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The Current Transcript for October 12, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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As far as the Post [unintelligible] we are not going to let this go. We should not let this go. His words aren't gone. They are not gone away.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Karen Attiya is Jamal Khashoggi editor at The Washington Post. But she may never work on a column with him again. The Saudi Arabian citizen who had a platform for his views in that U.S. newspaper is suddenly one of the best known journalists in the world, but for seemingly tragic reasons. Though the Saudis deny it, it appears he may have met a terrible fate after visiting his country's consulate in Turkey. I'll speak with one of his good friends, New Yorker staff writer Lawrence Wright, first up. Then, what's a few hundred million between families.

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I served two terms in the Canadian parliament hut then I thought it was time to come back to the family business as we were expanding, and this is where I am now and I love it.

MS: Belinda Stronach is back in the headlines this week after being sued by her father, the autoparts billionaire and founder of Magna International, Frank Stronach. In half an hour I'll speak with a reporter who first broke this story and we'll look into why a very wealthy families so often struggle to keep it together. Plus:

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They will be met with fire, fury and friendly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.

MS: What would the real fire and fury of a nuclear clash with North Korea look like? In an hour I'll speak with an expert on the rogue country's nuclear program who's put forth one scenario in a provocative new novel. I'm Michelle Shepard and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

Alleged plot surrounding missing Saudi journalist didn't factor in his fiancée, says Lawrence Wright

Guests: Robert Baer, Lawrence Wright

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JAMAL KHASHOGGI: I'm living between Istanbul and Washington D.C.

JOURNALIST: When do you think you might be able to go home again?

JAMAL KHASHOGGI: I don't think I don't think I would be. I don't ever be.

JOURNALIST: [Unintelligible] every now and again, test the temperature?

MS: Those are some of the last words we have from Jamal Khashoggi recorded after a recent interview with the BBC. As much of the world now knows, Mr. Khashoggi a Saudi Arabian journalist and critic of the kingdom walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month and it appears he never walked out. The fear is that he's been killed. As a permanent U.S. resident who wrote a column for The Washington Post, his disappearance has become an international incident. Here's U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday.

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First I want to find out what happened and we're looking again, this took place in Turkey, and to the best of our knowledge, Khashoggi is not a United States citizen. Is that right? He is a permanent resident. Okay. We all like it and we don't like it even a little bit. But as to whether or not we should stop 110 billion dollars from being spent in this country knowing they have four or five alternatives, two very good alternatives, that would not be acceptable to me.

MS: I'm joined by one of Jamal Khashoggi friends and colleagues. The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lawrence Wright. He's with me from Austin Texas. Hi Lawrence.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Hi Michelle.

MS: You were friends with Jamal Khashoggi. Tell me a little about how you came to know him in a little bit about who he is.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well I was writing The Looming Tower I was researching it, my book about al-Qaida and 9/11, and I spent some time in Saudi Arabia. I had to get a job there in order to get into the kingdom because they wouldn't let me in as a reporter. So I was working for the Saudi Gazette in Jeddah which was Bin Laden's hometown. And very quickly I found out that the best reporter in town was Jamal Khashoggi who was working for the Arab News. I made a point of going over to meet him and what was immediately appealing to me about him is that he was candid in a way that very few people that I had met in Saudi Arabia were. He had close contacts with the royal family. But he also understood the problem of extremism. In fact he had covered Bin Laden and the jihad in Afghanistan when he was a young reporter. So as a source he was wonderful, but he also just simply understood the culture, I thought, better than anybody else that I met.

MS: And when you first heard that he went missing in Istanbul, did you believe right away that he was dead? What did you think?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: I was worried. I was very worried about him. I thought at the time that it's most likely that he was kidnapped and taken back to the kingdom. When he left the country, in the summer last year, it was just before the roundup of a lot of - well you remember the princes and the billionaires. But there were also a number of intellectuals who were Jamal's friends and reporters. And they were locked up in the Ritz Carlton and Jamal wrote one of his very first columns for The Washington Post, maybe it was his first, objecting to that. So he's told me that 'they reacted as if I shot the king'. He knows it was seen as a betrayal by a person who had been thought of as a kind of insider because he had so many connections to the royal family.

MS: Do you have any hope for him now?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: You know as days passed and it became clear that the Saudis had probably gone into Turkey, and that this was maybe a plot to lure Jamal into some sort of Saudi situation where he could be abducted. I thought at first that's what it was all about. But when they were on and unable to produce him then I began to get very concerned.

MS: What are your thoughts now?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well you know it's hard for me because I really love Jamal. He was a wonderful man. But you know I think about Jamal I think he's just one of so many reporters who have been harassed, who've been jailed, who've been beaten, who've been killed. And you know if justice is brought in his case, and believe me if it's the truth of the matter is that this was an ordered execution on the part of the Royal Court, justice would be staggering to imagine. But I think if his if his death was met with justice then I think it would change the climate, the sense of entitlement that people have - especially, dictators and autocrats and mobs - to pick on the press to harass the press and even kill them.

MS: Larry, why now? Why in terms of the Saudi government trying to silence him in terms of the timing, why would this come at this point?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well it is puzzling. Jamal was he felt he was safe as long as he was in a western country. And I think - one of the things that he told me - we spoke privately about what he called the Arab Spring exiles. And he considered himself one of them, people who thought that the Arab Spring had so much promise, and Jamal had been one of them. And so many of them, their spirits broken, left to live in the West where they might be safe. And so all over the Arab world there are people who have left that region and gone into Europe and the United States. And one of Jamal's ideas was that they had string together, that they didn't have independently. And I think he wanted to organize some kind of move to create the voice of freedom outside of the Arab world that would give support to independent voices. I suspect that that was a motive. If indeed the royal court in Saudi Arabia decided to put him down, then they must have seen him as a greater threat than just the columns.

MS: yet it still runs contrary to what the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has tried to promote. You know if this alleged murder, along with some of the more recent brutal crackdowns, are put against sort of that image that he was trying to bring in the reforms, that he said he was trying to bring in, some that amal himself praise 21st came to power. How do you factor that into what's going on inside?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: You know he told me that what seems paradoxical to him is that he was advocating the reforms .and then Mohamed bin Salman comes along and now Jamal is in exile for advocating the reforms.

MS: That's right.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: And you know he was amused by his predicament. But he also said that you know freedom, it's one thing to talk about women driving, it's another to talk about who your leader is going to be, in other words, democracy. And Jamal believe that only democracy would free the Arab world from this constant curses which are mismanagement and wars.

MS: Do you think there's any possibility that MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is known, underestimated the response that we've seen to his disappearance?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: I have a theory, that's not very generous but I have to say it. If it's true that the royal court ordered the execution and they wanted to lure him to a Saudi sovereign territory which would be the consulate in Istanbul, they could imagine when they're sitting in Riyadh how this will be done. And he will be brought in. He'd be killed. He'd be disposed of and then they can say: 'Well he left the embassy. We don't know what happened to him'. What they didn't count on was his girlfriend, being a woman. They simply took no notice of her. She was standing out right in front of the embassy until midnight. That would have been fairly conspicuous but I think they disregarded her, in part because they just didn't consider her being important enough to- you know there's a witness standing right out outside.

MS: And Lawrence, you wrote on Facebook that the world will be a more savage place if Khashoggi is forgotten. And you ask what do we, as society, lose when journalists like Jamal Khashoggi are silenced. You're hoping to provoke discussion, to bring awareness. But can you answer your own questions now?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Yes. Jamal was a voice of moderation and peace. And you know those qualities are conspicuously absent in the Middle East. And in fact extremism is you know gaining a hand in indifferent form. You know the autocracy that you see in Saudi Arabia is in some respects crueler than ever. So what [unintelligible] for criticism in the press, observations by columnists, you know true reporting that would make a difference. What about the wars that are there undermining progress in the Arab world? Fact you know the new statistics about a whole generation of children lost in Yemen and Syria and other places because of the wars. And you know when you have a voice like Jamal saying, wait a minute, this is damaging our society and we're killing people innocent people. When you silence those voices. Yes you may be able to continue to wage that war. But the damage that you do to your society, as well as the society you're attacking, is immeasurable and will take generations to repair.

MS: Do you think others will pick up his voice and carry on?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: It's easy to imagine his case will simply be forgotten. And because of geopolitical considerations, such as America's relationship to Saudi Arabia, it would be best to be swept under the rug. Then I think we're in real trouble because that allows any- certainly it empowers Saudis to treat people that way. And it must send a shiver of terror into the hearts of anyone who would want to speak out.

MS: Lawrence, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: My pleasure thank you Michelle.

MS: Lawrence Wright is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, a colleague and a friend of Jamal Khashoggi. He was in Austin Texas. Mr. Khashoggi's disappearance is hanging over a major investment event planned for the Saudi capital Riyadh later this month. The New York Times has pulled its media sponsorship of the event and the Economist magazine's editor has canceled his speech. A growing list of top executives have also said they will not attend. But other guests, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Menuchin are still scheduled to appear. This despite new information from the Washington Post which is now reporting that the Turkish government has informed U.S. officials that it has audio and video evidence that Mr. Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate by a Saudi security team. Also today, a Saudi delegation has arrived in Turkey as part of a joint investigation. Robert Baer is a former CIA case officer and the author of several books including Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold our Soul for Saudi Crude. He joins us from Washington. Hi Robert.

ROBERT BAER: Good morning, Michelle.

MS: Let's start with the latest. The Washington Post story that the Turkish officials, Turkish government allegedly has recordings of Jamal Khashoggi being killed and dismembered by Saudi security members inside the consulate. What do you make of this report?

ROBERT BAER: Well I assume it's correct that the Turks have come out and gone to the administration, the American administration, and said we have tapes of it. And it doesn't surprise me the Turkish intelligence, the MIT, would wire the Saudi consulate. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are effectively in a cold war. They don't trust each other on all sorts of levels. So wiring that consulate makes total sense to me. But frankly I have to say, when I first heard these reports, I agree with Lawrence that I was convinced, almost 100 percent, that he had been grabbed sent out to the airport and put on one of those jets and brought back to Saudi Arabia, simply because the Saudis do not have a history of assassinating critics. They arrest him. They disappear them in prisons in the desert. In 1979 they did assassinate one critic in Beirut. But that was very unusual. The Saudis loathe, until this crown prince came along, to murder their citizens.

MS: So if it is proven that Mr. Khashoggi was killed on the crown prince's orders what does that say to you about the state of governance now in Saudi Arabia?

ROBERT BAER: Well the consensus has clearly gone. Saudi Arabia since 1932 its founding has been run on a consensus of senior princes. And they've been fairly rational in most of their decisions. In anything this flagrant could not have occurred in the past. Now Saudis tell me that they worry, even more than worry, they detest the crown prince. He's done all sorts of things that were unthinkable in the past. For instance putting the Lebanese prime minister, the head of state, under house arrest soon as he got off an airplane, Hariri. Frankly they call him a psychopath and they worry about him. They worry about Yemen. They worry about the rest of princes and senior businessmen and putting them in the Ritz Hotel and reportedly hanging them by their feet. This is not the Saudi Arabia that we know.

MS: We heard that clip from Donald Trump yesterday from the Oval Office. And he was pretty open, his assessment of the situation. He wants answers but he's not willing to jeopardize U.S. Saudi business interests. What role do you see, Robert, the president playing in pressuring Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi case?

ROBERT BAER: His very statement worries me. I mean he has for years been a business partner of the Saudi royal family. In fact, he had bought a yacht from a Khashoggi relative, Adnan Khashoggi. So he has his financial well-being is tied to Saudi Arabia in so many ways and still is with Saudi investments, Saudis staying in hotels. And then to have an American permanent resident aliens butchered apparently in the basement of a Saudi consulate and said well 'that's not going to stop us from going ahead with a 100 billion dollar deal'. I mean it's to me that sounds like 'as long as we've got business with the country, go ahead and murder our citizens and our residents when you have to. It's not going to affect our relations'. I just found this thing absolutely outrageous. Never heard it.

MS: The U.S. Senate did ask the White House this week to consider imposing sanctions against Saudi Arabia under the 2016 Global miniscule act. What impact do you think that will have, if any?

ROBERT BAER: Well I mean I think clearly the Saudis have a problem with this crown prince. I mean if this continues, and if he continues the war in Yemen, and whatever else he's going to do next, he's clearly not a stable leader and they have to come to terms with this. And the way to make that Saudi royal family do that is impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia. There's no other way. And a threat to the American Saudi alliance will get the attention of the Saudi royal family.

MS: And it was prominent Republicans in the Senate that led those calls, but ultimately it will rest with the White House to take action, go you think - given Trump's statement - that that will actually happen?

ROBERT BAER: I think that I think the Senate can tie his hands sort of like they did on on Russia. I mean he had obviously has a proclivity to align with dictators whether it's Kim Jong Un or Mohammed bin Salman. And I think, I hope, U.S. Congress can put a damper on that and effectively punish Saudi Arabia. If not like I said Saudi Arabia dissidents. Who knows what would be fair game.

MS: And the Canadian government tweeted some mild criticism of Saudi Arabia's human rights record earlier this year which was met with loud forceful rebuke from Saudi officials. What role can middle powers like Canada play in influencing Saudi Arabia do you think?

ROBERT BAER: Well Canada what they did was absolutely you know honourable and the right thing to do. But traditionally Canada has deferred the United States on relations with Saudi Arabia, whether it's supplying arms to the Saudi armed forces or anything else. So there's not much that Canada can do or Europe, simply because the relationship between - frankly that we do protect Saudi Arabia with the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf. If it weren't for that you know, who knows, the Iranians could be occupying the rim of the Gulf. So you know for them, to flagrantly kill an American resident and a journalist at The Washington Post- I tell you when I first heard this I said there's no way they killed him. That's just it's insane. But that's what apparently at the Washington Post is right, that's what happened.

MS: Robert this story continues to unfold and we'll be following it. But I appreciate you joining us today. Thanks for coming on the show.

ROBERT BAER: Thanks Michelle.

MS: Robert Baer is a former CIA case officer and the author of Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold our Soul for Saudi Crude. He joined us from Washington. We asked for comment from the Saudi embassy in Ottawa and no one got back to us. Coming up it's the CBC News. And coming up on Monday night if you're in the Ottawa area then we're inviting you to join Anna Maria Tremonti for a special town hall event about the legalization of marijuana. You can find out more and get your free tickets on our website at cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's Monday night in Ottawa. And the event will also be broadcast on The Current, on October 17th. After the news we'll share about intergenerational lawsuit that autoparts billionaire Frank Stronach has launched against his daughter, Belinda. I'm Michelle Shepherd and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Frank Stronach's lawsuit against family is in true form for billionaire, says business columnist

Guests: Bill Finley, Andrew Willis, David C. Bentall

MS: Hi I'm Michelle Shephard and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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MS: Still to come. I'll speak with the author behind a new novel with a rather ominous title; The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States. It's a work of fiction more or less but it's provocative and grounded in the scary reality of the North Korean nuclear threat. Author Jeffrey Lewis, who's also a scholar and leading expert on the issue, joins me in a half an hour. But first, why Thanksgiving at the Stronach may have been a bit awkward this year.

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This year we wanted to be able to host our special guests and friends in the Stronach Group's tent. And as you can see here the atmosphere is sort of like Soho House meets Ralph Lauren. It's meant to be a place to hang out, to have fun, to socialize.

MS: That's a voice we haven't heard much here lately in Canada, Belinda Stronach, the businesswoman, philanthropist and former member of parliament. You heard her showing off a party tent there at Pimlico a horse racing course owned by the Stronachs in Baltimore Maryland. Of course it was auto parts that helped make The Stronach family fortune. Belinda's father, Frank Stronach, founded Magna International a global automotive supplier based in Aurora Ontario. But this week it emerged that the family firm has been roiled by a family feud. Frank Stronach has filed a lawsuit demanding 520 million in damages and the suit names his daughter Belinda and two of his grandchildren. He alleges that his heirs have mismanaged the family's assets. And while he's been on the front page of Canadian newspapers this week, the story was first reported by an unlikely source. The Thoroughbred Daily News. We've reached reporter Bill Finley at Red Bank New Jersey. Hi Bill.

BILL FINLEY: Good morning Michelle.

MS: How did you find out about this lawsuit?

BILL FINLEY: Like many journalists I just got a tip from somebody, who will forever remain anonymous, that they heard that Frank had filed a lawsuit. They didn't know much more about it. They just said go find it and that you'll make an interesting story and sure enough, sure did.

MS: You broke a story throughout North America that continues to be on the front page of newspapers here. Why is the thoroughbred Daily News interested in Frank and Belinda Stronach?

BILL FINLEY: Well in America Frank Stronach is not known for his auto parts empire or his attempt at running for political office and all the various things that he's done in Canada and of course he is, his offices are in Toronto. In the United States it's all about the horseracing empire which is now called Skurnik group. It consists of six racetracks and numerous other horseracing related companies. And I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that Stronach group is the single biggest most important company in America in horse racing. So this is why you consider send an unlikely source to evoke and a story about a Canadian business magnate. Well in America it's all about thoroughbred horse racing, and nobody even remembers that he had once owned an auto parts company. It's all about the fact that owns, not only a bunch of racetracks, but some of the most prominent racetracks in the United States.

MS: And for those who aren't familiar yet with the story, can you briefly outline the allegations that Frank Stronach is making in the statement of claim?

BILL FINLEY: It's pretty simple. It all boils down to this' that he is alleging that Belinda and her cohorts basically threw him to the curb that they pulled off a coup and wrested control from him and left him with no power. It is a family owned company. It's not publicly traded. I don't even know if there's necessarily a board of directors. So basically I'm not quite sure how she did this but Frank was apparently setting her up to be the new head of the company upon death. He is 86 years old. So he had started giving her more and more power and more and more duty to get her ready for this eventual roll upon his death. And it looks like she, again this is all allegations and we're only hearing some [unintelligible] from the lawsuit, really nobody heard a word from Belinda since this happened. But apparently once she got a little taste of the new role of a more active role in running the company, she didn't want to relinquish it and get anything back to her father. In a matter of fact, yet according to the lawsuit, she wanted full control of the company and managed to pull it off.

MS: And one of the people in your words that you covered there, the thoroughbred racing community, what are they saying about the case?

BILL FINLEY: Well I think that you know nobody is on any one's side. It's not that people rooting for Belinda, or rooting for Frank, that this is causing a lot of worry within the American horseracing industry. I don't think this is going to make this Stronach company implode, but it's going to cause a lot of problems with this Stronach Group as we call it. One of the things that's been pointed out in the lawsuit by Frank Stronach is that he alleges that they're now having serious liquidity problems because of what he again alleges is her extravagant spending. If this company were to go broke or not be able to continue, as it has over the last many years, this would be disastrous to the American horse racing industry for many many reasons. Not only does own one of the three American Triple Crown races, the Preakness, it owns two racetracks [unintelligible] park that are among the most important racetracks in the country. American thoroughbred racing is struggling as it is and if this company were to, I wouldn't even say go away or go out of business which I don't think will happen, but even to be weak that would be a terrible blow for the horse racing.

MS: Well Bill congratulations on breaking this story and thanks for joining us today.

BILL FINLEY: My pleasure.

MS: Bill Finley is a reporter with The Thoroughbred Daily News. We reached him in Redbank New Jersey. Well here in Canada the Stronachs are known less for their horse racing interests and more for their autoparts company and political aspirations. Andrew Willis has been covering the family for years. He's a business columnist with The Globe and Mail and he's with me in our Toronto studio. Hi Andrew.

ANDREW WILLIS: Good morning Michelle.

MS: What did you think when you read Frank Stronach statement of claim against his daughter and grandchildren?

ANDREW WILLIS: It was completely in character for Frank and unfortunately it's completely in character for a lot of entrepreneurs with family companies who bring their kids into the company.

MS: Why is that?

ANDREW WILLIS: Everybody thinks: 'Well Frank's 86 years old. He's created Magna. He's had all this success. He should just go gracefully off and sit on a beach'. Frank Stronach does not sit on beaches. Frank Stronach does stuff and the guts of this debate, but the guts of the fight are about Frank's role and the company he created, versus a daughter who understandably is ambitious and wants to kind of take the company in her own direction. And she thought she'd been given the reins in 2013. Belinda was an experienced executive. As you mentioned earlier Michelle, she's run for political office. She's an ambitious woman. And all of a sudden she's got her dad dropping back into the family company after he had left. He'd gone off to Austria to run for politics in Austria. Didn't work out very well, back a year later and that's when the tension really started to reach the surface. But I think these issues have been building for years because Frank is frank and he's never going to be all to give up the company he built. And Belinda's got ambitions that sadly she hasn't been able to achieve with him on the scene.

MS: And we contacted Belinda Stronach and the Stronach group, as you did as well, and they gave us a statement which in part says: 'My children and I love my father. However, his allegations are untrue and we will be responding formally to the statement of claim in the normal course of the court process'. What is your sense then aside from Frank's personality that led up to this?

ANDREW WILLIS: Well there's two years of conflict that we're now aware of because, as Bill was just discussing with you, this is all been laid out in the 73 page lawsuit. And the tensions have been building for some time as to what's going to be Frank's role and what's going to be Belinda's role. And if I could boil it down for you Frank has got these passion projects, including a grass fed beef ranch in Florida. And he really believes in this stuff. He is an impassioned guy and he wants to have Americans eating healthy food. He's put 300 billion of the family fortune into this huge dredging operation. Belinda tried to shut it down. She said 'look we cannot afford to do this'. He built a golf course near the near the ranch, tens of millions of dollars went into the golf course. Belinda closed the doors and that made Frank crazy. And then the other little juicy element of this lawsuit is in recent weeks. Frank's been running around the country going to all these racecourses in this corporate jet, really gorgeous corporate jet. But Belinda decided to sell it didn't tell. And these are the kind of issues, just the control issues that have caused the breakdown of the relationship between father and son over the last two years. And look we've seen this it tons of Canadian families where one generation makes all the money. The second generation tries to live up to their parents expectations, especially when they get into try and run these companies and it goes really really badly. Where you've seen families successfully transitioning wealth is generally the entrepreneur build something and then they get professional managers to run it and the kids go off and do other things. And that's that's been the model that's worked well. What Frank and Belinda are doing is sadly gone wrong many many times.

MS: And so you weren't surprised that that was aired so publicly in such a dramatic way.

ANDREW WILLIS: Well the thing that shocked me is that all ended up in court. Usually families find better ways to resolve this. You know there's all sorts of proven approaches; something called binding arbitration. Basically Michelle you and I go into a room, we each presenter point of view, a judge or a retired judge would say' you know what Michelle you've got all the right points. We're going to go with Michelle solution and we both have to accept that'. That's the smart way to do it, it didn't happen here. They just couldn't get this done behind closed doors. Ending up in court did surprise me because it's such a thermo nuclear option. I mean what's said in these court documents can never be taken back. You opened up about the tenseness [unintelligible] Thanksgiving dinner. You imagine this family being together and looking at one another after what they've said about one another and it's not just Belinda, Belinda's children, Frank's grandchildren are involved in this. They're adults. They're in their 20s and they own trust that in turn owned the Stronach companies. So Frank's suing them as well.

MS: I know I think that's what struck a lot of people when you saw that, that even your grandchildren were involved in the lawsuit. And as you say it's just going to be thermo nuclear.

ANDREW WILLIS: It is just brutal.

MS: Frank Stronach spoke to Peter Gzowski in 1987 when Magna's revenues crossed a billion dollars. Let's take a listen to a bit of that conversation.

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PETER GZOWSKI: You've become something of a business guru. People were listening to your ideas. You like that part, is that important to you?

FRANK STRONACH: I believe it is important. I try to reflect and I try to open the books and I try to let people see how we do it. And we were very open about it. We are the most open company, we think, in the world.

PETER GZOWSKI: Is it important to have other people know your ideas are you trying to change the world?

FRANK STRONACH: I think that would be a strong statement. I hope that I could contribute to to create a better society, in one form or shape, and even if it's just an array of minute small amount.

MS: I saw you nodding there.

ANDREW WILLIS: Gzowski asks the right questions, Peter, God bless you. Now Frank talked a lot about what he called the Magna way. And it was an approach to empowering workers but also introducing a lot of automation. He was early to robots he was a real technical innovator and he was very very proud of what he does. And even in his philanthropy, Michelle, you know he went in after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and tried to build a new community on the edges of New Orleans. While he called it Magna land likes he's got an enormous ego. He has been incredibly successful in auto parts. He has not been very successful in some of his other ventures. If you've been around Toronto for a long time you may remember that Frank owned some lifestyle magazines, failed miserably, lost a lot of money. That he's had energy drinks, they failed, Redbull is one. I mean he's an impassioned guy. He does a lot of interesting things. He believes strongly that he's going to get things right. And frankly this big ranch in Florida that I mentioned a moment ago that seems to be a real point of contention between him and Belinda. Frank now believes in environmentally sustainable food. He believes in taking care of the animals as you raised them and Belinda she says this is a big waste of the family's money.

MS: Well let's talk a bit more about Belinda. You know her as well. Andrew over the years you've covered the family for 20 years is that right?

ANDREW WILLIS: 30.

MS: 30 years. So prior to this lawsuit, what was her relationship like? And tell us just a bit about what drives Belinda?

ANDREW WILLIS: Well so there are two siblings. There's Belinda and Andrew. Andrew works mostly in the golf course empire that Frank Stronach has built. Belinda has always been the heir apparent. And Frank has been very open about the fact that he wanted someone with a last name Stronach to take over his companies when he did leave the scene. So Belinda worked in the auto parts company. She's done a number of different roles in the horse racing empire that they build. I mean she's always been - and you know the Freudians would have a field with the relationship between father and daughter. She has always tried to fulfill her father's dreams of being a successful executive. And unfortunately now you can see they're butting heads because as she's built up experience, she's tried to do more on her own, and take more of a role in sort of taming Frank's impulses. And that has not worked out at all. But she has spent her entire adult life trying to impress him. I think that's the way it comes out.

MS: And what do you think this lawsuit will mean for the Stronach businesses and their employees?

ANDREW WILLIS: Well the interesting thing here, Michelle, is that the professionals who are running these companies are doing extremely well. In the last five years, they've almost doubled the revenues from horseracing. And as Bill said a moment ago, that is a challenged industry. And they've done it in a really innovative ways. They've they take the horse races in one place and they transmit them by on the Internet to casinos and to online gambling sites all around the world. I mean they've made Stronach races International Entertainment. I'm not a particular fan of horseracing but I do admire the job they've done of adapting horseracing for digital world. So the companies themselves will do well. I can't see any other solution here though that some of these businesses get sold and father and daughter go their separate ways. I can't imagine them ever repairing this rift. So someone's going to end up calling the shots. Frankly, Mr. Stronach, Frank Stronach has always built this company. I like his odds if they ever get it into court. I hope they can find some way to peacefully resolve this and find some way to get back to a father-daughter relationship that isn't quite this fractious.

MS: Andrew thanks so much for coming in today.

ANDREW WILLIS: Thank you Michelle.

MS: Andrew Willis is a business columnist at The Globe and Mail. He joined me here in our Toronto studio. Mixing family and business can be tricky. Something my next guest knows all too well. David C. Bentall's father built the Bentall centre, named after his grandfather, a 1.5 million square foot complex an underground shopping mall in downtown Vancouver. But after a family falling out, he says all that remains of the legacy is the name on the buildings. David C. Bentall is a Canadian adviser in family enterprise and the founding chairman of the Business Families Centre at the University of British Columbia. He's also the author of Leaving a Legacy: Navigating Family Businesses Succession. He's in our Vancouver studio. Hi David.

DAVID C. BENTALL: Good morning Michelle.

MS: David what did you think when you first heard Frank Stronach was suing his daughter?

DAVID C. BENTALL: Well Michelle obviously I was sad both for Frank and Belinda and for their family. I don't know either of them but I'm extremely confident that this is not the outcome that either of them wanted.

MS: had personal experience, something similar. Tell me your story about your family business. We'll start with who started it and what family members were involved?

DAVID C. BENTALL: My grandpa came from England in the early 90s hundreds and acquired a company called Dominion construction 1912. Spent 40 years building the business. And then my dad and my Uncle Bob went to work in the business, just prior to the war. And so they both worked there together for most of 40 years. And for probably 30 of those 40 years it was a wonderful happy circumstance, Michelle, dad building the business on the outside. Uncle Bob working on the inside. And then around 1988 they had a falling out and as a result of that all of the businesses were sold and the family relationships were unfortunately fractured.

MS: And what caused this falling out?

DAVID C. BENTALL: Well I think it's interesting, if you think in the context of the and Belinda story in The Stronach family, I think that transitioning leadership from one generation to the next in their case, or in our case of transitioning leadership from my dad to my uncle, is a tricky tricky exercise. And I think my dad and my uncle worked together for a long time. It was easiest when Dad was in charge but I think my uncle found it a long time working under dad's leadership, and my Uncle Bob wanted to have his turn. And I think trying to figure out how to make that happen really was a challenge. And it's interesting people talk about family business cocktail parties and they talk about when are the next generation going to take over the business. Michelle, noticed the hostile language to take over something that corporate raiders do. That's what the military does. They do a takeover.

MS: That's right.

DAVID C. BENTALL: And I think sadly in a family enterprise often we're dealing with a takeover rather than a collaboration. And I think where my dad or my uncle worked well was when they were sharing power and decision making. When it got when they got into trouble was when they were trying to make sure that - I guess - when my Uncle Bob wanted to be able to have the reins. And similar to Belinda she wants to have the reins. That's not appropriate. She's been around the company for years, at 52 years of age you'd think she'd be ready to lead. But most most of the enlightened families that I am aware of think, rather than passing the baton or having a takeover, they think about the interregnum where the two generations - or the two leaders in the case of my dad my uncle - are working together rather than having to make sure there's a sharp handoff between one leader and another. That makes sense.

MS: It does. David describe your what was your own experience like working with family members.

DAVID C. BENTALL: Well I had a great beginning working in our family company, I worked in different geographic areas in Vancouver and across the west and then in California and Toronto working in different roles. And it was very exciting to be part of a growing business and have the future looks bright ahead of me. But it did become difficult for me to work in an environment where my ideas were not welcomed. I was a young guy and had probably more ideas than were fair. And I think one of the best things I did, Michelle, in my career was to work outside of our family business for several years. I worked in Toronto for the Cadillac Fairview Corporation. At the time they were the largest or one of the largest real estate companies in North America. And I think that the biggest mistake I think I made was to only be there a couple of years. I think if I'd stayed maybe 10 years and come back when I'd earned a little more respect and I'd been a little more patient I probably would have made a big difference. I think that's a a challenge for all family enterprise, successors to be patient.

MS: What was it in the end and your case that ended the Bentall empire?

DAVID C. BENTALL: Well at the end of the day my two uncles decided that they didn't want the family to carry on in ownership. And so they added up the shares and found out that between the two of them they had just over 50 percent of voting shares. And so they took the company public and sold everything. So that kind of ended everything for everybody.

MS: And now you try to help families avoid some of the mistakes yours made. What's the general advice you give to people in family business?

DAVID C. BENTALL: Well thanks Michelle. Several things. And it's a great privilege. When I read the article about The Stronach family it reminded me how important it is the work that I'm privileged to do working with families. There's probably three things that we try and do, there are many others but there's probably three things that are paramount. The first, is to work with families to encourage and improve communication. One of the ways we do that is helping families to have regular family meetings where they can air their concerns before they become unmanageable, and often have the opportunity to facilitate and assist families. So number one is improving occasion. The second thing, is assisting families to create suitable governance structures. One of your earlier interviews was talking about how you're not sure whether the strong family have a board of directors. Every company has a board of directors. On a piece of paper somewhere in somebody's drawers a board of directors. But what we try and do and working with families is help them create working boards that can be helpful in, not only charting the course for the business, but also assisting the family in managing challenging circumstances when they come up, helping them have a sober second thought, helping them develop consensus regarding decisions. The second thing, is to help families get suitable governance. And then the third thing Michelle, I'd add, is that I try and work with families and my colleagues in this field, we try and help families to establish suitable conflict resolution mechanisms so that the families can resolve problems on their own and don't need to resort to the court room to help things resolve for them.

MS: And before we go how is your family doing now. Did your dad and uncles relationship ever recover?

DAVID C. BENTALL: Well it's not a happy story. I did go and meet with each of my uncles and apologized for my part. You know I confessed to them that I recognized that I was impatient and perhaps a bit of an iconoclast in the company. And so I apologized for my part. But sadly my dad died with a broken heart without being reconciled with his brothers. He worked for 50 years for the family business instead of getting a gold watch, he got invited to leave the company. So it was a sad ending for dad. And I'm thankful that our family, many of the cousins have good relationships, but sadly the brothers were unable to put things back together.

MS: David I really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you.

DAVID C. BENTALL: My privilege, Michelle, thank you.

MS: David C. Bentall is a Canadian adviser in family enterprise and the founding chairman of the Business Family Centre at UBC. He's the author of Leaving a Legacy: Navigating Family Businesses Succession. He was in our Vancouver studio. And coming up in the next half hour, looking back on the nuclear skirmish of 2020. An arms expert brings us his speculative fiction about a North Korean nuclear attack. I'm Michelle Shephard and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. [Music: Theme]

Nuclear war expert warns of future crisis in the form of a novel

Guest: Jeffrey Lewis

MS: I'm Michelle Shephard and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. If you're in the Ottawa area we're inviting you to join Anna Maria Tremonti for a special town hall event at the Canadian Museum of Nature on Monday evening, October 15th. She'll be looking at issues around the legalization of marijuana. Her guests include Bill Blair, minister of border security and organized crime reduction. And you'll hear why some longtime marijuana activists have mixed feelings, on the morning of October 17th.

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I can't say that I'm not happy. Legalization is obviously a great thing. It's a monumental piece of legislation. It's history in the world. We're one of the first G7 nation to do so. So it's a great step I'm glad to be a part of any sort of movement that is created that but it's definitely concerning landscaped to look forward to.

MS: That's in Ottawa. Monday night tickets are free. Visit our website to get yours at cbc.ca/thecurrent Doors open at 6:30 PM and the event runs from 7 to 9 p.m. And if you can't be there in person we'll be broadcasting the event, Into the Weeds, on The Current, on Wednesday October 17th, the day recreational marijuana will be legal.

[Music]

MS: You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Michele Shephard.

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No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. The United States has great strength and patience but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies. We will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.

MS: That was of course President Donald Trump at the U.N. last fall. At the time, tensions were high with North Korea testing nuclear weapons and the U.S. leader vowing fire and fury. Full on war between the two nations seemed dangerously near. One year, and one summit later, things seemed to have settled down at least for the moment. But both nations are still being led by erratic men with rather cavalier attitudes towards the most destructive weapons ever built. Jeffrey Lewis knows a lot about nuclear weapons. He's a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and a research affiliate at Stanford University's Center for Security and International Cooperation. And he is now a novelist. His new, and hopefully not prescient, novel is called the 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States. And Jeffrey Lewis joins me from Monterey California. Hi Jeffrey.

JEFFREY LEWIS: Hey it's nice to talk to you.

MS: Thanks for joining us today. The nuclear war you describe in your novel is just two years in the future. Should this book be seen as a work of fiction or can you actually envision this future based on the current facts as you know them?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well this is absolutely intended as a scholar's view about how things could go wrong. It's easier to explain it in terms of fiction and so I chose that as an approach, but it really is a novel about real people doing real things and having just a bit of a bad day.

MS: Describe the bad day.

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well you know the bad day leads to the horrible day. But the idea is that human beings are not great decision makers and often we're a little bit shallow and self interested and in particular - you know I explore the consequences of a real nuclear crisis breaking out where people spend too much time managing up, managing erratic personalities like President Trump and Kim Jong Un, and not enough time managing the crisis. So really they they do the kinds of things that we read about in the newspaper every day. It's just that, in that particular context, it turns out to be a pretty disastrous situation.

MS: Just to step back a little bit I'll sort of explain the concept of the book, which I have to say I thought was brilliant. It's fashion after the 9/11 Commission report which I remember reading cover to cover and remarking to friends that it actually read like a tragic novel. What you've done is sort of this dystopia of fiction but it's footnoted and you said it's easier to write as fiction but you're an academic. You know why did you decide to do it this way? Why is it easier as fiction?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well you know I spend a lot of time talking about how a nuclear war might break out how decision makers might stumble into an outcome that no one wants. And it turns out it's very hard to explain that in a nonfiction sense because what you're really saying is: 'Here is this outcome that would be total madness. And let me rationally explain to you how that will come about'. It just doesn't really work in a nonfiction context because I think as a nonfiction reader you're just like wow this is insane. You would just stop. It's easier to show that it's easier to show how people might make incremental decisions that make sense in the very narrow context that they're being made. But that, as a reader who can have a more global perspective, you see as being one little step toward destruction after another.

MS: And part of the novel is how the U.S. underestimated the North Koreans ability perhaps. How would you describe the current U.S. government's understanding of North Korea's reasoning for having nuclear weapons?

JEFFREY LEWIS: You know I think it's pretty poor. I actually teach a class on China's nuclear weapons program and how the United States intelligence community assessed that program in the 1960s and 70s. And it's a very interesting thing. Most of the declassified intelligence assessments we look at don't stack up very well against the historical record. And when you look at them they're really stories about America. Their intelligence assessments that are answering questions about the domestic political debates we're having about what kind of nuclear forces we want to build. And I think the same thing is true of North Korea. We don't spend a lot of time trying to understand why the North Koreans might be compelled to acquire these weapons. What role these weapons might play in their security and the kinds of decisions they might make. We're too busy arguing amongst ourselves to even let the North Koreans into that conversation.

MS: Do you think there's some parallels there to lead a 9/11 and perhaps some of the intelligence that was missed an understanding that was lacking at that time?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Yes. There is a portion in the book where - I don't want to give away too much in terms of spoilers - But there's some pretty clear warning that the situation has gotten out of control and that the North Koreans are going to launch a nuclear strike that is you know revealed in the title. And the U.S. policymakers miss that warning and I discussed both the 9/11 commission report, but also the commission report that came after Pearl Harbor. And I talk about a scholar named Roberta Wohlstetter's work where she talked about why policymakers missed signals. And you know usually what it is we have very strong expectations. And so instead of seeing the warning lights flashing in front of us we just imagine that all those warnings are not really warnings at all. But just what we're expecting to begin with. And so it's a very human thing to take confusing or unclear information and find a nice reassuring spot in your world and stick it in there even if that's not where it goes.

MS: So in your novel what is the actual triggering event that leads to the fictional nuclear war? And with that based on real events?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Yes yes. In 1983, during one of the most frightening moments of the Cold War, the Soviet Union accidentally shot down a South Korean airliner. And that triggered a prolonged crisis where the Soviet leadership was really quite convinced that the Reagan administration might attack them. The Reagan administration had no intention of doing that. But that's much what this book is about, misperceptions. So I imagine a very similar scenario where the current diplomatic negotiations with North Korea have collapsed. Tension has resumed. The Trump administration has, as they have promised, gotten tough again and re-ignited an [unintelligible] program of bomber over flights to frighten the North Koreans. And in the middle of one of those bomber flights a civilian airliner is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and just like in 1983, the North Koreans shoot it down just as the Soviets did.

MS: And after that there's a series of tragic events that of course escalate to the nuclear war that you envision. How do President Trump's tweets play into that? In the novel first.

JEFFREY LEWIS: Right well they they play out in the novel much as I imagine they really play out in real life, which is to say that the North Koreans don't have a complete and comprehensive understanding of everything that Donald Trump is thinking. And so they are looking for signs and they are looking for signals. And those tweets are one of the signals and signs that they assess. And again, it's a spoiler alert but I can try of the situation so that Donald Trump sends what is to him an innocuous tweet that has very little meaning other than maybe just a bit of bombast before he is fully briefed about the situation. But when the North Koreans receive it they have a very different understanding of things and they really take it the wrong way.

MS: Do you think sometimes we downplay the importance of these tweets? I mean I know I wake up every morning I look to Twitter to see what has happened in the early morning. Do you think we sometimes just laugh at it, but I mean do you think we sometimes underestimate the importance of this?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Oh yes. I think the tweets are far more important than we give them credit for. You know there are an important form of the president's political speech. And in fact we have seen at least one instance where the president went over the tweets in the Oval Office with his advisers to send a message to the North Koreans. And so if you're the North Koreans you don't really know which tweets are carefully agreed to in the Oval Office and which tweets are fired off in anger because the president's in bed watching Fox News. And so you know that's what happens in the book, is they're expecting the careful Oval Office suite and you know...

MS: They got something else.

JEFFREY LEWIS: Yes that's right.

MS: Well as you know fact is often stranger than fiction which might be a good setup for our next clip that we're going to listen to. President Trump spoke again about the North Korean leader. Let's listen to this.

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I was really being tough. And so was he. And we go back and forth. And then we fell in love. [Laughter] Oh really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they are great letters. We fell in love. But you know what. Now they'll just say: 'Donald Trump says they fell in love. How horrible. How horrible is that? So unpresidential'.

MS: Sorry I have trouble keeping a straight face after that clip. Jeffrey Lewis now that the President Trump is in love again with his North Korean counterpart, do you feel some relief perhaps that the danger of nuclear war has passed?

JEFFREY LEWIS: No I actually feel the opposite. The president keeps promising that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons and I think the North Koreans have been pretty clear that they're willing to undertake gestures that kind of mimic disarmament. But at the end of the day they think it's their nuclear weapons that brought Trump to Singapore and they're not giving them up. And so you know I worry about the scenario where the president says he falls in love and then he feels spurned. And I think that could actually be a more dangerous situation. So I don't feel good about this engagement because I don't have any confidence that the president's going into it in a clear headed or pragmatic way.

MS: But as this was happening and the tensions were flying at least publicly. Did your publisher say to you at any point: 'Wow the plot of this book is moot. Let's change this'.

JEFFREY LEWIS: Oh yes. I had handed in the manuscript and they were thinking about substantially delaying publication because, yes, the publicity, people are like: 'Well North Korea is going to give up their nuclear weapon'.

MS: Oh boy.

JEFFREY LEWIS: Yes and I was like well, I don't I don't actually think that's going to happen. And in fact I think this whole process is going to be pretty rocky and I'm quite worried. And then President Trump kind of very impetuously canceled the Singapore summit before putting it back on. And that was enough for the publisher. They decided like 'Oh yeah maybe it is good to have a book that talks about what happens if if things go wrong'.

MS: And when things go wrong, in your novel, the attack like the one you describe, when do U.S. intelligence agencies go on the hunt to try and find North Korean missiles and destroy them on the ground?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well you know there are a couple of things. I am trying to dance around spoilers. You know in 1991, during the Gulf War, the United States had a really serious problem which is that Iraq was launching SCUD missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia. And the United States Air Force engaged in something that came to be called the great SCUD hunt. The U.S. Air Force did not destroy a single Iraqi Scud missile prior to launch. They didn't get any because as it turns out the reason the countries put missiles on trucks to drive them around is they're pretty hard to find. I don't have any confidence that even if the U.S. put every resource into finding and destroying those missiles, that they would get more than a few, let alone all of them.

MS: So should North Korea acquire the ability to launch intercontinental nuclear missiles at the United States, how likely do you think it is that U.S. defenses can shoot them down before they hit the U.S?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well you know North Korea has tested a missile once they can do that. So we have some sense of what the North Korean capability that they're building now looks like. And I'm pretty skeptical frankly. You know if we go back to that same Gulf War the United States claimed that its missile defenses in Israel in Saudi Arabia shot down all of the Iraqi missiles. And I know people who were involved in the assessments afterwards and pretty quickly the army went from saying 'Well it was all of them' to 'you know was like 70 percent' and then it was like 30 percent. And I think at the end of the day, if you read the documentation very carefully, they cannot confirm that a single missile had been shot down.

MS: Your fictional President Trump seems confident both in the U.S. defense ability and dismissive of North Koreans ability to reach the U.S. How much of that is based on fact of what you know what he believes in this case?

JEFFREY LEWIS: That is completely real. The comments that he makes about the efficacy of the missile defense system saying it's 97 percent effective is a real comment he made. Which is really quite frustrating because I think the Missile Defense Agency in the United States exaggerates the effectiveness of the system, and they don't even say a single interceptor would have a 97 percent chance of shooting down a North Korean missile.

MS: How much warning whether it be before nuclear weapons actually hit the United States?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well it depends on where you are. You know I think as you saw in Hawaii it's a statewide warning system. And so not every state has warning system. I think you could do it at the federal level. I think you know there was this effort to send everyone a text message the other day in the United States, although really only a small fraction of people got them. I didn't get them, even though I was staring at my phone waiting for it to happen. But I think in cases where there is a well-developed warning network, given that it's going to take you know 30 to 40 minutes for the missile to get to the United States from North area, I would think you would get10-15 minutes of warning in a very good case, although I have to say I think the luckiest thing would not be to know at all.

MS: You mentioned the Hawaii warning. People in your fictional attack were not heeding the warning because of that, because that had been a false alarm.

JEFFREY LEWIS: well that person is real and he's a friend of mine. And he really was on vacation in Hawaii when that warning came in and he really was surfing and he really did not want to go home and his wife really made him come home. You know I shouldn't laugh but obviously in that case everything was fine. But you know in a realistic situation I think you're going to have people who won't know what to do. And my guess is most people will assume it's a false alarm and ignore the warning and you know maybe it's best that we don't worry about these things too much. But, yes, it would be it would be best if people sought shelter.

MS: Well some readers will say that you're being alarmist with this book, that North Korea is not quite capable of carrying out the kind of attacks that you describe. When you get this feedback, what do you say to that?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well you know our work at the Middlebury Institute is using open source information to assess the capabilities of North Korea. So for example when North Korea launched the Hwasong 15, which is the missile that could carry a nuclear weapon sized payload all the way to Mar a Lago, we analyzed that missile extremely carefully. We modeled it. We found all the Weld lines on the missile body to figure out the relative size of the propellant tank, so we could tell you what kind of fuel it had. We made an estimate of how much it weighed. We measured how quickly it accelerated to tell you how powerful the engine was. So we have our own assessment of capabilities that generally agrees with the kind of information that gets leaked from the U.S. government. And I think the answer is I actually slightly understated the capabilities in the book. You know the high estimate that the U.S. makes about a number of North Korean nuclear weapons is at the moment 65, and adding 12 a year, and I slightly adjusted that down. So I think a lot of times we don't want to accept that North Korea has these capabilities because it's unsettling. But that's my job is to unsettle you with the truth because it is.

MS: In the Novel you describe in graphic detail what a nuclear attack would look like. And I understand you borrowed this from some real testimony from Japan. What would a nuclear attack on New York City do to that city in the wider context?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well it would be horrible. I am a member of the governor of Hiroshima's roundtable on disarmament. So I go to Hiroshima every year and I have spent a lot of time reading the testimonies of survivors and trying to understand what that attack did to that city. It wasn't all over in a flash of light. There was a blast which killed an enormous number of people in Hiroshima. There was an enormous fire which very well could break out in New York City as well. After that people suffered radiation sickness and there was a complete collapse of the infrastructure that would be needed to bring supplies and relief to people. So you know the consequences in Hiroshima, as they would be in New York, were horrific. And I think one of the things I took away from the survivor testimonies - which I wanted to repurpose and put in an American context so that people would be willing to engage with with what nuclear weapons really do - is that the people who survived aren't all necessarily glad that they lived. You know a lot of people felt like it was horrible enough thing to go through that they would prefer not to have been a survivor.

MS: And beyond the cities and the areas that were hit directly, what do you think a nuclear attack, like the one you describe in the novel, would do to the rest of the world? I know that's a huge question. But in terms of the immediate ripple effects.

JEFFREY LEWIS: Yes I mean it's an enormously complex question. You know the things that I emphasize in in the novel are the climactic effects. You would probably get a very temporary global cooling which would trigger famines around the world. And probably also pretty serious disease outbreaks. And I think it it seems a little bit flip to say that it would damage the global economy, but it would really disrupt the economic well-being of a lot of countries and that would have all kinds of other follow on effects. So I think it would be a tremendously destabilizing event. You know it would not really just be localized horror. It would be localized horror coupled with a systemic shock to the global order. I think we'd have really unpredictable and unwelcome consequences.

MS: And you're careful both at the beginning of the novel and at the end not to offer an opinion about whether or not the U.S. should seek the elimination of nuclear weapons. So beyond that what advice would you give to policymakers or to the public who needs to know about this issue to make sure the events you lay out in your book stay the stuff of fiction?

JEFFREY LEWIS: Well those little advice and there's big advice. The little advice is the kind of stuff of my academic work. We have to do a better job of understanding why countries choose to build nuclear weapons. We have to do a better job of understanding the role that those nuclear weapons play in their security. We have to be aware that crises don't always go as we expect, that communications break down. I think people when they talk about nuclear weapons have this confidence that the system is deeply rational and well-organized and will work the way it is supposed to. And everything I know about crises and military systems and nuclear weapons suggests none of that is true. And so there are some real dangers that I think we could work on. I mean we could reduce them. But I think we have to have that broader conversation about disarmament. I structured that conversation in the 2020 Commission report in the way I did because I think sometimes people feel it's a little too hard. And so they say something like, well if a nuclear weapon gets used then we'll realize these things are really terrible and then we'll start making the right choices. But the thing is nuclear weapons have already been used and we didn't make the right choices. We didn't change the way we thought. And so I wanted to leave people with the idea, like, I don't think that we're just going to stumble along until a bomb goes off and then everything will be fine because we'll learn our lesson. The opposite possibility is true that will stumble along until a bomb goes off and then we'll stumble along until another one goes off, and we'll continue to repeat these mistakes over and over again. So I think we have to have that bigger conversation about the bargain we're making with the bomb.

MS: Jeffrey thanks so much for joining me today and for writing this book.

JEFFREY LEWIS: It was a real pleasure.

MS: Jeffrey Lewis is an expert on nuclear disarmament and the author of The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States. He was in Monterey California. And that's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for Q and hear from Canadian actor Dalmar Abuzeid. Finally we've been talking about some frightening speculative fiction about a nuclear war with North Korea. It was 80 years ago, this month, on October 30th 1938, that Orson Welles terrified listeners with his radio dramatization of the war of the worlds about an alien invasion. We'll leave you with some of how that sounded. I'm Michelle Shepard. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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ORSON WELLES: We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what's happening on the Wilmoth farm Gloversville New Jersey.

[Music]

ORSON WELLES: We now return you to Cole Phillips from Grovers Mill.

COLE PHILLIPS: Ladies and gentlemen, here I am back of stone wall at Jarvis Wilmuth Garden. I'm here. I get a sweep of the whole thing. I'll give you every detail as long as I can talk as long as I can see. More state police have arrived and drawing up a cordon in front of the pit, there are 30 of them. No need to push the crowd back now they're willing to keep their distance. The captain's conferring with someone can't quite see who. I ask. I believe it's Professor Pearson. [Noise and sirens in background] Yes it is not an [unintelligible] part and the professor moves around one side, studying the object, while a captain and two policemen advance with something in their hands. I see it now. It is a white handkerchief tied to a pole. Flag of truce. Those creatures know what that means, but anything means. [Warning sirens and alarms] Wait a minute, something is happening. Rising out of a pit and making a small beam of light against a mirror. There is a jet of flame springing from the mirror [Alarms going higher] it strikes them head on [men screaming in pain][Unintelligible] The automobiles spreading everywhere coming this way back 20 yards to my right.

MS: Ladies And gentlemen due to circumstances beyond our control we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grovers Mill. Evidently there's some difficulty with our field transmission. However we will return to that point at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime we...

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