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Life & Times Transcript

11/08/07

Coverage of Town Hall Los Angeles speakers on Life and Times is made possible by a grant from the Boeing Company.

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Its destination is space. Its origin is Long Beach.

Dan Dubbs>> I'm amazed the number of people I talk to going to the grocery story, to the doctor and to the dentist and I tell them I launch rockets, big satellites, DIRECTV satellites, EchoStar satellites, yet they don't seem to know it's here.

Val Zavala>> And then, we learn about the evil genius behind Osama Bin Laden.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> What do you do with an old oil platform? Well, one Long Beach company has taken that platform and converted it into a launching pad for commercial satellites. Unfortunately, earlier this year, one of the launches ended up in a fiery disaster and many people said they'd be out of business. But as Roger Cooper tells us, Sea Launch is ready to try again.

Roger Cooper>> Docked alongside all the container vessels that constantly come and go from the port here in Long Beach is a cargo ship like no other in the world. Every few months, it casts off its lines and heads out to sea, but the shipments it carries are not headed for another country. This is Sea Launch and the cargo it carries is headed for space.

[Film Clip]

Roger Cooper>> Since 1999, this oil rig on its second life has been launching commercial satellites into orbit. Dan Dubbs is in charge of launch operations for Sea Launch, the company that developed this vessel. But few Long Beach residents have ever heard about them, much less seen what they do.

Dan Dubbs>> I'm amazed that the people in Long Beach don't know that there's an active launch site in Long Beach, California. The number of people I talk to going to the grocery, to the doctor and to the dentist and I tell them I launch rockets, big satellites, DIRECTV satellites and EchoStar satellites, yet they don't seem to know it's here.

Roger Cooper>> But Sea Launch got plenty of attention back in 1998 when it first did a test raising of its rocket in Long Beach Harbor. Company President Rob Peckham remembers it well.

Rob Peckham>> We neglected to notify the local authorities as to what we were doing and there was a lot of questions to the press as to "Why is there a two hundred foot rocket on top of a platform in the Port of Long Beach?"

Roger Cooper>> Then, earlier this year, Sea Launch got some attention it could have done without. One of its rockets exploded on the launch pad at sea, destroying the satellite it had on board.

[Film Clip]

Roger Cooper>> Sea Launch is scheduled to try again this month and the question on everyone's mind is, "Will the next launch succeed?" Most of their launches have. Sea Launch, a private company, has put twenty-four commercial satellites successfully into orbit. If you hear XM radio in your car, it's coming from a satellite this Long Beach company boosted into orbit from the middle of the ocean.

And how is it done? Sea Launch started with a North Sea oil drilling platform. They converted it into a floating launch pad. The giant twenty-story structure had to be brought through the Suez Canal in 1998 and, after a twenty thousand mile journey, it arrived in Long Beach to a fire boat welcome.

Dan Dubbs>> And what it is is a stable platform that we drop sixty-five feet into the ocean and stabilize. It forms kind of an island that we can then launch a rocket from. It's very stable.

Roger Cooper>> The second major component is this specially built command ship. It's equipped with rocket control rooms and everything needed to feed and support a three hundred person launch crew at sea.

Rob Peckham>> It's in essence a floating rocket assembly plant, the only one of its kind in the world.

>> "You have this one. It's in English and Russian."

Roger Cooper>> The entire operation is run by a unique international partnership involving Boeing plus Russian, Ukrainian and Norwegian companies. The Russians and Ukrainians provide rocket expertise. The Norwegians operate the ships. And the United States is in charge of satellite payloads.

[Film Clip]

Rob Peckham>> The launch countdown sequence is conducted in two languages, English and Russian, because we do have two separate teams that are conducting the launch.

Roger Cooper>> Only Russians are allowed to see and operate the Russian-built rockets and only Americans can use United States equipment.

Dan Dubbs>> And we do that for export reasons. We do that so that we don't transfer improper technology in either case, Russians to us or us to Russians.

Roger Cooper>> Eleven days before a satellite launch, the platform steams out of Long Beach bound for the equator.

Dan Dubbs>> At that point, the LP leaves and it's headed toward the equator three thousand miles away. That's approximately twelve hundred miles south of the Hawaiian Islands.

Roger Cooper>> The command ship follows three days later. When they reach the equator, the launch pad takes on water to make a stable launch platform just above the surface. A special bridge is moved into place allowing workers to walk from one ship to the other.

But why launch from the equator? Because at the equator, the earth rotates faster, creating a slingshot effect that helps fling the payload into orbit.

Dan Dubbs>> The earth rotates at a certain speed. At the equator, it's equivalent to about a thousand miles an hour. So when we lift off, we're going a thousand miles an hour as far as space is concerned. So we're getting a big boost all the way into orbit.

Roger Cooper>> Operating at the equator also allows Sea Launch to put satellites into space more cheaply and precisely than governments or other land-based launch operations. As the time for launch approaches, the command ship moves about three miles away from the platform for its own safety and the last few crew members are helicoptered off the launch platform as the countdown continues.

Dan Dubbs>> Everybody is holding their breath, so you don't hear a lot of breathing (laughter). I can guarantee you that.

[Film Clip]

Dan Dubbs>> You don't hear anything right away, but about five seconds later, you feel the rumbling coming. It's a rattling and a rumbling like you'd experience at any launch site, but it comes across the water in a kind of different intonation. I've heard it standing outside and it, again, takes your breath away.

Roger Cooper>> One and a half million tons of thrust send the satellite and the hopes of a paying customer into space. Companies pay millions to get their equipment launched.

Dan Dubbs>> The customer is intense, you know. This is their next fifteen to twenty years of revenue that's just left the launch pad.

>> "On the apogee, we had predicted 42,435 kilometers. I've asked Kirk to take a look at why we came in at 42,437.1 kilometers. We were off by 2.1 kilometers."

Roger Cooper>> Half a century ago this fall, the Russians lofted Sputnik, the first satellite into space.

Rob Peckham>> Our Russian partner had on their team people, professionals, scientists, that participated in that very first Sputnik launch.

Roger Cooper>> And now, fifty years later, Sea Launch is on station at the equator preparing for another launch in just five days. This will be an important one, the first attempt since last January's failure.

Rob Peckham>> And there are not very many people in this industry that thought we would have the wherewithal to be ready to launch in nine short months. We have done that and we're very much looking forward to regaining our tempo come the middle of November.

Roger Cooper>> And, come the middle of November, they'll also know if they've regained their reputation as the innovative private satellite company that launches from the ocean, the company that makes Long Beach not only a seaport, but a spaceport as well. In Long Beach, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Osama Bin Laden is a household name in America, but few Americans have heard of Ayman al Zawahiri. He's an Egyptian doctor that some describe as Osama's evil mentor and some say that 9/11 might not have happened without Zawahiri.

Zawahiri is one of four key people that writer and reporter Lawrence Wright focused on to tell the story of 9/11. His book, "The Looming Tower: al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11", won a Pulitzer Prize. It's based on more than five hundred interviews.

Wright asserts that 9/11 was not inevitable, that it was the result of the unique conjunction of personalities, one of them Ayman al Zawahiri, the man who shaped Osama Bin Laden. Tell us about this Ayman al Zawahiri. Who was he?

Lawrence Wright>> Zawahiri is the Egyptian doctor. You often see him at Bin Laden's side. He's really the brains behind al Qaeda. You know, Bin Laden really was a young idealist. He went to Afghanistan during the Jihad against the Soviets. He had money and he had a certain kind of mystique.

Bin Laden had a vision of creating an all-Arab foreign legion. There would be a kind of anti-communist force. But he didn't have the people to do that with. Zawahiri had the people. Zawahiri, when he was fifteen years old, started a cell in Cairo to overthrow the Egyptian government. Since that time, he had been bringing people around him, military officers, policemen, other technocrats, and he created this big terror cell.

He went to Afghanistan and he met Bin Laden and I think that it must have been like the first time Colonel Parker laid eyes on Elvis. You know, he thought, "I can do something with this young man." So to this day, al Qaeda is really an Egyptian body with a Saudi head. You couldn't have it without Bin Laden and you couldn't have it without Ayman al Zawahiri.

Val Zavala>> Zawahiri met Osama Bin Laden and said, "This is the man I need." How did he begin? What happened next?

Lawrence Wright>> Well, first of all, he had to make sure that he was able to get Bin Laden to do the things that he wanted Bin Laden to do. I mean, really, Bin Laden had a dream of creating this force that would pursue the Soviets out of Afghanistan and then fight the communist government that was in control of Yemen.

Zawahiri didn't care about those things. What Zawahiri wanted was Egypt. Since he was fifteen years old, that had been his goal, to take over Egypt, and he looked at Bin Laden and thought, "That's a guy who can help me do that."

Val Zavala>> Zawahiri had tried, but failed, to start a rebellion in his homeland of Egypt. Instead, the government cracked down on him and thousands of his followers. Zawahiri realized that he couldn't overthrow the Egyptian royalty. Then in 1990, Bin Laden learned a painful lesson from the leaders of his own homeland, Saudi Arabia.

Lawrence Wright>> In 1990, this is his origins of his hatred against his own leaders. In 1990, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and Bin Laden goes to the Defense Minister and he offers to defend the kingdom of Saudi Arabia with al Qaeda, which is about two hundred guys at the moment, you know (laughter).

Val Zavala>> But he thought he could win just like he kicked the Russians out of Afghanistan.

Lawrence Wright>> That was in his fantasy. He never really did anything effective against the Russians at all. But he had a myth that he had developed around himself and he really proposed that he could defend Saudi Arabia against a million-man Iraqi army, one of the largest tank corps in the world. Of course, the Defense Minister laughed him out of the office. It was very humiliating for him.

But Bin Laden, like many strict Wahabis, believes that the peninsula of Arabia should be entirely free of any non-Muslims. The prophet Mohammad on his death bed said, "Let there not be two religions in Arabia" and he takes that to mean that there should be no Jews, no Christians, no Shiites, no one other than strict Wahabis on the entire Arabian peninsula.

So when you have half a million foreigners, mainly Christians and Jews and, even more galling, women soldiers coming in to protect the kingdom, this was a really cruel blow. He took refuge in Sudan and began to plot his revenge.

Val Zavala>> Against America.

Lawrence Wright>> Against America and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Val Zavala>> On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda's plot succeeded, much of it because of Zawahiri.

Lawrence Wright>> It was Zawahiri's men who ran al Qaeda and they really controlled the whole organization. There was Bin Laden at the top, a titular head, but Zawahiri was really the Chief of Staff. All of the inner council, the Shura Council, including Bin Laden, six of the nine were Egyptians. Those were Zawahiri's men. So they're the ones that made all the decisions.

The people that were running the military operations and so on were all Egyptians, so it was really their expertise that set up the training camps and helped Bin Laden choose the method in which he would encounter his attacks on America.

Val Zavala>> So where is Zawahiri now? Do we know?

Lawrence Wright>> We think we know that he's in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but he's very active. This year alone, they've produced more than eighty videos, probably more shows than you've done. So they are constantly putting out messages. It's been very, very active and Zawahiri is their chief spokesman now.

Val Zavala>> So was 9/11 part of Bin Laden's strategy? In a way, it was a big success on his part. What was that larger strategy that he wanted to enfold?

Lawrence Wright>> Well, he had a plan which was that he would get the United States to make the same mistake the Soviets did. If you remember, on Christmas Eve in 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. They spent ten years bleeding on Afghan soil and then withdraw and what happened in 1989? The Soviet Union shattered. It fell apart.

In Bin Laden's mind, the same thing would happen to America. The United States would become the dis-United States and it would open up the way for Islam to regain its proper place as the only super power.

Val Zavala>> So Bin Laden actually envisioned drawing the United States into Afghanistan just like the Soviets came, that we would slowly bleed just like the Soviets would and that it would be another Vietnam or whatever and that the United States would crumble just like the Soviet Union?

Lawrence Wright>> Well, he miscalculated obviously because it took less than six weeks for American coalition troops to sweep aside the Taliban and pummel al Qaeda. Yes, the leaders got away, but they were scattered. They were impoverished. They were unable to communicate. They were essentially dead. The war on terror was essentially over.

Val Zavala>> But ironically, here we are in a quagmire in Iraq.

Lawrence Wright>> Iraq looks a lot like we had in mind for us in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda won't win. You know, there are a number of reasons for it. One is that, you know, everybody is his enemy. He has no allies.

Especially other Muslims are his main victims is another reason. Four times as many Muslims have died in Iraq alone this year at the hands of al Qaeda than Americans died on 9/11. Al Qaeda offers nothing to the young people that follow it except death. That's the only thing. They have no political agenda.

But I fear that, if we don't keep in mind how precious are the liberties that we have been negotiating away in the pursuit of safety we can never really have, then we won't win either.

Val Zavala>> Lawrence Wright, thank you very much and congratulations on a superb book and a lot of work.

Lawrence Wright>> Thank you, Val. It was a pleasure for me.

Val Zavala>> Lawrence Wright was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles and Writers Bloc. If you'd like more information on future Town Hall Los Angeles speakers, you can go to their website at townhall-la.org.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

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Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. The political drama, "Lions for Lambs", is directed by Robert Redford who plays an anti-war professor. Tom Cruise is a United States Senator and Meryl Streep a reporter, as their three stories intertwine.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com and Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor. Peter, what did you think of "Lions for Lambs"?

Peter Rainer>> This is a pretty bad movie, Larry. It has all the trappings of an off-Broadway play and not a very good one, although it is a screen original. It was written by Matthew Michael Carnahan who wrote "The Kingdom", a big action picture, a political film.

This movie is pretty much a talk fest from beginning to end. The three different stories that are supposed to be synergistic aren't. They kind of all sit there and have very little real emotional relationship to each other. It has a phlegmatic tone to it, but in fact the ideas are so woozy.

Redford as the director tries to kind of even things out by giving everybody, you know, their due. All different political sides can say what they want to say, which is maybe fine if you're at the U.N., but in a movie like this, it just kind of blands everything out.

Larry Mantle>> Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> You know, I think we're going to need to invent a new word besides bad to describe this movie. I mean, it's horrific. It's stupefying. It is just conversations, three and a half conversations, that don't make any sense.

Redford plays a professor who's talking to a slacker student about how he should commit himself to ideas and causes. What he ends up suggesting is even if you're against the war in Iraq, as Redford's character is, it would be a good idea to volunteer and go there to fight. I mean, literally, that's what he says.

Tom Cruise plays a Republican senator, but the movie treats him as if he was the Secretary of Defense. I mean, he's making all kinds of decisions about the war in Iraq that a senator would never make. I mean, it's just kablooey.

Larry Mantle>> The Christmas comedy, "Fred Claus", stars Vince Vaughn as the brother to Santa Claus. Paul Giamatti is St. Nick himself when the brother of Santa Claus arrives at the North Pole to offer his help.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Fred Claus", Henry. What did you think?

Henry Sheehan>> Well, this must have sounded good in the pitch meeting, I suppose. Santa has kind of a semi-bum of a brother and he has to go help Santa one Christmas. You know, I suppose it's a good setup. It's a familiar problem. You have a decent setup and then it just kind of sits there. You don't really have a story to go with it.

The Santa is played by Paul Giamatti, but he's kind of hunkered down behind his padding and his beard. He doesn't really emerge in the way he can. Vince Vaughn is Fred Claus, the brother. He does his usual Vince Vaughn stuff. The director here is the director of "Wedding Crashers", so clearly it's not a guy who makes a lot of demands on his actors. Just kind of show up and do your shtick.

You know, the movie just kind of lies there. This is the kind of a movie I always thought of as vanilla pudding that Hollywood puts out. You know, it's not good by any means. Is it lousy? Well, it's just kind of a waste of time.

Larry Mantle>> Peter?

Peter Rainer>> Well, that's an insult to vanilla pudding (laughter). There's nothing more depressing than a holiday comedy that tries to be a perennial, you know, and sort of strains to be a classic. This movie is far from it.

Paul Giamatti is completely hidden behind this foliage of white beard and he looks like he'd rather be hidden away entirely from the movie. Vince Vaughn does his motor mouth routine and it's sort of time to give that shtick a rest and his mouth along with it.

It does have an interesting premise, but even if it was a better movie, I have to say that movies about Santa don't really work for me anymore ever since "Bad Santa". I just think "Bad Santa" was so funny and so subversive and it just kind of exploded all of those holiday cheer myths that, you know, this film doesn't work on any level.

Larry Mantle>> The latest film from the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, is "No Country for Old Men". It's based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy and it's a crime thriller set in Texas. Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem star.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "No Country for Old Men", Peter?

Peter Rainer>> Larry, this is one of the best and strongest movies I've seen all year. It really is a first-rate piece of work. The Coen Brothers have had a kind of on and off career for me and most of their recent movies, I think, have been pretty bad. This is based on really good source material, a novel by Cormac McCarthy, and it's quite faithful to it.

It has three different actors who represent sort of three different masculine codes, if you will. Josh Brolin, I think, really emerges as a kind of star in this picture. Javier Bardem is a great, great bad guy. I think he's right up there with Robert Mitchum in "Night of the Hunter". Tommy Lee Jones, in a somewhat truncated role, has a sort of soft-spoken power that he does so well.

It's unrelenting and it can be enjoyed just as a straight chase picture or something a bit more apocalyptic and nihilistic and nasty. It's altogether, I think, a terrific picture.

Larry Mantle>> Do you agree, Henry?

Henry Sheehan>> For the most part, I do think it's a good movie. I would say that, in a way, it reminds me of "Taxi Driver" in that the impact is immediate and very strong, but the movie itself is very hard to get hold of. It's somewhat incoherent.

For example, at the beginning of the movie, the Josh Brolin character lives in a trailer park with his wife, very well played by the Scottish actress, Kelly MacDonald. We kind of see what he's like. We kind of see a hint of their relationship that maybe it's not the greatest relationship in the world, but then they kind of drop all that and he becomes more of a conventional hero in a way.

Tommy Lee Jones has the most interesting character, but they have trouble integrating his character into the main action. I wouldn't want to undersell the power of this movie. I mean, it's quite something to watch.

Larry Mantle>> That's it for FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Please join us again next week at this time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> For a longer version of FilmWeek, tune in to KPCC public radio Fridays at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

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