Event Audio

Its reputation is that of America’s incorruptible police force. Yet the primary mission of the FBI is secret intelligence, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tim Weiner. In his new book Weiner reveals how presidents have used the agency as the most formidable intelligence force in American history, and how the bureau has spied on anyone it considers subversive … including presidents.

The FBI’s secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between national security and civil liberties, creating a tension that strains the very fabric of a free society.

George Washington was a slave owner, a fact which he described as his “only unavoidable subject of regret.” So much did he regret it that in his will Washington made the startling decision to free his slaves. Author Henry Wiencek, who in 2012 spoke at the Library about Thomas Jefferson’s attitudes toward slavery, now examines the relationship between the most iconic of our Founding Fathers and the “peculiar institution.”

Historian Ethan S. Rafuse examines a tumultuous year in the history of the Army of the Potomac, when Gen. “Fighting” Joe Hooker took over a demoralized and bruised Union force and restored its effectiveness, only to lose the battle of Chancellorsville and be replaced by George Meade.

Rafuse is professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

Co-sponsored by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Foundation.

Biographer Robert Farnsworth discusses his new eBook about the life, death, and legacy of Leon Jordan, a one-time police officer and educator who founded Freedom, Inc., and became Missouri’s most powerful black politician before being gunned down in a 1970 assassination outside his Kansas City tavern.