother’s intervention in cabinet decision-making? Did he call from Dubai with his advice if not instructions once a day or once every hour? My interrogation was mild and polite but evident and persistent. She smiled and said she understood. I replied by noting that both

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TAKING LEAVE OF the FORMER THAI PRIME MINISTER yingluck shinawatra: A good restaurant chat in Los Angeles with a lady afflicted with coup.

enemies of her brother as well as friends and allies found much to agree with in Conversations with Thaksin and perhaps that approach added to its legitimacy. She smiled and said she understood. She smiled a great deal — but not a frozen Barbie Doll kind of face but one effectively hiding the inner turmoil and thus surprising from a woman who was stuck in the middle of such an incredible Asian storm. In the case of this restaurant interview, I took no notes, but recorded it, of course. In a public setting, obvious electronic equipment will draw a crowd of eyes, and so I kept my digital USB recorder in my open shirt pocket. I was planning to tell her of this because — as you know, but not she — I prefer to record all interviews to eliminate any and all possible issues of inaccuracy. But when the hour was over, and we stood up, an aide pushed us together for quick picture taking. As I said goodbye and left the hotel, it wasn’t until I got home that I realized she hadn’t been told. So I erased the recording. That’s the best way to go — the only way to go. I feel if I cannot be completely trusted, I cannot be completely effective. Neither she nor any other

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interviewee will ever be recorded by me in the absence of their consent. Interviewing journalists should not have the morals of the secret police. For days and weeks after this restaurant conversation, I tried to analyze my sense of foreboding, even slight depression. I barely knew this remarkable and underestimated woman; I knew of course her brother better. And yet as I worried about her, I INTERVIEW tip almost felt a little bit responsible for her When feasible, record fate. I don’t know why. It was absurdly all interviews to self-aggrandizing — rather ridiculous. Yet the feeling was unmistakable, eliminate any and unshakable, haunting, flying in the face all possible issues of of my American optimism. inaccuracy. But do not Sometimes American optimism can record an interview be extremely annoying, even to myself. in the absence of And sometimes I find myself annoying consent. Interviewing because of it. Now I re-tell a story that I now accept was behind my unease about journalists should not Yingluck. have the morals of the Dharmeratnam Sivaram and I met secret police. only once — about 10 years ago, in May 2005, in a waterside café in Marina Del Rey. He was large-built, somewhat gruff in manner, eyes hidden behind dark shades and, in his home country of Sri Lanka, famous. Maybe too famous: As a well-read newspaper columnist sympathetic to the cause of the minority Tamil community, he felt he was often trailed by Sinhalese extremists, and as such was a probable target of assassination. I returned a stare of incredulity. How melodramatic, I thought to myself. But he could read my mind, and was unmoved by my mushy optimism. Despite the then-mediating

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presence of the international community, led by a skilled Norwegian diplomat, Sivaram harbored nightmarish visions of mass ethnic cleansing in his home country. When I scoffed at the very idea, his face returned an odd expression, one that I will never forget — and after meeting with Yingluck I did not have to struggle to recall. The subsequent carnage proved him right beyond belief, but he never threw this back in my face. He couldn’t. A few weeks after this interview in Los Angeles, his body was found near a marsh, with the 9mm pistol used to kill him lying next to his slain body. The murder scene was not far from the country’s parliament building. Thugs, whatever their politics or ideology, should not be underestimated. They live and kill by a very narrow mentality. Any and all in their way need to get immediately and totally out of the way, whether journalist or children or women. YItzak rabin ( N o v e m b e r 1 9 9 4 )

Normal politics is not only messy and greedy, it can even be dangerous. Assassinations happen everywhere — just ask an American what remains of the Kennedy family. Or ask an Israeli who desires peace. Like Bhutto, the fifth prime minister of Israel was also the victim of political assassination. In 1995 Yitzak Rabin was shot and killed by an idiotic right-wing Israeli radical protesting the nicely-progressing peace process that the PM was championing. We had met not many months before that in a private dining room of the Four Season Hotel in Los Angeles. The entire seventh floor had been sealed off for the visiting delegation from Israel, which included the war hero prime minister and several cabinet members. Security was so tight, you had to be credentialed by the U.S. Secret Service, the Los Angeles Police Department and of course Israeli security before

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you could even get out of the elevator on the sixth floor to walk up the staircase to the seventh. A long table had been squeezed into an oblong private dining room and six of us from the L.A. Times squeezed in. We sat down and waited a little bit — not too long — and then the Israeli side came in … one by one. Prime Minister Rabin was the last to enter. As soon as he sat down, one of those obnoxiously cute L.A. waiters who’d much rather be in a TV sitcom hovered with his cute little pad to take drinks orders. This was about 10:30am on a Sunday — by custom, brunch time. Rabin asked the waiter to take everyone else’s orders first. And wow were they boring: a tomato juice … a Perrier … ice tea (mine) … even a glass of milk. He stared at each of us (it seemed to me with droll contempt) as our orders were taken. When finally it was his turn, he scoffed to the waiter in a loud voice: “Get the largest glass you have and fill it with the best scotch you have.” This is 10:30 in the morning. The waiter looked taken aback and asked, “With some ice?” Rabin started back: “No ice. Just fill it right to the top. Thank you.” The questions were the usual, and, as usual, I bided my time. At last, time for the last question — by design, my time. These Arabs and Palestinians and so on, they all hate the Jews. They want to kill all Jews, or as many as possible. And yet you want to make peace with them, you believe you can trust them. What compels you to believe so strongly that this is the only way forward? After all, if you had not been a brave and successful general, one might be tempted to think you a bit naïve. Rabin started to issue a semblance of a smile but stopped himself short. This Nobel Peace Prize winner stared at me (his scotch was almost gone) for what seemed like a few seconds before staring out the seventh floor window. .

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“You want to know?” he said, in a gravelly voice that seemed to have spent years scraping against brick walls. I nodded, I did. “Really, I don’t want to do it. It is not what I want to do. But history makes me do it. It makes me do it because we cannot go on like this forever and hope to survive as a democracy. We have to leave our children a better Israel.” History makes me do it. And I believed him. What else could be behind it? I would have to say that, with one or two exceptions, Rabin’s steely mien and crystal-clear vision made him an unforgettable figure. With one or two or at most three exceptions, I have met no one quite like him. I suppose the closest figure from the American political perspective would be Dwight David Eisenhower, the commander in chief of the allied forces for World War II and then the 34th president of the United States. Having experienced the horrors (if sometimes, the necessity) of war, he knew well enough of the need to avoid it at almost all costs. The most successful military men of the 20th century have been peculiar that way — like Rabin. Perhaps this will seem a very odd juxtaposition, but when I recall the lunchtime group interview with former General Rabin, I almost immediately recall the lunchtime group interview with Nelson Mandela before that. Released from endless prison in 1990, his African National Congress organized fund-raising tours of America, which always included a trip to the entertainment capital of the world. On one of those forays the editorial board of the L.A. Times was graced with a long morning coffee-and-tea session, in a nearby hotel notable for its grace, swan lake and reclusiveness, until a modern hotel chain took over and

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ruined it — a remake as subtle and successful as plastic surgery on the face of an 80-year-old. The way I need to set this paragraph up for you is simply this: Being in the same room with Mandela is probably as close as anyone gets to meeting a true deity during one’s life on this earth. There is nothing about him that seems normal, in the boring sense of the word, and everything transcendent: a sense of overriding purpose in life, a way of manly carriage that is unforgettable; a way of speaking that is beyond eloquent due to its naturalness. It was a group session so I will not go into how I loathed it, felt all sorts of opportunities wasted with gratuitous bowings-and-scrapings, and wanted to leave the room at times. But by staying and not sulking and listening carefully, I felt I was in the presence of a master tutor. Years later I noticed myself campaigning against unmonitored globalization; against predatory currency speculation aimed at Third and Second world economies; and against the West’s soulless use of complicated financial formulations for destructive investment schemes, such as derivatives and hedge funds. The words of Mandela would come back to me: “Is globalization only to benefit the powerful and the financiers, speculators, investors and traders? Does it offer nothing to men, women and children who are ravaged by the violence of poverty?” Much like Dwight David Eisenhower in his farewell speech as president, warning an unchecked “military-industrial complex,” or Lee Kuan Yew on “getting the U.S.-China relationship right”, Mandela warned of unfettered globalization as “a grand and destructive irrationality for those countries and their peoples whom it sets back on the development path.” As you know, I loathe group sessions. But sometimes you learn big.

9 On Questions You Wished You Had Never Asked

…Everyone he knew had his and her place in the coherent and vividly coloured world constructed by his fervid imagination, which now and again seemed to me to exist at a certain distance from the world of what most of us regard as reality… — Isaiah Berlin, on intellectual eccentric and philosopher Auberon Herbert (1838–1906), in Personal Impressions

“ These a re for the CIA, rig h t ? ”

I admit to you that I am one of the few professional American journalists I know who has very much been an open admirer of the longest-running prime minister in the history of Malaysia. So I realize that I owe you an explanation. I also owe it to myself after receiving such a loony letter about the infamous 9/11 attack on America from the apparent pen of Dr Mahathir Mohamad shortly after Conversations with Mahathir was published in 2011. Frankly, I don’t know what to tell you now. I’m not sure I know what I think any more. Maybe what I have come to think is that the good doctor is, in fact, a crazy political genius — but more crazy than genius? I just don’t know. You decide for yourself. It all went back to 2002, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. This was not held in Davos, Switzerland, the usual home site of that spectacular, if pretentious, annual event. That year it was convened in New York city, to respect the memory of 9/11; September

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11, 2001, the infamous day of the brutal attack on the iconic Twin Towers of Manhattan. The sidewalks of New York still seemed to be shaking as invited guests from all over the world collected themselves into Manhattan’s many over-priced hotels and began registering for high-toned panels and policy briefing sessions. In my syndicated newspaper columns, I wrote at the time that the evil massacre would change the trajectory of America in ways that could not be predicted. Now, well more than a decade later, we understand how tragically true in unexpected ways that obvious thought turned out to be. Consider, for starters, the unbelievable blunder of the invasion of Iraq, which had the effect of inspiring a whole new generation of terrorists; consider the mixed results from the invasion of Afghanistan, with enemies constantly in evil reformation; and consider the further encrustation of the American surveillance state, with its panoply of technology based on the principle of no one can be trusted and thus all, theoretically and technically speaking, need to be watched. Many huge political stars attended … the usual names. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and so on. But I had heard them speak so very often, I thought I could anticipate what they would say before they said it. So in my usual weird solipsistic way, I searched for speakers and briefers who might actually have something new to say — or at least something I personally hadn’t heard before — and who might actually have the balls to say something truly interesting. That special standard brought quickly to mind the one and only Mahathir Mohamad, back then ticking down to the end of his more than two-decade flying-run as prime minister of Malaysia, a country few people in the U.S. had ever heard of but which everyone in

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Southeast Asia knew well indeed. It was a moderate mostly Muslim country. To its north was testy, mostly Buddhist Thailand; to the south was sprawling, 90 percent Muslim Indonesia; and in between was tiny but steroid-driven Singapore, a rich mixture grounded by mostly Chinese (70 percent). Malaysia was a gorgeous country, deeply colored by Islamic tradition even as it was modernizing under the pushy Mahathir; and it was a country with a PM who spoke his mind, sometimes fearlessly … and sometimes imprudently. A few years before, Mahathir had rightly broken ranks with the brainless generic reform prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund and its evil twin sister the World Bank in Washington, and boldly erected unprecedented barriers to currency trading amid the whirling uncertainties of the Asian financial crisis. How remarkable was that? Almost no one ever stood up to the IMF, at least that I could remember — except for Washington, of course, which controlled it. We note that at about the same time Indonesia’s fabled strongman President Suharto, more than three decades at the top, had to cave in to IMF ‘conditionality’ demands in return for bailout billions. This decision helped precipitate his fall from power, which, in all fairness, was overdue … but not so unceremoniously. But not for any pushing or shoving by IMF or by anyone else was Mahathir, who made a decision that not only led to the extension of his run until 2003 but that substantially worked in favor of the Malaysian economy. He decided to implement his own economic reform program, customized to Malaysia, without IMF money, or advice. This included measures to combat corrosive Western speculation on the currency: the ringgit. Western-sourced currency buying and selling was widely blamed for aggravating the deepening Asian financial crisis (1997–99.) What

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started as a currency meltdown in the mismanaged economy of Thailand spread like avian flu to Indonesia, South Korea and even — for a short while — Hong Kong, which had one of the most admired economies in the world. Western currency and equity manipulation was the evil wind behind the storm. Warren Buffet, perhaps America’s most respected investment guru, was to term the West’s globalized, speculative financial instruments as nothing less than “financial weapons of mass destruction. We view them as time bombs.” Prime Minister Mahathir viewed derivatives and the like as drones directed against his country’s financial security, and in response rolled up the international trading door to his currency for about a year. To date, history has viewed his actions as prescient and effective. Economists generally agree. One exhaustive and authoritative Harvard University study gave high marks to Mahathir: “Compared to IMF programs,” wrote Harvard’s Ethan Kaplan and Dani Rodrik in their definitive joint 2001 paper, “we find that the Malaysian policies produced faster economic recovery, smaller declines in employment and real wages, and more rapid turnaround in the stock market.” But back in September 1998 that decision was enormously controversial, virtually economic apostasy to the Western news media, especially the Wall Street Journal, which jumped all over him. The drift of their critique was that thanks to Comrade Mahathir the Malaysian economy was becoming as perfectly socialist (which it surely wasn’t) as Hong Kong’s was perfectly free market (which it also wasn’t). Mahathir himself was utterly unfazed. As he said to me years afterward, “Why can’t they let Malaysia run its own country? Why do they always have to tell us what to do?” I admired his sheer willpower and evident mastery, from his country’s point of view, of the complex issue, and said so in my column

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at the time; as did Princeton economist Paul Krugman. In fact, this brilliant academic-into-columnist went even further in his New York Times column and wrote that the Malaysian currency controls might well work. I was not that forthright (I was no Krugman, for sure); I was simply convinced the policy deserved a try and under the circumstances PM Mahathir had every reason to roll the dice as he did. (Years later, the god-awful IMF admitted to policy errors during that Asian financial crisis.) Well, of course I tried not to crow too loudly to my colleagues in the Western press when it turned out that Krugman (and to a lesser extent) moi had had it right. So at the World Economic Forum in January 2002, Mahathir was practically the only leader I was dying to see. But maybe this seems odd? Here is how I look at it: My weekly syndicated newspaper column was near-halfway through its first decade (its second decade started in fall 2014), during which time I was purposely not relying on the considered views of the U.S. establishment (East Coast sources) for my journalism. My great fear was that, like so many foreign-policy columns, it would too readily reflect New York-Washington corridor ‘wisdom’ and thus become as appealing and relevant as a black banana. And so, operating out of my university office base in Los Angeles, I kept flying the other way — toward Asia — and thinking the “other way”. By the two-decade mark I had probably travelled to Asia for the column maybe 75 times. And that was a good thing: as my colleague and friend Cheong Yip Seng, the former editorial boss of Singapore Press Holdings, had been saying, there was no other way to make such a column on Asia by an American to be of value without a lot of travel. The U.S. press doesn’t cover Asia, and when it does the report is invariably filtered through an American lens. Without actually going there and talking to

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people and getting the story by sticking your face into their reality, you were bogged down in the slog of stereotypes and clichés and warmedover reports of others. Pertinent commentary can’t be conjured from an armchair using only the crutch of search engines. And so as I determined to travel extensively, a different and magnificent Asia quickly unfolded — not the fatally troubled one in the eyes of Washington with its IMF and World Bank, but a huge bustling, driving continent of energy that was to claim a giant share in determining the future of the 21st century. The goal was for the column to be different, not simply to be different, but to be closer to the truth than was the general margarine spread of American journalism. It was Lawrence Summers, when he was deputy Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, who inadvertently convinced me of how invaluable had been Cheong’s advice. The telling had taken place at the previous WEF, in January 1999, in Davos, after he had had a wine or two (which I liked to see in someone who almost never indulged). We chatted a bit and he started complaining, not whining but with sincerity, that the column was too “pro-Asia”. Instead of waxing defensive, however, I quietly exulted. Little did this brilliant man know that his complaint was my attainment: It confirmed that my work had taken on its own identity, was not an East Coast establishment issue, and was causing thoughtful Americans (like Summers) to notice that more than one way of thinking about complex issues was possible. I replied to Summers by saying: “Thank you. That is the whole point of the column.” He shook his head and just edged away. By reputation, if not in person, Mahathir was of course not the easiest man in the world to like, and it was impossible to believe Summers or

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any other American official was a fan. In fact, the outspoken Malaysian chief was not going to win a lot of popularity contests in Asia, either, especially among most Singaporeans. Many felt him brash, even, somehow, uncouth; and of course his public jousting matches with their founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, were almost legendary, not to mention entertaining — the battle of tyrannosaurus egos and mutual mercury mouths. But journalists are as attracted to such rhetorical exhibitionists as moths to any flame. Besides, to take on the highly articulate Lee Kuan Yew in public, as Dr M often did, well … that took … balls. Which Dr M had. At the 2002 WEF in New York, I caught up with Mahathir giving a private performance, a closed session with invited Western journalists; and later that same day sought him out as he was roaming around aimlessly, looking for love in all the wrong places. The compliment I gave him — that his press briefing to journalists went over very well — was sincere, and the assessment true enough; but it did have an ulterior motive: Someday I wanted to spend time with him to elicit his views on almost everything under the sun. Miraculously, one day that opportunity arrived, and wound up birthing the second volume in the ‘Giants of Asia’ series, Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad. It arose in the course of completing some on-scene reporting for the first volume in that quartet Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew (see pages 58–74). On the suggestion of my editor Violet Phoon (always listen carefully to your editors), I popped up in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur after finishing up a patch of research in Singapore. I had called ahead and asked if Mahathir, now out of office (but not out of sight, not to mention out of any of his countrymen’s hearing) would see me about Lee.

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Haha! Was he ever willing to see me about Lee! No arm had to be twisted at all, not even a pinky. The request was received cheerfully. The interview took place in his ex-PM office at the top of tower #1 Petronas Towers in downtown Kuala Lumpur. He seemed unrushed, I put my cards on the table, and off we sped in stopless conversation. I had needed INTERVIEW TIP no complex interview strategy! I knew in Don’t make the advance I would only need one simple simple complicated. straightforward question, no games: “So, With Mahathir I had what do you think of that big ego Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore?” And off he went needed no complex … scampering across fields of memory interview strategy! and dreams like a young kid finally getting I knew in advance I even with a schoolyard rival. would only need one At some point, I do not remember simple straightforward quite when, probably near the session’s question, no games: end, I inquired as to whether he thought it fair and right to see Lee getting a whole “So, what do you ‘Giants’ book on him and his exploits, as think of that big ego Singapore’s modern founder ran but the Lee Kuan Yew in tiniest country of only 5 million people, Singapore?” And off he whereas Malaysia was a sprawling country went … scampering with a population five times that?! And across fields of mostly Muslim, to boot. I had barely gotten the question out memory and dreams into the narrow airspace between us when like a young kid finally a smile hit his face with the impact of the getting even with a sun rising on the cold desert sands. We schoolyard rival. did a quick little bit of eye contact, and

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I knew right then that was it — now only a matter of timing and scheduling for the #2 ‘Giant of Asia’ sessions. I returned to Kuala Lumpur the following year for a series of two-hour conversations, the last one taking place in his leadership foundation office in the overly planned city of Putrajaya 20 miles outside the capital. As my personal gift to him, I gave him a signed copy of the first edition of Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew. At the first session, atop Tower #1 of Petronas, the former prime minister gave me his full attention and the full stretch of time, as promised, but there was an uneasy undertone of skepticism. No surprise: I knew he would have to believe that underneath my warm and emotive pro-Asian mien, I was nothing less than just another feral Western journo looking to trip him up and report the proceedings back to a scoffing West in general, if not to the CIA in particular. In point of fact, as I was busying myself at the first conversation session trying to set up my little Sony mini-video recorders with aplomb, trying to avoid the embarrassment of turning the exercise into a ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ production, he watched while trying politely not to laugh, then suddenly saying: “These are for the CIA, right?” I took the remark as total whimsy and so replied: “Well, yes, of course. These tiny critters are fine-tuned to transmit directly to Langley.” He roared in appreciation — at least this American character from Los Angeles wasn’t going to be a boring stiff. Dr M reading what I wrote about what he said about his great rival But he had every reason to make from Singapore: He started reading while I was setting up my video and audio devices. that joke only in half-jest. Everyone

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knows that — in the past, if not now — some Western journalists have from time to time worked both sides of the street. Foreign officials were particularly aware of the practice. The CIA stopped recruiting newsmedia types years ago, but still the unsavory taste lingered. (The CIA approached me once to do a job, though in my capacity as a professor, not a journalist. See In the Middle of China’s Future, pp 18–24. In fact I wanted to help — the task was not evil, and perhaps despite some appearances I really am a patriotic American. In the end I just had to beg off. Simply put, there is no way the worth or objectivity of my journalism will be enhanced with a secret client lurking between my lines of prose.) Mahathir was an absolutely vital figure to include in the ‘Giants’ series because he was a Muslim who had stayed atop the heap of Malaysian politics for decades, during which his country developed quite impressively, though not as brilliantly as much smaller Singapore. Whatever his faults — and almost no matter how grievous they might be — I admired his grit and indeed his historic role as a moderate Muslim. True, he hated being so labeled; he felt it only exposed him to endless attacks from the far right wing of his party and his Islam immoderates. But that is what he was … a moderate Muslim; and in this age of machine-gun and body-bomb mullahs, his general demeanor and obvious astuteness seemed all the more remarkable. He was also a Machiavellian Muslim, very much so, a wizard at the deft political maneuver, whenever the quiet frontal ram for obliteration of an opponent was necessary, and of course — last but not least — the persuasive impact of unmarked bills. In America we might say he was not unlike the original Mayor Daley of Chicago — if in flowing Islamic robes when not in western suit. He ran his United Malays National Organization party like a personal political clubhouse, not so

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far from the American style of the early 20th century Tammany Hall, and used cold cash to wash down hotheaded enemies or paper over party cleavages. He would play the ‘Jewish’ card from time to time, even though he quietly funded scholarships for Jewish students and publicly praised their intellectual and professional achievements. If anything, he was jealous of what had been achieved and wished Muslims would work as hard (see his excellent book, The Malay Dilemma). Still, his calculated demagoguery not only sated the blood lust of those who figured every Jew in the world for a mean Likud, but also played tragically into the hands of Western critics, who of course know personally of no Jewish adult or Israeli official who has ever taunted, much less insulted, a Muslim or an Arab or a Palestinian. This was the poisoned atmosphere with which we had to live; I realized this would be the crux of the challenge the book faced — the brutal question it had to confront and answer back in the States. Was or was not Dr Mahathir an anti-Semite? But even if he were found to be exactly that, such would hardly be all that he was. This controversial political personality was not only a Machiavellian political-party master-builder, but also an acknowledged nation-builder. Between 1981 and 2003, the years of his PM-ship, the Gross National Product of this otherwise obscure Southeast Asian, largely Muslim nation more than quadrupled. Almost unheard of in the lovely land of the mellow Malay, some years the growth rate flirted with 10 percent. As his rival Lee Kuan Yew would tell me, in a compliment that Dr M has never graciously reciprocated: “He was an outstanding Prime Minister of Malaysia.” The interview strategy would dwell on the facts of his achievements out of both sincerity (they were in reality impressive) and insincerity — to somehow defuse Mahathir’s defenses in order to get at this awkward

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dr mahathir in his putrajaya office: “He was an outstanding Prime Minister of Malaysia”, was how Lee Kuan Yew put it.

roll call of questions that he’d know had to be coming. Pulling this all off would be the central challenge of the book, because it would include one of the elements so often played back in the media to readers in America, where the issue had been raised over and over again. I had no personal animus about the issue. I could go at it right at the start of our conversations, frankly explaining that while I was not a Jew, my wife was and thus, by Jewish law, so was our only child, a daughter. You could just put your cards on the table at the outset and the hell with it. The defect, on further reflection, with the early start approach is that if my determination to be persistent — to go over the ‘commentary on Jews’ record — did trigger an early eruption, the poisonous lava would spill over onto all the remaining sessions — if there were to be any. After all, to gather up the more or less complete Mahathir/Malaysia story, there were more than a dozen topics worthy of conversation (and, in fact, the final book offered 17 chapters). So perhaps I should wade into one or two of the earliest sessions until Dr M himself had a better sense of the interviewer, was reasonably assured of my intention

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to draw a portrait of him mainly through his own words about himself, and was resigned to accept that an American journalist would have to do what he had to do, that it couldn’t be postponed forever, and that the Jewish insult questions would have to be faced. I had one little ice-breaking maneuver up my sleeve. On a trip to Kuala Lumpur for one of the conversation sessions, my wife would come with me. I had told her of the great beauty of Malaysia and of the fancy Shangri-la where we would stay (she loves those five-star hotels). I would time a session with him to coincide with our wedding anniversary in July. We would celebrate in the pleasantries of the Shangri-la Hotel in the central city. And maybe she would like to meet the grandmaster of Malaysian politics? Indeed she would. It was set up this way: Toward the two-thirds mark of one of our sessions I casually told Dr M that Andrea wanted to meet him and that she would be coming by in a half hour and was that ok? His formidable eyebrows rose up quickly, especially when I told him she was Jewish. He must have assumed this would be the ‘screw-you’ end of the conversations — that some ugly scene was about to unfold. Andrea, who is a U.S. drug-abuse expert and long-time professional social worker at the U.S. Veterans Administration in West Los Angeles, had no intention of firebombing his desk, of course. Her interests are cosmopolitan and wide-ranging, but when she walked in, Mahathir became strangely alert and uptight — almost as if ready for a round of fusillades. The temperature of the room seemed to chill. Andrea in fact had scoffed at my suggestion she confront him on the Jewish question. She felt that sensitive issue was between us, and, as a ‘fallen Jew’, as she put it, it was beyond her moral competence. She would ask him about Malaysia’s federal drug control program,

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which was harsh and repressive, as was Singapore’s, to the south; she was in no doubt that any war on drugs that emphasized supply-side suppression would not succeed. So when she sat down and started her line of inquiry on that issue, Dr M was completely thrown off balance, even stumbling a bit at first and at one point frankly admitting that the drug-control program wasn’t working well. When we bade good-bye and left together, I imagined that he sat behind his desk for a bit of time wondering what that had been all about. What it was about was to convey to him a sense of the interviewer as a real person, not as some court-martial prosecutor; that the Plates had their own life and their own world and their own set of issues; and that Tom Plate, not unlike Dr M himself or any of his circle of friends, was simply in pursuit of a measure of professional excellence in doing such a book without making any other exceptional or extraordinary claims. I do believe the Andrea Ploy worked its magic. When at the second half of the next session I moved to the discussion that was to become the chapter titled “The Anti-Semitism Controversy Never Dies”, it seemed that I had his full forbearance, if also his considered resignation; that the discussion that lasted 40 minutes was the longest stretch he had ever entertained — in his life — for this uncomfortable question; and that at the end I had pushed him absolutely further than anyone could have, whether as battering-ram interviewer in the 60 Minutes style or an oleaginous David Frost at his effective unctuous best. The net result was a chapter that offered him every opportunity to backtrack or refine or clarify or even slightly modify comments, general observations or suspicious snarky snippets that over the years in America had won him the suspicion of being an anti-Semite. But when he did not jump on that opportunity but dug in his heels, I did

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not assume he was a genuine hard-core anti-Semite; in fact the chapter concludes with the view that he is not. But it did convince me that even at 82, after 23 years as prime minister, the thirst for power had not been sated; and that the only reason INTERVIEW tip he would not admit these views might They say in a criminal have been put more politely was his fear trial no attorney of losing the Muslim constituency that so admires him for standing up to Israel. should risk asking a When all of the exhausting twoquestion to which he hour sessions were over, I felt we parted or she doesn’t know on good professional terms. I had the answer in advance. enough material for my book, and when The idea is to take no I saw the very large pile of papers on his chances in open court. desk that I knew to be his autobiography (when he was briefly out of the office, The opposite might be I had a delicious peek! The pages were said of a journalistic marred with editing of all sorts!), I asked interview session: him point-blank how it was going. He Avoid a question to replied by saying he was having a hard which you already time of it, that he kept rewriting and rewriting, and that my book would be know the answer. out in the stores long before his. Among other reasons Later, when my publisher proposed – why waste the time? to the former prime minister that he attend with me the book launch in the lobby of his foundation, he graciously agreed. I was not surprised: Any publicity for my book would stir the waters for his own; besides, as we had finished the conversations on good terms, why not keep the professional relationship going? For my part, I agreed that I would co-sign with him a pile of special

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editions for auction to big businesses on behalf of Malaysian charity, as Dr M had suggested. I was so looking forward to the event! Like Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Mahathir had a hidden sense of the ridiculous that could pop out at any moment. So would you be surprised to learn that he abruptly cancelled his participation at the eleventh hour, just before the event was to be held? The excuse given by his office was so lame, I cannot recall it; insiders said the truth was that his own book was being superrushed to publication very shortly and he rued his participation in Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad for its effect in cutting into his own book sales. In fact, had there been a decent interval between publications, my book would have helped his; but by piling his endless autobiography on top of my elegant 200-page plus rendition, he flattened mine (on Asian bestseller lists until the moment his came out) while not adding to his own prospects. From which I conclude (rightly or wrongly) that among the many things about Dr M, one thing is he is greedy — a conclusion which, if true, would explain other aspects of federal party politics during the Mahathir years. Books are to be treasured and loved but on their own are no easy path to riches. And so when I reviewed his autobiography, I waxed most positive. I do not hold grudges. But I was disappointed in him. During my publicity tour for the Conversations book, I was often asked by reporters who was smarter, or better, or more interesting, or more whatever: Lee Kuan Yew or Dr Mahathir? I never answered directly, much to the frustration of the reporters, suggesting simply they read the two books and draw their own conclusion. But if I were asked today, I might answer this way: You judge character by what

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people do and how they act, as well as by what they say. Lee Kuan Yew initially said he would not have time to attend the book launch of Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew but then a few days before the book launch his office called and said he had found time. By contrast, while I was still writing the book, Mahathir promised he would attend the launch but then the day before cancelled out with no explanation. Draw your own conclusions as to their comparative character — as I draw mine. Finally, I wish Dr Mahathir hadn’t sent me the three-page letter explicating further his view that the Twin Tower attack was not perpetrated by extremist Muslims but by Western elements that wanted to befoul Islam’s image; that it wasn’t even a real event but was Avatar like; and maybe the CIA anyway. Anyway, I suppose I deserved this. After all, it was I who asked him about 9/11 and whether he bought into any of the goofy theories. Unfortunately, he said he did, answering in a way perhaps configured to keep political faith with some in the Muslim world who believe almost anything evil about the evil. And so the 9/11 question becomes my best example of the Question I Wished I Had Not Asked. One thing I will not do is reprint the letter here. It would only detract from a proper respect for the real-world achievements of the Mahathir years. But it is possible something in his head is not right. Or maybe it is just age — and certainly not Dr M at his best. This is the one I most cared to highlight for you, the Dr M history will remember: the moderate Muslim who helped modernize his country and move it well beyond the Dark Ages. Maybe we could just leave it at that, ok? Opening that door even wider would probably yield nothing of value.

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AT HOME WITH THE GOOD D O CTOR M — A POLITIC AL CLINIC

An Unpublished Conversation Even ‘soft authoritarians’ need to mix in with ‘the people’. Lee Kuan Yew had told me that as age advanced, his visits to his formal parliamentary constituency had to be cut back, eventually to zero. That reality of aging made Singapore’s famous ‘soft authoritarian’ both unhappy and uneasy: You could not govern well unless you could bring the citizenry along with you, and you could not do that well if you did not have a good feel for what they were thinking and needing. With that thought, I asked the former Malaysian PM, a couple of years younger than LKY, what he did for constituency contact as the years were adding up. His answer was that once a year he holds an open house at home and anyone can come by. Then he said: “Thirteen thousand people came to my home.” “How many?” “Thirteen thousand!” “Wow … I would have liked to have gone to that, just to see you in action. [I laugh] “And I shook hands with almost all of them.” “Yeah, I know. Someone wrote that about you, that you shake hands with everybody. The doctor’s touch.” [Both laugh] “Yeah, the laying on of the hands!” All joking aside, Dr M — another well known ‘soft authoritarian’ — felt you couldn’t move the country forward if you left the people behind. It was bad governance.

10 On Interviewing the Lonely Political Exile

Immediately we begin to see that many of the moral judgments commonly made about politics are simply untrue. It is not true that good men alone bring dignity and prosperity to their people. But neither is it true, as so-called realists like to argue, that desirable ends in politics are nearly always achieved by employing undesirable means. — Noel Annan in Personal Impressions

“ Whe n Will You B e Leavi ng ? ”

There was one big hope at the outset of the Thaksin Project; and there was one big worry. The hope was that a man in exile would be lonely and open to endless conversations. I vividly and conveniently imagined the former prime minister of Thailand to be ever so isolated over there in Dubai, sitting all by himself, desperate for company, even with an American journalist. But there was a big worry too: Colleagues whom I respected, including a serious and learned professor, warned me that my reputation would be put at risk if I pursued a book on Thaksin. Question for discussion: When should you (politely) decline the opportunity to take on a major interview, no matter how high profile or interesting or important the VIP? We have to admit that the core format of the ‘Giants of Asia: Conversations with...’ series is structured so that the political VIP at the book’s center will necessarily come across as a sympathetic figure.

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A book of 50,000 words of which half is from the VIP cannot come out otherwise unless the VIP is stupid or clumsy or inarticulate or hopelessly venal — and if so, why would he or she then be called a ‘giant’? Unless the format is set in the tiresome form of a defendant’s deposition in a criminal case, how is a measure of empathy avoidable? And, in fact, why avoid it? The choice of Lee Kuan Yew as the first stop for the whirlwind series was either lucky or inspired, I’m not sure even today; but whatever it was, it opened doors. The first INTERVIEW TIP door opened knocked on the formidable ego of Dr Mahathir’s. The second opened Unless the format you door led to the quiet man of international set up is designed in diplomacy, Ban Ki-moon, who was the tiresome form of a enthusiastic about leading the series defendant’s deposition with LKY. The United Nations Secretary in a criminal case, General averred that the choice was how is a measure of “perfect”. Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew empathy with the VIP then dropped a third opportunity in my interviewee avoidable? lap, but quite unexpectedly. But it quickly And, in fact, why became a worrisome and complicated one avoid it? — and the most difficult decision of the four ‘Giants’. To tell the full story, please indulge me on the topic of Los Angeles as a place to work as well as to live. Yes, it is the solar system’s headquarters for Hollywood, breast implants, tanning salons and bisexual pilates instructors. But Southern California is also home to millions of Asians. The fact is that more Koreans make their home here than anywhere except in Seoul: The Chinese have their own Chinatown (title of a

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famous movie starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, directed by Roman Polanski, 1974) and more; the Vietnamese have their very own cute little freeway exit sign, “Little Saigon”; and many Asian governments do their West Coast diplomatic and commercial work out of their L.A. consulates, including Japan, China, Korea, Papua New Guinea and Thailand. The result is a metropolis whose broad and deep multiculturalism makes it something more than just a glitzy ditsy flimsy Disneyland. As for my sources for my books and columns, I can jump into an intellectual hot tub of noted scholars at think-tanks such as worldfamous RAND and research universities such as UCLA and USC; and reach out to former U.S. government officials residing here (and not in the slightest missing the snowfalls of winter), not to mention current or former Asian politicians or diplomats. The constant swirl of airline traffic from Asia touching down at Los Angeles International Airport delivers platoons of new talent continuously. And so one day in 2010 a nicely dressed, well-spoken businesswoman was sitting in the living room of a well-known former diplomat from Asia. Looking for something to read on the return flight to Dubai, the classy lady picked up a copy of a book lying among a spread of magazines on the coffee table. Reading a few pages, she looked up to ask if she might take it with her. By the time she arrived in the United Arab Emirates at her brother’s home, she had finished and recommended he read it. A few days later he asked his sister if she knew anything about the author. She didn’t, she said, but friends back in L.A. did. Maybe they can get word back to the author, he said; tell him I want to do a book like this. You have guessed by now that the lady was Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother was Thaksin. And this is how it all started — as yet

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another ‘Giants’ spawned by the first one on LKY. In the first decade of the new century, Thaksin, the brother, was the twice-elected prime minister of Thailand, and in the second decade Yingluck, the sister, was the twice-elected PM of that country. Both were driven out of that high office by military coups. Where history will place them and how it will portray the two of them is a mystery to us right now, of course. But in 2010 the reviews on the ousted male PM were generally unfavorable. The Western news media had almost unanimously bought into the narrative that the allegations of corruption against Thaksin must be true. But what was also undoubtedly true was that half of Thailand (mostly the poorer half ) adored him because of his domestic redistribution policies, and the other half (mostly the richer, better educated class) loathed him in part because of his efforts at redistribution. That his broad political story hadn’t been told was clear enough, no matter where you stood on Thaksin. The question is how it should be told and who should tell it — and whether it could be properly told at all. Subjected to such a blizzard of negativity about the business billionaire turned populist politician, I was unable to deflect my initial distaste for the project. In fact, when my loyal publisher formally proposed it, I balked, and my unease did not quickly let up. Then came the chorus of rebuttals. And they came from sources deep inside Thailand who argued that the Thaksin side of the story deserved to be told in full, and that no one had, and that the American from Los Angeles should. I started leaning the other way. Why? In part I began to get a little annoyed. A very good friend from the University of Southern California — a distinguished professor

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who knew Thailand better than I ever will — scared me with: ‘Your reputation will be ruined. Don’t do it.’ Probably, if you want your cat to not do a certain thing, it is wiser not to make the request. And so it is, for better or for worse, with journalists. They tend to be a contrarian, sometimes even combative breed: Don’t dare them to open the secret door to the closed attic, unless you desire precisely that outcome. But what was I to do? What would be the correct and good decision? From a moral perspective, it seemed as if there was no easy answer. Thaksin would surely claim that the charges against him were trumped up; his enemies would argue that they were not. Maybe they were a bit of both — who really knew? As a point of fact, the allegations were never formally or, in any Western sense, at least, properly litigated from a procedural perspective. Some seemed silly, some seemed murky — who could tell what was right and what was not? The charges all clustered around a presumed character flaw that Thaksin was greedy and corrupt. In reality when he became prime minister in 2001, he had already attained cell-phone billionaire status. Various business magazines put him high up on their lists of Asia’s richest. His portfolio increased in value while in office but was the rate of increase suspiciously beyond the credible range of market yields? Was his high office behind the investments gains, or was normal market appreciation the explanation? What’s more, in Southeast Asia political parties have been known to use cash as the glue that keeps the quarreling coalitions together and snippy critics quiet. Mahathir’s Malaysia is a perfect example. The good doctor’s ATM-cash party system worked well enough politically that for decades the economy kept moving forward. I bluntly asked

On Interviewing the Lonely Political Exile 175

THE GROUND RULES FOR THE INTERVIEWS — LETTER FAXED TO DUBAI, U.A.E., TO FORMER THAILAND PRIME MINISTER THAKSIN

November 10, 2010 Dear Thaksin Shinawatra: I know very few people in Dubai, except for some editors at the Khaleej Times, which publishes my column on Asia from time to time. So we can be flexible as to when during the day each two-hour session is scheduled. FYI only — UNSG Ban preferred late afternoon, early evening, when much of his daily work was done; he liked to try to relax. Lee Kuan Yew preferred the same, too. Dr Mahathir generally preferred late morning ... just before lunch time. Dr Thaksin should choose whatever he feels most comfortable with. But the main thing is for him to be relaxed and comfortable and ... well... talkative!!! Sincerely, Tom Plate Ground Rules (previously sent to an aide, and appended to the updated letter) 1. Everything that is said by both of us is on the record for the book (though if there is a slip, we can just leave it out ... it is so important for the VIP subject to be relaxed and not worry about being “ambushed”. That is not my goal here.) 2. All direct quotes to be used in the book can be reviewed by Dr Thaksin and edited to some extent if needed. If they are over-

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edited, well, then, there is no book! But a little polishing and fixing (such as LKY did, though not Dr Mahathir or Ban Ki-moon) is fine by me, up to a point, of course. I am aware that Dr Thaksin is highly intelligent and articulate and any book that fails to reflect those qualities would be grossly misleading. 3. The ‘conversation’ sessions will work best without anyone else in the room. Neither UNSG Ban or Dr Mahathir had an aide in the room (though LKY did, but that was in part because he was suffering some serious pain when I was with him for the book...). I strongly recommend the Mahathir/Ban approach to Dr Thaksin, but will not insist on it ... but it is highly recommended ... and, it is a sign of mutual trust. 4. The manuscript itself will of course be shown to no one outside of the inner publishers’ circle prior to publication. I understand that Dr Thaksin accepts the obvious, that there can be no prior review of the manuscript. That would be fatal to the book’s credibility. 5. Dr Thaksin should understand going in that there will be tough questions asked of him, some perhaps very tough, though always asked with sincere respect. The book will have little credibility if it does not ask the hard questions, as well as seek to illuminate the ways in which he feels he was misunderstood, as well as correctly perceived. These questions are not a sign of hostility but an effort to achieve broad credibility. He is a controversial figure, though a highly accomplished international political figure, and acting as if he isn’t controversial will only undermine the value of the book, to an immediate readership, and to history.

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Mahathir in Conversations whether it would be wrong to say that the party leadership more or less bribed the entire country to behave, whether through aggregate affirmative action for Malays (the majority ethnicity, not the minority!) or via more individually targeted cash incentives. He smiled, thought a bit and said, with remarkable candor: “You could put it that way.” Which is the way I do put it. What finally killed off the raging tsunami in my head was the admonishment of another journalist friend whom I had long admired and whose judgment was always reasoned and sound. His view was stern and untroubled. He started by reminding me that I was a journalist, not a moral philosopher; and that as a “contemporary historian” my obligation was to seize the moment of opportunity and bring out into the public realm all that journalism could. He warned that I was permitting “fatal professorial caution” to get the upper hand on my journalistic obligation. Journalists throw themselves into the swirl of history, he wrote from Bangkok, where he had settled in – they don’t run from it like frightened babies. If Thaksin was prepared to open up and truly put his views out there for all to see and judge, it was the journalist’s job to be there for that opening up. Another matter needed to be noted, he added. The methodology of the ‘Giants’ series was precisely designed to tease out a political VIP’s views, recollections and emotions. Who knows what they might say if the hurdles to their saying it were minimized? The only true standard by which this patient, non-confrontational methodology can be judged, he wrote, is whether the reader winds up learning more than she or he otherwise would have. What’s more, he insisted, “What I like about your approach is that, instead of trying to strangle them yourself, you just give them all the rope in the world and let them do it themselves.”

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As it turned out, many in Thailand chose to view the book not as a soft featurette This is a real obvious at all but in fact as a deceptively revealing one. Always remember portrait, as the former PM did wind up with all the space in the world to explain that the interview himself. isn’t ever over until My publisher agreed to support a the interviewee stops trip to Dubai for an initial session with talking. Your job is to Thaksin to assess the personal chemistry. keep the talking going I told him the chances of the book actually happening might not be better until you both drop than 50-50. He wanted some assurance from psychological that the odds were in fact at least 50-50 near-exhaustion. Not and that the publisher’s money for the before. trip was a reasonable investment. In reply I said I could not promise a book, but that I would meet Thaksin with an open mind and the ambition to deliver a book if possible. Thaksin and I met outside his comfortable but not vulgar or lavish dacha in Emirates Hills, as flat a piece of developed desert as accumulated sand has ever been. We had a driveway handshake, and went inside. He introduced me to his executive assistant, then his driver (who doubled as his bodyguard, sometimes armed) and even his chef (imported from Thailand). His demeanor was professional, above reproach. In addition he was affable, relaxed, somewhat charming, thoughtful, and openly eager to make the book project work. In effect in semi-exile, he also seemed a little lonely, hungry for serious conversation, isolated despite the nearconstant travel and the very many back-and-forth long-distance cell phone calls to supporters in Thailand and elsewhere, and investment

INTERVIEW tip

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bankers perhaps everywhere. He carried multiple cell phones to handle all the calls from all parts of the world. Sometimes he would seem to throw this one or that one away like a poisoned tissue. He re-agreed without hesitation or exception to all the ground rules for the ‘Giants’ series that had been faxed to him (see above). All the formal conversations would be taped, and while the transcript would be made available for review should he request it, the actual book itself would not. In effect the publisher would send him one of the first copies off the press, and that would be his first look at it. I added that it was in the nature of the format that the book would seek to draw him out in a sympathetic way, but that tough questions would have to be asked, and if the answers were false ones, it would reveal a bad side of himself — and it would go into the book for all to see. I told him I would press him as much as I could on certain questions, but in the final analysis the book would be more influential to the extent it was as honest as humanly possible, and reflected his

with thaksin in dubai, 2010: Listening carefully and learning.

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views to the maximum extent possible. These books were conversations with, not indictments of. To none of this was there any substantial objection, and when I returned to my hotel that night, I emailed my publisher that the first meeting had gone well, there was enough positive chemistry to make it work, that Thaksin had not only read the book on Lee Kuan Yew and liked it, but also understood why it was different and why the unusual format had made a difference with readers. One reviewer described the ‘Giants’ series as “weird but fascinating”, which was perhaps fair enough; I took the comment to suggest that the books were both sufficiently original (if too much so for some), and at the same time readable enough to have value to all who cared to fly onto the wall in the room of the conversations and listen. I explained to Thaksin that all the ‘Giants’ books would be written in the present tense, with a minimum of fussy or off-putting language — directly presented, with a clear narrative line and a sense of making the reader feel she or he was in the room where the conversations were happening right at that very moment. I further explained — and at this point Thaksin was probably finding me somewhat tedious — that I had studied the screenwriting craft of Hollywood writers for tips on how to make the material seem fresh and current, and had borrowed many of the profession’s writing techniques. Over the next week, in his dacha or in strolls through shopping malls (where he’d bump into Thai tourists and greet them); or in restaurants (but not bars, Thaksin being no more than a light wine drinker); or back in my hotel for a session — Thaksin, it seemed to me at least, basically respected the ‘conversations’ or interview process, understood what I was trying to do, and did want to help make it a serious book, if reflective of his own perspective (being the whole

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point of the ‘Giants’ series). No more or no less than any of the other ‘Giants’, his candor was not unlimited, but it was generally expansive and his manner on the whole very cooperative. He was not as articulate as Lee Kuan Yew nor as idealistic as Ban Kimoon; but like Mahathir, Thaksin had a force of personality that was relentless and driven. He was by no means a difficult interview and his practicality and pragmatism convinced me that my publisher had not by any means been in error to push me to do the book. I am happy I did the book. The right decision was made. The book was about the history of an important part of Southeast Asia, and plunging in was the right thing to do. But care and caution are never with thaksin: Serving lunch in his exile an ill-advised routine. Rushing into home and posing during a super-mall crawl. something without developing the proper mental/psychological frame of mind toward the project will make the job more difficult, perhaps impossible to do properly. To this effect, I had to hire researchers to get up to speed on contemporary Thai politics, and interview friendly people who knew Thaksin and his ways. Almost instantly I ran into a problem. If in Singapore journalists cannot “criticize City Hall” directly, in the land of the former Siam the king and queen (and by arguable extension the royal court itself ) are off limits to serious scrutiny. In Thailand that prohibition is even publicly enshrined. The law of lèse majesté applies and criticism of the monarchy is potentially

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a criminal offense. No American journalist could like such a law, but in deference to Thai ways I made it clear at the very beginning of the Thaksin book that I would respect it. Some sincere voices concerned about Thailand’s future have been urging all writers to ignore lèse majesté and come out with literary guns blazing with whatever they may know or criticisms they have. But as long as lives might be put at grave risk with the exercise of that option, this approach would seem reckless and arguably amoral. THE ETHICS OF INTERVIEW I NG : ‘ Thi s is the Tha i Way!

Thaksin Shinawatra, like almost every other politician (in Thailand or elsewhere), may have given his enemies good reason — or not — to doubt his integrity. But in my dealings with him, my only serious problem was his ebullient generosity. Again and again (as related in Conversations with Thaksin), I had to fend off the former prime minister’s gifting syndrome. You cannot hope to maintain your reputation as a serious and respected journalist while bagging gifts right and left from your interviewee — obviously. But he was always charming about it, not at all creepy — almost puckish playing with me a little. Of course there has to be some common sense to these ethical rules, especially when you spend a lot of interviewing time with a VIP. Here is an exchange with Thaksin that I saved in my file for just this illustrative purpose. It took place in December 2010, in Thaksin’s dacha in Emirates Hills, Dubai, U.A.E. Me saying: “Now, tomorrow [Thursday] will be the last two hours, okay? And then…” “When will you be leaving?” says Thaksin.

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“I’m going Saturday morning. So if you have nothing to do on Friday, and you want to have lunch or dinner, or something, let me know. It’ll be my treat.” “Yes. I want to take you out, not just as we have lunch in my house every day. I want to take you out.” “Right, have lunch or dinner or something like that?” “Yes.” “Okay, but you got to let me pay.” “No.” “I can’t do it then.” “This is the Thai way!” “Stop it. You’re giving me the car and driver to get me to see the editors of the Khaleej Times [tomorrow], wherever that place is…” [He had advised I would either get lost or get ripped off if I just took a taxi] “No. This is my area. When I go to Los Angeles, I will not pay.” “You ever go to Los Angeles? No. Yes?” “If I were to go to US … definitely I will be in Los Angeles.” “You’ll let me and my wife take you out to dinner, or something like that?” “Definitely.” “Alright.” “I will not pay in L.A.” “Alright, it’s a deal, then — when you think about Friday, what you want to do, just for an hour or two — lunch or dinner, or whatever you want to do.” “Whatever you like.” “Because I’ve got some chores to do, Friday, but if you—” “What would you like to do?” “Lunch would be perfect.”

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“Lunch? Okay. What kind of food you like … Iranian? Or, Italian? Or, the Lebanese?” “What do you like?” “Or, Japanese?” “How about Lebanese?” “Lebanese?” “You like Lebanese food?” “I eat almost everything, but not Mexican.” “Yeah, I’m the same way. I don’t like Mexican, either.” “It’s terrible.” “Yes, and the Italian restaurant is in the tallest building in Dubai…” “Then it’s the tallest building for lunch on Friday.” “That’s Italian. You think two hours tomorrow will be enough?” “Yeah, although maybe at lunch on Friday, I might ask you a few more things.” Always remember: the interview isn’t ever over until the interviewee stops the talking. Your job is to keep the talking going until you both drop from psychological near-exhaustion. Not before.

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INTERVIEWING THAK S IN ON OT H E R P OLITIC AL VIP s HE LIKES

Former PM Thaksin on Putin, Zhu Rongji, Lee Kuan Yew and others, (Dubai, 2012) “Now … when you went to Beijing, and you stayed with a friend, playing golf, weren’t you pretty isolated there?” “Well I met friends, but I cannot speak Chinese. That’s the problem. But my friends there bring some former ministers, some businessmen to come to see me, and then we have talks. I met with some of my former international colleagues like Madame Wu Yi, the former deputy prime minister of China during [the government of ] Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji.” “Oh, you mean the brilliant Chinese woman who was in charge of trade negotiations?” “Yes. Yes.” “Her reputation is that she’s a fierce and terrific negotiator.” “Yes.” “Did you talk with her?” “Yes. We talked in general, but no deep philosophy or anything. We talked especially politics, and our good work together, because you know during the 2003 emergency SARS epidemic, she was asked to take the portfolio of public health in China, and she coordinated with Thailand because we organized the venue for China to speak with ASEAN members on the SARS crisis in Bangkok. And then, I declared — after just listening to her! — after listening to her and Premier Wen Jiaobao, I went directly to the press conference, together with Wen Jiabao, and I told everyone that I believed SARS would be ended from China by 60 days, according to the impressive

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plans that they gave to the panels at the ASEAN forum. And, you know, China announced itself SARS-free in 59 days!” “Impressive prediction.” “Fifty-nine days! I had predicted 60 days, and it was 59 days, exactly. So, every time we met after that, we would reminisce about how we had so closely cooperated in supporting them on SARS.” “That was some team China had then, right?” “Yes.” “That was some team. You know, I’m going to tell you this quickly, just to give you a moment to catch your breath, but Charlene Barshefsky, do you remember her? She was Clinton’s chief trade negotiator.” “Yes, yes, yes. The U.S Trade Representative.” “That’s right. Exactly. I was saying to her, ‘When you were dealing with WTO in China, whom did you admire and work with the best?’ She said, ‘Zhu Rongji,’ and I said, ‘Give me an example,’ and she said, ‘Well, besides the fact that he was very straight-forward and honest and fun, he understood his limitations, and one time I got a call in Washington, and it was Rongji, and he said, ‘Charlene, I have a problem.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘The problem is that I don’t understand certain aspects of WTO, and all my provincial governors are saying, ‘Explain to us what we have to do,’ and it’s very technical, right? So, I was just wondering,’ and she said, ‘Would you like me to come to Beijing and talk to them?’ and he said, ‘Yeah I would like you to come to Beijing and talk to them.’ Right? So she flies to Beijing, and she has like 70 of these regional officials in a room and they sit there for a whole day and talk about, you know, WTO, and what it means, and I just thought, here’s this guy — this second, number two in China — and he’s saying, ‘I don’t really understand it, Charlene, come on over.’ And that was the kind of guy; he was

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self-confident enough to admit it! Me then asking: “Who would be a few such personalities you’ve met in the course of your political career?” “Several people … each one has different kinds of talents, otherwise they’re not going to have come this far in life. Let’s say, like Vladimir Putin … Putin has very good leadership qualities, but if you don’t have a human-side relationship with such a VIP, then you don’t really know the person. When I visited with him in April 2006, he was very human. He looks tough, he does look like a former KGB, you know, but he’s very human. When I visited him, before I was ousted, at his residence, we were having dinner together, and after dinner he didn’t tell me anything, but when the bodyguard came to open the front door for me and I said, ‘No, I’ll sit in back seat,’ the bodyguard said, ‘No,’ but because they cannot speak English, he just strongly guided me to the front seat. Then, unexpectedly, Putin himself came and jumped in the car and we drove away, and he laughed, driving to his helipad.” “I think you said he was a little shy, is that what you said?” “Normally, when you look at him, he seems maybe he doesn’t want to be very friendly, because he’s former KGB and, you know, he didn’t speak to just anyone. But actually he’s very, very friendly; very human.” “Anyone else you like?” “I like Lee Kuan Yew, and I like Mahathir, from a different angle.” “Why, because they’re so smart?” “Yes. They are smart, they have experience, and then you know, they still contribute to Southeast Asia. Look at Lee Kuan Yew, he tours all the countries. You know, every six months he came to Thailand when I was prime minister; he’d call on me, and we’d share. I found

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that he’s really knowledgeable, and I’d ask him, ‘Your Excellency, did you read a lot of books?’ He said, ‘Well, you know, at my age, I don’t read a lot of books, but I meet a lot of people. I exchange ideas.’ So now I learn a lot from meeting people.” “Does he try to tell you how to run your country?” “No, no. He did not tell you but I get many ideas from him. He shares lots of experiences. Another person that I like very much is Zhu Rongji [a former highly touted #2 of China]. He has very good leadership, and he’s very knowledgeable, especially about the economy. He was the key person continuing the modernization of China after Deng Xiaoping.” “He was the intellectual successor to Deng Xiaoping.” “Yes.” “I don’t think I’ve asked you this question Of the people you have met, is there someone who is number one on your list? “I think Zhu Rongji … because I met him. I cannot say Deng Xiaoping because I never met him.” “No, and I’ll never do a book on him, either!” “Of those that I’ve met, I like Zhu Rongji. He has good leadership. He was running a big country, but he has a good heart. Good heart. He understands and sympathizes with the smaller country, with the smaller economy, and he has a vision for China, and he’s very fluent in economics. Very fluent. We had very good chemistry when discussing economic issues together. Not just bilateral but regional as well.” “In fact, among national leaders, when you were prime minister, you and he probably actually understood economics better than most.” “Not all leaders understand economics.” “Yes. And do you think, I mean, everyone in the world is trying

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to understand now what China is about, where China is going. If you ask Mahathir, he has a view about China, Lee Kuan Yew has a view about China — what is your view of China? Is it going to be a big monster that’s going to be a problem? Can you tell what direction it’s going in?” “China is very big in terms of land and population, and now wealth of the country, but not wealth of the people. Their per capita income is still not nearly high enough but their currency reserve is huge.” “Right.” “And, they are very big players. Asia is really China and India.” “Right. That’s like 90 percent of it.” “So I look at China differently. China is the production base for world consumption.” “Right.” “Especially in industrial production, no one can compete with China for many years to come because they have both high tech and cheap labor. But China has many social problems that will surface because they’re growing too fast. Even though the government is trying to help the people in the rural regions, it’s not easy for them to adapt themselves to the new Chinese economy, and so they will face serious internal problems. It’s a challenge. They have become big too fast.” “Right.” “They might well become a threat to other big players in the world because it will become a big power in the world. It won’t be easy to balance themselves between their own domestic challenges and the international challenges they will face. But I don’t think they are a big monster. They will represent a risk and an opportunity at the same time. And they are going to be almost everywhere,

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because they have a huge population with a big capital base, and a big knowledge base, and they can compete here and there, and they will send the people to invest and to do work here and there. For example, Africa. They want minerals for their consumption, so they send people to do mining everywhere. You can see it. And they have money, as well.” “They have money, and money is power.” “Yes. And they send the young scientist, young engineer, to create laboratories in every famous country that is famous in some area of content. They learn quick, they move quick, and because of that they are well-structured, in a disciplined country. At the same time, their own market is so big. They are a vast market, as well.” “Yeah. If they develop that market … domestic market.” “Yeah.” “So it is your sense, then, that China — if only because of its sheer size and numbers and its conflicting urban versus rural dynamics — is going to be, well, not a monster, you say, but it’s going to be a bumpy … it’s going to be very bumpy? “Yes.” “And so for a country like Thailand … what’s the best policy for Thailand vis a vis China? “With China? In this modern world, you cannot compete only, you cannot collaborate only … you have to compete and collaborate. So, economically and trade-wise, you have to compete and collaborate with China. Thailand has to reposition itself on what is its strength — and is there any room for your strength to grow? You have to proceed that way. You cannot run the country the old way any more. You have to have the strategies for Thailand.” “Right.” “You have to have the common strategies for the whole nation,

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for each particular sector — otherwise you move like this way or that way, you fight on each other, you have Red and Yellows, you have someone saying that this is loyal or not loyal to the monarch. We shouldn’t be in that stage now, and we can’t stay in this stage for long. Time is running out for Thailand.” “Right. In terms of relaying to China, Thailand has no territorial issues with China, but Vietnam has ongoing quarrels, and there are all these island issues around the South China Sea that worry not only Hanoi but other nations in the region; but Thailand doesn’t really have any disputes with China.” “No, no.” “But as you know China has been saying, for years now — peaceful rising. Peaceful rising. And then, it got kind of badtempered, in the last six to eight months in China, you know, with these issues with Vietnam and Japan, for sure, Vietnam and Malaysia and South Korea in various island disputes, to which these countries began to say, ‘Well, now we really understand why we need the United States to stay,’ to have a balance of power. Do you think it is ideal foreign policy for Thailand to be in good relations with China, but also good relations with the United States? “During my administration, actually, I tried to bring Thailand ever closer to the U.S. After all, the U.S. had been a treaty ally for 80 years, and I went to see President Bush. I said: ‘Please, President Bush, don’t take our relationship for granted. Use Thailand as your strategy base, economically, not just only military. You need Thailand to be a base for production. We have manpower, we have physical location. That can help you distribute products to other countries.’ But, you know, I think the U.S. spends most of its time with the Middle East.” “Many Asian leaders feel this way.”

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“Maybe because of oil, it is the only major strategic interest of the U.S … I don’t know, sometimes it seems like that. Whatever, the U.S. needs to spend more time and make more efforts with Southeast Asia — and in Asia.” “But, to go back to your conversations with Bush, I see that you didn’t put at the top of your most admired leader list, George W. Bush; you put Zhu Rongji there. “Right. I still think Zhu Rongji was a much better leader than Bush. I know Bush personally. Bush is … you know, I know him personally, but I think he is a little … I’d better not say. Look, on the day of the coup against me, in 2006, I was in New York, and right after the coup happened Bush was giving a speech to the UN on democracy. He didn’t mention about Thailand having a coup d’etat. No condemnation from him. I said to myself, ‘Hey, what kind of leader of democracy is this?’ Bush says nothing.” “Why didn’t he say anything?” “You have also mentioned in the past that one of the problems in talking to President Bush was that while you might want to talk about X, Y and Z, he only wanted to talk about one thing — the War on Terror.” “Yes.” “So he was like a one-song guy.” “Yes. His obsession.” “Right. Do you think that precisely because 9/11 was so terrible, the United States has been obsessed with this whole terror issue?” “Well, I think the policy has only one-side. Just attack. That is Texan-style.” “Very smart. Texan-style.” “Texan-style. But that style cannot be effective, it’s dated in this modern world, you cannot use only one way, one style. Even my

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style that emphasized the iron fist inside the velvet glove, I still think my use of the iron fist was too much in this modern world.” “And you admit that you—” “Yeah, we all have to reduce the reliance on force in all kinds of ways.” “Your use of Texan to describe Bush W. is exactly right. One of the few times that I disagreed with Lee Kuan Yew, and I knew I was right, was at the beginning of the Bush administration, and he asked, ‘What do you think of the new president?” and I said, ‘Well, I worry,’ and he said, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘Well, he’s from Texas,’ and he said, “No. The Bushes are from Kennebunkport,’ and I said, ‘No, that’s senior Bush. He’s Kennebunkport. Junior Bush is Texas, and they shoot first, and ask questions later.” “Yes.” “I saw Lee a year later, and Lee said, ‘You were right. You were right.’ And, so Thaksin, you’re right.”

11 On What to Say When The y Say The y Didn’ t Say That

Every attempt to produce coherent memories involves falsification. No human memory is so arranged as to recollect everything in continuous sequence. — Russian poet Anna Akhmatova as quoted in Isaiah Berlin’s Personal Impressions

“ We Act As If Nothing H a p p e ne d… ”

It is impossible to work for any length of time as a serial interviewer without bumping into controversy. You have to protect yourself by sticking to a meticulous personal methodology. On the road to becoming the impossible — the ‘perfect interviewer’ — there is a particularly serious bump to watch out for known as the onthe-record, off-the-record problem. The issue will surface in the course of an interview when your VIP suddenly says, “This next thing I can tell you but it has to be off the record!” Or, “I have something to tell you but you cannot use it [in the magazine article or the book]. Ok?” What is the best response from you, the honorable journalist? There is only one: No problem, that comment is now totally and completely off the record. This point is vital to understand and accept. A decent measure of mutual trust must undergird a series of extended conversations or a lengthy and important interview. There must be some psychological

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modulation of the adversarial system, some common courtesy INTERVIEW TIP and agreed-on rules that facilitate A tricky moment arises civil discourse. How can we get when the interviewee anywhere if every sentence is actually wants some spicy rife with treachery? How can the interviewee be encouraged to negative morsel out there relax and open up if the ‘gotcha!’ for all the public to see pit bull is forever growling at (and laugh about … or be his feet? Do not the interviewer scandalized about) but and the interviewee accept that a wishes to disavow any collaborative atmosphere of jawresponsibility for its gotten jaw will work out better for the out. The source wants reader and history than war-war? To be sure, there are times plausible deniability. So the when the interviewee will be interviewee looks at you insincere about the demand. in the eyes and says, ‘Of This tricky moment will arise course that has to be off the when she or he actually wants record.’ But is that what’s some spicy negative morsel out there for all the public to see (and wanted? This can get subtle laugh about … or be scandalized and extremely tricky and about) but wishes to disavow any can really test your powers responsibility for it having gotten of ESP. out. The source wants plausible deniability. This can get subtle and extremely tricky and can really test your powers of ESP. You have to decide what complex game the interviewee is playing. It is unspoken and slightly dangerous. You might not even

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get the courtesy of a wink or a nod. So if you decide to use the spicy morsel, you will find yourself taking all the heat when your source denies ever saying it — on the record or off! For myself, I try to shy away from this gray area unless the information is of very great public interest. It’s not so much that I regard it as beneath me but the practice, which is not uncommon, makes me edgy. In the long run, I believe, it doesn’t work for the wouldbe serious journalist to play these games. But the situation does arise, and the journalist has to make an individual, professional decision as to how the game will be played. But where the situation is not ambiguous — where the journalist agrees to accept a quote or two from the VIP interviewee as off-therecord and there is no doubt about what is being asked — that is it. The journalist who proceeds to violate that agreement should be disbarred from further practice. But unlike the legal or medical profession, journalism has no such sanction. When I was teaching undergraduates a course in media ethics at UCLA, an oft-appearing guest was a famous celebrity lawyer, Robert Shapiro. His first media-rich case was the representation of a porn star in Vegas who claimed she had been raped. His most famous client was football legend O.J. Simpson. When the legend was arrested for murdering his wife, Shapiro was his lawyer at the arraignment who then put together the star-studded defense team that was to include the late Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey. Bob would visit my media ethics class every year and in his presentation reveal how a well-known magazine journalist writing about the trial for a well-known national magazine consciously and systematically broke off-the-record rules. Only once was I accused of violating ‘off-the-record’. The accuser was Lawrence Summers, when he was a top official in the Treasury

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Department during the Clinton administration. We had conducted a long phone interview from my office on the UCLA campus to his in Washington, and I had taken pages of notes. The very morning that the column on the Asian Financial Crisis appeared in the Los Angeles Times he telephoned the office angrily with the accusation that I had made up one of the quotes. This was absurd of course and so I told him, bluntly. We batted around accusations and insults and then he changed his position to claim that, “If I said it, which I doubt greatly, it was said off the record.” I had my notes in front of me when he called and the quote was written down clearly: “Thailand is not on our border.” He had said it as part of the explanation as to why the U.S. government was not planning to bail Thailand’s currency out in 1997 as it had so boldly and effectively bailed out Mexico when the international market value of the peso fell through the floor in 1995. Summers, of course, is scary-intelligent and knew that the quote would go over like the proverbial lead balloon in Asia as callous and offensive. But there was another problem for him. In the earliest stage of this major story he might have underestimated the extent to which the Thai currency disease would infect the currencies of neighboring Asian economies with which it conduced significant trade. The future president of Harvard was quite hot under the starched collar and my recollection is that while he did not use four-letter words, he sure sounded as if he had wanted to! If I had been a much younger journalist with only the thinnest layer of experience, if I had not interviewed gangsters and presidents, mayors and other monsters for most of my professional life, if I had not long ago decided not to be intimidated by anyone, I might have been shaken by the accusation and have sought the easy way out by

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vaguely apologizing for something I did not do. But I did not because I knew I had stuck with my usual method during the interview. And so I politely but firmly explained to Summers that when a VIP had a second thought and asked to go off the record, in my note-taking I would quickly and boldly and unmistakably circle the comment and label it OFF! This little habit would take place not at a later time in reviewing the notes, but at the exact time the request was made. I wanted no mess-ups. I hate them. I will always hate them. I further explained to Summers that as far as I recall, this might well be the very first time I had been accused of violating an ‘off-therecord’ agreement. So I had to stand my ground in an uncompromising way. There was a bit of awkward silence and Summers said something like, “Well, I don’t know what to do next? What do you propose?” That was an easy one: I said we should do another interview, not pull the plug on the whole fruitful relationship. He said something like, “Well that’s not going to happen.” He was fishing for a retraction and there wasn’t going to be one. Then I said something like: “No, we should do another interview and I will type up the notes personally and fax all the quotes I plan to use in the column to your office and you can take out or modify anything you deem prudent or you believe I got wrong.” Over the phone one sensed a bit of astonishment, him finally saying, “You would do that?” I said of course I would. I said my game was not to break promises, much less make up quotes, but to accurately convey the reasoning of the interviewee. I was interested in accuracy and insight, not fiction-driven controversy. Seemingly placated, Summers accepted the proposal and we were to go on to do other interviews. His views were always insightful and often cleverly and originally constructed in sometimes mind-

On What to Say When They Say They Didn’t Say That 201

charming sentences, and I was always grateful for them. I was also not uncomfortable with allowing him to review his comments in advance of publication. It is a courtesy some VIPs (especially in Asia) will insist on. Lee Kuan Yew always did. His office made it a non-negotiable condition of every interview. With LKY, the resulting problems were generally minor because he knew his own mind so well, almost never changed it, and in passing his pencil over the transcript would simply smooth over rough spots to heighten elegance and grammatical consistency. The end result was quotes generally as smooth to the eye as they had been to the ear. I saw nothing deceptive about reading an interview with the founder of modern Singapore that was as clear and articulate sounding as in the original oral delivery. What’s more, I was to offer exactly that courtesy to Dr Mahathir, former PM Thaksin and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — but they never wound up calling it in. I would like to believe that, Summers notwithstanding, I have a track record for aiming to keep my word, trying hard for accuracy and not confusing fiction with nonfiction. Even so, you can’t please everyone and the truth does not always get you off the hook; sometimes it can prove a problem. Consider the many interviews with UNSG Ban. He never once asked to review the quotes from our hours and hours of conversation in his residence in Manhattan. But after the book came out, it turned out he wished he had. Even though the video and audio recorder were always in evidence — right in front of both of us, always churning away — and he not once asked for anything to be put off the record, he realized when the first copy of the book came in front of his eyes that in some respects he had spoken far too freely. In the original edition, Ban, in a moment of frustration, refers to a certain leader of a major country involved in trouble as “someone

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who must be … insane.” But — wow! — did the SG really say that? When a famous and prestigious New York newspaper got wind of a rumor starting to make the media rounds to that effect, it checked with the UN press office in New York. The newspaper was told that Ban absolutely never said any such thing, or if such was so entered in the book, it was a wild misquote, wholly out of context (which it wasn’t). Anyone who knows my method would know that the comment would have to have been recorded to make it into the book. Ban was upset and felt strongly that the intense, ongoing negotiations involving this country deserved to proceed apace, that the quote should not have been included in the book because it could poison the atmosphere of the talks and that perhaps the author should have left the comment out of the book. Journalists in the West get this line of argument from government officials all time. The classic ironic, iconic case was President John Kennedy lobbying the New York Times not to publish its exclusive story on the secretly planned invasion of the Bay of Pigs until the actual invasion of Cuba took place. After resisting White House pressure, the Times finally folded, the invasion went ahead, and it was a monstrous disaster. Just like the Times, somehow Castro’s Cuba found out in advance, too, that thousands of émigré troops trained by the CIA were heading its way. Looking back, Kennedy realized that the spectacular tragedy and huge political embarrassment would have been avoided had the Times not caved in to his pressure. ‘Premature’ publication would have wiped out the possibility of surprise; and lacking that, it could not have gone forward at all. Thus the massacre would not have happened and the Kennedy administration blunder would have been preempted by superb newspaper journalism.

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This classic story is in every editor’s playbook. All true editors operating within the American political and media system believe that if they have a true story, what they should do with it is: not debate it to death with public officials but run it or air it or broadcast it — but whatever you do, don’t sit on it. The argument for holding back an important story rarely seems persuasive to the journalist but instead feeds into his or her paranoia and sense of smell of a cover-up. Though related, my case was different. In effect the quote that the UNSG worried about had already been published. But as Ban had gotten the very first ceremonial copy of the first book off the press — courtesy of my helpful publisher — and had quickly read it and found a few problems, including the quote, the publisher was able to take back distributed copies and in effect pump out a second edition with the courtesy redaction. What did I think of that? You may be surprised to learn that not only was I in agreement but also that I had recommended it. Of course, I was not a UN employee and had been contracted by the honorable publishing house to write a serious book, not produce some shiny sanitized public-relations job. So at first I felt the quote was Ban’s problem, not mine. And, frankly, I held on to that first reaction for a few days. On the other hand, I began thinking, Ban had his position in world diplomacy and quite a job it was — extremely consequential and deserving of enormous respect. He certainly had my respect; I thought him one of the finest of gentlemen in public life. So I responded to the SG (with the concurrence of my publisher) by proposing to remove the comment in the first edition when it went into a second edition, plus anything else (within bounds!) that Ban insisted could gravely, seriously compromise ongoing high-level

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efforts or negotiations. An aide responded quickly that Ban was greatly relieved by my proposal and within a week a very short list of requested changes were submitted. On the most consequential of his objections — the quote — the argument was that the book, by containing a momentary side comment uttered in frustration, might wind up standing in the way of possible regional peace. This nice idea was proffered in 2012 but here we are years later and I can tell you without fear of contradiction, not much has come of those talks. Even so, I defend what I did — if perhaps many American journalists would not have done this — because I trust Ban’s integrity, and respect his fundamental belief in negotiations, even end on end, and even with the devil incarnate, as it were. Ban’s experience and instinct is not to burn bridges — even ones to hell. Like all true diplomats, he believes there are very few if any eternal enemies or eternal friends in the morally fraught world of diplomacy. But what do we say of the journalistic ethics of removing a quote from the original at the request of the VIP? An absolutist ethics would forbid it. But a teleological ethics (one of consequences) would permit, if it were reasonable to imagine that the effect of leaving the quote in place could lead to substantial public disutility or even harm. Ban convinced me that it would or at least could and so the change was made. Would I do it again? Almost certainly not. But there are exceptions to almost any rule. They should be exercised very sparingly. But they happen. Life is not simple and easy answers are not always available at the time a timely decision has to be made. And Ban, who tried hard to make the book as true and honest as possible even as every instinct in his diplomat’s body was of caution, restraint and blandness, deserved a break. And I wanted to give him one.

12 On What to Do When the Tables Are Turned

It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right; have a magical eye which sees the truth; and that others cannot be right if they disagree. — Isaiah Berlin in Personal Impressions

“ Whom D o You Like B ett e r, M ahathir or Lee Kua n Y e w ? ”

The interviewer is the one who’s supposed to be asking all the questions, not answering them, right? But sometimes life turns on you and you wind up on the firing line. How will you handle the reversal of fortune? Does a long life on the questioning side of the table prepare you for your own interrogation? Yes, it does. If you are lucky to have had this happy job of interviewing powerful figures for long enough, you reach the point where you might become your own best media adviser. You learn how to handle the fastballs thrown at you because you’ve chucked so many of them yourself. And you can sense when that tricky curve call is coming at you. Experience is the best teacher — or so you hope! How you react under the interview gun depends on where you think the question is coming from and what kind of experiences you have had. It’s when I’m touring on behalf of a book that I generally get pushed to the other side of the table, having to field media questions,

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responding to a media inquiry when some news story surfaces about a subject with which I’m — rightly or wrongly — thought conversant, especially if I’ve written a book on the topic or on the VIP. Do I find these moments annoying? Not on your life: On the contrary, I tend to enjoy every challenge and try to respond to every inquiry, without exception. Call me crazy. To be sure, media people can be jerks. And very probably there have been times that I’ve been one myself. So I try not to remember them. I have a few general rules that I thought I’d share with you and that, as far as I am aware, I never break. This is not my plea for canonization; it’s just the way I am and the way, personally, I think journalists ought to be and how they should respond. One: Unless I am very ill, sound asleep, or dealing with some family or personal upheaval, I always answer a media inquiry. ‘No comment’ would apply only to a very personal matter, such as a query about my family or my faculty colleagues or my students — issues of that nature. All legitimate media questions deserve a prompt response. There is reserved in hell an especially scalding hot tub for the professional journalist who ignores questions from other journalists. There is no excuse for this. This would be the rough equivalent of a priest refusing to hear the confession of another priest. Something slightly similar to that. Two: I try not to make difficult questions out of simple ones. Answer a direct question directly. Be direct and honest. If a professional type question, stay calm, cool and recollected. At a World Economic Forum event in Davos, I ran into then President Bill Clinton who was patrolling the main hall. He was the one with the question this time. “This [Davos event] looks pretty good,” he said, as if what do you

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think? I remember my response: “It is pretty good and it is very good for you. You are a policy wonk genius and this is policy wonk heaven.” He smiled and continued on working the crowd, shaking hands, being charming. I was happy with my answer — and no way was I going to ask him for an autograph! (And I wasn’t looking for a job from him!) Three: I try to keep my responses short and pithy and somewhat edgy and controversial. I feel the pain of the reporter trying to get a racy reply or score a scoop, and I try to play along. But I have to watch myself; sometimes my empathy gets the better of my judgment. A pride of South Korean reporters roared up on me after a panel at a conference in Seoul to ask whether North Korea would ever relinquish its nuclear-weapons program. I said yes, of course, knowing that every other so-called ‘expert’ at the event had a more dour view; and accordingly, the reporters started scribbling furiously. Then, like some kind of junkie, I got too easily turned on by the scribbling scrum and had to add “and within the next year or two”. Well, I made small headlines but that did little to improve my batting average for political prediction. (And recalling this blip reminded me that my columns on North Korea have in general made the grave error of assuming Pyongyang’s decision-making would prove logical and sensible. I have stopped making that assumption. There is no out-guessing evil.) Fourth: Don’t hesitate to cut off or even run away from an interviewer who obviously is not listening to you, comes to the session with rigid preconceived ideas, and only wants to give you a hard time. Life is too short to have to endure that. This dreadful experience has happened on very few occasions, but memorably while in Malaysia during a book promotion tour for Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad. This was in 2011, and the interlocutor had been described by the public relations outfit handling the book tour as an “expert on

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Malaysian politics”. Nothing wrong with that, right? I was actually looking forward to the encounter, probably would learn a lot! But what my interviewer turned out to be was a Mahathir-hater made insanely furious by any book that failed to place the long-running prime minister in the same basic moral camp as Pol Pot or Stalin. But I hadn’t been tipped to what was coming. We sat at a table in the Kuala Lumpur Shangri-la Hotel. I was jet-lagged and perhaps not my most patient self (otherwise, as every single person without exception who knows me will tell you, I am the very soul of patience … well, perhaps not!). So when the hater started in on me like my book was nothing more or less than a positive endorsement of a Nazi War Criminal, I realized I was getting drenched in partisan poison that my book did not deserve and that mere reason could not counter. Further discussion would be pointless. Thoughtful criticisms from serious people, you always want. Authors thrive on that; they can make the next book better. Sure, perhaps the book might have been tougher on Dr Mahathir for this, or for that. In retrospect the book should have included the former PM’s rank dismissal of my questions about his terrible taming of the country’s judiciary. This was one of the black marks given him not only by his critics but also by some in the business community that supported him. His answer was blunt, though: “Judges here are not like your judges.” And he shot me that look of complete dismissal of their net worth. In sifting through all the material I had, I put that issue to the side and failed to return to it. And if the court-system issue should have been handled better, was the emphasis on the anti-semitic charge against Mahathir worthy of an entire chapter? A few days after the unpleasant and insulting encounter with the Mahathir hater, I was approached in Singapore

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by a former Malaysian — and practicing Muslim — who thought the book was on the whole mean to Mahathir. Why did I make so much of his obviously political-only comments on Israel? So go figure, right? I cannot stand interviewers who think they are saints dealing with sinners. It sickens me. Writing a book, almost any serious book, is damn hard work. In my own code of conduct, if I don’t like someone’s book, I just will not review it; but if I do like it, I will praise it to the heavens. I respect almost all authors — unlike this idiot interviewer. I’m not sure he respected himself, and the book “review” he wrote was a perfect example of professional bad faith and intellectual deceit. He did not need to have read the book to write his stream of preconceived thoughts; in fact, perhaps he didn’t bother. And why bother to try to learn anything new when you already know everything? To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: I prefer talking only to myself; it minimizes interruption and eliminates contradiction. Don’t you loathe people like that? Or to quote another sage, in this case in 2002 about the thenrumored U.S. invasion of Iraq: “The United States should be prepared to listen to the views of others and not just their own views. Its tendency is to feel that any other view is wrong.” Who said that? Mahathir Mohamad. Personally I viewed him, for all his faults, as a ‘Giant of Asia’ — as you know. One of the more annoying and inconsequential questions I’ve been asked by an interviewer also concerned Mahathir. The questioner was a very nice young lady who’d obviously been pressured by her boss to induce me to compare the master of Malaysia to the master of Singapore. “Who do you like better, Mahathir or Lee Kuan Yew?”, begging your humble author for a controversial and newsworthy contrast/ compare job on the first two ‘Giants’. Both were as different as two men

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could be and yet in major respects so much the same. Choose between Monet and Manet? Billy the Kidd or Wild Bill Hickok? Why bother? But this sort of phony controversy is endemic to media manipulation. Why disrespect either man simply for the sake of sating the media’s need for foolishness? I refused to answer the pressured lady’s question and she almost welled up in tears. Really, I felt for her. Pressured by her editior, she tried, but the old professor wouldn’t play that game. Maybe I should have, eh? What would have been the harm? If my answer had been outrageous enough, she might have gotten a promotion, or at least a raise. And would either Mahathir or Lee then cared? Not very much. Some interviews can improve your game. Back in March, upon the death of Lee Kuan Yew at 91, after a long hospitalization, the media of Asia, as well as the BBC, was all over the story. And, predictably, there was much less coverage in the U.S. media, but no surprise there, right? At the end of the news cycle — perhaps three days or so — I probably did four or five interviews for BBC alone and maybe a half dozen different shows from Asia, including Bloomberg TV from Hong Kong, China. Another interview request came from China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing, which approached me in this way: Dear Mr. Plate, It will be a pleasure to have your thoughts on our show today. Here are the questions we’d like to discuss with you when we call. Please advise. You had the opportunity to sit down with Mr Lee Kuan Yew many times and have, over the years, developed a Western account of his worldview. Could you briefly sum it up for us? And which

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part of his political wisdom has a strong relevance to other Asian countries, despite their different systems? My colleague will be recording the interview. Thank you for your time. Best regards, Mangmang Wang CCTVNEWS Anchor, Chief Correspondent China Central Television 32 East Third Ring Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China The manner in which the interview was framed and the structure of the content struck me as particularly thoughtful and, in some odd respect that is somehow difficult to explain, mature, at least for the media. The result was that I spent a goodly amount of time thinking about the responses I would offer a few hours later when CCTV telephoned my home office — at some fairly odd hour of the day or night due to the 13-hour time difference. As best as I can recall, based on the notes that I made beforehand and have in front of me now, my answer went something like this: “One way of looking at Lee’s views is to categorize them in some special manner. I like to imagine that his thinking can be summed up as the ‘4 Ps’… “The first P is for Pragmatism. Though much in English colonial culture he found less than charming or inspiring, at Cambridge where he studied, the philosophical air of empiricism and pragmatism must have seeped into his soul. His governance of Singapore for more than three decades was steeped in pragmatism. He had no compunction with abandoning a policy if it wasn’t working (though his government stayed with some policies too long). But ideological or philosophical

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consistency were not reasons to keep a program that wasn’t working. In this regard he allowed that India’s Nehru might possibly be thought a great man, but regarded his ideological commitment to the tenets of central planning as a sign of ideological disease … a kind of policy intellectual rigor mortis. “The second P is for Perfection. The late Lee Kuan Yew got up every morning and said to himself: How can I make Singapore better? If it is a good place now, how can it be made into a better place? And why not then an even better if not the very best place? Mediocrity is a moral disease of government. Let’s pay our government workers properly and educate our citizens properly, and let’s see how close to perfect we can make this city-state where most of us will spend the rest of our lives. That was how he thought, I believe. “The third P is for Power. Simply put, he thought that if you had power, you should use it for good. This meant to him that weak leaders like Jimmy Carter, whom he judged as the worst American president he had met in his lifetime, were those who had the power but were too timid to exercise it. But you must use it to defeat evil and do good. And so he preferred strong leaders —Nixon not Carter, etc. “The fourth P is for Prudence. Despite being so strong-willed and sure of himself, he was not reckless or careless. ‘You are dealing with people’s lives,’ he said of governance; and so you were morally obligated to get your public policies right. This means that the right way to proceed might not always be headlong but prudently. Give your cabinet colleagues and political allies time to adjust. Use charm and assurance when possible, rather than compulsion or intimidation. Bring the people along with you, don’t frighten or alienate. At the same time, he was in notorious agreement with Machiavelli, that it was better to be loved as well as feared, but were only one or the other

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possible, then it was better to be feared; fear was the least unstable compelling emotion.” In short, some interview questions are much better than others. This one from CCTV forced me to configure elements of LKY’s governing approach in a way I had not before, despite countless interviews. Subjecting yourself to interviews can help make your own interviews better. And you can always do better, unless of course you have done the best you can. Even so, it is best to fight complacency at almost all costs: It’s a killer disease. Another interviewer of quality well above the worldwide media average is Channel NewsAsia. I have been on their shows several times and somehow the questions are never stupid and on those occasions when the Singapore-based news network has seen fit to ask me about a new book, I have found that, miraculously, the lady questioner has either read it or as an accomplished dramatic actress gives every impression of having read it. In April of 2015, Channel NewsAsia interviewed me at 2 o’clock in the morning Singapore time. Fortunately this was 11am mine. The live TV interview on the lifting of martial law in Thailand lasted but five minutes, but the interviewer covered more ground in that short time than a stock car racer taking off in the lead post. I felt I touched on every point I needed to, if that was the most time we could have. Oh, yes — the interviewer was a lady. Geraldine. I forgot to get her last name. But she was very good — even at two in the morning in Singapore. In Singapore, where Channel NewsAsia is based, every time I have been interviewed, it has been by a lady. Oh, well — the price you have to pay as an author. But these ladies do not just do lunch, they do their jobs. I even wrote a column about them.

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LA DY P OWER IN AS IA’S ME DI A

Khaleej Times (February 25, 2007) SINGAPORE — You wake up in the morning with lids woeful from the festivities of the night before, pop on the flat-screen television in high-tech Singapore and — if it’s 6 a.m. — catch every blaring sharp and flat of Majulah Singapura (Malay for “Onward Singapore”), the country’s fulsome national anthem sung in the Malay language. Ordinarily you might say any kind of “onward” at this hour is a bit much, but if you have tracked the growth of this tiny little citystate over the past decade or so, you’d have to admit that Singapore has indeed been heading onward and forward. Until recently, though, I was not exactly sure why. Plausible factors include the high literacy and education rate. Practically all Singaporeans get post-secondary school education, whether they want it or not, and virtually all Singaporeans will graduate from what we would call high school, whether they like it or not. The ultra-competent “nanny state”, as the government is called, does not programme for failure or permit its people to admit defeat early in life. Lots of other factors could be advanced, as well, but it wasn’t until this trip that I finally understood why this place hums and why it is the envy (polite word) of its neighbors for its high standard of living and relative modernity. The reason Singapore works, I have finally figured out, is because its women work so well. Let me explain. I was here this week not only to interview Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, but to promote my book. (It’s Confessions of an American Media Man, should you care to know!) To this end, I was programmed into my media paces by my Asia-based publisher Marshall Cavendish and within a 48-hour

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period, the country’s TV and radio shows were all but silly with the image and/or the voice of your intrepid columnist, hawking his book with all the classlessness of the average used-car salesman. It was then that it became clear why Singapore does move onward; it’s because its women are moving forward — helping keep Singapore ahead. Decades ago, you see, the ‘nanny’ government here made the cold and calculated economic decision to promote equal rights for women not because it was obviously the right thing to do, but because, with an adult population of a few million, it needed to double the size of the work force — fast. Including both genders gives you double your money. Today you can see the results everywhere, in all the professions, not just the usual ones (nursing and teaching and so on). You especially see it in the media. Walk through two days with me: In the morning Suzanne, co-host of the lead morning TV chat show, Prime Time Morning, holds up my book as she asks me the first on-air question. Several things stood out about Suzanne, not solely that she was really lovely and beyond articulate, but that she was not ethnically Chinese or Indian or Malay (the three major non-Caucasian sectors of the country’s demographic). She was ethnically Korean. There are not that many Koreans in Singapore, but now, we see, one of them is co-host of the top morning TV show and she’d easily give Katie Couric a run for her money. An hour later I am sunk deep inside the cavernous studio of a live radio show, well-known as The Living Room. Again, a goldentongued woman alternatively read out the latest stock quotations to listeners while plumbing the depth of my tortured author’s psyche. Her name is Deepika, she is ethnically Indian and (neglected authors

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of the world, you will know what I mean when I say this) she had actually read the book! And so I remained in a dither of shock when I staggered on to the next media round to meet Loretta, the thrillingly talkative host of her own chat show on Radio Singapore International. She had read the book too! Following that bout with acute adult literacy was a second radio session with another young Chinese woman, Esther. Her internationally broadcast radio show is called Passion People, a nicely understated accurate description of the host who had also read the book! I’ve done enough media in my career to recognize TV talkshow-host mediocrity when I see it. In America, it’s as common as product recalls in the U.S. car industry. Singapore’s media is often maligned in the West because of its necessary policy subservience to the government. But it was hard to detect even a trace of subservience in Suzanne, Deepika, Loretta or Esther. They were four good reasons why as Singapore continues to move forward, and they in all probability will be moving, careerwise, onward as well. Call me a ladies man, if you wish, but I was deeply smitten with the ambitious ladies of Singapore’s media.

Conclusion On the Near-Perfect Interviewer

Unlike some who have such a sharp eye he is not interested — none less so —in doing others down. He may not be totally un-censorious but, unlike many moralists, censoriousness is not a state of mind in which he finds pleasure. In the act of observing a crook or a charlatan, a dullard or a devious fellow, he enjoys discovering redeeming features. Redemption not condemnation, merits not failings, stimulate him to write; and when he writes he chooses those he wants to praise and particularizes only their good qualities.. — Noel Annan in Personal Impressions “ I ’m Rea d y For My Clos e Up. ”

Surely you have asked yourself the classic question, as have very many philosophers over very many centuries: Is what is in my head the ‘real’ reality, or is all reality — that which is Out There — all outside of us? Not everyone worries like this, to be sure. Most people are normal, sensible and sane. Then there are philosophers, and certain journalists… The typical Blogger and Tweeter avoid getting hung up in philosophical clouds, and why should they? Their constant commentaries prance above in the Cyberclouds of our technological universe, endowed with all the glitter of the present, which, however, immediately degrades into the stardust of the past. Issues of accuracy, perspective, fairness and documentation have little place at this frenetic but (usually) fun party. And perhaps that is the way the thing should be. (By the way, my Twitter address is @seniorminister, but I do always fact-check my Tweets.)

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At the same time, some of us do worry about this, and the more we worry — I believe — the better, especially for the journalist getting properly psyched for the political interview. The reality conundrum has to be the dynamic question at the center of what we do. It is our constant responsibility to which attention must be paid at almost any cost. The near-perfect interview cannot exist without the near-perfect interviewer. There exist for the interviewer several well-known tactical options, as you know. In the faux courtroom-confrontation interview, the interviewee is the defendant, the interviewer is the prosecutor, and presumably the judge/jury is the viewer or reader. Consider as a prime example a combative segment from the iconic 60 Minutes TV show in the U.S. Reality check: But how many verdicts in a ‘real’ courtroom turn out to be unjust? How many O.Js are found not guilty and how many innocents are wrongly convicted? Aside from what might arguably be gained by banderilla-battering, what might be lost to history, contemporary and future? My sense is probably a great deal. The opposite approach is problematic as well, of course, and can disappoint not only the reader/viewer/listener but also the big-time interviewee. Even so, one has to rate broadcaster Charlie Rose’s long-running interview shows as the best on TV in America. Your interviewee, whether LKY or someone easier, will always expect some measure of edgy confrontation. I will never forget Thaksin almost physically shrinking in the next to last two-hour conversation when I began to raise the touchy subject of the financing of his ‘Red’ political movement back in Thailand (direct financing from outside Thailand being clearly illegal). But he knew these questions were coming — and had to be asked. Mahathir understood this too, but,

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still, almost seemed to be weighing the option of throwing me out of his office when I kept hammering at the anti-semitism question (my head as well as moral sense said I had to make a strong effort). Lee Kuan Yew all but advised me to try to give him a few stiff shots on the chin (he knew he could handle it, had been hit by heavier weights than me, time and again of his decades in power), but I used some fast footwork to dance our conversation away from the tried-and-blue and into the area of friends and family (questions about which he had rarely if ever been asked); and it was that which had caught him unprepared. It took several conversational sessions for Ban Ki-moon to relax even a little; and so any kind of early frontal attack might have pushed him back forever under a tortoise shell as impenetrable as any in Galapagos. You by now well know my instinct for candy over cyanide. But from the standpoint of which one is the more principled approach, there is no difference between the two. It is a matter of preference, and result. The ultimate test is what the interviewer is able to obtain from the interviewee in the conversation. Everything else is preference (and ego), not principle. But to restate it one last time: It is always my instinct to search for the truth and not for the lie. That is the reality of the interview as an art form. The next step in the process of this art is the mass communication of that reality from the conversational room and onto the pages or onto the viewing screen. What if anything is lost in that transmission? If some degree of loss is inevitable, how might it be minimized? If the loss can be made moderately marginal, can we say that we have created a reading, or viewing or artistic experience that reflects the reality in that room as well as anything might? We have looked at the shortcomings of the pure transcript interview (as in the early pages of the pioneering INTERVIEW

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magazine, out of the crazed genius mind of Andy Warhol), and came to agree that more than superficial verisimilitude was needed to edge the interviewing product closer to the reality of the actual conversation. We also scoffed at the macho (girl or boy) interviewer who thought or acted as if she or he were more central to the reality of the experience than the political VIP interviewed. We found that view wanting not only because it undermined the integrity of the very structure of the conversation as a more or less carefully balanced and nuanced mutual conversation, but also because it diminished the possibility of viewing the political VIP in anything remotely approaching a proper framework of relative equality. Without equipoise it is difficult to create any degree of intimacy. The mind of one man and the mind of another can be separated by more than the distance between their heads. The bridge to opening up an exchange is not a matter of architecture but of art. And perhaps a very fine art at that: For this art, assuming if you will that it is indeed so, derives from an almost transcendental attempt to lift yourself out of your own ego and cross over into unknown territory — the mind (and psyche, really) of the interviewee. Instead of viewing the political VIP as ‘the other’, view the interviewee as your alter ego. Drop the pretence of objectivity — whatever that might mean anyway in the context of an art form — and embrace the notion of the psychically symbiotic interview. What is in it for him (or her) is what is in it for you: some approximation of reality as it is lived on this earth every day by the political VIP, with his quotes and your well-informed and carefully nuanced context as a guide. The near-perfect interviewer stashes a few sharp instruments in her or his tool kit. The unexpected change of direction threw the brilliant

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Lee Kuan Yew off enough so that he was forced into discussing family issues when he realized the interviewer was refusing to unsheath the banderilla. Mahathir Mohamad accepted my ‘sigh’ as the honorable duty of the American journalist to press the issue of anti-semitism to the limit of his patience. Thaksin was asked four times about campaign-financing questions — and firmly said no each time. And Ban Ki-moon at one point revealed that he was starting to enjoy the conversations — interview as therapy for the political VIP. Aim for total objectivity in your interview assessment of the subject, and you will soon find it is a god that will always fail you; indeed, it is crucial to understand that the road to objectivity is filled with monstrous potholes, dangerous curves and sudden no-exits. Your human eye can lie — and is not capable of absorbing enough data to feed your mind with enough quality input to process the interview object and his world in some scientifically objective sense. Your body in all respects trains itself to be selective as a matter of existential (and indeed evolutionary) survival. Please accept as your reality a social science version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. To use here a sweeping and insightful passage by Sir Isaiah Berlin regarding U.S-British perceptions of the world: They were, he wrote, divided by “two centuries. The microscopic vision of the eighteenth century was succeeded by the macroscopic eye of the nineteenth. The latter saw much more widely, saw in universal … terms; it saw the contours of great mountain ranges where the eighteenth century discerned, however sharply and perceptively, only the veins and cracks and different shades of but a portion of the mountainside. The object of vision of the eighteenth century was smaller and its eye was closer to the object. The enormous moral issues of the nineteenth century were [thus] not within the field of its acutely discriminating gaze….”

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The artistry of the political interview, then, is to be able to zoom out as well as zoom in — to span centuries, as it were, with the parameters of your mutual conversation, but without avoiding telltale detail. Your interview target will not flinch on the zoom-out, but how to get enough room from the interviewee for the zoom-in? Without the empathy of interview symbiosis, this will be difficult. And this will be the key to your success or failure. There is a further difficulty. It is possible — just possible — that you will discover none of your interviewees to be living saints. Imagine that! Yet the process of the personal periscoping can be achieved only through the intimacy of interview empathy. So how will you be able to hold your nose as, figuratively speaking, you move closer and closer for the zoom-in to the ‘soiled goods’? When will you know your subject is ready for the close up? (From the 1950 Hollywood movie Sunset Boulevard, where the fading silent-screen movie star declaims to a passel of paparazzi: “…I’m ready for my close up.”) We construct an impossibly high and dysfunctional hurdle when we set ourselves up on the assumption that somehow we are better than them. Trust me, we really are not; or, to put it another (kinder, gentler) way, our jobs and responsibilities as journalist/interviewers as opposed to political VIPS/interviewees are so fundamentally different as to be mutually incomparable. This generalization is true to some extent for all kinds of political-media systems but of course it is most pronounced in a democratic or adversarial one. What’s more, in politics there is almost no alternative to meeting and interviewing political figures whose principles exist solely in the extremities of their pragmatism. These will be people who have gotten not only their feet wet but also at times their hands dirty —

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because this is how one has to govern when the canvas is large and complex. One thinks of Lee Kuan Yew, now almost universally praised as the modernizer of Singapore, in the earlier days of his reign in stamping out opponents. No omelet was ever configured without first breaking some eggs; no leader that refuses to use power stays in power long enough to accomplish anything useful. It would be nice to be able to rule by reason alone but that would assume that enough of the citizens were more or less always reasonable. As Berlin wrote of a figure he greatly admired: “He did not condone the abandonment of ultimate principles before the claim of expediency or anything else; but political monasticism — a search for some private cave of Adullam to avoid being disappointed or tarnished, the taking up of consciously Utopian or politically impossible positions, in order to remain true to some inner voice, or some unbreakable principle too pure for the wicked public world – that seemed to him a mixture of weakness and self-conceit, foolish and despicable…. His point of view is one which has, of course, been opposed, and indeed detested, by men of the greatest courage and integrity; but I should be less than candid if I did not confess that it is a point of view that seems to me superior to its opposite.” And it will come as no surprise that I tend toward Berlin’s view of the urgent need to relate, with your journalism, to the world of reality that, alas, is far from any place remotely resembling utopia. Without such an underlying political outlook, it is difficult to imagine the breeding of the successful interviewer. To quote Berlin again: “[They were] ostriches with their heads in some very inferior sands….” In my own career, how many extremists or ideologists have I interviewed? I can think of not one. Whether Thatcher or Thaksin,

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whether Bhutto or Blair, whether this ‘soft authoritarian’ or that ‘populist democrat’, they have all slogged through the reality of the mud of politics long enough to know that thigh-high boots will serve them much better over the course of their career than white sneakers. But supposing history had offered me access to a modern-day Nehru of India or Bakunin of Russia, would I have felt better, cleaner and even holier than after sessions with Mahathir or Mickey Cohen? I would hope not. For when you accept that the road from Nehru to Pol Pot is much shorter and the end point more dangerous than even the road between Clinton and Mahathir, you try to adjust your emotional and moral outrage to a frequency closer to contemporary reality. Speaking of Dr Mahathir — a colorful character indeed — I was always struck by the irrelevance of Western critiques, if not condemnations, of his 23-year reign as PM on the grounds of corruption within his ruling party, in combination with their scant (or at best grudging) respect for the religious and cultural challenge of running and improving a Muslim country in a modernized way. It seems to me such Western studies and books are more revealing about the West than about Mahathir and his world, and in important ways miss the central point. And so when I informed Dr M that I wished to interview him in a series of longish conversations for the book, I also told him that the interviewer would be treating him with respect, and while the book would be anything but reverential, it would also not presume the role of a Western grand jury. I feel I kept to that promise and he never disagreed, publicly at least. But supposing I had departed Kuala Lumpur with all my digital recordings and notes and ready to write and … wound up

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producing a Western Journalist’s Grand Jury Indictment. Is there an ethical issue here? There is indeed, in my view, particularly if I went into the interview knowing that I was lying, that I was no more than a con man. Then the solid moral ground on which the interviewer must stand would have been immediately undermined by the willful deception. The art of the political interview is not the same thing as an investigative report. The goals are different, and so are the techniques, and so is the morality. Journalists indulge in such deceptions so perhaps I am wrong to come down on the side that I do. You will have to decide for yourself which sort of journalist you want to be. And what kind of human being. For myself, I prefer to do more homework and then go in straight and honest, listen carefully, without prejudgment, and try to get inside the head of the political VIP. When I sit down to write the interview for the newspaper or begin the enormous challenge of a nonfiction book, I feel my approach has been rooted in firm ethical ground. Such does not make me a perfect journalist (by far), or a perfect human being (not close). But it does get me nearer to being the nearperfect interviewer — and as near as I am ever going to get. Always remember that the harder the target is to interview, in the profounder sense of getting beyond mere verisimilitude, the more you will need all those special little skills. Great men and women value their privacy, precisely because their chosen profession tends to leave them with so little of it. Thus, the near-perfect interview is a deliberate intrusion into their privacy and is a successful reduction of what might remain in that small space of room. In this sense the interviewer is a potential troublemaker as well

On the Near-Perfect Interviewer 229

as a public educator. I have always appreciated the witty observation attributed to Pascal, to the effect that many of the ills of mankind come because men will not stay quietly in a room. Probably the best advice is to always search for the waters most still. I may not have gotten as close to my subjects as I wished, or as history might want, if it bothers to inquire. I have made mistakes, misjudgments and committed, perhaps, a touch of madness from time to time. But I did my interviews in the only way I thought they should be done. And that was what this book has been about.

GIVING THANKS

This volume is the eighth book of mine published by Marshall Cavendish Asia International Ltd. And this doesn’t count second and third editions, or fourth, fifth and sixth reprints. The first, Confessions of an American Media Man, initially rolled off the press in 2007. Then came the ‘Giants of Asia’ series (Lee, Mahathir, Thaksin, Ban), and then a pair of ‘Tom Plate on Asia’ books. The Fine Art of the Political Interview is thus the eighth in seven years. No one person alone could achieve this level of productivity. The totality of the effort would have to be the work-product of a special team — and that team is Marshall Cavendish, the best little serious but not boring publisher of books that anyone could imagine. Based in Singapore, Marshall Cavendish manages by emphasizing quality of talent over quantity of workers — with marvelous results. In this sense this small but influential publishing house mirrors the tiny Singapore nation in which it thrives. Striving for excellence, it seems, must be some kind of national trait. The list of names of people whom I would like to thank would thus not be long, but at the top is Violet Phoon, my first editor and now the house’s associate publisher; and Mei Lin Lee, my current editor and the house’s editor in chief. They are tremendous editors and elegant ladies to boot. I also am grateful for the smooth professionalism of Janine Gamilla, who manages sales and distribution, and Norjan Hussain, who deftly juggles the licensing rights issues and opportunities. And finally (though one could go on and on), for the clean and appealing design of my books, a deep bow of respect to Bernard Goh.

GIVING THANKS 231

And at my university — Loyola Marymount — Provost Joseph Hellige, Senior Vice President Dennis Slon, and Asia and Pacific Studies Director (Prof.) Robin Wang have been warmly and firmly in my corner from the start. One result has been the creation of the Asia Pacific International media center (asiamedia.lmu.edu), which has become a gem — in no little measure thanks to them and to others at LMU who have supported my efforts and had to endure my eccentricities. In fact, a former student staffer of Asia Media, John Po, graciously read through the manuscript and made some helpful suggestions indeed.

Index A Abdul Jabbar, Kareem 87 Akhmatova, Anna 196 Al Jazeera 124 Albright, Madeleine 132 American Broadcasting Company (ABC) 129 Annan, Noel xiii, 3, 12, 24, 38, 76, 170, 221 Annan, Kofi 96, 97, 99, 100–2, 107, 108 Argo (Film) 45 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 185–86 Asian Review of Books 118 Aung San Suu Kyi 38–40 Austin, John 76

B Bailey, Francis Lee 198 Bakunin, Mikhail 227 Ban Ki-moon 8, 24–25, 33, 34, 35, 51, 94–126, 131, 133, 171, 175, 176, 181, 201–4, 222, 224 Ban Soon-taek 24–25, 103, 113–14, 120 Barshefsky, Charlene 134, 186 Berlin, Isaiah xiii, 3, 38, 59, 73–74, 94, 105–7, 129, 151, 197, 206, 224, 226 Bhutto, Benazir 139–40, 141, 145, 227 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali 140 Blair, Tony 10, 34, 43–48, 52, 109, 130, 151, 227 Bloom, Orlando 25 BloombergTV 211 Bowra, Maurice 94 Bradley, Tom 30–31 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 211 Buffet, Warren 153 Bundy, McGeorge 7 Bush, Barbara 55 Bush, George Walker 10, 191–93 Bush, George Herbert Walker Sr. 55

C Carter, Jimmy 49, 133, 213 Castro, Fidel 202 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 150, 158, 159, 166, 202 Channel NewsAsia 214 China Daily 16–22, 109 Cheong Yip Seng 61, 72, 154–55 China Central Television (CCTV) 211–14 Chotiner, Murray 29 Christopher, Warren 88, 132–35 Clinton, Bill 10, 25, 129–35, 151, 86,198, 207–8, 227 Clinton, Chelsea 130 Cochran, Johnnie 198 Coffey, Shelby 140 Cohen, Mickey 28–29, 227 Cole, Jeff 76 Confessions of an American Media Man 215 Conservative Party 46 Conversations with Ban Ki-moon 3, 95, 99, 113–26 Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew 3, 9, 51, 58–74, 114, 116, 119, 142, 156, 158, 166, 171 Conversations with Mahathir 150–67, 174, 177, 208 Conversations with Thaksin 141–45, 170–84 Couric, Katie 216 Crime Pays! 29 Crossette, Barbara 118 Curie, Marie 141 D Diary of Anne Frank, The (Film) 27 Daily Mail 26–28, 30 Dalai Lama 26, 51–52 Daley, Richard Michael (Mayor) 159 Deng Xiaoping 41, 140, 188

Index 233 Donaldson, Sam 129 Downing Street Years, The 137 Dunaway, Faye 172 E Edwards, Blake 26 Eisatu Sato 77 Eisenhower, Dwight David 6, 147, 148 English, David, Sir 27–31 F Family Weekly 54 Feng Shusen 86–88 Ferraro, Geraldine 55 Financial Times 39 Foreign Affairs 40 From Third World to First 61 Friedman, Tom 95, 112 Frost, David 20, 21, 65, 89, 163 G George Washington University 91 Gere, Richard 26 ‘Giants of Asia’ or ‘Giant’ 3, 10, 20, 33, 34, 38, 50, 51, 58, 63, 64, 95, 114, 116, 117, 129, 140, 156, 157, 158, 159, 170, 171, 172, 177, 179, 180, 210 Goh Sik Ngee 70

H Hammerskjold, Dag 110, 115 Han Tao 86–87 Harvard University 153 Hedgehog and the Fox 73 Herald Examiner 49 Herbert, Auberon 150 Heisenberg, Werner 224 Hitler, Adolf 6, 98 Hoge, James 40–41 Howard, Ron 25 Humphrey, Hubert 7

I International Monetary Fund (IMF) 152–55 In the Middle of China’s Future 18, 159 Interview 31–34, 222 J Japan Times 111 Jiang Zemin 52, 185 Johnson, Lyndon Baines 8 Junichiro Koizumi 10, 49, 76–81 K Kantor, Mickey 132, 134 Kaplan, Ethan 153 Kaufmann, Gerald 43, 46 Kay Kuok 70 Kazuo Kodama 78, 79 Khaleej Times 175, 183, 215 Keizo Obuchi 8, 49–50, 76, 98 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (JFK) 8, 9, 202 Kennedy, Robert Francis (RFK) 7–8, 10 Kim Dae Jong 140 Kim Una 121 King’s College, London xiii Kissinger, Henry 88, 120, 133 Koh, Tommy 64 Krugman, Paul 154 L Labour Party 29–31, 43, 46–48 Lane, Diane 25 Lansky, Meyer 29 Le Monde 130 Lee Hsien Loong 215 Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) 33–35, 50, 51, 58–74, 76, 98, 99, 113, 114, 116, 117, 139, 148, 156, 157, 160, 161, 165–66, 167, 171, 175, 176, 180, 181, 185, 187–88, 189, 193, 201, 206, 210–14, 221–22, 224, 226 Levittown Bugle 6–7 Lewsinsky, Monica 10, 135 Li Ka-shing 50

234 The Fine Art of the Politic a l Interv iew Liberal Democratic Party 50 Likud 160 Living Room, The 216 Los Angeles Times 43–48, 49, 60, 76, 77, 85, 87, 89, 132, 134, 137, 139, 146, 147, 199 Lolita (Film) 26 Loren, Sophia 140 Loyola Marymount University (LMU) 17, 18 Luce, Henry 33 M Machiavelli 213 Macleod, Iain 10 Mahathir Mohamad 3, 28, 33–35, 51, 64–65, 116, 150–67, 171, 174, 175, 176, 177, 181, 187, 189, 201, 206, 208–11, 221, 224, 227 Mahbubani, Kishore 40–41, 64, 101 Major, John 10, 43, 45–48 Majulah Singapura 215 Malay Dilemma, The 160 Mandela, Nelson 25, 147–48 Mandelson, Peter 47 Mao Zedong 104 Marshall Cavendish 62, 113, 215 Mason, James 26 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 71 Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II, The 38 Mondale, Walter 54 Moore, Demi 25, 131–32 N Namier, Lewis Bernstein 106–7 Nehru, Jarwaharlal 213, 227 Newsweek 33, 108, 109 New York Magazine 28 New York Times 84, 95, 109, 154, 202 Nicholson, Jack 172 Nixon, Richard 20, 21, 29, 88, 213 Nye, Joseph 134

O OB Markers: My Straits Times Story 61 Obama, Barack 10 P Patch of Blue, A (Film) 27 Peel, Michael 39 Personal Impressions xiii, 3, 12, 24, 38, 58, 76, 94, 106, 128, 150, 170, 197, 206, 220 Phoon, Violet 62, 156 Plamenatz, John Petrov 58 Piling, David 39 Plate, Andrea 24–25, 27, 55, 71, 87, 103, 118, 132, 161–63 Playboy 32 Plato 4, 5, 66 Pol Pot 6, 209, 227 Polanski, Roman 172 Pollock, Jackson 34 Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics 91 Prime Time Morning 216 Puck, Wolfgang 87 Putin, Vladimir 185, 187 Q Qian Qichen 87–89, 90–91 R RAND Corporation 172 Rabin, Yitzak 145–47 Radio Singapore International 216 Reagan, Nancy 82 Reagan, Patti 82 Reagan, Ronald (President) 54, 81–82, 129, 137 Reagan, Ron 82 Reitman, Jason 25 Rice, Condoleezza 91, 94–95, 101 Rodrik, Dani 153 Rose, Charlie 221 Rusk, Dean 7

Index 235 S Sarcozy, Nicolas 139 Seattle Times, The 90, 96, 100 Shambaugh, David 91 Shapiro, Robert 198 Shigeru Yoshida 77 Shinawatra, Thaksin 3, 33–35, 51, 116, 142–44, 170–93, 201, 221, 224, 226 Shinawatra, Yingluck 141–45, 172–73 Simpson, O.J. 198, 221 Singapore Press Holdings 154 Singapore Story, The 61 Sivaram, Dharmeratnam 144–45 Smith, John 45, 46 S.O.B. (Film) 26–27 Social Democrats 30 Sorensen, Theodore 9, 10 Soviet Union 91 Stalin, Josef 6, 209 Straits Times 63, 67, 72 Stevenson, Adlai 6 Suharto 152 Summers, Lawrence 52, 155, 198–201 Sunset Boulevard 225 Sutherland, Kiefer 25 Swank, Hilary 25 T Ta Kung Pao 88 Taliban 27 Tempest, Rone 89 Ten Episodes in China’s Diplomacy 88, 90 Thatcher, Margaret 137–39, 226 Time Magazine 33, 82, 128 Times, The 47 Truman, Harry 139 Tuohy, Bill 43–48 U United Nations (UN) as Organization 25, 40, 51, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 124, 125, 126

United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) 2, 96, 100, 102, 107, 114, 120, 125 United Nations Security Council 40, 95, 98, 101, 103, 104, 108, 109 United Nations General Assembly 95, 98, 99, 103, 108 United Malays National Organization (UMNO) 159 University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) 134, 172, 198 University of Southern California (USC) 76, 172, 173 W Wall Street Journal 84, 153 Wang Daohan 10, 52–53, 89 Wang Mangmang 212 Warhol, Andy 31–33, 223 Washington Post 68, 84 Weizmann, Chaim 38 Wen Jiaobao 185 Wilcock, John 32 Wilde, Oscar 210 Winters, Shelley 26–28 World Bank 152, 155 World Economic Forum (WEF) 129, 150, 154, 207 World Trade Organization (WTO) 186 Wu Yi 185 X Xu Weiwei 18 Y Yoshiro Mori 97 Yeo, George 39–40, 64 Yeong Yoon Ying 66, 67, 70–71 Z Zhu Rongji 185–86, 188, 192 Zwick, Edward 25

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Plate, author of the ongoing ‘Giants of Asia’ series, is an American journalist with an international career at media institutions from London to Los Angeles. Born in New York, he completed his studies at Amherst College and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he earned his master’s degree in public and international affairs. His syndicated columns focusing on Asia and America, begun in 1996, have run in major newspapers in Asia and America. He has received awards from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Greater Los Angeles Press Club. When he was Editor of Editorial Pages of the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper garnered the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Los Angeles riots. From 1994 to 2008, he taught in the communication and policy studies programs at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been a Media Fellow at Stanford University and a fellow in Tokyo at the Japanese Foreign Press Center’s annual Asia-Pacific Media Conference. He is currently Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, as well as a former Visiting Professor at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, UAE.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 237

He was the founder of the non-profit Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), whose webpage resurfaced as Asia Media International at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles (lmu.edu/asiamedia). He also founded the Pacific Perspectives Media Center in Beverly Hills, California, a non-profit op-ed service. On the West Coast, he is a board member of the Pacific Century Institute and a Senior Fellow at the USC Center for the Digital Future; on the East Coast he is a long-standing member of the Princeton Club of New York and the Phi Beta Kappa Society. For years he was a participant at the retreats of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Professor Plate is the author of twelve books, including the bestsellers Confessions of an American Media Man (2007); Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew (2010), now in its third edition; Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad (2011); Conversations with Thaksin (2011); and Conversations with Ban Ki-moon (2012). His other works include In the Middle of the Future (2013) and In the Middle of China’s Future (2014), all published by Marshall Cavendish Editions. Under a pseudonym, he is the author of the novel The Only Way to Go. He resides in Beverly Hills with his wife Andrea, a licensed clinical social worker, and their three cats: Rafael, Rufianne and Leonardo.

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