 from Bear Pond Books, thank you all for coming. Thank you to Vermont College of Fine Arts for co-hosting this event tonight and giving us this beautiful space. Good time to remind you to turn off your phones or at least turn the volume off. And we're very excited to be celebrating Senator Leahy, his career and his new book, The Road Taken. The program this evening is going to be interview style. We have Garrett Graff who's gonna be interviewing the senator afterwards. We'll have a Q and A and a book signing. We also have pre-signed books available if you don't want to wait more. But I would suggest getting in with the senator. So that and restrooms are right out here and I'm sure you've all found the elevator right now. So, Garrett Graff. Graff, Garrett Graff excuse me is a historian, journalist and author. You've seen him on CNN, you know him through his books, Raven Rock, The Only Plane in the Sky and most recently, Watergate, a new history. Interesting stuff in there. But most notably, he's a Montpelier native, which we love and Garrett has been proving his political chops for a long time. He was a Senate page in high school for none other than another Montpelier native, Senator Leahy and we're coming full circle here tonight. So we'd love that. Real local action, excuse me. Senator Leahy, our senior senator, our longest serving senator, he's in his eighth term. He is the Senate President Pro Tem. He is the chair of the Appropriations Committee and has been chair of too many committees to list here tonight. He is a supporter of human rights, education, the arts and the environment and above all, he is a supporter of Vermont. He has been working tirelessly for us for 48 years. And this, but as we know, he's not all politics. Our senator is well known for his love of photography. He's taken a few star turns in Batman movies. And of course, he's well known for his devotion to his wife, Marcel and family, a well rounded guy. But enough for me and we'll let him tell you more about it. Garrett Graf, Garrett Graf and Senator Leahy. Hey everyone, thank you for joining us here at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Senator, it's great to have the chance to talk with you. I have to say that the book is great. I'm not being paid to say this. It's a really great history and memoir of your extraordinary career. Claire mentioned eight terms in the US Senate, but it's almost impossible to grasp the full scope of the history that you have lived. You are the third longest serving senator in US history passing recently your two former colleagues, Strom Thurman and Ted Kennedy. You have taken the second most number of votes in US Senate history, 17,243 of them as of June. So what I thought we could do today was sort of just go through them one by one. And you could sort of just talk about sort of what you remember of that day. We only need about 280 hours to go through them. So Senate Resolution 21, January 27th, 1975 and the 94th Congress, take it away. So the thing that sort of just comes through so clearly in this book is how much you love the Senate. And I thought I would sort of start off by reading a section where you sort of talk about it in the introduction that the Senate was an idea. The idea that an institution doesn't belong to a single party or single ideology, nor is it exhibited or embodied in a single issue. The Senate was a concept, an outlook about how we might live or lead, learn or listen. And I thought we could just sort of start off by, I could ask you to talk a little bit about how you have come to love the Senate so much in your career and sort of what you have learned about what it says about the way that our government works. But that's an excellent question. Is this, can you hear this okay? I'm checking over at my two bosses, my wife, Marcel and the other, Dr. Carolyn Dwyer, they're showing me that, they can hear me. Before I start in writing this, I kept almost daily journal and going back through thousands of pages trying to sort of out. I would note that your prize winning top selling author begins a page at the U.S. Senate before you went on to Harvard and all. And I thought, you know, I remember where I pointed you as a page, I thought, gosh, I had to try the same things, writing a book. It's not easy, I don't know how you do it. It's not easy going through the notes. But back to your question, as a young law student at Georgetown, I used to go up a lot of times I had a break from the class, just come to sit in the gallery, watch the Senate, see some of the greats of the time in both parties, debate and say, this is a place really we should come together, make sure people's voices are heard, and then there's a hundred. At that time there was a hundred men, now fortunately it's a hundred men and women. Representing three or 25 million Americans. And I wanted that, and we had the opportunity to set the conscience. I realized after I'd been there a while, that what I was seeing was some of the best part. There's a lot of other parts in it. But I found it fascinating, you know, I was offered all kinds of other jobs as we're going along. And the judiciary, there's no place I wanted to be other than the Senate, especially representing a state like Vermont. I grew up just a few blocks from here. My sister and I, my sister Mary and I, remember walking up this hill, visiting relatives and friends and everything. So I really became impressed with people who were there when I agreed to disagree with an issue. And yes, it has been, one vote said, I guess just about all but two. Someone asked me about vote number 14,312. And I was like, five years' idea, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Everything about it appealed to me because you could get your own ideas out there. You could try to get other people to join your ideas. You can have an effect on your own state, have your own state, but you can also have an effect on all other Americans and very much matters throughout the world. The book starts off, of course, with your time growing up in Montpelier and the Leahy Press, an institution that probably almost everyone in this room remembers. Goes on to your time as Chittin County State's attorney and then we come to the race in 1974. And one of the most amazing superlatives of your career, to me, has always been that you are the only Democrat ever elected to the US Senate from Vermont, which is a sort of amazing piece of history. And in 1974, as you relate in the book, there's sort of still the pieces of our modern political landscape. You've got Bernie Sanders right there and then a very young US Senator comes to campaign for you, Joseph Robinette Biden. And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about the 74 race and your memories of Bernie and President Biden in that moment. Well, then Senator Biden, who was the youngest member of the US Senate, if I was going to be elected, I'd be the second youngest at that time. He came up here for a, you have to remember that Vermont Democratic Party was almost an asterisk at the time. He came up for a big rally that Vermont Democratic Party was going to have, I think 25 people were at it. And he was then going off other states campaigning. The press talked about which candidates we had there for governor and this and that and the other thing that's about Joe Biden. I was, this was a few weeks before the election, I was irrelevant enough, I never even got mentioned. But Joe and I hit it off because we were laughing in the hallways and we were like, well, you're gonna be crowds up here. I said, oh, this is the last one. Last year I went to the crowd, we only had 15, we're almost 30 now, it's important. I could see the acceleration, they were gonna be like, okay. And they were like elected. The older members, both the two of us as the kids, because we were the two youngest. And I think we bonded over that because neither one of us was supposed to have won the first time. And you remember the headlines, five days before the election, Paul Boone's Leahy. And then, which was an uncomfortable five days. I saw myself at the panel after all this campaigning, then five days later, when he unexpectedly wins. Now I should mention to everybody, probably about Garrett, the Republican party was having their celebrations here in Montpayer. Because they were elected the first, a new Senator in 34 years. Senator Aiken had been elected for a four-year term, first to complete the term of the year I was born. And so now they're gonna have a nuisance all over here to meet with the new one. It's not getting late into the evening and things are looking a little bit different. My campaign in a hotel, in a motel in Burlington, the only prostitute were young, spying editors and writers from cars, newspapers, including Garrett Grap. My dad, Chris Grap. I thought you were there too from the car. No. Well, Chris, you waged well. But we had Vermont said, I don't like to move, they were taking pictures, those were the pictures that were seen in the papers that had them the next day. I said, make sure, if you took the pictures, you get paid for them. So one of the things that really comes through in this book is how your closest and best political advisor in your entire career has been your wife. That's true. And Marcel shows up in almost every key moment in every key conversation and the books are filled with wonderful stories of the two of you, including my favorite when you went off, after you got married, went off on your honeymoon and returned to the family farm and your father had printed up one sign that said Patrick's room, one sign that said Marcel's room. And then in between had posted signs saying, no hunting or trespassing. No hunting or trespassing. Nothing but a new press. I wonder if you could sort of talk about how that relationship has inspired you and helped you through the course of your career. Because I think it is so unique to me in American politics over the time that you two have been together serving the state. I can honestly say I could not have done it without Marcel. There are so many times very difficult issues that come up whether one or not, the two of us could sit privately and just talk about it. We're all each other's thinking so well, I mean, our decision to retire, and before I had the accent, was a joint decision. As you know, we picked the same room where I'd announced almost 40 years before for the election. But she can be very honest with me and say, you know, that was great, or what were you thinking? And then she is highly respected by other settlers I'm with, presidents over the years, others. And again, I find that they can seek out her advice and know it's not gonna be in the papers, it's gonna be between them, and that's been very helpful. I sit here in Vermont every so often when I come to something, oh, good to see you, where's Marcel? All right, all right. I want to talk a little bit about Patrick. I want to talk a little bit about some of your accomplishments in the Senate and some of the major moments that you have lived through. And one of the things I also learned about the book was you get so much of your sense of humor in it, and there's so many funny moments, both you and Marcel. And I thought I would share one of them and then actually ask you about a less funny moment in the wake of 9-11 and the anthrax scare that targeted you, which you talk a lot about, and the way that you struggled with your conscience in the wake of 9-11 and the run up to the Iraq War and how you were having dinner with Bill Plant, the CBS bureau chief, the week that your office was targeted with anthrax, Bill Plant legendary, CBS Newsman actually passed away this week himself, and that you and Marcel came up with an idea that you were going to show up at his house for dinner wearing yellow rubber gloves, and you docked on Bill's door and said, it's been a busy week. I haven't had all the chance to answer all my mail. Could I borrow your kitchen table to open the rest of it? And I don't know if you could just talk a little bit about what it was like living through that moment and the anthrax scare and sort of the run up to the Iraq War. Well, the anthrax scare was significant. Fortunately, when the first anthrax murder hit and killed somebody in Florida, and then there was a rumor that one had arrived in one of the said office buildings, my chief of staff had stopped the bill coming into our office. We found a letter addressed to me and because the zip code was very similar, went to the state department by mistake. This was what I was supposed to receive it open. One of the postal employees who touched it took it from here, put it in here, died as a result. Others, people were targeted specifically. They died. And when we found it, one of the others addressed to me, they'd been found, this was a few weeks later and all the mail they were holding, no one, one container had something in it. Anyway, it was finding, I was on my way home, got a call from the FBI director, about a door, and he said, well, we found the fifth letter we're looking for. I said, oh God, Bob, don't tell me. He said, yeah, it's addressed to you. And you'll see police cars outside your home when you get there, when we want you to have security. It was a very funny moment. And I understood the truth, even that, I had people threatening to kill me and all that. I never really worried about it. This one I knew that a lot of directed to me killed somebody else. And your plan, and Robin's method invited us over for dinner were some mutual friends before. And they thought, well, we have to cancel. And I said, I'm going to get out of this since I concerned, that's when we came up with the idea and said, no, we'll be there. And the police guy brings us up and we knock on their door. And we would all of the others say, now, don't talk about the entry. It's going to be very, Pat and myself suddenly tell him, don't talk about, I should have, we should have been in a place where we could sign this bill. The laughter grew, and it happened to me out of the funk that I was in because of the, because of the attack. And I wonder if you could talk about the decision to vote against the Iraq war authorization, which you sort of really wrestled with in the book. And there's this incredible story, to me, as someone who covers natural security, the most amazing story in the whole book of how you and Marcel were out walking a couple of weekends, and these two men, these two joggers would come up to you and say, you really should ask for file number five in your classified briefing. And then the next weekend they said, you really should ask, now that you've seen file five, you should really see file 12. And it was sort of, those were the secret files, evidently, that sort of showed that the Bush administration was stretching the intelligence that it made. I had asked a whole lot of questions in these meetings. And we see joggers in our neighborhood all the time. We'd never seen these two before we get it. Good morning, Senator, good morning, Mrs. Leahy. I heard you had the briefing. I said, well, I can't talk about the briefing, I had it. But they show you a file, they use a code word, I put just a number in there. And when I saw it, I was contradicted by what had been told us by Dick Cheney and others, who briefed us. And I was troubled by the first one. It sits on that, then all of a sudden they appear again. But did you see the other file? And I'm like, holy, well, I couldn't talk about it. I'm like, well, I understand, but I think it's quite interesting. So we did. And I told myself, I'm gonna come out and give us some more. I don't care how popular I'm going after the Iraqis because New York Times and everything was pretty. They had this thing that they had weapons of mass destruction, well, they didn't have. And the evidence was very clear. So we were out and walking again. Suddenly after church and these big black cars go by and one pulls up a suburban with kind of interiors I get used to now and right behind it, window goes down. It's a member of President Bush's inner circle. And he said, Pat, Marcel, good to see you. I said, well, good to see you. Pat, could I talk with you? Everybody gets out of the car. I get in, windows go back up. It's a security thing. And he said, I hear you, you read the two files and you're going to vote against the war. I said, that's right. Can I talk you out of that and vote for it? I said, no. He said, will we still be friends? I said, yes, but it's not right what you guys are saying. So I was trying to get out myself and walked out about a mile or so from the home. And he said, we'll give you a ride. I said, let me tell you where I live. The answer was, we know where you live. I'll never forget that. I would rather watch what was going on at that point. And I voted against it. Several people afterward told me they finally got something and would vote for it for one reason or another, which they voted that way. One of my heroes in both the Democratic and the Republican administration, this is not in the book, it was Colin Powell who spoke to the UN in bouts for these weapons of mass destruction that he had been briefed on. Of course, it turned out that we're not. And we ran to each other somewhere and we were talking about, he, to normal I've been saying, he was now retired and became very ill and died. And he said the biggest, we had talked about the illustrious career he had, a wonderful career. He said my biggest mistake was that I didn't read the intelligence you read. And even in his bookie, he talks about he wish he'd read that. Your book is littered with incredible anecdotes of some of your colleagues from the Senate. And one of the things that really stands out is that you had a very special friendship in the Senate and later in his White House with Barack Obama. And you would tease each other in a lot, but I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your friendship with Barack Obama and sort of how you sort of encouraged him along on his presidential run. Well, he was doing, he sort of, many ways kept himself, but the two of us would work on the Senate gym. And he said that he was in far better shape than I was and he would tease me about my old sneakers. We would trash talk each other, something fierce. And on the way out, we'd be laughing our heads off with our arms around each other. But I encouraged him to run. He had taken away from Governor in Illinois and I said, look, you have a chance to run, run. Somewhere if you lose. The way I felt is a lot different than Senator in Vermont, but the only same union never elected a Democrat and we're the 14th same union. If I hadn't run that time, I would have regretted forever. And just do it, you have the backing. And he didn't know what he would. I had friends in there, but including Hillary Clinton and she had won decisively the first primary in New Hampshire. Our son, I liked to scuba dive and we were, it was a week's break in the Senate. We were down in the Caribbean diving and I called Barack on his cell phone and I said, look, I'm gonna come out for you. And I'll go anywhere and door shoot everything else. He said, well, you know, I lost. I said, yeah, we was one team. He sat in the aisle around and we'd watch that. And so we said, remember John McCain was gonna be running against him. Gets my cell phone, this is the way we were. He said, it's great that Patrick's gonna come out for me, but if you're down there diving in all the Caribbean, tell him to put a hat on when he comes up so he doesn't burn that bald head of his. He's the only speaker I can hear. I said, you know, I was just thinking, do you happen to have John McCain's phone number when we got here? I thought, okay, we'll have to wield that kind of relationship. But of course, two days later in a Southern state, I made a strong endorsement of it, as did others. And, you know, we've always teased each other but then we've had very serious conversations. And I thought to the world about my, well, go ahead. Yeah, I've got three more questions that I wanna ask and then we're gonna take a couple of audience questions. So if you wanna start thinking about any questions you might have for the Senator. You know, here at Vermont, we think of you, Senator Lakey, as, you know, for your role on the Agriculture Committee, your, you know, the decades that you served on the Judiciary Committee and on the Appropriations Committee. But throughout the book, some of your sort of biggest and proudest achievements come in foreign policy. And in terms of relations with Cuba and your role sort of reopening the relations with Cuba in terms of banning landmines and of course the Lakey Law. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the foreign policy realm that we don't really think of as much here, at least as part of your legacy, but I think is probably the biggest stamp you have put on the world. Well, some ways, the fact that I don't go rushing off and hold a press conference and everything I might do overseas because I found that if you do it quietly, you get the confidence of the people you're working with. And, you know, I, Vietnam and all those positive being the only remonder to vote to end the war. And at that time, the editor of our largest newspaper told me I'd never get reelected because he strongly supported the war. But I felt comfortable with it. And I felt, why be in the Senate if you can't do so? Now later, having seen a young child during conflicts in Central America and a field hospital without, with a leg missing and he was devastated the rest of his life, turned out it was landmines. So I started learning more about landmines. And Bobby Boer, who was paralyzed as a Marine in Vietnam but began to be Vietnam veterans for Vietnam. John McCain, John Kerry, who would try to open that. I thought, well, maybe we could use the way he wore it was fun for that. I talked to the party, sorry, a party to put in there, President Bush and Jim Baker, the secretary, I was in the Oval Office, and I said, you know, we could do this, we could run the money through the Vietnam veterans and President said, that's a great idea. Baker, the secretary said, that's a great idea. And I said, well, you got assistant secretary, so that's one of the things that allows the idea. President Bush says, Jimmy, I don't even go to, Jimmy, get him on the phone. So he gets on the phone, the governor, so he explains to the secretary why he thinks it's a lousy idea. He said, okay, look, I got something here that thinks it's a great idea. Mr. President, did you hear that? And therefore, it went over. And I'll never forget the effect. Here's all these people who lost their legs, they had crawled on the ground for years. They gave me my first wheelchair under the laying fund. And they asked me to pick up this man, put him in the wheelchair. All those, through the speech that he stared at me, I was thinking, this guy must hate me. America, over six feet tall, I'm walking in and out. They asked me to pick him up, put him in his wheelchair. I did, I put him in the wheelchair, he grabbed my shirt and pulled me down and kissed me. The same thing happened to John Glenn, but he put that in. John was not, rest of his soul, was not an emotional type. He had tears in his eyes. And he was moved by and became one of my strongest forces. And when I told the president about it, he had tears. But the thing is, I said, okay, this is one step. Let's keep doing it. Went to the River of Asia and Orange in Denay. John Tracy, who was at my Vermont office, at the station in Denay, has gone on a helicopter and fought against the Vietnamese. He came with me. I explained to the top general in Vietnam, who John Tracy was. General stands up, of course everybody else stands up because he was so respected, he walks down to where John was, stands at the tension, slew to him. That kind of told what happened. We'd done this step by step, but I'm going to Vietnam, I hope, later this month. And, but it's all just done step by step. It may have come a way, it may come a way. It doesn't mean we agree on everything with them by any means. But it happened. Cuba was the same way. The first time we went down there, Jack Reed, Senator from, from Dallas, he's about five foot eight, I think, speaks, been a part of Cuba, speaks Spanish. And we, we thought might happen, got called in the middle of the night to go and have dinner with Fidel Castro. And I didn't interrupt him, so he said to everybody, don't interrupt him. And I said, well, you should know about Senator Reed. He's been traveling with me. And Jack, tell him, present what you said about me. So he says in Spanish, place of Reed Goh, I'd speak and he said, be nice to the big guy, cause he thinks he's important, but I'm the guy you gotta talk with. For now, in terms of me, I said, do you know what we said? Oh, no, no, we do this routine. Oh, well, he loved it. I mean, nobody would ever do that with him. We were back and forth and back and forth. And he wanted myself to know that they'd make the finest ice cream in the world there. I said, well, no, no, no, no, no. We got Ben and Jerry's. I said, never heard of it. I said, would you want some? He said, I don't care. On the way out, he grabs myself, I said, if he sends the ice cream packet, try ice and pop it. And we did. The Secretary of State, which you heard about, of course, Bill Corwin's, when you tried to appoint him, talked about the revolution in the panel. But they ended up, we got it down there and got a very nice note back from him. And a box, which I was hoping wouldn't be, would not be cigars, but it's all, every kind of rum they make is still sitting, rum sitting unopened with a handwritten note from, yeah, it was there. But I say that I was just a precursor when Ronald Castro became President. He would not meet with any American officials. I had a delegation of Republicans and Democrats down there, asked, I got a phone call at lunch. It was Castro. He'd like to meet with me that evening. And which was a surprise, but I asked him, I could bring myself. I said, okay. I said, well, I've got a delegation of senators. I don't want to see a delegation. Well, could I bring the senior Republicans on it to show us bipartisan? All right, we go to the meeting and here's the kind of inner diplomacy. I said, well, you know, people of our age, he said, I don't know when you are. He said, okay, I'm doing really good as a diplomat. I said, but we'll remember what you did while you remember what you think we did. You're a bigger country. You did more things wrong than we did. I said, man, I'm really doing a good job here. And I said, well, we have, we want to leave a better world for our children and grandchildren. I have a great granddaughter. Ourself says, oh, do you have a picture of her? Well, yes, I do. Things are lovely. And we have a granddaughter of the same age and he pointed out the grandson's head is a security's right, mother's black, and our granddaughter's just the opposite. Our daughter is white, our son-in-law is African-American. Bring the pictures the next time you come. And then Dick Shelby, conservative, there was his wife, Dr. Shelby, she said, well, you know what, I taught a number of Cuban students at Georgetown where she was a professor. The whole attitude changed. And we kept in touch and then I wanted to get prisoners that they had and I talked about that in the book and what we didn't talk about where they also had a CIA agent who'd been held prison for a number of years and we finally worked out an exchange. I went down in one plane with the wife of the American, another plane took three Cubans we had in prison, down in a third plane, unmarked plane, all went to different airports, went to pick up the CIA agent, grabbed the ground in 35 minutes. President Obama said our son-in-law was one of his photographers down there and it was an emotional thing. And then that led to President Obama being the first president I believe to go to Cuba since Calvin College. And things improved so much for that. I regret terribly, I told myself at the time when Donald Trump caught up with all the things we had worked for decades to agree with Cuba. It didn't help us. It damaged the young people in Cuba. And but those, the Cuba, the Vietnam, and passing, we were the first country to ban the export of landmines. I wrote other countries, then dozens of them copied the same law, many of them called the Leahy Law. And the last thing, we set the Leahy Law. In fact, I was on the phone half the weekend in part to this, the bans are going to any military unit in the world that's clear violation of human rights. Yeah. Let me ask one final question here about the Supreme Court. You are one of the four U.S. senators sitting in the Senate right now who has voted on the entire Supreme Court over the course of your career. And... Not for all of them. I didn't say voted for all of them, voted on all of them. And you talk about, and it's really striking in the book, the sort of arc of the politicization of court nominations. And you talk about Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination as one of your proudest moments as a senator. You talk about how you voted for John Roberts when he was Chief Justice. And sort of what an important moment that was for you in terms of the sort of regular order of Supreme Court nominations. And then you have actually some very strong words for Mitch McConnell in the book about the Merrick Garland nomination and the death of Antonin Scalia. And I wonder if you could just sort of, as a final question tonight, talk a little bit about the challenge of the way that the court has become politicized and what that has done to the Senate as an institution. Well, that worries, what has happened worries me very much. It was back and forth on my mind on John Roberts. I did not want somebody as Chief Justice to be there to pry line vote. Because I wanted to see, I wanted to keep some respect for the court, even though he and I disagree with some issues, but I thought he's an honest, well-qualified person. But then I started to unravel with Merrick Garland, a man that, it was on the Court of Appeals. Remember Republicans that said that's a sort of person Barack Obama is moderate to that point. Well, as soon as he nominated him, Mitch McConnell said, well, we never confirmed some of your presidential election here, which of course is BS, that's a technical parliamentary term. But I said, I was kind of looking at it, don't you use the word? But we had Anthony Kennedy was in Ronald Reagan's last year, I'm sorry, it's going to be an election, which actually is going to be an election that fall. And Democratic controlled Congress and Senate, we confirmed Kennedy like many two or something in votes. And so there was a complete misstatement that McConnell was saying, and I told him so, but it opened the way then to have people come in that the Federalist Society had been grooming that had very clear ideas of how they would vote and made it very clear to the Federalist Society. And I had concerned anyway by someone who sat on the bench like Alito would go to political gatherings, which just as it's never did, it talked about the need for the politicize the court. And then attacking Joe Biden and others, the whole thing fell apart during the Trump years and they came in and they were willing to McConnell so much for the rules. They waived the rules on timing, on the amount of hearings to have. The White House bought part of the background checks, including for one judge who was having, or a nominee who was having enough trouble because a woman who had said what he did wrong and I said, yeah, but I also want to look at the fact that he accepted stolen files from the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he's stolen by a guy named Miranda. And it just, the politicization started then, it continued with the Federalists and others, basically grooming people and saying, they won't take over the courts. It's such a mistake. And I'm afraid that the respect that I always had as a young lawyer, and I argued before all the federal courts and state courts, it destroys the respect people have for their decisions. And I always felt as a prospect, I argued a lot of cases of remorse would be more. I would accept whatever they did. In fact, the case we kind of engineered it up there, beach versus light, this would be for a role versus weight. And I'd argued why the law against abortion in Vermont was unconstitutional. Five member conservatives in court in Vermont agreed with me on that and before role versus weight, they came down with a decision here in Vermont and the beach in Miami that outlawed restraints and looked up to a woman in her position to make the decision. I'm proud of that. All right, I think we've got time for a question or two from the audience and the player is going to steal my microphone away and take it out to the audience. Yeah, we have time for a few questions and then we'll do book signing. Both of the gentlemen will be signing. They will ask for the book signing. We're going to ask people to come up on the stage to the stairs there and book signing right there. I was just saying, I have Karen Crafts latest book I want to give which is excellent, signed. Also the book here. And I'll have the signed copy of the book, take it. Oh, thank you, sir. Oh, you. I have to ask the questions, you know, it's about the influence of... Anyone who needs to come forward to ask a question? I'm Craig Salt. I'll bring it up. Hello, Senator Kerry. I'm Craig Lange and he was maybe 1987 or 1988. I was working as a stringer for Associated Press and I was given the assignment to drive to Burlington to your office where I was to take photographs of you explaining why and how you had released a confidential report to an NBC report. And I felt horrible having to do that. And you, to your credit, you came to Vermont. You gave reporters their fair chance to have at you. And that night, I was having dinner with friends and we all said, but aren't we lucky? And the next day I said, my God, I'm gonna call him up and tell him that. So I looked up your number in the phone book. You remember what that is, right? And I called and Marcel, you answered the phone and said, oh, thank you so much. It's been a hard week. And Pat's not here. He went down to the hardware store. An hour later, you called Craig, it's Pat, white weird old friends. And we're both photographers. Well, it's you and me. And what struck me then and what has struck me ever since and this is not just true of you, but of many Vermont politicians. We are so lucky to have people who are authentic and real and really thinking not of themselves so much, but of the rest of us and what's best. So my comment is, thank you so much for that. And how do you follow this up? And thank you. One of those I'm wearing is a photograph, excuse me, you should talk about photography and what lens you use on this. I should point out that I was angry at myself for releasing that confidential report. There's nothing classified in it. In fact, the committee released a whole, not just the part I showed, released a whole report within a week or so after putting out the other classified because as President Pro Tem and because of the committees I've chaired, I receive classified material every week, sometimes every day. But you know, it's just where I am. We have always had a listed home phone number. Once that somebody said, oh, I call it so and so and so and so and there's one payer and they're trying to reach me that back when you had phones and phone books. So he's like, oh, he's dropping every kind of name of the famous people he called. And I got you a phone number. I said, did you look at the phone book? No, you wouldn't be there. I said, look at the phone book. Damn, that's it. I got it for those who are phone members. Thank you very much, Senator, for the work you've done for Vermont, for our country, for the world. It's very impressive to hear it and have the book I can't wait to read it. Now, two things. The anthrax, sorry, where was that coming from? Who was sending anthrax to your office to target you? That's the first question. The second question is these two anonymous jawbirds who gave you tips about the files. Do you know who they were and or where they came from to give you that information that was so important? Thank you. No, I don't know their names. I surprise them how and where they did come from. Obviously somebody in the administration knew that I also forgetting bad information and they knew I'd worked carefully on these issues and I think they wanted me to know. On the anthrax, a long, long time was spent trying to figure out who did it and why. The FBI stated basically fatally that they had the right man, they turned out they had the wrong person. He'd asked his job to sue the FBI and they had to come up with a million or two million dollars and the New York Times was writing that there were weapons of mass destruction in their reporter, had a special source named Chalbey, the people of the intelligence referred to him as curveball, they did not trust him. And in the anthrax thing, the man they finally had a warrant for committed suicide just for the rest of them and they closed the case. They said, you must be satisfied now we have the right person. I said, you don't, you may have had the person who mailed the anthrax, but it was such a complicated type of anthrax, there had to be others involved and I've told them my suspicions of who they are and that was by the way why they didn't, people died. They tested on one young woman in New York and killed her. Nearly 90 years old and Kanaka died because her male had touched some of the male sent to me in time to action. And I think there were several people involved with that and I think that it was not a good investigation and these are my own personal views and I'd like to know why I was targeted. Two of us were in the Senate, myself and Tom Dasher. I think it was a question on there. Thank you. Senator, I just think it's nice after all these years that you're finally going to get a chance to focus on your acting career. Can we roll if you want to tell us about it tonight and make some news, maybe? I hear they're looking for a new James Bond. Yeah, yeah. Right. If I could just fit in, you have to mind me about that. I've been in five Batman movies and I've written some states for Batman and he said every single set that I've made in those Batman movies, it's a fair amount, goes to the Coward, Copper, Children's Hyper. I had my first I was going to cry there when I was four, my sister and I and our brother, John, would read all kinds of books that our parents encouraged us to read. I wrote a young people, I learned how to read. He drew the money from that and all the money I was able to get from some of the actors and others. They were able to build the big wing, took the library out of the basement as he had sick, out of the basement, made the wing which is designed for children who read way above their level. They have that but the old children who have a high time reading, they have that. And it's just, I love it. In fact, I'll try to make this very short. I was volunteering one time on a Saturday. I really am, I'm reading the story and I was handed a note that Batman's enemies had hidden there, pictures in the library and had clues which I couldn't figure out. I grabbed myself a, I said, you nearby, I need help, go and put the inbox Batman. And he got four or five or six or four kids, and I was like this, Batman couldn't be self of the clues, the children did. So I was like, oh, I don't think you children. You're welcome, Mr. Batman, that was not the problem. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was a passage in the book that you talked about, the sort of fight over organic farming labeling where you had this great passage about Vermont that we're a small state, we've never even tried to be the biggest at anything, but we've excelled by being the best in a quiet kind of show, don't tell away. We took that quiet pride in everything from our maple syrup to our granite and marble to our cheddar cheese. If it had the word Vermont in front of it, it meant something about quality and craftsmanship. So, Senator, I wanted to thank you for being the best kind of Vermont senator that we could ever ask for. Thank you.