>> for more information on shreveport weekend on booktv, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> next from the u.s. holocaust museum in washington, dc, a panel discussion on war crimes tribunals. both past and present. it's about an hour and a half. >> my name is kevin. and on behalf of the united states holocaust memorial museum and its committee on conscience, the aspen institute justice and society program, and the united states institute of peace, i'm pleased to welcome you all here this evening. as a member of the museum's lawyers committee, i've had the pleasure to be associated with this institution for quite a long time. like you, i am moved by the

force of will of the survivors and the compelling nature of their stories. and i'm struck by the museum's many partnerships and educational programs that allow it to reach a wide and diverse audience. but perhaps most important impressive is the extraordinary relevance that this one horrific historical event has for so many people who seemingly have no personal connection to it. in fact, with the millions of people that the museum reaches every year, there really is no limit to the issues that we deal with today that can and inform our history. it's a history that provides a unique window to human nature, both the good and the bad. but it also provides a compelling platform for each of us in our respective professional capacities to better understand the nature of our profession and the nature of

our individual responsibility as a member of that profession and as a member of civilized society. this is especially true for the legal profession, one that many of us here tonight share. after all, it is a fact of history that the holocaust occurred through the rule of law, not in spite of law. and similarly, any measure of justice or accountability, as it relates to the holocaust or any other genocide will undoubtedly largely be realized through law. ellie said a memorial unresponsive to the future would violate the memory of the past. this museum embodies the commitment that holocaust memory will stand in perpetuity to inspire humanity to affect a better future. that is a commitment we all must share. this evening's program will be extraordinary. we have an incredibly

distinguished panel. and to introduce that panel, i'm very pleased to introduce meryl chertoff, director of the aspen institute's justice and society institute. meryl? >> thank you so much for that very kind introduction. i want to thank michael abramits for the conscious and the leadership of the museum for organizing this evening and on behalf of the walter isaacson and the aspen institute, i want to say how glad we are to be partnering with the museum and the institute of peace on this important event. but partnering on this particular subject comes to us naturally. i'm proud to say harold koh one of this evening's panelist was a regular moderator at the seminar for judges run for many years at aspen's wide river facility by

our director, alice henkin along with her husband of columbia law school two proponents of the modern field of human rights and humanitarian law. some of the justice and society efforts are focused to the development of the rule of law around the world including in the arabian gulf and the arab spring countries and in the countries of the former eastern bloc and i want to observe that it is through the rule of law, through vigorous legal and judicial institutions that we are able to prevent the perpetration of the most grievous offenses committed by the unbridled exercise of power by the political branches against discreet and insular minorities. tonight we'll hear about the courts and more recently the international criminal tribunal of the former yugoslavia and the international tribunal for rwanda in administering a writ

of proclamation of justice testimony and reconciliation in nations where the rule of law have grievously failed. i want to salute the museum's committee on conscience for its work on genocide prevention around the world. a worthy aspect of this museum's mission to educate and to remember. and now i want to turn it over to michael abromitz. >> thank you, meryl for that kind introduction. what meryl did not say was that michael chertoff, her husband, is also the chairman on the committee of conscience and we enjoy working with the chertoffs in general so thank you, meryl. i'm the director of the genocide program at the holocaust museum which is the mission since we opened our doors 20 years ago. if you go upstairs and after you go through our permanent exhibition on the holocaust you'll come to our interactive installation which focuses on the genocide of rwanda and in

darfur and we are working on a lot of different levels and a lot of different ways to really focus public and policymaker attention on the ongoing problem of genocide in our time. i would like to thank our partners this evening, first of all, our new partnerships the aspen institute and we're also aside this evening by the u.s. institute of peace which is really a very close and trusted partner for the museum. one current initiative that we are working on with the usip which would like to highlight is our joint working group on the responsibility to protect which is cochaired by secretary madeleine albright and ambassador rich williamson and it's a bipartisan group and as some of you know the responsibility to protect is an important new international norm that's really aimed at making clear that all nations share a responsibility to protect our citizens from genocide, from war crimes, crimes against humanity and we expect our cochairs to issue a report later this year about how to strengthen this

norm and improve our capacity to prevent these crimes from happening. our subject tonight is a big one and one that i do believe relates to the issue of prevention because if one -- if we can't deliver justice and accountability for the truly evil, how can we ever hope to deter would-be perpetrators in the future? yet, this is a problem that has vexed democracies and other nations since the military tribunals opened up in 1955 against 22 leading nazis for war crimes, crimes against humanity and the waging of aggressive war as william shawcross to my left writes in his first chapter of the book, the judgment of evil is never simple. and this is a problem that is very much with us today. whether we are talking about the -- how to bring justice to the architects of the killing fields in cambodia, how to arrest the president of sudan who has been accused of genocide in darfur or how we properly try

khalid sheikh mohammed and the other members of al-qaeda who have murdered thousands over the years and aspire to the destruction of western society. and so we are surely fortunate this evening to have a great team of all-stars to discuss and debate these issues. and i suspect disagree a little bit. so david scheffer has been intimately involved in these issues over many years first as a senior official in the u.s. delegation to the united nations and then as the first war crimes ambassador for the united states working for then-secretary of state albright. in his new book, "all the missing souls" david gives a real insider account of the creation of the first international tribunal since nuremberg, set up to try the perpetrators of the wave of killings that took place in the 1990s. and i should also say that david is a very good friend of the museum and we have worked with him over the years on many projects and most recently on a project that we're going to do on the cambodia war crime

trials. i should say david has been appointed -- he has a new job that many of you might not know about. he's a special expert for the united nations on the trials. so he's in the middle now of the controversies over how to handle that important set of cases. william shawcross has addressed these issues from a different perspective. as really one of the leading journalists of his generation and who first made his mark actually chronicling the terrible events in cambodia but in justice and the enemy william tackles a different issue which is how we're going to deliver justice to the new breed of stateless islamic terrorists that will challenge the west over the past decades and a problem that has vexed two american presidents just as nuremberg a new judicial body within the military to try suspects. so what i'm going to do tonight is i'm going to ask william and david to talk about their recent books, which address these issues from slightly different framer and then i'm going to

turn to harold koh who is one of the great legal figures of this generation. harold worked during the clinton administration as the assistant secretary of state for human rights democracy and labor. did i get that in the right order? [laughter] >> and then he became the dean of yale law school and he has returned to government service as the legal advisor at the state department, where he routinely deals with such noncontroversial subjects as drone strikes, the legality of killing osama bin laden and our cooperation with the international criminal court. so i will ask harold to react a bit to the points raised by william and david and then we'll invite you, the audience, to ask some brief questions of us. so i'm going to lead off with william. your book focuses on a very large and very important subject which is how best to bring justice to the al-qaeda terror suspects that are now being held for the most part at guantanamo bay. but i want to first talk about how the proceedings at nuremberg shaped your own thinking about

this question. your father, lord hartley shawcross was the chief british prosecutor at nuremberg and i want to take a moment to show you a clip that we have in our film and video collection here in the museum. [inaudible] >> day by day over the years, holding their children in their arms and pointing to the sky, while they're waiting to take their place in glasgow. 12 million men, women and children have died, millions

upon millions more today, more with their mothers, their husbands, their wives and their children. what did the message would play a part -- [inaudible] >> it's clear you're thinking of the legacy that they're in the title of your new book and it's clear that there's something about that trial from 60 years ago that is relevant of how we try al-qaeda suspects today. what is it? >> those words i heard all through my childhood because we

had 78 records of the proceedings at nuremberg at home and i was born in 1946 in the '50s i used to listen to them with morbid fascination and heard these accounts of my father reading accounts of the atrocities that you just heard a clip from. it very much formed my childhood and my youth and nuremberg was with us in our family, of course, at the time because it was an important issue because my father was only 42 at the time which is extraordinary and i think nuremberg -- there's controversy today about military tribunals in the united states but one should remember that nuremberg was very controversial at the time. it's not seen so. it seemed to be a great success and i think it was, but in 1944, '45 there was very little agreement to begin with on what should be done with the nazis who were eventually to be captured. and wanted to liquidate 150

million germans and it was best for the allies to give summary execution to the 10 or 12 top nazis who they captured from hitler on down. and it's in the united states that different views came and different views prevailed. roosevelt by the spring of 1945 the had thought the tribunal must somehow be created and truman after roosevelt's death in 1945 agreed and truman appointed justice robert jackson, a supreme court justice to try to create nuremberg, what became nuremberg and it was an inspired choice and robert jackson is in the way a hero in my book. he went to europe two weeks after ve day in may, 1945. traveled the continent, the wreckage of the continent, found in nuremberg itself that the courthouse miraculously had not been bombed by the allies and thought we could do it here they started building it in nuremberg. he went to paris and found that

the u.s. army had already collated in paris wagon loads of hundreds of thousands of -- millions of pages of nazi documents and jackson said i can't believe that men could have been so stupid and brutal to record their crimes in this way but they did. and that remained an important part -- it became an important part of the evidence. and the trial opened amazingly but even at this stage there was controversy. the british were reluctant to get involved and jackson's superior the chairman of the supreme court said i want no part of bob jackson's lynching expedition in nuremberg. so it's still controversial and it opened in november 1945 and the trial ended in july, 1946. astonishingly and of the 22 defendants 12 were sentenced to death, 7 were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and 2 were let go and the russians wanted

everybody to be sentenced to death. the speed with which it took place and the record that it created, i think, were both extraordinarily important. and my father said at the time at nuremberg we created -- at nuremberg we'll provide a touchstone and a record for future historians to seek the truth and for future politicians to see a warning. and i think that nuremberg has -- has acquired a sort of mythic status in a way and in 2008, senator obama campaigning said nuremberg was the example to which we should aspire. >> so let's bring it up to the current moment. so how did you get from nuremberg thinking about khalid sheikh mohammed and the appropriate way to -- give us -- i mean, i take one of the major themes of your book as really that the problem of trying people like khalid sheikh mohammed is much more difficult and collected than critics and ordinary people think. and you play that out throughout the pages of your book.

talk about that a little bit. >> it's incredibly complicated to try these al-qaeda people. i mean, there's no absolute comparison, of course, between the nazis and al-qaeda but nuremberg was -- nuremberg we created a vehicle to remove evil, men imbued evil and evil is eternal and take different forms and one of the most threatening forms of evil today is, in my view is islamist fundamentalism which the leaders have been al-qaeda. they threaten western civilization. they threaten mostly muslims across the world, most of their victims have been muslims. but their most devastating and visible attack, of course, was on 9/11. but, yes, you're right. there is a lot of critics of military tribunals and it seems to me that it's a mistake to be -- to criticize military tribunals in the united states as easily as they have been if you think nuremberg was a

triumph than the military tribunal that's scheduled to take place in guantanamo for khalid sheikh mohammed will have far more motion than nuremberg ever gave any nazi. if any nazi was transported by time machine from nuremberg to guantanamo, he would be overjoyed by the extra privileges and safeguards that were offered him. as its most simple in nuremberg there was no right of appeal. the judgment of the tribunal was that. that was final. it was the judgment -- the judgment was given in july, 1946 and the executions took place in november, 1946. and there was no appeal to that. in the case of khalid sheikh mohammed, should he or his codefendants wish after they are found guilty, if they are found guilty, he can appeal all the way through the federal system of the united states to the supreme court. now, that's -- there's no better safeguard than that anywhere in the world. in guantanamo, these people will be given much greater legal protection than many other justices throughout the world. and in effect, they'll be given

as much protection as the people in the federal courts title 3 courts in the united states. and that's an extraordinary -- extraordinary privilege if you like that's been given by the united states to these men. >> so do you think that we have lurched our way for a system for trying these sorts of suspects? >> i do. i do. i take the united states has been subjected particularly in europe to ill-informed and very unfair perhaps deliberately unfair criticism by our european allies and politicians and intellectuals and in one way i was trying to address that in this book to look at the criticisms and i think many of them are real. i think in guantanamo now, these people will be given as much protections as they would be given in the federal courts. and there's another -- another thing which i think -- a name

that everyone here should remember which is there is a new successor to robert jackson who's called general mark martins who was appointed by the pentagon last year to be the new u.s. military prosecutor. and he is a very fine military lawyer who has -- was a former infantryman and he has studied the history of military tribunals in the united states, from george washington onwards. he knows their shortcomings and he knows how they can work and succeed. and -- he takes the position, i think, that most terrorists will continue to be tried in the federal court systems but there are some who will have to be tried in guantanamo. and for one reason, the congress has said that nobody -- none of the prisoners in guantanamo can be brought to the united states for any purpose. if you don't try khalid sheikh mohammed in guantanamo, you won't be able to try him at all. general martins made a speech to the american bar association a few weeks ago in which he listed the ways in which he's

determined make these cases in guantanamo open and transparent and proper. and i'll just read you a couple of his sentences. the accused is presumed innocent. the prosecution must prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. the accused has a right to notice that the charges -- the right to counsel and the choice of counsel and the right to be present in proceedings, protection -- this is very important. protection against any use of statements obtained through torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. the right to present evidence, cross-examine witnesses and compel attendances of witnesses in his own defense. and so on. basically, all the rights that he would have in a federal court. >> okay. all right. we're going to try to jump to david and david's book, which i talked about also deals with the treatment of evil but i think largely from a different category of perpetrators. the statesmen and their

followers who perpetrated mass murder and genocide in places like rwanda in the former yugoslavia, sierra leone, in cambodia. so you really served at the center of this when you were in the clinton administration and, you know, lived through these terrible episodes, the rwanda genocide and in the balkans. we should not lay blame for these events or responsibility i should say on the united states alone. this is a collective responsibility that was -- that was dropped by the international community during that time. but i think you write very openly and honestly in your book about the failures to stop the tragedies and so before we talk about trying them i would just like you to say a little bit about what you say in your book about your reflections about what you learned from how we can

stop those kinds of tragedies? what were the failures that happened that you saw firsthand? >> well, i would say that the failures can be summed up fairly simply and that is that when we confront it particularly the rwandan genocide, we confronted it with conventional thinking for an extraordinarily unconventional crisis. in other words, our first reaction was to look at what was occurring and to impose conventional formula upon that event. if you're in the state department, you talk about a failed peace process, how do you get the peace process back on track. if you're in the defense department, you think about and talk about, well, the peacekeeping force there isn't fulfilling all the criteria that we needed to fulfill in order to be properly deployed in rwanda and if not, should we be withdrawing those peacekeeping

forces and talking about the possibility of combat-ready forces sometime in the future but certainly not now. it's far too premature to do that and also extremely difficult. so those are conventional ways of responding to a situation that was unfolding very, very rapidly. 8,000 people a day were being butchered with machetes in rwanda. and so as those bodies were stacking up, back in washington we were talking about the peace process, let's talk about how to get the parties back to the table. and by the way, in the meantime, let's get as many foreigners out of rwanda as possible. that's our first priority. and secondly, on the military side, let's not talk about engagements. let's talk about how do you rationalize removing the peacekeepers because they're really not there for the purpose of dealing with atrocities of this character. they're there to mediate a peace agreement. those are conventional ways.

as i try to point out in my book, we have to learn how to think unconventionally, out of the box, very, very quickly in response to atrocities not only while they're occurring but also have the wisdom to understand that when we see signals of this coming over the horizon, we need to understand how to plan for and react to those signals as effectively and as wisely as possible. in the genocide of 1995, again, we didn't understand how quickly our presumptions could be completely reversed by just a few decisions in that case case bosnian serb commanders on the ground to reverse presumptions of safe areas, take advantage of it, move very, very quickly to do so under the cover of means that didn't allow us to know very, very quickly what was

happening. we had to have by that stage, i thought, a better ability to get on top of situations like that and to have planned for them much better than we did. and the book tries to explain both in rwanda where our mistakes were, it really provides an insider's view within the united states government where we were going wrong step-by-step as those genocides unfolded. >> so what the bulk of the book is really devoted to is the process of creating these tribunals to try the perpetrators of the crime you just outlined and i think william alluded to this in his discussion of nuremberg of just -- you can look back at those events kind of with rose colored glasses but when you get in the weeds they're very messy complicated political bargaining behind all of it which i think really is one of the themes of your -- of your book. and i'm wondering if you could

just expand upon that a little bit and tell us from your perspective what did you find -- why was it so difficult to achieve what really all good people want which is justice to punish the perpetrator. >> recognize, michael in 1993, and '94 when this started we had gone through 40 years since nuremberg and tokyo without any international criminal tribunals at all. quite frankly, nuremberg was sort of a fading distant memory by then. and we had no established institutional basis upon which to bring leaders to account for atrocity crimes. we had to invent it again. and, of course, we used the template of nuremberg and tokyo as a starting point in our exercise. but our challenge was, if i may say so, actually much more complex than nuremberg and

tokyo. this was not victors justice per se. you can argue it was the justice of the strong over the weak at that point in history. but we could not simply impose -- we had to work it through an international system through the united nations through the security council and particularly in the case of rwanda, rwanda was a nonpermanent member on the security council in 1994. so the new government was actually at the negotiating table right across from me throughout all of these discussions. i had to negotiate with the rwandan government as to the composition of the international tribunal for rwanda. that wasn't the case for yugoslavia. they were not across the table from us. their conflict was raging at that point. it was a much more complex political dynamic that demanded at times compromise but also it demanded a sense of political will internationally to stand firm, to build institutions of high credibility and

independence. and that created, you know, a long experience of negotiation and of -- of trying to corral the international community around the creation of courts that really needed the support of the international community to be successful. >> now, the other major institution which you discussed in your book is the international criminal court and you were the lead u.s. negotiator in negotiating in rome the statute that led to the creation of the court. give us a little bit of the insider feel of those negotiations. what were you trying to achieve and now looking back 10 years later, the u.s. is not a party to the court. there's lots of controversy within our own country about the wisdom of whether or not to join the court. what's been the legacy of that?

>> president clinton stated the fact six times publicly during his presidency that he wanted to see the permanent international criminal court built and in one of those statements he said, i want it built by the end of this century. so those are my instructions. i was the ambassador at large for war crimes issues. that was my job. and so the united states actually had a very determined point of view about actually building the international criminal court. and i had a large interagency process behind me. in fact, my colleague harold koh was part of that process and a very useful colleague of the second four years of the clinton administration. but when you're in an interagency format of that character and as negotiations progressed year by year, the dynamic and the configuration of

issues changes. and it became very clear as the years of negotiation proceeded that some of our original presumptions about what the international criminal court would evolve as and be -- and be constituted as were changing because other countries were involved in discussions and in international negotiations changes. by the time we reached 1998, some of our positions were being modified by other countries in terms of what the court would look like. so it became a very, very difficult process for me in washington, interagency particularly with the defense department, as to what this court would ultimately look like in its final form and that's why in rome in 1998, my final position as to the final text of the rome statute was actually a negative one. not because we didn't think 95%

of it was fantastic. it was. but it was that final 5% that was the final problem. and, of course, we worked on that in the aftermath and ultimately the treaty was signed in the clinton administration at the very end of the administrati administration. >> i want to give harold an opportunity to respond. maybe just picking up on david to bring this story about the international criminal court. i would like to give you an opportunity to respond just your general reaction to both of these men as, you know, from your perch now as someone within the government having to deal with these issues on a practical level, and then we'll come back to the international criminal courts. >> well, my strongest reaction -- i had a book that i had out there for distribution out there tonight. [laughter] >> you can't do that in the government. i should say what a thrill to be

here and with bill shawcross whose book i have read for many years. david scheffer and i were college freshman 41 years ago. and he's from oklahoma. my roommate was from oklahoma. and since he was a oklahoma and i was a korean advisor we'll see you at the holocaust museum 40 years later and here we are. i think i had a couple of reactions. one is how difficult the challenge that both books are describing is. because it's a two-sided coin. the first is how is it that acts which are put forward which are self-righteous are require global legitimacy and the second is how do self-professed systems

of justice that are trying to address those act how do they acquire legitimacy? and i think what david and bill has participated in this effort. i think it's one day to think about it in cyberterms 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, is imagining the machine, building the mission. nuremberg along with tokyo they were both military trials as william has said. the fact that they succeeded at all much of their legitimacy was acquired after the fact and by self-conscious decisions made by remark ja remarkable lawyers like shawcross. david and my time in the clinton

administration was one of struggling to create a whole institutions the tribunals. and also the international criminal court and at the same time trying to manage the united states' relationship with those tribunals. i think now we are in global justice 3.0. we have all these international tribunals. the question is how do they interlink with international tribunals? how does a system have the lead, a simple of complementary which david was very much focused. how exactly to get them the information that they need to succeed? and then we're adding in now two different elements of that machine, an atrocity prevention piece through the work of this

museum and the genocide task force and the second is how to map that -- that global justice movement onto the counterterrorism movement with the adaptation of military trials to al-qaeda suspects? so none of this is easy and it's a life's work for many people, both to think about it and to record it. but i think if you are someone who wants to understand how to confront evil. there's only certain things of means of evil that are unchanging and shared across many different experiences. david's book i think does an amazing job of comparing the ways in which the gross violators in many different cultures had a certain sameness about them. but then the means that we used

to combat these evils changes. sometimes they're international courts, sometimes they are military tribunals. sometimes it's military actions. sometimes it's publicity. and it's become a much more complex picture. and i think tribunals are part of the solution but they're never going to be all of the solution. >> let me -- one thing that david writes about in his book that i would be interested in your reaction to is he writes of the siren of exceptionalism, which david describes in his book as the ongoing effort by the united states to kind of carve itself out of the reach of some of these tribunals. and i think that would be a good issue to put on the table because i think all three of you have thought about that issue, the role of the united states in international justice. harold, looking forward, do you see greater or less engagement

in leading the way in trying to make these new institutions which you described successful. will the u.s., for instance, ever sign their own statute in our lifetime? >> well, there's two kinds of exceptionalism, good exceptional and bad exceptionalism. just like cholesterol. so, you know, the u.s. as lou says is like a flying buttress in the world of human rights. it's outside of the edifice of supporting but unwilling to come in and be subjected to it. and, therefore, the united states takes a long time to get involved with tribunals to ratify treaties, et cetera. we have an interesting approach before ratification. david's example -- most countries if they like 95% of a treaty they ratify and don't worry about the other 5%. the united states has a very legally conscious society has a

pattern of compliance before ratification. so there are very few conventions on the rights of the child and women's rights that we don't comply as a matter of practice, but getting the 67 votes you get ratifying it is another story. and the staying out part but let's face it. the united states is an exception capacity to change events for the good that's how i happened to live in this country because of america goodness. when we say america is the problem. we forget the times when america is the solution and if america is not the solution there will be no solution. and the real question i think is, how to prevent a tendency toward bad exceptionalism from weakening our legitimacy that

allows us to lead and to give -- and to do the samples of good exceptionalism that this world desperately needs. >> david, do you have a reaction? >> well, i might just add to what harold has said that certainly in my experience in the 1990s as a u.s. negotiateori projected myself in a leadership role in terms of negotiating on behalf of my country and with the international community and that was purposeful because when you try to take the lead in negotiations, you're not only projecting your own interest as a country and your own values as a country but you're also in a very unique position to persuade others, particularly, the united states of america, the most powerful nation in the world, we enter a negotiating room and i was always very proud to do so. i also knew i had the clout of the united states behind me and it's very different, you know, than being from some other much,

much smaller country in the world. that leadership does carry an obligation with it. and i think we need to figure that out much better than we have to date in our country's history. if we're going to take the lead in these negotiations and work towards building the rule of law internationally and being on the forefront of persuading others to buy into that rule of law, at some point we have to understand that once these institutions are built, many in the international community actually expect us to be part of those institutions, to be part of that ongoing effort internationally and not to stand apart from it and that's what the great challenge is. is that we do have this tendency to lead but then we also have to participate after we have led. >> william, i think one of the themes of your writings in recent years have been this issue american exceptionalism.

give us a little bit your take on this on the point of view of justice issues? >> well, i agree entirely with harold koh that america is a power for good. and is often the solution. and i would go further that america has often been the only power -- the only really effective power for good in 194 foo5 and that has liberated millions of people throughout the 20th century. and the united states is exceptional and will remain exceptional, i hope, by reason of its power. and its basic good will. it is a benign hagman and we in europe are extremely -- there are many europeans who are foolish when they don't recognize that. and the problem of the

international criminal court -- i understand that it derives from nuremberg and the treaty of rome derives and i can understand it and i applaud it. but i do also understand for any u.s. administration, the threat of frivolous or malicious legal assault bithe european allies is a very dangerous one and so membership of the criminal court is a very difficult decision to make. and i can see why no u.s. administration has yet wished to commit to that. i mean, there was an example not involving the international criminal court in 2003 but this involved the growing doctrine of universal jurisdiction and under in belgium under a 1990s law, the belgian courts tried to prosecute tommy franks for the invasion of iraq. and donald rumsfeld said to the

belgian minister of defense, if you try to persecute general franks then i'm afraid nato headquarters will move from belgium very smartly and the prosecution was very quickly dropped. but it's that kind of sort of -- the belgians had never prosecuted saddam hussein or kim jong-il. it was this kind of malicious prosecution against the united states which is extremely dangerous. >> right. but the flip side of this william and i invited harold and david to comment is that if united states is not part of the international court to not press others to subscribe to the principles. i was struck, for instance, when the president of sudan traveled to kenya and there was an issue -- a statement was issued from the white house, you know, condemning kenya for welcoming an indicted fugitive from

justice. and yet we're not a part of the court. so does it not undermine our credibility? >> both david and harold understand these issues as i do. but as i understand the court only comes into play when it comes into play if domestic courts if the country in question does not take action in the united states domestic law domestic courts is very quickly applied. i can't foresee -- imagine any circumstances in which the united states would have to be hold for the international criminal court. it's a rule of law here. >> i don't think anyone should forget the last three years in the time that this administration has been in place. the administration has shifted its position from the united states position toward international criminal court from one to hostility to engage participation. the united states has attended every meeting of the assembly of

states parties. the u.s. government has made pledges in support. the united states has supported first at the end of the bush administration the referral of the sudan case and the unanimous referral of the and is cooperating with the court on every case that's ongoing. kenya, congo, central africa and the republic and sudan and on these issues and david can attest to this, the view is that the united states is very much a part of the process. now, it may take us a while for us to become a party. it took us a while to become a party to the international court of justice and other international institutions. but i don't think anyone should kid themselves that the atmosphere between the united states and the court at the moment bears any resemblance to

where it was back in 2003/2004. the mood is very fundamentally changed. i have colleagues here from the state department -- when we went to the assembly states meeting in new york of the icc, there was applause as the united states entered the room, you know, the deep freeze was over. the period of engagement has begun. and the point we get to more formal kinds of relationships will always take time for the united states which is a country that has been worried about entangling alliances since george washington. but i do think the mood is very, very fundamentally different than it was. >> i'm going to open this up for questions in a sec but i would like to ask one final question for the group, which is really the role of justice in prevention of atrocities. obviously, there is -- there were a dimension to this that you want to try these bad people for the things that they have

done. but it's striking that over the last 20 years, the atmosphere of impunity and perpetrators has really changed a lot. you know, the president of sudan can't travel freely. milosevic did end up in the hague before he died. charles taylor did too. gadhafi was cornered and he chose -- he could have gone to the hague if he wanted and avoid his fate. so it does seem that it's more dangerous these days if you're a perpetrator if you're a head of state and i wanted to know if you agree with that and whether you think this track record is going to deter future -- future perpetrators. i'd like each of you -- we'll start with you, david. >> well, i think as my book tries to describe we have gone

through a transformational period in not only world history but really the history of international justice in the last 17 years or so. and that transformation is a reversal of all sorts of assumptions we have had about official leadership impunity. about the lack of any institutional capacity to actually bring these individuals to justice. and even the fact we didn't have experienced jurists in our legal academy, now we do who can take on international cases of this character with great skill and experience and knowledge. that is all possible now. it's happened, in our lifetimes. i think on the issue of deterrence we need to keep reminding ourselves that these tribunals should not be burdened with the argument that they should only exist or their legitimacy relies upon whether or not i can prove to you that they're deterring future crimes.

their first and foremost responsibility is justice. just that is paired. they're not huge geopolitical machines. they're criminal courts first and foremost and their job is to render punishment or acquittal and they do often acquit. if deterrence comes, that's good bonus if that comes along. i think empirically we've been able to establish -- establish academically now that over the last 30 years, societies which have focused on human rights prosecutions, whether it's at a domestic level or preventing them at the international level or even having them imposed internationally, that those societies are gravitating away from human rights abuses. they're modernizing towards humanity. that's empirically happening in the last 30 years and it's a combination of both domestic prosecution of the international

prosecution. and that to me is a sign ultimately of deterrence. >> harold, what are your thoughts on this issue? >> well, i agree with david that a function -- international criminal tribunals play many functions one is deterrence and the other is truth telling. another is the legitimatization of people to make it impossible for people who commit certain kinds of acts to participate in a political process. but another critically important one is to separate out those who are most guilty from those who will go on and be part of a new process. and it happens in a age of soft power to be a tool that saves us military resources. we did not occupy belgrade, nevertheless, milosevic, are all at the tribunal.

and it is -- and our relations with all three parts of the former yugoslavia goes on. so there's a way in which the new kind of -- the modern international criminal justice plays multiple functions and it's an absolutely critical tool in transitional justice. >> william? >> yeah, i understand all of that. and i think that these courts are also in an very early age of existence and they will develop and improve. i think david knows much better than i. the ad hoc tribunals in rwanda and sierra leone and cambodia had problems with delays and so on. in sierra leon, i would say even the right people were put on trial. and i wonder whether -- two things, whether a lot of the

money that is spent on these international tribunals which come and take place and then go away again or will go again eventually if that money would not be better spent on building up justice systems themselves. sierra leon and cambodia there's no justice system at all. there's no money for them. and cambodia as david knows much better than i do now, is immense attempts by the cambodian government to interfere politically with the tribunal. and getting back to your other point about gadhafi, there is also a sense, i suppose, at least on some occasions that indictment on the international criminal court deter forces, monsters like gadhafi to stay on and fight till the end. if gadhafi had been eased out and encouraged to go to venezuela than indicted, it may be a peace settlement of the violence in libya would have come earlier and fewer people would have died. the duvalliers, for example, were eased out of haiti and i think that was a very good

thing. rather than feeling that they had nowhere to go and they should fight to the end and there are many examples like that. so i think not everything not everything is international justice that we have done so far is necessarily to the instant benefit of the population to whom we do. >> >> the last three points we could spend two hours with this group. >> that's why i brought it up. >> i want to the audience -- because we have a limited amount of time because i want to hear from your friends in the audience. we have two microphones set up here and i'd encourage you if you want to ask a question, please come to the microphone. we'll try to get questions from group. i want everyone to pose a question so we can try to get through this and give everyone an opportunity not to use this as a chance to make a statement, so sir, go ahead. >> thank you so much.

>> we know because we've heard many numerous reports about continuing atrocities going on in the former belgian congo. my question is, why has there not been anything done about that, especially, since we know of the trials of yugoslavia and other -- other i guess -- so that's my question. >> you, sir, question. >> okay. my question concerns al-assad out of syria. currently the united states is pursuing it within the united states security council a motion to condemn the actions in syria. my question for your panel is whether or not do you believe that this would be an effective measure or an indictment from the icc would be a effective

pursuit. >> we'll take one more over here. ma'am. >> i feel like it's a different type of question. i just want to say that my mother is a survivor of the holocaust and she tried to get into the nuremberg trials but they wouldn't let her in. so i'm interested i hear your father -- >> can you speak -- i didn't hear the question. >> but that is not my question. my question is to the first speaker. you say galead sheik mohammed is getting all these rights given to americans, is presumed innocent yet at one of the debates for the republicans, scott pelley asked newt gingrich whether it's okay to kill an american without ever charging them with a crime. and ron paul said it's unconstitutional and the next three or more people had been killed, maybe more. probably the only ones caught. and newt gingrich says it's

legal to kill americans without charging them. he said there's a legal panel. they report to the president and that's how it's done. >> okay. so i'm going to ask harold to take that last question. [laughter] >> very fun choice. >> and then maybe -- >> you want to do congo and then william will do assad. go for it and you can comment on any of the questions. i'll start with harold. >> well, let me say first that william talked about the privileges the defendants have. i actually think they're right and the question then becomes what happens in an armed conflict? in an armed conflict which is

one that began with al-qaeda formally on 9/11 3,000 people were killed on their home soil for going to work. that's a massive human rights violation on a massive scale. and the united states congress initiated an armed conflict against al-qaeda and the associated forces. now, when congress initiated the conflict against japan for pearl harbor it was then permitted within the scope of that armed conflict to target and kill the japanese japanese military commander who initiated pearl harbor and it is not illegal to apply that same law of war reasoning in this particular setting and i think that was the rationale put forward and which i support for bin laden. now, the question is, is that

something in which the fact of american citizenship of a combatant resolves the situation in favor of a judicial solution? there is a due process that must be applied in wartime. american citizens deserve more careful consideration i have no idea how much mr. gingrich knows about the procedures that are followed. but i think at the end of the day, we're talking about a law of war situation in which the laws of war have been entirely respected and i think the rights of american citizen and see their due process rights have been taken into account fully and completely. >> david, feel free to comment on any of that but i'd like to make sure you address congo. >> right. the question about the congo and why isn't justice being rendered for really one of the largest

atrocity situations in the world, not only in our own time but also during the 1990s, particularly, the latter half of the 1990s. i actually spent a fair amount of my time as ambassador for war crimes in the congo trying to address what i saw as a very, very significant set of atrocity crimes erupting at that time and trying to figure out how can we possibly build a tribunal to bring these leading perpetrators to justice? ..

>> after july 1st of 2002. not during the '90s, but in a more contemporary sense. and that, in fact, is what's happening. there are a number of indicted individuals, several of them have arrived in the hague, one of them has gone think a complete trial for trial soldier recruitment and use. we are awaiting the trial judgment on him. so we've actually gone the distance with one of them at least, and there are others who are lining up to be prosecuted for atrocity crimes in the congo since july 1st of 2002. but i think we do need to reflect that we really have no justice available at this time for what occurred in the 1990s this that country. >> david, not to be a

provocateur, but i know you might have a slightly different opinion about the osama bin laden situation. >> well, yeah. my opinion which i've gone on record about is recognizing all of the arguments that harold has stated about the law of war situation versus what we might regard as an anti-terrorism law situation and how do you bring those two together in a coherent policy out there, it's a very, very complex formula. and i don't think it's black or white one way or the other at all times at all. and so i sympathize with that dilemma. but i do think that, what disturbed me so greatly since osama bin laden was under federal indictment is that during that operation that took him down as i understand it, there was a kill order. and if i had, you know, had my judgment placed on that, i would have said capture and wound or kill if necessary for

self-defense purposes, but capture this man and bring him back to justice. >> william. >> and i was, i rejoiced in the killing of bin laden. i thought it was a very good thing, and it was certainly, um, arbitrary justice if you like, but he -- under the rules of law which harold has explained eloquently, i thought it was the appropriate way of dealing with this very evil mass murderer. and one of the interesting things that has happened, i think, in the last few years is that, um, whereas president bush was excoriated for enhanced interrogation of a few dozen prisoners, waterboarding of three detainees including khalid sheikh mohammed, president obama has taken a very different, adopted a very different policy, that of drone strikes in which

1500 al-qaeda operatives and believed to be al-qaeda operatives have been killed in drone strikes in pakistan and afghanistan and elsewhere. and anwar al-awlaki, the american citizen in yemen. i'm sure most of these people were extremely carefully targeted and had known, the cia or other government agencies had every reason to believe they were plotting strikes, terrorist attacks on the west. but what is interesting to me is that it's so much easier for the administration to do drone strikes than it is to arrest and interrogate and put people on trial. trials have become so complicated now, and the fact that -- within the united states, i'm talking about. and the fact that the military commissions which i argue and will continue to argue have been create inside a very responsible way -- created in a very responsible way to make sure that justice is transparently

administered, and as harold says, the rights of the detainees are respected. the fact that it has become so complicated and is under such fierce criticism i would think would lead many people in the administration to throw up their hands in any administration and say, well, drones are much simpler. and it's odd to me that drones which is a phrase from vietnam, termination with extreme prejudice, should be easier for a president to, um, to escape criticism for than arrest and interrogation and trial. >> all right. i'm going to let harold and david bond because i saw hands shoot up, but i do want to -- do you have something to say about assad? i don't want that e question to be -- >> yeah, on assad, it's a very interesting dilemma. would it be easier for syria for assad to be eased out by his russian friends, or would it be better for him, would it be better for syria to have assad

be indicted and then decide he will fight to the death with all the consequence of the death tolls that will, you know, the number -- hundreds or thousands of syrians who will be killed? be i think that's one of the dilemmas of justice. >> okay. david and then harold. >> i'll just, i have to respond to that last comment as well. [laughter] you know, we're confronted with this with mr. gadhafi as well. >> yes. >> it's, it's a question of timing. gadhafi was not under indictment when the international criminal court was triggered, its jurisdiction triggered over libya by the u.n. security council. there was a fair space of time before any indictment came down, and there was an enormous amount of dialogue at that point or shall we say, perhaps, monologue at that time suggesting to mr. gadhafi, you have an opportunity. you are not yet indicted. take it, seize it, go to a

country that is a sanctuary from icc jurisdiction. that opportunity is in your hands right now. take it. finish -- now, if they don't take that opportunity and they decide to stay until the day they are indicted, then i think the dynamic changes. they are indicted fugitives at that day. mr. assad has that opportunity right now. there's not even any jurisdiction over him yet by the icc. but he has the opportunity as a political leader, as someone who's presumably has some smarts in all of this to understand that he has an opportunity. he can talk to his russian colleagues right now, prepare that for me. i'm there in a week ready to go, and he'll be outside of icc jurisdiction period at that point. but if he wants to wait until the icc jurisdiction is triggered by the international community through the security council and then wait for the indictment to be prepared and then say, oh, no, no, no, you

should never have gone down this path, you should give me the opportunity to get to that doca, i think that's a surreal argument. take the opportunity now while it's before you. >> but it's all politics, isn't it? it hasn't happened in the security council yet because of russian vetoes. >> well, exactly. but i'm just stating in response to your argument i'm not going to hold this against international justice or the icc that they have the capacity to actually bring someone to justice and then argue that, in fact, we should put that aside as an option and only talk about the opportunity to avoid justice for mr. assad and give him every opportunity to avoid that for the rest of his tour. i think there's going to be, there's going to come a point where he has to face up to accountability for his actions. >> we're going to have one more

round of questions. i'll try to get in as many as we can, so try to be brief, sir. >> i would like to thank mr. scheffer for his hard work in exposing the bosnian genocide, and my question is regarding the efficiency of these courts. so milosevic died after four or five years of trial finish. [inaudible] has been on trial for over eight years now. a lot of these cases have descended into what a lot of people consider farce, and they're wondering where is the justice, how can this be sped up, how can justice be delivered on time and more efficiently? thank you. >> mine is not actually a question, you know? i was presidential candidate in sierra leone, 996, and my father was a veteran world war ii. he died as a refugee during the ten-year civil war. but i have a deep sympathy for the holocaust and the holocaust -- [inaudible]

and i'm going to be president 19 -- [inaudible] and one of the i'm going to institute a very bold proposal, foreign policy proposal. any country that denied holocaust would be denied a diplomatic representation to sierra leone. that's where we're going to start, so is a policy that's developed by me, and i'm going to institute it, and i hope i'll be the next president, so i need your support for that. [laughter] >> very good. [applause] >> go ahead. >> thank you for that. um, a question about forensics. mr. shawcross reminds us that in the nuremberg tribunals the prosecutors were astonished at the degree of records, the truckfuls of information. i believe deriving from that some of the crimes against humanity in ethiopia in the '70s and '80s were very easy to prosecute because the ddr had been coaching those

perpetrators. as we run out of luck and presumably people who perpetrate human rights atrocities will be beginning to not keep such wonderful records, what will be the difficulty, how high will the bar be in the future on obtaining enough forensic evidence to are the? thanks. >> okay. >> i wanted to ask about a set of cases that doesn't involve genocide, but does involve actions by powerful states aprod that interfere with the democratically-expressed wishes of a local population usually in a smaller country or area aspiring to be a country. and i'll give four examples. two are historical, the cia actions in guatemala and iran back in the 1950s, another would be russia in chechnya, and a fourth would be china and tibet. now, in my view there is an issue as to the legitimacy of

that kind of projection of state power when a credible argument can be made that it is contrary to the expression of democratic wishes and values by the local population. and my question is, should there be a set of rules for really powerful states like the united states, russia and china as they project power in their or interests abroad, or is it sort of might makes right, and we'll deal with that in some future age? >> okay. so i heard there a question about the efficiency of courts, a question about forensic evidence and the difficulty which i think is a good question especially in the cases you write about, you know, intelligence also gathered through intelligence which the question of admissibility, and then also the question of projection of power. and we had a request for support for, i guess, a bill on holocaust denial.

so you want to start, william, and then we'll go -- >> um, well, the last questioner talked about should there be a set of rules for powerful countries like i think he said the united states, russia and china. i think that there is a huge distinction. the united states is a rule, it's government by the rule of law, and neither russia nor china -- certainly not russia today -- i don't think thereunder be a rule for these three states because they're all powerful, and i do believe in american exceptionalism in this regard. the forensic evidence, i think that's probably a question for, um, harold and david. i mean, it's not just in questions of justice, but in the age of tweeting and texting and even e-mails it's going to be much more difficult to find records of anything, so i write biographies, and biographies, historical biographies depend on

people writing letters. next generation there aren't going to be many letters. >> david. >> yeah. let me just take the first question as well, the efficiency of the courts and how to speed them up. i do think we have to recognize that there's an explanation as to why so many of these trials before the international tribunals have lasted as many years as they have. we don't have time to go through all that except to say that they are dealing with massive investigative challenges over the deaths of tens to hundreds of thousands of individuals. that's not easy, particularly when perhaps the documentary evidence is far more shallow than we ever experienced at nuremberg. you have to rely on witness testimony, you have to dig up mass graves, you have to figure out exactly how leaders at the very top planned and executed policies through their support net, who's going to testify against them, how do you build that kind of case? that takes a long amount of time. but even when you get to trial, we have to recognize that these

are courts that are built to be very, very respectful of due process. and part of due process is defense counsel. and defense counsel find -- and they have every right to -- an enormous range of means to delay trials because they're representing the interests of their clients. and we have a very talented international defense bar now. so they come into play. and their motion, their pretrial motions and then their trial motions and their advocacy in the courtroom can be significant delay factors. not that it's bad that it's being delayed, but they're actually playing out the principle we believe in which is due process. and finally, i would just say on the forensics side, yes, that's very true. the forensics challenge for these mass crimes is very, very challenging, and it's very time consuming, and it has to go beyond the ease of documentary

evidence to many other forms of evidence including the collection of background intelligence information from various countries, that has to be either remain classified and stay as lead evidence or be declassified. all of that takes an enormous amount of time and effort. you know, we talk a lot about complex commercial litigation, antitrust litigation, things of that nature. guess what? there's enormously complex atrocity crimes litigation and, frankly, we need to get used to it. >> i heard the issue of forensics goes to a broader question of the role of technology, um, both in uncovering human rights abuses and redressing them. in -- we don't know how many people died in the cultural revolution. by 1989 people were faxing for democracy, and now they're tweeting from tahrir square. this has had an enormous impact.

when david and i were working on both kosovo and sierra leone, satellite imagery made it possible to identify the location of mass graves. and even now in cracking difficult cases people use cell phones, and there are other kinds of selectors that can be used in information exchange. so on the other hand, it's a double-edged sword. people's privacy then is put at risk in a way that it was not before. so we have to balance the capacities of these technologies with the need to protect against them. on the other hand, i think the question that was asked about pro-democracy intervention some academics have asserted that right, but i think that the international community has gone only so far as to talk about an emerging concept of responsibility to protect when civilians are being can killed and threatened through various forms of humanitarian intervention. we've seen this and the

elaboration of that doctrine come through in our lifetime. i think driven by the absence of action in rwanda to the delayed action in bosnia, to kosovo, to east timor and then now most recently with regard to libya. >> okay. we're sort of really running out of time. i'm going to take two more questions, you, sir, and you, ma'am and then i'm going to cut it off because these guys have to sign books. you can talk to harold too. [laughter] go ahead, sir. >> i'll try to make it brief. i, i'm just curious to know you talk about justice and what course and all that which i'm all for, however, i have a problem. one of the reasons that i have a problem is like usually when the country's stronger or bigger like the united states or england, for instance, somehow they could get away with things.

we bend the truth in a sense something, like waterboarding is not torture or whatever. but like the prisoners -- [inaudible] they were committing a lot of things that if any other country had done, they would have been brought to the court of justice. the united states has a problem even though i'm not -- i don't feel sorry for those terrorists for that matter, but it bothers me, we put them in guantanamo. now, we claim that's not american soil, we can do anything we want there. i have a problem with that. if the an american embassy is in england or france, it's american soil, okay? guantanamo is an american possession or whatever it is, it's rented. the point is that we conducted things that as people that are ruled by law how in the world can you possibly explain that if nazis did torture it was wrong, and if somebody else does it, if

good guys do it, it's overlooked, it's somehow put aside? same thing with a military court. for once in my life, i would like to see them decide they belong to military court or civilian court. let them give them a fair trial if that's what they want to do, but -- [inaudible] somehow doesn't make sense. >> thank you. ma'am l? >> hi. i'm a little short. annie marino from allegheny college. my question is what do you suggest that the united states do about very dangerous subjects who have been detained with, um, evidence provided by torture when they might be released, if ever put through due process? >> we really have two questions on the same issue of torture. i don't know, william, you want to start? and then -- >> well, i mean, the question of guantanamo and harold can answer this much more, much more legal expertise than i can. but it seems to me as i understand it, guantanamo was chosen as a place to put

detainees from afghanistan in the aftermath of the fall of the taliban because it was thought to be beyond the reach of federal courts. but now it is, i think, the only detention center in the war on terror that is actually completely, um, supervised by the federal courts of the united states. and every detain three in guantanamo -- and the numbers have come down considerably -- has access to defense lawyers and to habeas corpus rules and much better protection than in any other court, in any other detention center around the world. and it's changed. but it's very, very difficult for the united states to get the changes across in international opinion. on the question of torture, um, all torture is abhorrent, and the, um, i think there is a consensus of opinion that waterboarding those three men not in guantanamo, but in the

aftermath of 9/11 did produce life-saving information. the british head of mi5, former head of mi5 said last year it was torture, and it should have not happened, but i still -- and i say that although i know it produced life-saving information. so you have there the dilemma of the lesser evil which michael waltzer has written about, the american social scientist, very eloquently at different times. which is the lesser evil, is it saving lives by waterboarding three people, or is it waterboarding -- is waterboarding a greater evil than that? that's a question that any politician who has to face lives with consequences of it for the rest of of his life, and it's a horrible one. >> well, i think i would take a slightly different view of that. um, there is -- we have reached this almost sort of bizarre situation in our society whereby

we actually discuss whether or not we need to waterboard in order to obtain information through interrogation. we actually know how to interrogate people without waterboarding and to obtain accurate information as a consequence of that. that's been proven empirically and in social science research, etc. that's all out there. it's all documented. and i think interrogators generally would confirm that, frankly, they don't want to use that particular tool because, frankly, it can illicit false information far more often than it can accurate information. the individual waterboarded actually tells you exactly what you want to know because he wants the waterboarding to stop whether it's true or false. so it's just a lot of empirical work out there on how to interrogate, and i think we've demonstrated, and the obama administration, i think, has accepted is veracity of that

empirical knowledge, that there's a better way to interrogate individuals than to undertake those kinds of torturous activities. and i would just say on the military commissions, william, that, you know, you've actually said this very accurately throughout the evening. we've reached a point now with the military commissions in guantanamo where they are of superior quality than they were ten years ago or eight years ago. in other words, when this whole started, this whole situation started, we had a terrible problem with those commissions down there. and it had to work its way through our federal courts and finally the supreme court on many occasions to correct serious problems of due process and of fairness within those tribunals. so you can make an argument today that as they are currently

constituted, they reach a certain threshold of fairness and due process. i think a lot of my colleagues in the legal academy would argue we're not there yet, um, but it is a better situation than it was. and it needs, we need to say that was that explain -- because that explains why so many lawyers and really true advocates of due process and of constitutional law this our society fought for ten years to correct it, to right the situation that simply was a very flawed system in the very beginning. >> harold, i'm going to give you the last word. >> one of the most remarkable public documents i've seen is president obama's nobel prize lecture where he says i'm winning a peace prize, and i'm the commander in chief of a very large military force in a country that's under threat, and how do i reconcile these two things. and the answer is i must defend my country using the tools of

law. and following the principles of morality. so the approach that's been taken to al-qaeda has been multipronged; try those you can in military commissions with rights that satisfy due process, try you can in civilian courts in an attempt to achieve criminal prosecutions, those who must be detained until the end of of the conflict, do so consistent with due process of law, try to transfer people from guantanamo to the extent possible. humane treatment under all circumstances, and then in the ongoing conflict with those who are still conducting attacks, use methods to carry out that conflict against them. that's a multipronged approach. now, congress has actually spoken very strongly, as mr. shawcross said, against two features of that. they want to keep guantanamo

open, the administration wants to close it. they don't want to transfer people out, and they don't like civilian courts in the united states. so there's been a battle over whether the full array of tools can be used. but the most fundamental one has been a no-tolerance policy toward torture under any circumstances. that was something that was announced at the very beginning of the administration, and you've heard no stories of it in this administration. >> all right. well, i'd like to thank our panelists for a really stimulating discussion. [applause] >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> and now on your screen at the national press club's author night is well-known author ann coulter, she just did three hours on "in depth" with booktv. ann coulter, i did want to ask you, your most recent book,

"demonic," for the first time ever you're wearing a white dress. [laughter] >> yeah. we wanted to shake things up a bit. i usually, i stuck to the black dress for a while. we take photos, sometimes the dress i was actually wearing in the photo was green, but it just -- the design people, the art people at the publishing house, it just looked better to have me in black because it looks like i'm a letter. anyway, they were the ones who would often recolor the dress i was wearing black, and i was always in favor of it because for some reason me on the cover of my books in a black cocktail dress drove liberals mad, and i enjoy doing that. [laughter] >> "demonic" your most recent, has been out for six, seven months now. [inaudible conversations] are you working on another book at in this point? >> no. oh, no, no, no. this is a lot of work, this book. it took a lot of research. i mean, the whole -- i sort of knew about the french revolution, but like most americans i didn't know a lot

about it, and it was just so much research and so little talking to other humans, um, that, no, i think it's going to be about a year now. i mean, you need time to percolate to think about what the next theme of the book is going to be, but also i'm just tired. [laughter] >> long book tour? >> yes. the book tour ended up being fun. i usually hate the first two weeks because my publicist makes me get up early. [laughter] that's the only thing i hate about it. but then i outsmart her by going to california, and she's not going to get me up at 4 in the morning, and i just stay on east coast time, so it's like i'm sleeping in. >> in two sentences, what is "demonic" about? >> "demonic" is about the mob mentality and how it is a part of liberalism beginning with the french revolution and the american revolution which i contrast and explaining