:00:00. > :00:00.The journalist and writer Jonathan Freedland talks
:00:00. > :00:00.to Jim Naughtie about his book, To Kill The President.
:00:07. > :00:09.On the cover of Sam Bourne's latest thriller, To Kill The President,
:00:10. > :00:11.it says this: "The unthinkable has happened.
:00:12. > :00:13."The United States has elected a volatile demagogue as president."
:00:14. > :00:15.Well, readers may suspect that they know what's coming,
:00:16. > :00:19.but of course, we don't know who he is.
:00:20. > :00:24.Just that there's enough danger for some of those around him to have
:00:25. > :00:29.Well, Sam Bourne is the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland.
:00:30. > :00:31.He has long since outed himself as the author.
:00:32. > :00:50.Some of your readers may find the setup in this
:00:51. > :00:57.Does that make it easier or harder to write?
:00:58. > :01:00.Well, in some ways harder, because this is meant to be
:01:01. > :01:09.But of course the reader is going to have recent and current
:01:10. > :01:13.So you have to sort of ride that and use that to your advantage,
:01:14. > :01:16.and yet also insert things that will be wholly unfamiliar,
:01:17. > :01:19.so the heroine of the story, the character called Maggie Costello
:01:20. > :01:21.who has appeared in a couple of earlier Sam Bourne novels,
:01:22. > :01:24.Irish-born, very idealistic, principled woman who worked
:01:25. > :01:28.for the previous president, who was this widely admired figure
:01:29. > :01:32.around the world, and now has held on, working for this much more
:01:33. > :01:38.So she is at the centre of it, she is a wholly fictional character.
:01:39. > :01:40.But the universe around her, I'm aware that people
:01:41. > :01:43.are going to be bringing things to it that they know
:01:44. > :01:46.Well, you know perfectly well what they're going to bring to it.
:01:47. > :01:48.They're going to say this is Donald Trump.
:01:49. > :01:51.Now, I mean, is it Donald Trump, or is it not Donald Trump?
:01:52. > :01:57.And I think that's important, because you wouldn't be able to set
:01:58. > :02:01.So, you know, for example, at the centre of the story are these
:02:02. > :02:04.two lieutenants to the president, loyal partisans for their party,
:02:05. > :02:06.who find themselves frankly appalled by the man they are serving,
:02:07. > :02:09.have come to the conclusion that he's a menace not only
:02:10. > :02:13.And those people, the backgrounds they have, in this novel,
:02:14. > :02:15.they're the defence secretary, they're the chief of staff.
:02:16. > :02:18.They don't map onto the real defence secretary, the real chief of staff.
:02:19. > :02:20.So what you're doing is creating this alternative universe,
:02:21. > :02:26.But at the centre of it obviously are going to be things that
:02:27. > :02:29.We don't want to give away the whole plot,
:02:30. > :02:32.and the central moral dilemma that unfolds as the story goes on.
:02:33. > :02:35.But you can set the scene for us at the beginning, I think,
:02:36. > :02:39.Yes, so the book opens with the president launching
:02:40. > :02:41.a nuclear strike against North Korea.
:02:42. > :02:44.Remember I wrote this book many months ago,
:02:45. > :02:47.before any of the current events had happened, but that is
:02:48. > :02:52.He launches a nuclear strike against North Korea and China
:02:53. > :02:56.after a war of words with the North Korean leader,
:02:57. > :02:59.and that is narrowly averted really by the ingenious intervention
:03:00. > :03:01.of quite a low-level person who narrowly averts that strike.
:03:02. > :03:05.It's a fascinating moment, because it gets us into the whole
:03:06. > :03:11.question of whether there's a machine that is
:03:12. > :03:14.irrevocable once it starts, or whether it can be stopped.
:03:15. > :03:17.One of the fascinating things of parts of the research I did
:03:18. > :03:20.for this book was about the nuclear authority of the president.
:03:21. > :03:23.It turns out it's the least checked power of all the powers
:03:24. > :03:27.The right to, or the power, to launch a nuclear assault,
:03:28. > :03:29.one that could end civilisation and the human race,
:03:30. > :03:35.Once he or she decides to do it, they simply have this aide,
:03:36. > :03:38.this quite low-level military aide who walks around with a briefcase
:03:39. > :03:42.manacled to the wrist which has the nuclear codes in it.
:03:43. > :03:45.He gets the codes from the aide, calls up a number in
:03:46. > :03:48.the Pentagon war room, simply confirms his identity
:03:49. > :03:52.using those codes, and then he can give the order.
:03:53. > :03:55.The defence secretary is not there, the head of the army is not there,
:03:56. > :03:57.the chairman of the joint chiefs is not there.
:03:58. > :04:01.He's a nuclear monarch with this power, and that is
:04:02. > :04:03.what sets this plot, this story, in motion.
:04:04. > :04:05.But what the plot then explores is whether the military mind
:04:06. > :04:08.and the political mind has the flexibility to say
:04:09. > :04:09.in those circumstances, we must do something.
:04:10. > :04:11.Even if it is something morally as difficult
:04:12. > :04:19.and dangerous as the launching of a nuclear strike itself.
:04:20. > :04:25.At the heart of this book, I hope, are a series of these kind of moral
:04:26. > :04:29.The president himself is actually more or less offstage
:04:30. > :04:34.It's about the people who serve him, and the dilemmas they wrestle with.
:04:35. > :04:36.And there's one right at the very beginning,
:04:37. > :04:45.But from then on, the even larger dilemma, which confronts the two
:04:46. > :04:48.people who work for him, and which is discovered
:04:49. > :04:51.by our heroine, Maggie Costello, is that they begin to conclude
:04:52. > :04:54.that the man that they have taken an oath to serve
:04:55. > :04:58.And there they begin to wrestle with, where does your responsibility
:04:59. > :05:02.As a good patriot, is it your duty to serve the commander-in-chief,
:05:03. > :05:05.or should you, if you really have concluded he's a danger
:05:06. > :05:10.And of course they explore the legal avenues first.
:05:11. > :05:14.In a sense, we've been there before in the Nixon presidency,
:05:15. > :05:17.because although what was at stake was simply the clinging on to power,
:05:18. > :05:19.it wasn't the possibility of a nuclear strike or anything
:05:20. > :05:22.like that, at least as far as we know.
:05:23. > :05:27.But there was a question raised among some of those around him
:05:28. > :05:31.as to whether his travails and horror of the position
:05:32. > :05:37.And if it had, was there anything anyone could do about it?
:05:38. > :05:41.And I'm glad you mention it, partly because the characters
:05:42. > :05:45.themselves refer to Nixon and the so-called madman strategy.
:05:46. > :05:47.This is where he deputed his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger,
:05:48. > :05:50.to go round the world saying to world leaders, Nixon's
:05:51. > :05:56.Which Nixon encouraged this strategy, because he believed it
:05:57. > :05:58.would make them fear him more, and therefore accommodate him
:05:59. > :06:00.with peace in Vietnam and that kind of thing.
:06:01. > :06:02.But I'm particularly glad you mentioned Nixon,
:06:03. > :06:05.partly just because it comes from that era of the early '70s
:06:06. > :06:07.where not only was Nixon and Watergate going on,
:06:08. > :06:09.but it spawned the conspiracy political thriller.
:06:10. > :06:13.And, you know, I had no role in this, but one thing I love
:06:14. > :06:17.And the cover is absolutely a '70s-era sort of cover design.
:06:18. > :06:20.It could be Day Of The Jackal or Three Days Of The Condor,
:06:21. > :06:23.which were thrillers I grew up with and loved.
:06:24. > :06:27.And the Nixon era really incubated an atmosphere where people
:06:28. > :06:29.were ready to believe that the president was somehow
:06:30. > :06:34.a danger, and therefore buy into those kinds of scenarios.
:06:35. > :06:36.Some people will think either looking at this book,
:06:37. > :06:38.just looking at the cover, or reading it, that
:06:39. > :06:44.You can't bear Donald Trump, so you've written a book
:06:45. > :06:46.portraying him, albeit through an unnamed president
:06:47. > :06:50.in these pages, as somebody who is about to blow up the world.
:06:51. > :06:53.And they say, come on, if you believe that, write it,
:06:54. > :06:56.put your name on it and answer questions, rather than suggesting
:06:57. > :07:02.Well, Jonathan Freedland is denouncing Trump regularly
:07:03. > :07:05.in the column I write as a newspaper journalist, I'm sort
:07:06. > :07:10.This was a different issue that I wanted to wrestle with,
:07:11. > :07:12.which was this question, the what if question.
:07:13. > :07:15.You know, I think all thriller writers will say, the two most
:07:16. > :07:19.You take what's going on in the real world,
:07:20. > :07:22.and then you knock it on a stage, and you think, what if
:07:23. > :07:26.And the what if for me was, what if you served somebody
:07:27. > :07:28.like that, and you yourself, not a hostile Guardian journalist,
:07:29. > :07:31.but you yourself, a loyal member of the President's party who had
:07:32. > :07:33.sworn the oath to serve him, you yourself came to
:07:34. > :07:38.That's what I wanted to explore, and I think, you know,
:07:39. > :07:41.The Day Of The Jackal, and I've been very pleased a couple
:07:42. > :07:43.of critics have compared it to that, was about a named president
:07:44. > :07:46.Jeffrey Archer wrote Shall We Tell The President?,
:07:47. > :07:49.in which Teddy Kennedy was imagined in an assassination scenario.
:07:50. > :07:52.So I think there is a kind of sub-genre that does this.
:07:53. > :07:55.But to me, the reality and this novel are separate.
:07:56. > :07:58.They may be separate, but the key to a novel like this,
:07:59. > :08:01.you mentioned Day Of The Jackal, you mentioned Three Days
:08:02. > :08:04.Of The Condor, the key is that the reader has to believe
:08:05. > :08:09.that this is not fantasy, that it could come to this.
:08:10. > :08:11.If they don't believe that, they'd probably give
:08:12. > :08:15.Yeah, I think there is something in that.
:08:16. > :08:17.And I think one of the things that's interesting getting
:08:18. > :08:21.the reader reaction so far, and it's not been very long,
:08:22. > :08:24.is this idea that this seems plausible, that the danger,
:08:25. > :08:29.the sort of stakes that are in their mind as a reader,
:08:30. > :08:31.are because they look at the real world, and they think,
:08:32. > :08:35.a scenario not the same as this, not identical to this, is plausible.
:08:36. > :08:40.And I think one of the things that the big surprises that have
:08:41. > :08:43.confronted you and me as journalists this year is they've made all kinds
:08:44. > :08:45.of scenarios that would once have seemed fantastical
:08:46. > :08:49.And therefore I think it makes readers able to regard a story
:08:50. > :08:52.like this as plausible, because the real world itself
:08:53. > :08:54.is throwing up fantastical things all the time.
:08:55. > :08:57.Jonathan Freedland, Sam Bourne, author of To Kill The President,
:08:58. > :09:19.It feels like the weather is stuck in a rut at the moment, nothing is
:09:20. > :09:21.changing quickly, the Windies light with nothing to move the