Well, it was Theodore Roosevelt`s idea. He came to address the West Point centennial in 1902, and he congratulated the cadets on having what he thought...

West Point is about 50 miles north of New York City. It`s right on the banks of the Hudson, very beautiful. George Washington had one of his first posts...

Well, you know, I actually like campuses because there`s this thing of people becoming, do you know what I mean? You know, when you`re a -- when you`re...

How did you first get -- what was the first time you ever went to West Point?

And what made that really crystal (ph) to the guys who run West Point, the two generals, is they were driving to a conference, and they stopped at,...

Well, there`s a lot of similarities. And actually, I picked -- I picked the publisher that I worked with. One of the reasons I picked them was that...

So what kind of access did they give you?

Now, there`s a lot of dialogue in here. All -- did it all have to be agreed to by the cadets?

How did you dress?

Where did you live?

Literally living there.

Whitey Herzog (ph). Somebody my age remembers that name.

Why do you start off a chapter with his name?

But Whitey always wanted to be in the military because he wanted to do service to the country. He also grew up around kids who were kind of Dead-heads,...

That`s right.

I think it really -- when a -- at the time that Whitey goes to Kosovo, I think he`d been a graduate, at that point, for about two-and-a-half years....

I followed one -- I followed the class of 2002 from when they arrived to when they graduated last June. But there`s a lot -- there`s a lot of inter-class...

That`s right.

Well, it`s a great war of attrition, right? It`s -- 50,000 high school juniors will send what`s called their request for information to the West Point...

So then from that group, about 2,000 are given physical fitness tests, where they see if they can -- you know, how far they can jump, how quickly they...

About 1,000, 950 will make it all the way through and become 2nd lieutenants in the U.S. Army.

It costs -- there are -- the basic thing they`ll say at West Point because I think the number`s gotten a little higher, but it costs about a quarter...

Yes, they`re paid about $600 a month.

Well, because they`re in the military. I mean, when you -- you know, when you go to college, you`re a freshman, and it`s the first time that you are...

Their reaction would be that the Army is the place they thought it was. And that was one of the reasons why I stayed, also, that the -- I didn`t really...

And so I thought, OK, now how can I get out of doing this story? And I said, Look, you know, I really would love to do a story about West Point, but...

But go back to these two.

Ryan Sutherland (ph) and...

... and Betty (CROSSTALK)

Now, where are they today, the two of them? Are they still boyfriend-girlfriend?

How many women are there in the class?

Is that on purpose, that figure?

When did women first go there?

And how`s it working out?

And even when I got there in the late `90s, there were still a number of those cadets around, who wouldn`t talk to the female cadets and certainly wouldn`t...

Basically rules, no sex in the barracks, you know? No physical contact, really, in barracks because they`re barracks, they`re not dorms. So that --...

Oh, yes. That -- that`s a euphemism for the fact that you -- because obviously, to have a really successful sexual encounter, you have to be on the...

Doors have to be open a book length, same as in the `50s.

You have one roommate. Sometimes, if there`s an odd number of females or an odd number of any kind of group. you`ll get a three-man or three-woman room....

A tac is a -- is an adult officer who lives with a company. There are 32 companies at West Point, and they`re composed of about 130 cadets each. And...

It stands for Tactical (ph) Officer. Excellent question.

Yes.

That`s right.

That stands for Company G, Company Gulf (ph), 4th Regiment. There are four regiments at West Point. Each one has eight companies. So when you say G-4,...

Jim DeMoss was the tac during my first year there. He was -- he was in the infantry. In the Army, infantry -- you know, you wear -- you`ll see, if you`re...

That`s a captain, and then becoming a major in that photograph. That`s Major John Vermeesh (ph). He was another infantry guy, also called "Mud Crawlers."...

He`s tough. And one of the great moments in the book -- the book is stories. I mean, the book -- you know, I had read a lot of histories -- aside from...

And if you -- West Point`s a kind of a sudden-death, high-stakes place. And if you go through your first two years and you either get kicked out or...

And the reason he was saying that was that George was having a very hard time passing the Army physical fitness tests, and he was about to pass -- and...

You say that there are three drugs at West Point: porn, sleep and nicotine.

And not necessarily in that order. I think you said sleep is first.

Does Gatorade have a kick to it?

And then porn, which actually was, you know, joked about pretty freely and all that when I first came up -- in 2001, there was a decision made that...

Excellent question. Cadets will go about four or five a night. And since most things at West Point are preparation for challenges that you`ll face in...

Go back to the commitment.

When you sign up, what are you signing up for?

No -- there`s no ifs, ands or buts. So you need -- you give them five full years.

And what`s the routine? When you -- you know, how much time do you spend during the four years that you`re there on campus at West Point?

What`s "beast (ph)"?

And they have this great ceremony at the last day of beast. The plebe class that`s gone through beast marches over to a field, and the other three classes...

The -- yes, the drop-off -- one of the things that changed a lot about West Point in the `90s was the system at West Point used to be failure-based....

Well, there`s so many reasons that the tacs -- there`s guys like Major Vermeesh and DeMoss will just say, Life goals not compatible with military. I...

Then you go -- then you change out of those clothes, and then you -- and then you kind of -- you actually have to show your -- I followed the guys---I...

How many of the cadets today, versus years ago, have tattoos?

Is there still hazing?

When was there hazing?

And there was a decision made in the middle `90s that maybe that wasn`t producing officers who could actually make contact with the Joes who were coming...

Yes. Yes, yes. My day was like a cadet variety show every day, and it was great.

No, I biked, actually, because, you know, the Army prizes efficiency, and I started out by driving, but it would take too long to get in my car, start...

The two is -- however big it is, it`s kind of too big for -- it`s not a -- it`s actually not a great town. It`s probably about 10,000 people. It`s small...

Yes, it`s literally right there. It looks like an old `50s football town. It`s the kind of place that people actually tend to leave to go into the Army,...

Did you go in the classes?

But four years. Did you ever get tired of this?

And then your third year, you`re either becoming cynical, which is a term of art there, or you become "hoo-ah (ph)," which is a military term that means...

How many hours of tape do you have?

And as you went through the four years, did you write at -- you know, like, you`ve broken this down in four year sections. Did you do -- did you write...

No, I -- I was going to say, we graduated -- the class graduated on 2002, June 1, and June 2 I sat down and began writing.

It took me about right until the end of April. You know, it was just one long day. I`m sure that you have worked on projects where it became consuming...

I wrote it -- I wrote for the summer, because there were some things that I kind of wanted to keep an eye on, so the first summer, I stayed up at West...

Yes. Yes, the e-mails have begun. The book will be officially published on July 4, and I don`t know when it`s going to air, but today I think is July...

OK. But somehow the cadets found ways of getting kind of bootleg copies, gullies, and so I started getting e-mails from people. But you know, the --...

Have you talked to George Rash (ph)?

Here is another picture of him, his athletic prowess was all part of this whole thing, and explain that again.

He`s the fellow on the left.

How many miles are there?

And my heart went out to him, because I saw that he wasn`t folding. And I thought that I would have folded going through a year like that. And he passed...

Road march is in a sense when they get the civilians in, they want to teach them how to be hard. And so, they take them on these marches that are kind...

Yeah, they were great. It was one of the things I loved. To my surprise, one of the things I loved the most about being at West Point.

And then -- because of a problem with someone else`s feet, he got brought up on honor charges, when everyone was really sure he`d be gone, and then...

Honor code is very simple, and it`s -- it`s kind of a model. Again, that Army simplicity. A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.

Yeah. It came in the 1970`s, because they wanted to -- there was a slight problem with cheating two times in the two decades, time between when the...

A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.

They had about 100 cases a year.

Yeah, generally it`s a good -- that`s a good, solid average.

Well, George -- well, the way it works is that you get -- it`s like "Law and Order," but it`s people in cadet uniforms. Investigators come and take...

What happened?

And then you talk to a Jaguar (ph), if you want, but you can`t bring a lawyer into the courtroom, you have to be your own lawyer. So every cadet ends...

In the preface of your book, you name a bunch of people, including a woman who was involved in this particular case, Mrs. Como (ph).

Who is not really a person. I mean, that`s not the real name?

How did she get involved in the first place?

And then Calabanos (ph) is not a real name?

Other names that are not the real names are James Edgar (ph). Who was he, and why didn`t you want to -- why didn`t he want to give his real name?

We were talking earlier about the no sex in the barracks policy. Another great concept that made me love West Point and see the ways that it runs better...

Lauren Winner (ph)?

Virginia Whistler, yes. Before you go any farther, why did you name her Virginia Whistler?

But he was having -- when he became company commander, which puts you in charge of the other 124 cadets in your company, he had to live to standard...

Who is Scott Melon (ph), again not the real name?

By the way, where did you get the name?

And the story about Scott Melon (ph)?

And Scott was kind of a genius, the smartest cadet in G-4. And so he had helped one of the fellow on the cover of the book, Huck Finn (ph), who`s a...

Scott, the last TAC (ph) who took over G-4 was in a sense more rule-bound than the first two TAC (ph). That`s captain Rafael Peretis (ph), who is in...

Exactly. And a very, very hard-charging, a very, very infantry officer.

Regular Army. Came in a -- when you come to be a TAC (ph), you have usually served in the Army for about eight, nine years, and then you go back to...

And so when he looked at George Rash (ph) and Scott Melon (ph), who were roommates, and they were roommates because they both were kind of less than...

That`s Lieutenant Colonel Hank Curci (ph). He`s -- I have met -- I have interviewed celebrities and people in government, and he`s the most admirable...

Well, he was the head of military training at -- the picture is him when he`s in Desert Storm. I guess Desert Storm I, since there was a sequel, but...

Huah.

Huah.

Fun to say, though, isn`t it?

There`s two spellings. I prefer the shorter, simpler one, which is huah. The other spelling is hooah. It`s the word that Al Pacino keeps saying in "Scent...

You use it to cheer and...

I wanted to go to Colonel Curci (ph) in just a second, though, but before we run out of time, I have got to get in your background for folks. Four years...

How old are you?

And where did you go to school?

In what?

So, is this the chance of a lifetime, writing?

What do your parents do?

And are you permanently attached to "Rolling Stone?"

Back to Colonel Curci (ph). What`s the story of what happened to him and why he left the military?

And in the fall of 1999, one of Colonel Curci`s (ph) subordinates made a kind of unfortunate joke, and he made it on a computer.

Dan Dent (ph). Captain Dan Dent (ph). And because he wasn`t great with how kind of interconnected everything is digitally at West Point, he allowed...

And so although Colonel Curci (ph) was the most popular figure on the post, when I got to post, the first thing I was told by cadets was, if you talk...

That was in the fall of 1999.

He did.

Yes, J.D. and Kent. And J.D. is now serving in Iraq, and Kent is beginning his infantry training at Fort Benning.

Colonel Curci (ph) was just offered a role actually training the Iraqi army that we`re trying to reinstate, the Iraqi army. But he turned it down, because...

I was at my computer. And then I went over to West Point.

What I saw was the reverse of what everyone was seeing, I think in their cities or towns, which is that`s the kind of day where you think my job doesn`t...

Josh Rizzo (ph) was a kid from Flatbush, Brooklyn. He was a hard partier. He`s a baseball player, but he was basically like just a guy who`s having...

Well, they said in the same way, and it was one of the reasons that West Point approached "Rolling Stone" initially. You know, a lot of them when they...

And I would say to them, you know, they have to be ready, et cetera. And then I went back a few days after the bombings, I went back to New York, and...

Yeah. I mean, I was -- I could have -- you know, when I first went to West Point, I was supposed to be there for two weeks, and I stayed the whole year....

Well, I find it impossible, as we were talking before, I find it impossible to not say "sir" to people now, or if I`m with an adult in an elevator,...

Well, my father was particularly anti-military.

Well, he called me when he read the book and he said that he was wrong. He said that that`s a great place. Which was nice to hear him say.

No. He`s in California. But the next time he goes to New York -- you know, I was working, I was there, you know. And so I haven`t seen my father, actually,...

well, I want to do something that`s a total change of pace. So I want to do a four-year book on the Naval Academy. No, I`m teasing. You know, I don`t...

Yes. Some officers thought there was too much cursing, that there was -- because there`s an image of the cadets, which is a really right-thinking, kind...

Our guest has been David Lipsky, and the cover of the book looks like this. The title is "Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point." Thank you...