>> july 4th weekend on book tv, discover an unfamiliar side of our nation's first president as we're live from george washington's mount vernon estate with historian and author john ferling on the assent of george washington. join our three-hour conversation sunday july 5th live on in depth on c-span2's book tv. >> now a discussion of human rights with marc garlasco who left early in the iraq war for the last six years he's been an analyst for human rights watch. this is a little less than an hour. >> i would like to also thank all of you for coming and for your interest and hopefully commitment to human rights. what i'd like to do this evening is begin by telling you a little bit about myself. i know people are often curious about how one goes from targeting in the pentagon to

working at human rights watch. how we operate.zl but better than telling you i would like to show you. we have a very short video, it's about 4 minutes. it will give you some of the dangers that we face when we're on the ground in a[ conflict zoe and also how we approach working in a conflict zone and it will give you a real appreciation of what it's like for us on a moment's notice on how to pick up, leave the family and gohg do the kind of research that we do. then after we're finished with the video, i would like to talk to you about some of the work that i've done, some of the successes and some of the challenges and what it's like for us to actually have to face some of the things that we do on the ground and the work for human rights watch. so let me begin by telling you a little bit about myself.

my name is marc garlasco. i'm originally from queens, new york. [applause] [laughter] >>áz in all the times that i've ever spoke, that is the only time from getting applause from getting queens. [laughter] >> and thank you, houston, for this weather. i really appreciate it. when i graduated from grad looking for work, i was offered a position with the defense intelligence agency. and6%v it was one of these jobs where you literally go in for the interview and the people who are speaking to you and asking you the questions -- and it was a panel, when it's all done they said well, young man, we like you. we think you have what it takes a position here. and i said, great, a job! fantastic! >> but they said but we can't

tell you what you're going to do. and i said even better. [laughter] >> and then i went in and after a lengthy security background investigation, walked into the at that time the defense intelligence agency at boeing air force i was a base. the pentagon is a little bit too small to house the intel folks i know you'll find that hard to believe as large as the pentagon is. i pentagon where i spent many years. what i did]jé -- what i found war that i never believed would ever be fought. my job for

community, at that point, for me, things changed drastically. i went back to work, and i was tasked along with others, i'm sure -- but i was tasked with trying to discern whether or not there was a relationship between saddam hussein and osama bin laden. now, i turned to my boss and i said, nope, job done. what's next.

but, of course, i had to sit down with the chief analyst on counterterrorism for iraq and we sat and looked over just about every piece of intelligence that we could in the time allotted us. now, of course, since then people have done even more. but even back then, with what we had, we put together an assessment that said there was no relationship between the two. as we, the united states, went into afghanistan, my work more and more turned towards taking the old target lists that we had for the various contingency plans for iraq for that war that i never believed would be fought dusting them off, rechecking them, flying out to meet with defectors from iraq, some who had left willingly and some the cia assisted getting out of where they were. sat down with them and spoke to

them. some willingly, some a little bit not as willingly and did these discussions, trying to piece together where saddam would be. and so when that march moved on in 2002, i decided it was time for me to move on and find something else. while i loved my nation and the organization that i could not support the war in iraq any further. it took a while to be honest for you to find something new. and when my wife finally received an offer from the bronx zoo, we knew that it was getting close. and then human rights watch eventually did offer me a position but it was a very odd meandering way to get there. unlike most people i actually found a job in the newspaper. applied to it, never asking is it possible that i could work

for a human rights organization. the question for me was, are these guys going to take me seriously? you know, with my background, having what i know, are they going to think i'm some kind of spook on report on them. and oddly enough, they took me seriously and they offered me the position. they offered me the position the week before the invasion in iraq. and i said to them, you guys now have to wait. because i'm not going to leave until after the bombs have stopped falling in iraq. the reason, whether it was hubris, or reality at least in my mind, i felt no one knew that target set as well as i did. and i was going to take the necessary care to ensure that our pilots did not fly against targets that were unnecessary, that civilians would be taken care of and that we did the best job that we could. and in the end that we got the targets when the job was necessary.

and so i went in and worked, you know, did the long shifts, 18 hours everyday during the war. my compatriots at cia, et cetera. and we dropped the bombs. now, in my specific strikes -- i worked on many hundreds of air strikes, but on the target set in which we were trying to kill saddam hussein it was a very limited target set. we had 50 missions in which we actually dropped munitions on either saddam or another member of them. in the 50 air strikes we had a total sum of zero successes. we didn't get saddam or his sons or the brothers or any of the people on the deck of cards.

as we went in the war it was failure after failure. i would estimate about 250 civilians were killed in the air strikes that we did have against saddam hussein. but i truly felt that we did the best job that we could. i then left the pentagon on the 11th of april of 2003. this was days after the statue of saddam fell in baghdad. and in all honesty, a week later, i was standing in a crater in basra in an air strike in which we had targeted chemical ali because of his gassing of the kurds in 1988 and i stood facing this man. he was in his 60s, i guess, maybe older, with fingernails just really worn down and browned hands. and he told me how two families

had been wiped out in that air strike. and his kids were killed and his grandchildren were killed, and he was a doctor. his son was a doctor. his wife was a doctor. and on and on. and that was a difficult moment, but it was also a moment for me where i knew i had done the right thing in coming to human rights watch i could help to tell the story for those people about what had happened to them and try to look and assess whether or not the geneva conventions were being followed by all parties to a conflict. and that's really what it comes down what we do at human rights watch in the emergencies division and so now let me tell you a little bit about h.r.w. and how that work happens. so at human rights watch, we have, oh, i would guesstimate about 270 people. we work in about 80 nations worldwide. and we are split up in two different ways. one, we have our regional divisions. and the regional divisions are

real experts in the countries in which they work so, for example, our caucuses researcher who you will see in the film when we show it, he lives in tablisi and he knows everyone. he knows everyone in the government and he gets us into the highest levels of that government. our researcher in beirut, the same level. our researcher in jerusalem, our researcher in columbia, our researcher in japan -- all the different countries that we have people in, they are the experts where they work and live. our researcher for afghanistan has just gone back to kabul now and she's there -- i was just speaking to her -- we're working very closely with the u.s. military and different afghan groups looking at the civilian casualties issues so these people are there everyday. these are the regional experts. then we have transnational divisions. people who work on things that transcend national borders and boundaries.

people who work on things such as in our arms division, the arms division works on weapons so, for example, land mines or nonlethal weapons. these are some of the things that they follow. we have a children's rights division that looks at children's rights worldwide so, for example, in burma they would follow child soldier issues working with the researchers in burma that we have. then you have other divisions such as the emergencies division which i am in. and the emergencies division we are the guys who go in a moment's notice, about 24 hours notice and we will go into a war zone and try to work in an active conflict zone. and when we're there, we're trying to research and expose and change what is happening as the war is being fought. and we are looking not at one side and saying, look at how bad you're doing and look at these great guys. we're looking at all parties to the conflict. we're looking at how ever actor

is acting in that conflict. how they are impacting the civilian population. and we're trying to -- as the war happens, save lives. so i would like to take a moment and turn to a video to show you all what that's like in the field and how we at times are able to have some stunning successes in improving people's situations in these conflicts as the war is going on. >> so she said the planes were flying overhead and they were flowing out a little a lot of little bombs and we're going to go and see what's left behind. >> we had been trying to get in the gori district for a number of days. the russians the erected numerous checkpoints and it was difficult to get in the city of

gori let alone between the area between gori and tskhinvall. we banged our head over a number of russian checkpoints and found this road -- it was more like a goat trail over the mountains. the village we're seeing here is a farm area. all of these people are farmers and when we got there, we were speaking to some civilians there and they said that there were bombs there in their farms and they described to us what sounded like cluster bombs so we decided that we would go out and investigate. [speaking russian] >> oh, yeah. it's a dpicm. oh, my god. it looks like an m85. wow! okay. listen if the chickens touch that, that is going to explode, already? she's armed. she's got the trigger. she's armed.

cluster munitions are dropped by airplanes or launched by rockets that have many dozens to hundreds of smaller bombs inside. and when it opens up it covers about a football field area and then when they come down, they're all supposed to destroy their targets. the problem they're manufactured very poorly and more often than not you have up to a quarter of them not exploding and that then creates a de facto minefield. [speaking russian] >> he's saying don't you want to see the entire field is full of it. >> i'll tell you what. i'll go with him. everybody please walk away from the bomb, all right? i don't want him to touch anything. [russian] [speaking russian] >> there are several lines. they flew in the lines.

>> being there at the point that we were, getting in when no one was getting access to, we were able to provide the filter through all the propaganda so we could tell the story. the biggest impact that we had immediately was to really get the georgian government to educate their civilian population. we take basically a day when we found those munitions and went to the minister of defense, to the minister of interior, to the highest levels of the georgian government and we pushed on them. we provided all the photos of cluster bombs that we had and the next day we started to see it. there were pamphlets being handed out. the thing about this conflict that really resonated with me is how it showed that these weapons had been stigmatized and even though they were used in this conflict, the response by the international community was swift and it was harsh but you even had the russians no, of course, we didn't use cluster bombs whereas in the past they

would have said well, it's a legal weapon. we use it in a legal matter. instead, they just denied and it showed how utterly scared they were to admit to using a weapon that has now been banned by 107 nations and hopefully more when we finally get signature. >> okay. so that gives you all an idea of what it's like for us in the field and i want to assure everyone that that night when we found those cluster bombs, we all had chicken for dinner. [laughter] >> it was very satisfying, i have to be honest with you. but in all seriousness, this video really goes to what we like to say research, expose, and change or have impact. those are the three things that we have in our work. the research that you saw is the research in the field. so when you open up a human

rights watch report, when you go on the internet and read what we've written, if you read a newspaper article and we're quoted in it, you know, you can rest assured that you're getting information from someone who has been there. from someone who has observed it and has researched it at that point where it has been used. wherever it is. where that abuse is happening. our research is done by people in the field. and then next is expose. and expose we have, you know, two different things and there's a little bit of a feeling, it's the short-term exposure at that moment and then there are the longer term reports and there's always this kind of balance that we look for and we go through and there's this discussion that we have in the field and in our headquarters and it's that, do we put out a press release now? do we make a big statement now?

if we expose this right now, is it going to have an impact? is it going to make an immediate change. now, you could see here we were able to do both with the information. one, in the short term because we had that access to the georgian government and because we had the information from the field, we were able to right away show the weapons, get the georgian government to immediately -- [inaudible] >> and i'd like to compare it with what happened in lebanon in 2006. in lebanon in 2006, you may know there was an awful lot of cluster munitions used by the israeli defense forces. they dropped somewhere around 4 million submunitions on southern lebanon in about the last three days. now, because of that, you have two problems. one, when as you saw in the video the munition explodes it

covers a very large area and so people are caught up during the strikes. but afterwards, you have upwards of 25% don't blow up. so 25% of 4 million, you know, that's a million land mines that are sitting there waiting for people to touch them. and there were millions of killed. there was a death a few weeks ago, a lebanese farmer was killed. now, one of the problems that we had at that time -- israel had failed to provide the locations of the bombs that they had dropped. they had refused to provide the strike data for all of the cluster munitions. we pressured them. a lot of people pressured them. the international community pressured them and i'm happy to say just last week they did provide that data to the united nations. now, some people will say too little too late. yes, it is late but at least that data has been provided and hopefully the u.n. will now be able to find whatever other areas were hit that they didn't know about.

so going from that short-term change that we made, you're looking at 300 civilian deaths approximately in lebanon. now we go to the deaths in georgia. and we're talking, you know, less than a handful from unexploded cluster bombs thus far so really that ability to pressure the government into educating their population helped. and it helped immediately. but then there's the longer term. and the longer term for us was, we want to outlaw these weapons. we want to get rid of cluster bombs as a problem for the future. and that is something we took on in ernest and as we did in 1997, where human rights watch shared in the peace prize for the land mine ban we got the same group of people together. we used the same basic legal language and began to work with many of our partners in the international community to shape not only the language of a

treaty but also the destroy by nations to outlaw these bombs. and we did from a number of different meetings that began in oslo. it was hosted by the norwegians in 2006. we were able to get signature in december 3rd and 4th in december of 2008. and i'm very happy that we have 107 nations on board a global ban of cluster bombs and so i have to say personally that was a great success for me having stood in my first cluster bomb field in 2003 in iraq and seeing them used time and again in conflict. and so you being able to say, hopefully, that's not going to be a problem again for anyone in the future. there's a but. but who did not sign? who did not come on board?

russia, china, india, brazil, israel, the united states of america. and so now we are engaged in a strong advocacy campaign to get those nations on board the treaty. to get those past users, abusers, stockpilers to join the treaty. now we have some good short-term news. shortly after coming into office, president obama signed legislation that basically makes it illegal for the u.s. to transfer cluster bombs anywhere else. now, that's great news. the problem is, we're still sitting on one billion with a b, cluster bombs, in this country in our arsenal. that's an awful lot that could still be used in the future. some of them quite old. for example, many of the munitions that we had transferred to israel that were used eventually in the 2006 lebanon war dated back to the vietnam war. so we're talking about some very

old and dangerous munitions. so what can we do to bring the u.s. on board? now, we at human rights watch have briefed people in the obama administration about not only the cluster treaty but also the mine ban treaty and we're hopeful to get them on. but there's more that we can do. and senator feinstein has now put in a bill that if it is signed into law will make illegal the u.s. using any cluster munition that has less than a 99% success rate. so if 99% of them don't work -- i'm sorry, the other way around. if 1%, more than 1% don't work, then you can't use them. and we can't. and of our 1 billion stockpile that we have right now, only 30,000 meet that standard. so by and large, most of our munitions would be outlawed if this passes into law and we

believe if that happens, it is a short journey for the obama administration to then sign on to the global ban. and that's what we're pushing and i certainly ask all of you to get into contact with your senators and your representatives to support senator feinstein's bill. and if you need any further information on it, you can look on our website at hrw.org. but the cluster ban treaty i would put forward to you is one of really at least for me the greater successes that we have had and something that i am very proud to have participated in. excuse me. now, we have very good relations with many of the militaries worldwide. i am, for example, going to west point next week and will be speaking there at a large panel. we have a good working relationship with the u.s. military. many of the nato militaries have me and others from human rights watch come speak to them.

they also liaison closely with our people in afghanistan, in iraq and in other conflict zones. we have a working relationship with the israeli defense forces which i'm very proud we're able to sit down with them and meet with their lawyers, with their operational people, understand from their perspective what they're doing at any given time. that's very useful. other militaries we have a fairly adversarial relationship with so, for example, if you look at the russian military at this point we don't have -- we're not as popular with the russians, let's put it that way. the burmese hunta, you know, we do an awful lot of work to try to expose what's going on in burma, for example, but that's to give you an idea with our relationses with militaries worldwide and we believe it's important to gauge with the militaries. that we must engage these people because they're the ones who are at the point end of the sphere. but when it comes down to it,

what do we do when it comes to a war zone. we're looking at governments, we're looking at militaries, we're looking at nonstate actors. oftentimes and although we have a good relationship with many militaries, we're talking about abuses, bringing out abuses that the abusers do not want us to publicize. so whether they are a government or a nonstate actor or a corporation, it is in their interest to kind of hold us back and stymie us. to give you a breadth of work that we do. conflicts, maybe about a third of our actual work. so while oftentimes that may get some of the publicity because it is current and it's sexy, it should not in any way minimize the incredible work that the rest of our researchers do. so, for example, we have had reports from our america's decision that focuses on actions

by companies such as wal-mart in their practices with unions. we have had reports on the meat packing industry here in the united states. and the dealings between the meat packing industry and their employees regarding treatment and access to medical insurance so there's a wide variety of issues that we are covering and i just want to make sure that you all understand while we are speaking about conflict tonight, it is a very small and narrow part of our work. i would like to end before i open it up to general discussion with a little bit of information about my most recent work. and i know many of you may be interesting in my most recent mission to gaza and into israel. now i have been in israel and gaza three times for human rights watch. and i have to say beautiful as they may be, it's tragic and heartbreaking whenever i go there. i've been on both sides of that border.

i have been in areas when the rockets fly over. i've been in the buckets. i was shocked -- i was in one man's home. there's this a little area right on the other side of the northern border of gaza. it just sits right there. it's as close as anybody is. you could spit and you hit gaza. and i'm in there interviewing this man in 2006 when we were writing a report about rockets and the affect it was having on the israeli population and also israel's response to him as i was interviewing him all of a sudden his alarm goes off and his german shepherd leaps up and runs in the bunker in his house and beats us. i thought how awful is this the dog has a response to go into the bunker when this alarm goes off and this is the type of daily world tha