Terrorism Expert Rohan Gunaratna

DATE June 26, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Rohan Gunaratna discusses the research he put into his
new book, "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

After witnessing several terrorist attacks in his country, Sri Lanka, and
losing friends and relatives to attacks, my guest, Rohan Gunaratna decided to
study terrorism with the hope he might help to stop it. He's now a research
fellow at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and honorary fellow at the
International Political Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel. He's the
former principal investigator of the United Nations Terrorism Prevention
Branch. Gunaratna has devoted the past five years to studying al-Qaeda. This
has included interviewing al-Qaeda members, and reading hundreds of telephone,
e-mail and other communications. He's written a new book called "Inside Al
Qaeda: Global Network of Terror." I asked him how the war on terrorism has
changed the structure of al-Qaeda.

Mr. ROHAN GUNARATNA (Author, "Inside Al Qaeda"): Al-Qaeda has undergone
displacement from Afghanistan. Its infrastructure in Afghanistan has suffered
significantly, but its network outside Afghanistan is fully functional and
fully operational.

GROSS: The New York Times reported that a lot of members of al-Qaeda had to
flee Afghanistan and they moved on to other countries and, in that sense, our
job might be more difficult now in rooting them out because they're even more
international and more decentralized than before. Would you agree with that?

Mr. GUNARATNA: What we are seeing is that al-Qaeda members have not deserted
from Afghanistan. But al-Qaeda cells outside Afghanistan has become more
active. That means al-Qaeda operational and support cells in Asia, Africa,
Middle East, Western Europe and North America are continuing to operate
aggressively and actively.

GROSS: Do you think bin Laden is still alive?

Mr. GUNARATNA: Yes, definitely he is alive and, in fact, I would say that he
is on the Afghan-Pakistan border, an area he's most familiar with, an area he
has lived for more than 10 years during the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign and an
area where he enjoys significant tribal support.

GROSS: How can you say that with such confidence?

Mr. GUNARATNA: It is because that is the only area he would feel safe, and
that is the only area where the US and the Pakistani troops cannot operate
effectively, and also we know that he's alive by monitoring al-Qaeda Web
sites as well as pro al-Qaeda Web sites. And also a communique from his ally,
Mullah Omar, who was the head of Taliban, saying that the leader is alive.

GROSS: What kind of information can you find on the al-Qaeda Web sites that
could lead you to come to the conclusion that he's alive?

Mr. GUNARATNA: Osama bin Laden has a very specific style of writing. He uses
high-style Arabic and by reading the communiques on alnida.com(ph) Web site,
originally hosted out of Malaysia, it is very clear that only a man like Osama
can write it. And also we have another reason to belief that he's alive.
That is, al-Qaeda released a video of a 9/11 suicide bomber called
Hasnavi(ph), and in that video al-Qaeda admits to having committed 9/11. And
for such an important decision to be made, only a man of the stature of Osama
bin Laden could take that decision. There is no one else authorized in
al-Qaeda to take that decision.

GROSS: Now on what I believe is the latest al-Qaeda video, and I'm not sure
if this is the same video that you refer to, the spokesperson says, `Our
martyrs are ready for operations against American and Jewish targets inside
and outside. America should be prepared. It should be ready. They should
fasten their seat belts. We are coming to them where they never expected.'

Mr. GUNARATNA: Yes.

GROSS: Is that from the same video?

Mr. GUNARATNA: No. It is a different video. In fact, you quoted from
al-Qaeda's newest video.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. GUNARATNA: And what is being said is by a man called Abugate(ph), who is
Osama's spokesman and head of the media committee of al-Qaeda.

GROSS: How do you interpret this message that `We are coming to them where
they never expected. They should fasten their seat belts'?

Mr. GUNARATNA: He is trying to drive psychological fear into the American
people. And this is a technique used by many terrorist organizations. And I
believe that as long as the US citizens continue to maintain a high level of
alertness, vigilance, and the US security and intelligence community and law
enforcement authorities continue to coordinate their actions that al-Qaeda
will not be able to stage another operation of the scale of 9/11.

GROSS: Gee, a lot of people would like to have your confidence about that.
Why do you believe that?

Mr. GUNARATNA: It is because if you look at the post-9/11 operations by
al-Qaeda, many of those operations have failed. For instance, al-Qaeda
planned to destroy the US Embassy in Paris, the American Cultural Center in
France, tried to poison the water supply lines to the US Embassy in Rome,
tried to destroy US warships in the Straits of Gibraltar and in Malarka, as
well as tried to destroy the US Embassy in Singapore, and also tried to mount
an attack on the US military base in Sarajevo. They have failed.

Al-Qaeda has, however, succeeded in conducting a few medium-scale attacks,
such as the attack on the US Consulate in Karachi and the bombing of the
Ghriba synagogue, which is the oldest Jewish synagogue in Africa, where 11
Germans were killed. And also al-Qaeda conducted an operation in Karachi
where nine French naval technicians were killed. So al-Qaeda is able to
conduct tactical medium- to small-scale attacks, but not conduct large-scale
operations of the magnitude of 9/11 because that requires a lot of planning
and preparation, during which time they can become vulnerable to detection.

GROSS: There's a lot of pressure now to revamp America's intelligence
agencies. What's your critique of the FBI and the CIA and their past
abilities to prevent attacks and what they're doing now? What's your
critique?

Mr. GUNARATNA: The CIA and the FBI failed miserably in the face of fighting
al-Qaeda. Both these agencies knew that al-Qaeda is a group that was likely
to strike the United States and would strike the United States in a way a lot
of people are going to die, and they should have physically penetrated this
terrorist organization without relying excessively on electronic penetration.

Also the knowledge of these two agencies of al-Qaeda has been very weak. The
CIA, for the first time, came to know the real name of Osama bin Laden's
organization, the name of al-Qaeda, only after al-Qaeda attacked the US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. And al-Qaeda had been functioning
for 10 years before that, and these two agencies did not develop proper
understanding of this organization.

GROSS: I would assume that al-Qaeda is changing its communications techniques
so that we would have more trouble cracking their codes and intercepting their
messages. Is al-Qaeda changing its communications techniques?

Mr. GUNARATNA: What we are seeing is that even in the past it has been very
difficult to detect al-Qaeda communication. It is because al-Qaeda uses
commercially available encryption programs, such as PGP or Pretty Good
Privacy. And we know that less than 5 percent of al-Qaeda communication has
been decoded, has been read. And, of course, al-Qaeda has long years of
experience of using coded communication.

If you look at Ramzi Mohammad Yusef, the 1993, February, World Trade Center
bomber, he had his own laptop computer, and he developed his own encryption
program. Fortunately that program had a small error and the FBI was able to
decode it, but, of course, many months after the event.

And what we are seeing is that al-Qaeda is also using human couriers to
transmit messages, and this is the most difficult form of communication that a
security and intelligence agency can detect. So I think that it will be a
real challenge for Western intelligence agencies to monitor al-Qaeda
communication, especially after 9/11, because al-Qaeda is resorting to more
clandestine methods of communication.

GROSS: My guest is Rohan Gunaratna, research fellow a the Center for the
Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in
Scotland. We'll talk more after our break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Rohan Gunaratna, and he's
research fellow at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political
Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the former
principal investigator of the United Nations Terrorism Prevention Branch and
author of the new book "Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror."

Now you write in your book that al-Qaeda has forged connections with Middle
Eastern terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. How
recent are those connections?

Mr. GUNARATNA: Al-Qaeda is a network of organizations, and al-Qaeda attempted
to penetrate Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad from about 1996. And, of
course, al-Qaeda penetration of these two groups have not been all that
significant compared to its penetration of, say, the Armed Islamic Group in
Algeria or the Salafi Group(ph) in Algeria or the Islamic Group in Egypt or
the al-Jihad Group in Egypt, or the al-Ansar Mujaheddin in Chechnya. What we
are seeing is with regard to the Palestinian groups, they have tried to
maintain links with al-Qaeda, but also tried to maintain a distance because
the Palestinian groups have seen that the other groups that have come into
contact with al-Qaeda has been absorbed by al-Qaeda, such as the Egyptian
organizations.

GROSS: So how strong is the current connection, and what does that mean in
terms of terrorist plans and types of attacks that might come in the future,
and who the targets might be?

Mr. GUNARATNA: By establishing links with so many other terrorist
organizations, such as the groups that I mentioned, as well as other groups in
Central Asia, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and in South and
Southeast Asia groups like Giashi Mohamded Harkatu Mujaheddin(ph) operating in
Kashmir, and also groups like the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. What
al-Qaeda has done is al-Qaeda's force is multiplied several folds, and
al-Qaeda is able to operate globally by developing such connections.

Also, by recruiting from 40 different nationalities in 74 countries, al-Qaeda
is able to function as a multinational organization. And al-Qaeda has
unprecedented reach because of that. And that itself caused the international
community to cooperate and coordinate their actions to fight a multinational
war. No one country can fight and win against al-Qaeda. The success against
al-Qaeda will depend on the willingness and the ability, especially of Western
countries, that have the resources and the staying power to cooperate and work
with other Asian and Middle Eastern Muslim countries.

GROSS: You write a little bit in your book about bin Laden's mentor, Abdullah
Azzam. You say he's also the ideological father of al-Qaeda. Tell us
something about him.

Mr. GUNARATNA: Abdullah Azzam founded al-Qaeda. It is not Osama bin Laden
who established al-Qaeda. Abdullah Azzam also visited the United States
several times, and he addressed a number of meetings in this country. He also
established about 30 offices called Afghan Service Bureau(ph) inside the
United States, and it is the organization that he established called Afghan
Service Bureau, or the Maktamal al-Qaedamad(ph), that evolved into al-Qaeda
after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. And after some time,
Abdullah Azzam came into direct conflict with Osama bin Laden because Abdullah
Azzam--what he wanted to do was primarily to fight the security forces that he
perceived were attacking the Muslims unjustly, and primarily Abdullah Azzam
created the organization to conduct guerrilla warfare, not terrorism, because
guerrilla warfare is primarily to attack the security forces and terrorism is
to primarily attack civilians.

What happened was that Osama bin Laden disagreed with Abdullah Azzam at one
point and decided to take the side of the Egyptians, who wanted to conduct
terrorist attacks, especially attacks inside Egypt. And at that time, Osama
bin Laden and the Egyptians decided to assassinate Abdullah Azzam because
Abdullah Azzam did not want the money of al-Qaeda, the financial resources of
al-Qaeda to be devoted to fund terrorist operations in Egypt. So in many
ways, after Osama bin Laden killed his mentor and the founder of al-Qaeda, he
took over the organization and transformed the guerrilla organization into a
terrorist organization.

GROSS: What was the role of anti-Semitism in the original ideology of
al-Qaeda?

Mr. GUNARATNA: Very significant. In fact, Abdullah Azzam is a Palestinian
and he lived for many years in Jordan and Egypt, and if you look at his
doctrine, his philosophy, they always had Israel as an enemy.

GROSS: How much do you think al-Qaeda's anti-Semitism is a result of its
perceptions of Israel and Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and how much
of its anti-Semitism do you think precedes Israel and is just this, like,
long-festering anti-Semitism?

Mr. GUNARATNA: It is a very important question. What we are seeing is that
al-Qaeda has been able to generate significant support because of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And, in fact, most amount of support al-Qaeda
has been able to generate because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and not
because of its original anti-Semitic character, and what we are seeing is that
in many ways, al-Qaeda would want the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to continue
so that groups like al-Qaeda will have a steadfast flow of support even from
moderate Muslims.

GROSS: How did you start researching al-Qaeda? You've been devoting the last
five years to studying al-Qaeda.

Mr. GUNARATNA: It is because al-Qaeda is so different from all the other
terrorist groups that we have been studying, and also, al-Qaeda is a very
innovative and a creative organization. Usually terrorist organizations tend
to be very conservative and traditional in the use of techniques--for
instance, most groups will just do bombings, assassinations, but al-Qaeda, we
have seen, is very innovative and not an imitative organization. For
instance, in August '98, al-Qaeda did a land suicide attack against US targets
in Africa. In October, year 2000, al-Qaeda did maritime suicide attack
against a US target in the Middle East. And on September 11th, al-Qaeda did a
airborne suicide attack against landmark targets in the United States.
Al-Qaeda is also planning to conduct attacks using chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear material. So you can see it's a very creative
organization. It's an organization that is at the cutting edge of terrorist
technology.

And this group, in many ways, fascinated me and it drove me to study this
organization because it's so different from all the other groups we have been
studying since the beginning of the contemporary wave of terrorism in 1968.

GROSS: In your interviews with members of al-Qaeda, have you ever interviewed
somebody who had considered being a suicide bomber or was a failed suicide
bomber?

Mr. GUNARATNA: Al-Qaeda is a very small organization of 3,000 members.
Although al-Qaeda has trained over 100,000 members, its membership is only
3,000. That is because you have to be invited to join al-Qaeda. Most members
of al-Qaeda I have met are either in custody or in the open. These people
have no hesitation at all of sacrificing their lives for Allah. They are
ideologically convinced, they are psychologically war-trained to kill and to
die. Al-Qaeda's founding charter says that al-Qaeda member is the pioneering
vanguard of the Islamist movements. They are supposed to show the way to
other organizations, and that is why al-Qaeda conducts attacks on strategic,
high-profile, symbolic targets, because al-Qaeda wants to show the way to
other organizations and al-Qaeda members wants to kill and to die. They want
to sacrifice their lives. They want to set a trend. And that is why we have
to deal with this organization, because if you do not fight and destroy this
organization, we will have several other organizations like al-Qaeda that will
follow al-Qaeda.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you.

Mr. GUNARATNA: You're welcome. It's very nice to talk with you.

GROSS: Rohan Gunaratna is research fellow at the Center for the Study of
Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
His new book is called "Inside Al Qaeda."

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music; funding credits)

GROSS: Coming up, the life, death and music of Chet Baker. We talk with
James Gavin about his new biography of the trumpeter and singer.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: James Gavin discusses new book "Deep in a Dream,"
about the life of jazz singer/musician Chet Baker
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The beauty of Chet Baker's singing and trumpet playing and the mystique of
cool that surrounded him is contrasted to his troubled life, drug addiction
and wrecked relationships in the new book, "Deep in a Dream: The Long Night
of Chet Baker." My guest is the author, James Gavin. Gavin is also the
author of an earlier book called "Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York
Cabaret." Chet Baker was born in 1929 in Oklahoma, became part of the West
Coast jazz scene and started recording in the 1950s. He died in 1988 under
mysterious circumstances. He fell from his third-floor hotel room in
Amsterdam. The death was ruled either a suicide or a drug-induced accident.
The new Chet Baker biography inspired a companion CD, also called "Deep in a
Dream," which includes this 1954 recording of the song Baker is most
associated with, "My Funny Valentine."

(Soundbite of "My Funny Valentine")

Mr. CHET BAKER: (Singing) My funny valentine. Sweet comic valentine. You
make me smile with my heart. Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet
you're my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek? Is your
mouth full of the weak when you open it to speak? Are you smart? But don't
change your hair for me...

GROSS: That's Chet Baker. My guest is James Gavin, author of a new biography
of Baker.

James Gavin, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. JAMES GAVIN (Author, "Deep in a Dream"): So happy to be here, Terry.

GROSS: What does Chet Baker mean to you as a listener?

Mr. GAVIN: Well, when I think of a recording like "My Funny Valentine," which
we just heard, I was so captured when I first heard that recording years ago
by the combination of two things that don't seem to fit logically together.
One is this soft, vulnerable, seemingly very sensitive tone that he had as a
singer and as a trumpet player, and also this complete detachment, this almost
numbness that he sang with. In other words, the delivery is completely
emotionless. The tone is very winsome and tender and fragile, and that is one
of the big paradoxes of Chet Baker. It's one of the things that always
fascinated me about him.

GROSS: Baker started performing locally at about the age of 12. You say his
mother taught him standards. Years later he confided to the pianist Jimmy
Rowles that some of the children laughed at him when he sang, calling him a
sissy and saying that he sounded like a girl. What impact did that have on
him?

Mr. GAVIN: Well, you know the way Chet Baker sang when he was mature, when he
was in his 20s, so you can imagine how he must have sounded before his voice
changed. And I think that being called a sissy and compared to a girl, it's
painful enough for a man to hear that in the times we're living in now, but
back then in the early '40s--that's when that would have been--that was
devastating, because at that time, the sex roles were extremely defined. If
you stepped out of being a real man or a real woman, then you were in big
trouble. And that's one of the big problems that Chet Baker had after he
became famous because he was not taken seriously by a lot of people as a
result of that. I think it's one of the many things in his life that created
incredible anger in him, and anger is one of the things that he stifled in the
years when he became known as a so-called cool trumpeter and singer.

GROSS: Well, after Chet Baker started singing and kids were calling him a
sissy, his father was apparently real worried about that, too. You say his
father brought him trombone because he hoped it would be a more manly way of
making music. So how did Baker end up with a trumpet after his father
presented him with a trombone?

Mr. GAVIN: Chet was not that tall. I think as a grown man, he was about
5'9", and when he was not fully grown and a boy--you know, if you extend a
trombone all the way, it's enormous, and it's also heavy, and he said that he
simply couldn't handle carrying it and manipulating it. So a trumpet is much
smaller, and his father, so the story goes, reluctantly went out and exchanged
the trombone for a trumpet, and that's what Chet Baker played for most of the
rest of his life.

GROSS: Baker started getting into trouble as a teen-ager. His mother, you
say, signed him into the Army a few weeks before he reached legal age. He
ended up playing in an Army dance band. Do you think that that helped him
develop musically?

Mr. GAVIN: I think that playing in an Army dance band convinced him that he
really had no particular interest in learning music by the books, and that's
where he decided the way he really wanted to play. He was not interested in
learning theory or studying technique. Part of it was laziness, but part of
it, I guess, was the instinct of knowing that's not the message that he wanted
to communicate. He was fond of saying that most trumpet players are expected
to sound virtuoso and bravura and to play high, fast and loud. And these
aren't things that he was, A, particularly adept at or, B, that interested in,
because he was a very lyrical player. He played in a linear way, and that is
one of the reasons, I think, why the melodicism of his playing has such a
direct appeal. You don't have to be a musicologist or a jazz aficionado
particularly to get his message, because the sound is sweet and the lines are
lyrical and they're graceful and they're beautifully formed, and they fall so
beautifully upon the ear, that it's a pleasure to listen to him no matter what
kind of music you may like.

GROSS: How did Baker start playing with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan?
They had a very famous group in the 1950s. They started playing together in
'52.

Mr. GAVIN: Gerry Mulligan had come to Los Angeles from New York in the early
'50s because his career had hit a dead end in New York. He was a heroin
addict. Things were not going so well, and he went to LA to have a fresh
start. And he came upon the idea gradually of creating something
revolutionary at the time, which was a quartet that had no piano. It had two
horns--as he conceived it, it would have two horns, bass and drums, and
therefore, you would be much harmonically freer with the other horn player to
do what he wanted to do. Because a pianist really dominates the harmony of
music, and Gerry Mulligan apparently didn't have a lot of respect for most of
the pianists that were around at that time because he felt that they sort of
hogged the spotlight. And he needed another horn player, and he and Chet met
at a sort of a jam session, and Chet Baker clicked with him immediately. They
were personal rivals and professionally seemed to be infatuated with the way
they played together.

GROSS: What kind of sound did they create together, the kind of counterpart
melodies that they would play with each other?

Mr. GAVIN: These were two very melodic players. They had that much in
common, because although Gerry Mulligan was musically virtuosic and was
already known as a great arranger who had contributed to the Miles Davis
"Birth of the Cool" recordings, which, as you well know, were historic in
modern jazz. But Gerry Mulligan also loved a tune, as did Chet Baker. And
when they got together on stage, they were able to put their egos aside and
completely wrap their lines around one another. They had a rare rapport.
It's unusual that you'll put two jazz horn players together who will not duel,
who will not try to top one another and who will not try to show the audience,
you know, who's stronger, who's more manly, who can make a louder sound. What
they were making was the sound of cool, because again, everything stayed nice
and relaxed. It had a kind of swagger to it, and it was a collection of soft,
melodic sounds that swung lightly. It was not aggressive East Coast type jazz
at all. It was very laid back and, in my opinion, very California of the day.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear a track that you've included on your companion
CD, "Deep in a Dream." And this is "Aren't You Glad You're You," the Burke
Van Heusen song, and it's recorded in 1952, the year that Baker and Mulligan
started playing together.

(Soundbite of "Aren't You Glad You're You")

GROSS: That's Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, "Aren't You Glad You're You,"
from the CD "Deep in a Dream," which is a companion CD to the book, "Deep in a
Dream," a new biography of Chet Baker. My guest is the author, James Gavin.
We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Gavin, author of a new biography of the late
trumpet player and singer Chet Baker.

How did Chet Baker start singing on record and in performances? He sang as a
boy and then--but when he started his recording career he was known as a
trumpeter. It wasn't till a little later that he actually started singing.

Mr. GAVIN: William Claxton tells the story of a party given at the music
salon in the home of the legendary Doris Duke, Falcon Lair. And Doris Duke,
at that time, had a young lover named Joe Castro, who was a jazz pianist who
worked at the Mocambo, I believe, in Los Angeles. And Joe Castro loved jazz,
of course, loved the visiting jazz musicians who came to town, and he had a
little musicale in his salon one night. It was attended by a handful of very
hip jazz musicians and singers. One of them was one of my very favorite
singers, June Christy. And Bill tells the story of Chet and June sitting at
the piano together and singing Cole Porter's song "Every Time We Say Goodbye"
and spellbinding the crowd. As Bill tells it, it was a magical moment. And
everybody encouraged Chet Baker to sing.

Now Chet Baker, as you said, was known primarily as a trumpet player at that
time. The band, the entire trio that he worked with at that time, they were
against it. They thought that his singing was basically ridiculous. But Chet
was stubborn enough to persist, and now I think it's safe to say that even
more people love him as a singer than as a trumpet player.

GROSS: Well, on the companion CD to your book, "Deep in a Dream," you have
two a cappella Chet Baker tracks that are--well, why don't you explain where
these tracks are from?

Mr. GAVIN: A few years ago, a producer and arranger and band leader, a
wonderfully talented man named Bob Belden, was working on a reissue of the big
commercial Chet Baker album of that period of the '50s, which was called "Chet
Baker With Strings On," Columbia Records. This was a big deal for Chet Baker.
No singing, just trumpet playing with arrangers like Marty Page and Johnny
Mandel. An expensive, splashy album. And it seems that at the end of one of
those sessions, which took place in late '53, early '54, Chet Baker just went
to the microphone and for fun sang one chorus all the way through of "Spring
Is Here" and "Blue Room," which are two Rodgers and Hart songs. And these
were never released. They were never intended to be released.

And there's a spooky quality to them. The silence is striking, because he
sings them without any accompaniment at all, and his pitch is actually pretty
good on these two tracks. And yet I heard them and I was so struck by this
tenderness and sweetness in the sound, but an emotional deadness as he's
singing, on one hand, "Spring Is Here," a heartbreaking song about being
alone, and on the other hand, "Blue Room," which is an idyllic song about sort
of a honeymoon between two people. He's singing them very tenderly and yet I
feel as if he's not even there as he's singing them. There's a very spooky
quality about that that fascinates me.

GROSS: Well, I love these tracks. I'm so glad you were able to bring them
out on your CD. Why don't we hear "Blue Room"? This is an outtake from a
1953 session.

(Soundbite of "Blue Room")

Mr. BAKER: (Singing) We'll have a blue room, a new room for two room where
every day's a holiday because you're married to me. Not like a ballroom, a
small room, a hall room where I can smoke my pipe away with your wee head upon
my knee. We will thrive on, keep alive on just nothing but kisses, with Mr.
and Mrs. on little blue chairs. You sew your trousseau and Robinson Crusoe is
not so far from worldly cares as our blue room far away upstairs.

GROSS: That's Chet Baker singing a cappella in an outtake from a 1953
recording session. My guest, James Gavin, is the author of a new biography of
Chet Baker called "Deep in a Dream." The track that we just heard is from a
companion CD.

Listening to that, I think: Who wouldn't have romantic fantasies about Chet
Baker listening to him sing that way? On the other hand, pianist Hal Galper
said about him Chet was an absolute realist. He didn't have a romantic bone
in his body or a naive one. He played all the games. He was a pro. What
kind of games is Galper talking about?

Mr. GAVIN: The games he's talking about date from later on when Chet Baker
became a serious heroin addict, and that really happened in about 1956, and at
the time that Hal was working with him, that was the mid-60s. Hal was the
pianist in a trio that was touring with Chet Baker throughout the United
States, and this was a time when Chet had been in Europe for several years,
had been in jail in Italy on a serious drug charge for over a year, had
basically gotten himself thrown out of a number of European countries, and
came back to America in 1964 and found that he wasn't particularly wanted
there, either. And he, in fact, could not get a cabaret license, which is
something that you need in order to work in a Manhattan jazz club. His drug
infractions made it impossible for him to get this license. And so off they
went on the road playing whatever gigs out of town that they could play, and
by this time Chet Baker was so addicted to heroin that as with any heroin
addict, you have to learn how to play all of those games simply to stay high.
It becomes, as Anita O'Day once said, hour to hour. That is what your need
is. It doesn't mean...

GROSS: To get enough money to get the drugs?

Mr. GAVIN: To get enough money to get the drugs, and also, where do you find
the drugs if you're in, you know, Dubuque on the road sitting around at a
Howard Johnson's and it's 3 AM and you need our stuff? So this becomes a
full-time occupation that he had to handle in addition to simply playing the
music.

GROSS: You also quote Laurie Pepper, the widow of the saxophonist Art Pepper,
as saying that Chet Baker was a career police informant.

Mr. GAVIN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Where does that information come from?

Mr. GAVIN: It came from quite a few people, as a matter of fact. If you look
at the police records of Chet Baker in the '60s, quite interesting, because he
got arrested and arrested and arrested, and he was not getting thrown into
jail most of the time. Maybe for a night or two, but he kept getting himself
out of it, and I wondered how. And when I started doing my research and
asking people who knew him at the time, it became pretty clear that he did
what a lot of people that are picked up for crimes like that will do. If you
inform on somebody, they'll show you some leniency. And Art Pepper had grown
to hate Chet Baker because men like that have a certain code of ethics, and
that is that you do not rat on people. This is standard prison ethics, and
Chet Baker was known to rat on a lot of people, and Art Pepper hated him for
it.

GROSS: My guest is James Gavin, author of a new biography of Chet Baker
called "Deep in a Dream." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Gavin, the author of "Deep in a Dream," a new
biography of the late trumpeter and singer Chet Baker. Baker died in 1988,
falling from the third-floor hotel room he lived in in Amsterdam.

His death is still somewhat of a mystery. Why don't you describe what is
known about his death in 1988?

Mr. GAVIN: You know, all the theories that have circulated through the years
about how Chet Baker died are perfectly in keeping with the tendency to
romanticize him. And the theory that was most popular is that he was murdered
because he hadn't paid his drug dealer or he'd had some kind of scuffle with a
drug dealer. And I was not in the room that night, so I can't say with 100
percent certainty that that didn't happen. What I can say is that I looked
through the police report, which was an extremely detailed one, page by page
with the officer who handled the investigation, and there was no evidence
whatsoever of a struggle. The door was locked from inside, so there was no
hint that anybody had been in there with him. But there is abundant evidence
that Chet Baker wanted to die, because he told so many people that he did.
And it was sort of a passive-aggressive suicide in my opinion, because Chet
knew enough by this time to know that if he were high on this dastardly
combination of drugs that he used, and if he were alone, something terrible
might happen, and something terrible did happen. He died.

GROSS: Well, James Gavin, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. GAVIN: My great pleasure, Terry.

GROSS: James Gavin is the author of the new book "Deep in a Dream: The Long
Night of Chet Baker." There's also a companion CD with some of his classic
recordings on it and a few outtakes as well. We're gonna close this interview
with a recording that he made near the end of his life, and this is from the
sound track for the documentary about him, "Let's Get Lost." This is the
Elvis Costello song "Almost Blue." James Gavin, you want to say anything
about this song, this recording?

Mr. GAVIN: About "Almost Blue" from the "Let's Get Lost" soundtrack?

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. GAVIN: Sure, I can. Elvis Costello adores Chet Baker and always has, and
in Elvis Costello's earlier years he heard a very haunting version of "The
Thrill Is Gone" from one of Chet Baker's early Pacific Jazz recordings, and it
occurred to him at one point to write a kind of a facsimile to "The Thrill Is
Gone." He wrote "Almost Blue," and the comparison between the two songs, for
anyone who knows "The Thrill Is Gone," will be obvious. Chet Baker, at that
time, was not learning many new songs at all. That was not on his mind, and
yet Elvis Costello presented him with this song, and it really captured Chet
Baker, and he played it until the very end of his life, and sang it, of
course.

GROSS: Well, here it is. Thank you again.

Mr. GAVIN: Thank you, Terry.

(Soundbite of "Almost Blue")

Mr. BAKER: (Singing) Almost blue. All those dances we used to do. There's
a girl here and she's almost you. Almost. All the things that you promised
with your eyes, I see in hers, too. Now your eyes are red from crying.
Almost blue. Flirting with this disaster became me. It made me as a fool who
all aim to be. Almost blue. Almost touching it will almost do. There's a
part of me that's always true. Always. All the things that you promised with
your eyes I see in hers, too. Now your eyes are red from crying. Almost...

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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