former congresswoman elizabeith holtzman argues that former president george w. bush and vice president dick cheney broke several laws and international treaties during their tenure and office. the author contends that the bush administration lied to the american public after the war in iraq. this is a little over an hour.

>> my name is doctor susan king, i am a professor in political science, and i am pleased to introduce the honorable elizabeith holtzman. she's going to talk about her book, "cheating justice", how bush and cheney attacked the rule of law and father to avoid prosecution. elizabeith holtzman is a public servant, public intellectual, and author. in addition to many news and magazine articles, she has authored a number of other books, including who said it would be easy, one woman's life in the political arena, and her second book was the impeachment of george w. bush, a practical guide for concerned citizens. it was published by nation books in 2006. this highly acclaimed book drew on experiences as her time as an

attorney, and former members of congress during watergate and arguing for the impeachment of george w. bush. it first gained attention when she was elected to commerce at the age of 31 and served a prominent role in the judiciary committee during the impeachment of president nixon. she also shared on the refugee and subcommittee. as a first district attorney of kings county in new york city. in addition to her service and elected office, list has continued to pursue justice and participation in other capacities. president bill clinton appointed her to the nazi and japanese imperial war criminals records interagency working group, which is overseeing the classification of u.s. government secret not see war crimes.

she's currently the cochair of the government relations practice committee at carol feinstein llc. thank you, elizabeth, for coming and sharing your book with our community. this event is being televised by c-span. during this question and answer period, if folks could come to the microphone, we would love to hear your questions. there will also be a reception after the event. thank you. >> good evening, everyone. can you hear me or do i need to speak more loudly? let me begin by thinking first president jeremy travis for the invitation to come here. to professor kane for reading my book and introducing me. and also for interrogating me --

enhanced interrogation. professor feldman, who has been a dear friend and a wonderful scholar and distinguished public servant. of course,. [inaudible] was wonderful work made this event possible this evening. thank you to all of you for coming to talk about the subject which is not a pleasant subject and most people don't want to hear about. it is very vital to our democracy. that is the subject of accountability for everyone. for the high and the mighty, as well as the low and the vulnerable. the poor and the powerless. we just heard the president of the united states respond to the concerns that the gangsters were not being held criminally responsible for the depredations that they caused to our economy.

he created a stepped up and beat up investigative team and investigative unit. but accountability has not been hacked for the action of the bush administration and for the serious abuses and misconduct that took place. i want to start by saying that i got hung up on the idea of accountability when i was first elected to congress. i didn't expect to be on the house judiciary committee, and i did not expect to be thrust as a new member into impeachment proceedings against the president of the united states. i was brand-new. my parents were immigrants. all of a sudden, i am sitting in judgment on the president of the

united states. i had to study the impeachment clause in the constitution and i understood something that the frame itself was a central to our functioning as a democracy. not only that there would be checks and balances, not only that there -- the high and mighty, the president and vice president could be held accountable through impeachment or other processes, but that the criminal law was functioning as well. that as a democracy, no one was above the law. it was an important lesson that the country learned at that time, too. i know many of you might not have even been born in 1973 and 1974 when watergate took place. but richard nixon won in one of the biggest landslides in the united states. it meant that most americans in that election voted for him. yet, when facts came out that

suggested that laws were violated, the american people -- the overwhelming majority supported richard nixon said that congress, you have to investigate and have a special prosecutor. the laws have to be enforced no matter what. in the end, when the house judiciary committee asked on a bipartisan basis for the impeachment of richard nixon, the country overwhelmingly supported that verdict. what did that tell us? that more important than any political party and more important than any president of the united states and more important than any single person and more important than any ideology, was the bedrock principle of the rule block and the preservation of our constitution. americans united on that theme, regardless of having a vote just about a year and a half before

that. we are not talking about ancient history. people put behind them their partisan views and said what is good for the country? and the rule of all? and the standard of law was critical. i said, that is a really important principle, and i believed in it too. then we got to the bush years. the accountability principles pretty much worked, i won't say they were perfect, hardly. government doesn't operate in a perfect world, and in itself is really perfect. then we got to the bush years. things changed. my office and i wrote on my subject. [inaudible] i have had the experience of dealing with the terms of the constitution and impeachment

proceedings -- but we saw and wrote a book. we saw, however, that there was no accountability to the impeachment process. then we said, well, let's look at what else can be done. it is clear in the debates about the constitution that once a president leaves office, he or she can be prosecuted. there was nothing in the debate that said oh, cuban president? you get a forever free from jail card. nonsense. the framers understood that presidents could do very bad things. they were human. they created checks and balances because they understood that a president could do bad things and they understood that congress could do bad things. they were not idealistic about people. they were very practical and they were very pragmatic. we said okay, let's do this book

about what kind of accountability can exist read we were surprised as we begin to look at what the criminal statutes were. what we saw was not just the possibility of accountability, but that the bush team was excruciatingly sensitive to the possibility of prosecution, and had tried to arrest barriers in a variety of ways, including slicing and dicing and rewriting criminal laws. to protect themselves from accountability and protect themselves specifically from criminal laws and verdicts. the book deals with -- not only with the idea of accountability and the importance of

accountability, and the possibility of accountability -- but it also describes how they tried to avoid accountability. i'm just going to give you a couple of examples of that, and then talk about one of the areas that we discussed in depth. after examining the federal code in detail, we found that there were three areas of potential criminal liability. one was the area of the deceptions -- which led to the war in iraq. the very tragic war in iraq. we examined in the book three potential statutes. we find that one is affable and offering the possibility of prosecution. we looked at the area of illegal

why camping, which is a federal crime. we looked at the area of treatment of detainees. let me just briefly tell you what we found in the area of the deception. it is a federal crime to conspire or defraud the united states. i don't think there is too much doubt that president bush and his team were involved in making statements that not only turned out not to be true, but the evidence suggests they knew was not true when they said that. in effort to defraud congress and the american people at the same time. conspiracy to defraud the united states is a federal crime.

we're not talking about international law, we are talking about united states crime. i don't want to say -- i would never say that is because it looks on the face of it that there is a statute that has been violated that someone has committed a crime. you need to have a series, their prosecutor examine the existing statutes and examine the evidence and make a determination. on the face of it, you have some very startling evidence. not all of the facts are out of the back, bag, even to this day, about exactly what president bush knew and when he knew it. exactly what the objectives were in the iraq war. his eyesight in the book, statements by him and vice

president cheney -- that there is no doubt that iraq had weapons of mass destruction, also the claim and we know that this is not true, of course, the claim that saddam hussein was in cahoots with al qaeda, and they knew better. these are some of the points that could be used by a prosecutor in determining whether to prosecute. i will give you some time in the question. matt, because i want to focus on some of the other areas. the other area is wiretapping. let me give you a little background to this. during the nixon impeachment proceeding, one of the grounds for impeachment was that president nixon engaged in illegal wiretapping. he decided to wiretap his staff,

some of that wiretapping was done for political purposes. and also journalists. as a result, that was one of the grounds of impeachment -- illegal wiretapping. as a result, about the findings of president nixon -- as a result of the findings about other agencies illegalities and wiretapping, in 1978, congress passed a law in response and said it is a federal crime to wiretap. this applies to anyone, without a court order in cases involving national security. ..

that argument is the essence of military dictatorship, the essence of tyranny. because if the president is not bound to obey the law, then he can commit any crime and any act that he wants. and that's exactly what the framers never intended to have happen. salt on the face of it, you have violation of the federal criminal statute with regard to

wiretapping. this also should be investigated. the third area that we look at is the area of torture. and this is an area in which, as i mentioned earlier, the president was exquisitely sent to come to the possibility of prosecution. i mean, how do we know this? because there was a memo that was sent to the president by his then council, who became attorney general of the united states. and a memo sent to the president and reference to a federal statute called the war crimes act, it reminds me a little bit of when i was d.a. and listening into wiretaps of organized crime figures. it was like boss, we've got to worry about this, this is something that could happen to

us. and basically gonzález's memo said as we discussed the war crimes act creates a potential, i'm paraphrasing, for prosecution, and the war crimes act, let me step back, was enacted by congress to carry out the geneva convention. geneva convention requires the humane treatment of everyone who is everyone despite the existence of a war during wartime the civilian population, as well as people who are armed and who are combatants. that statute was, in fact, treaty which we ratified in 1954 under president eisenhower, who led the american troops in world war ii and the allied troops in world war ii, was adopted

because eisenhower understood the importance of the geneva convention, not just as a moral principle, but as a way to protect american soldiers fighting in the war. and so, and the geneva convention were adopted in response to the terrible, horrible acts that occurred in world war ii, primarily in civilian populations but also the mistreatment of american pows by the japanese, and pows by others. so that was the background of geneva conventions but under the geneva conventions everyone who signs has to enact a statute that makes it a crime in that country to violate those geneva conventions. so, it took a while, for years, but in 1996, a republican congressperson, of north carolina, proposed the war

crimes act, which made it a u.s. crime to violate the geneva convention. not an international crime, not a matter of international law, but a matter of u.s. law, u.s. criminal law, to violate the geneva conventions. so in this memo to president bush, alberto gonzales said if we opt out of geneva conventions, we reduce the possibility of prosecution under the war crimes act. this is their logic, i'm not going to subscribe to, but their logic was since the war crimes act carries out the geneva conventions, if we say the geneva conventions don't apply than the war crimes act doesn't apply. so the press in reporting about the widely publicized decision of the bush administration to opt out of the geneva

conventions through al qaeda and for the taliban, mentioned in point number one in the gonzales memo, which said geneva conventions are quaint, that's why we should opt out of them. but point number two, which i think was the real point, was that opting out of the geneva convention would come in their mind, make the war crimes act less likely to be imposed and, therefore, reduce the likelihood of prosecution under the war crimes act. this is the chief counsel to the president of united states saying, if you opt out of the geneva conventions, we are less likely to be prosecuted under the war crimes act. i mean, that is an astonishing memorandum. so it wasn't just a memo going to the president.

they had a conversation about it and, of course, president bush opted out of the geneva conventions. in response to this memo. and what's very interesting is that they went merrily along thinking that there would be no liability under the war crimes act. and why were they so worried about the war crimes act? because the war crimes act not only make torture a breach of the geneva conventions and, therefore, a federal crime if you engage in torture, but cruel and in human treatment. that's pretty broad. and dignity upon people. pretty broad. they knew what they were doing, violated the prohibition against cruel and in human treatment, and against fostering indignities upon people.

well, at one point the supreme court had to rule on whether the geneva conventions applied to the people who were detained, and the supreme court said, geneva conventions applied. well, i think panic struck in the white house because of the passionate because if the geneva conventions applied, under their theory, the war crimes act applied and that meant they were liable for every person who was treated in a cruel and in human way. very serious. federal criminal penalties, a felony, a crime, it carries the death penalty if death results. and we know, by the way, that president bush was personally

involved, because he has admitted it, just like with the wiretapping, he has admitted that he authorized waterboarding of people, and other enhanced photo quote enhanced interrogation techniques. so this is very serious. what were they going to do? they were facing execution. and as they put it in the middle, as gonzalez put in the memo, the problem wasn't only the justice department during their tenure, but what about the justice department in the next administration or the administration after that? they couldn't control the justice department for ever. they were worried. panic struck the white house. what are we going to do with the war crimes act? we can all go to jail. well, they went to congress, and engaged in some flimflam to distract congress' attention -- which is not always very

difficult -- and they slipped through a statute. they didn't abolish the war crimes act, they just nullified it retroactively going back to the very beginning. there's no other example in history of the united states where a statute was made retroactively. so you couldn't prosecute anymore. under the war crimes act. that's what they succeeded in doing. to protect themselves. the other area in the area of mistreatment of detainees, and we believe its extremist difficult for any prosecutor to prosecute under the war crimes act, as they have left it mangled, chopped up, sliced and diced. there's another statute that they were concerned about called the anti-torture act. that act was adopted in 1994 to

carry out the convention against torture. that was adopted under president ronald reagan. and the antitorture act makes it a crime, federal crime, we're not talking international lawyer. we're talking about u.s. crime, makes it u.s. crime a u.s. felony to engage in torture outside the united states. well, this also created a problem. because a lot of people have thought in the past, for example, that waterboarding was torture, include the united states which prosecuted it when it took place in arizona, i believe it was in arizona by a sheriff against an american citizen. not under the antitorture act but under other statutes. and they said well, how are going to get around the

anti-torture act works that was each event the war crimes act because if you could define torture real nearly so that nothing is torture, home free. so they got a willing lawyer to redefine the word torture. the torture statute, the antitorture statute said that it's a federal crime to torture somebody, and torture is defined as causing severe mental pain, physical or mental pain or suffering. okay. well, the first thing they did was they were very worried about waterboarding because everybody thinks that waterboarding is torture. so they said, waterboarding is not supposed to actually cause pain but does cost something. so they said you know, pain and suffering, that's like a phrase, those words mean exactly the

same thing so we'll just take suffering doesn't mean anything other than pain, all right? i mean, it could mean paying it doesn't have to mean paying. so they just deleted, took any racer and even though the statute said physical or mental pain or suffering, they just be raised to word something. this is a lawyer who went to harvard law school and clerked for justice thomas, and teaches law. he just said well, suffering, we would just ignore it. it's like that song love and marriage, it's a phrase that goes together that means the same thing. pain-and-suffering, that's the same thing so we don't have to pay attention to suffering. then they decided to define the word, the phrase severe pain. how do you define the word severe pain so that almost nothing qualifies? well, they had a brilliant idea.

they said, and i give them credit for this, they said severe pain means the pain that is equivalent to the pain of death. now if you should look at it, you know, the eyes read over the term pain, death, wow, that's really, really serious and severe pain. my god, what could be worse than pain and death? but if you think about it for to second to you realize what is the pain of death? shakespeare once said, it's actually in hamlet, that death is that country from whose bourne no traveler returns. so how does anybody know what the pain of death is? right? well, when the guy who wrote this memo to the president was asked by the justice department at a later inquiry, what did you mean by the pain of death, what does that term mean? he said, it's a quote.

i don't know. i think it must be very severe but i don't know. so what am i telling you? this is a cooked up fake definition. it is a meaningless definition. but that was when president bush has tried to hide behind. my lawyers gave me this definition, and so what i was doing wasn't torture. well, actually his book is called decision point, not my lawyers decision point. so he can't exactly hide behind what his lawyers say. and is not really a defense for what advice lawyers give in general. it's normally advice that can be followed in tax cases because normal people are not expected to understand the tax law.

if you're a lawyer -- if your lawyer advises you on a tax case you are advised to follow his or her advice. but to some extent in terms of normal human behavior, we are expected to understand normal human events and what severe pain is. and we don't believe that defense is applicable, and we certainly don't believe that the defense is applicable when the president engaged and authorize the interrogation before he got written up in from his lawyer. when you pick a lawyer action is going to give you a definition, when the definition on the face of it makes no sense, and went another justice department lawyer, upon reading this memo said, this is insane. so we think there's no real reliance in good faith by the president or his team on the advice they got from this lawyer, whom they chose a very interesting way to prepare their

quote unquote defense of torture. we describe this in detail. the book goes into detail about these three areas and the criminal statutes that apply. but we have not had any effort at criminal accountability. and the question you may ask is, is there ever going to be criminal accountability? my answer to that is, that you can't give up hope. because if this president can commit acts that on the face of it appeared to be crimes, i'm not saying that they are, but appear to be, without ever having a series of investigations, then what's to stop the next president or the president after that, or the president after that from engaging in other crimes?

and crimes not necessarily abroad, but here at home. part of the reason you the criminal law and you enforce the law is not just to punish for bad acts, but to send a very clear signal to would be repeaters, you can't get away with it. we're not going to get -- we will not let you get away with it. it's also a student by society that these are acts that we find reprehensible. now, accountability for heads of state, not always easy. you haven't always seen it by countries willing to look internally and say our prayers did something bad. we have to hold them to account. we did that in watergate, but we seem to have lost the guidance and the center that watergate taught us about as a country. we are not focused on accountability. and so the failure to bring about justice in these cases,

tribalized is -- trivializes and sent a clear message to president in the future, don't worry, you guys or gals, you can get away with it. no one will ever hold you responsible. but i look at other places, and even the united states, to say that there will be accountability. if not now, in the future. we can look at the case of a gust of pinochet, the dictator of chile, took 27 years to bring them to justice. but just as our primary because it was triggered by a very fine spanish judge about the czar who sought his extradition to spain, to be prosecuted for mistreatment of spanish nationals in chile.

we have also seen in the united states and effort to bring matters to a just result. we can just look at the civil rights movement. in the south, in the '50s and '60s and '70s, there was a serious reluctance to hold people accountable for the murder of civil rights workers. but people didn't give up. we don't believe in the statute of limitations for murder. and so, starting in the '90s these cases were reopened, and many people who were able to escape justice and enjoy ingenuity were prosecuted and convicted in the deep south. i was involved myself in an effort to bring not see war criminals had come to the united states and were able to live here in peace and security for 30 or 40 years to justice.

so justice can be delayed, it can be detoured, but i don't believe it can be stopped. and as i said, it is an issue that goes to the heart of our democracy. is there going to a single standard of law for the powerful and the week? or powerful people in our society able to say, we can get away with it, what ever that it is. even if it is a violation of federal laws. i hope that won't happen, and i hope that you will be part of an effort to demand the accountability and justice for all. isn't that what this country is about? thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you so much for that stirring presentation. i really wanted to encourage

students, if you haven't read the book, please do so. especially those of you who are interested in moscow. the way that the bush administration's legal team was engaging very creative legal interpretations, incredibly well documented, i think you will learn a lot about federal laws when comes to accountability and with the international laws have been translated into domestic laws from this book so i think you're be good preparation to learn a lot of things for law school. okay. so i guess i don't have a couple of questions i would want to ask because we are running out of time and again to questions from students will probably be more interesting than any questions i might have. i think you did a great job document how important it will be to hold the bush administration responsible for the many criminal activities that he engaged in. and i think that is your political argument about how important it is to maintain accountability in american democracy is very well taken. but one of the questions that i

had, listening to use because while is reading the book is this contrast between the reaction of the american people when it came to watergate versus the george w. bush administration. so why do you suppose that there such a market difference in the demand for accountability? is it because when he came to the bush administration there were issues of national security at play? was it possibly because i guess the theatrics of the clinton administration's, i guess attempts of accountability by the republicans in the 1990s, put a sour taste in people's mouth? i was one if you had any thought about this distinction? >> i think that's a really important question about why the difference. i think, i think fear and national security issues -- can you hear? are these working? can you hear me now?

can you hear me now? okay. i think fear and national security were important factors. we knew in watergate, for example, president nixon used national security dozens of times to try to justify what was happening. the break-in was national security, tell the cia to stay awake -- i do, the fbi to stay away. he didn't go so tell them but he told the cia to tell the fbi to stay away from the watergate burglar. don't investigate it because it claimed national security. he claimed national city but this wasn't an ordinary break-in, and in the end the process went forward. the big difference in watergate was that there was a special prosecutor. and we have no special prosecutor here. archibald cox was appointed

special prosecutor, named special prosecutor by elite richardson, and with total happenstance, and one china prosecutor, like patrick fitzgerald, and he had a mandate. he had independence, and he was told to uncover the truth and uncovered evidence without fear or favor, and he did. he was ultimately obstructed in his efforts to get out the truth but i think most americans think he did a very professional job. we had no special prosecutor as a result of watergate, and i called for him a book in terms of what we can do, we created in common a statue for special prosecutors. that statute, unfortunately, was so abused by kenneth starr that congress said let's get rid of it, let's let it expire. and as a result we have no mechanism to create a special prosecutor which means that there is no hope of

accountability and less the president says affirmatively this has to be investigated, and i'm going to have a special prosecutor appointed, or the attorney general says the. i think that's one difference. also that bush did an extraordinary job of scaring the american people. they were scared by the constant emphasis on the mushroom clouds. most americans thought they were in imminent danger from saddam hussein, that we were going to have a nuclear weapon go off here, that he was going -- if he himself was going to use nuclear weapons, the news going to handed off to some terrorist group. i mean, even the cia said this was a very unlikely scenario but the american people believed it, and they were scared. if you go through all the documentation, we have some of it in our book, you will see that there was harping and harping and harping, not only by

the president but like condoleezza rice and by others in the administration about the mushroom cloud. so people were scared. wiretapping is a very abstract point. how do you feel that? how is your liberty affect? most people don't know, so they say well, first of all, they will never wiretap me, i'm a law-abiding citizen so what do i have to worry about? it's been, some group of would be terrorists, not me. so nobody really stopped to think about how illegal wiretapping can chill our liberties. the framers of the constitution understood. they understood, that's why in the bill of rights it said people shall be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and know what show issue except on probable cause. why do they say that? because they had experience with

the british monarchy, went and banged down doors and when he people's homes and arrested them based on all kinds of ridiculous evidence. they understood the danger, and we should really understand the danger of what happens when people think they are being wiretap. so, but it is too abstract for many people, and the torture was recounted many americans, but it wasn't our own people are being tortured. it was them, the other, you can't dehumanize the other. that's not the first time in history that happen. it's not the first time in the united states we've dehumanize the other. so i think those are some factors, but those factors i believe can be overcome, or hope they can become overcome, guess it's a terrible thing to think that we ourselves can't hold our

own administration, our own highest level of people, accountable. let's put it this way. if you don't think they should be prosecuted for a crime, let's change the law and say when a president violates the law, he or she can do it without being prosecuted. okay, but we don't have that and most americans wouldn't agree to that. so i think it's a very tough, i think tough time, the post-9/11 era. president bush took advantage of the fears of the american people, and americans trusted him. they trusted their president. they hadn't remembered watergate. they hadn't remembered the vietnam war when presidents lie to the american people. so they said our president is going to tell the truth. and they were wrong. >> i guess i have really a little bit of time left i guess i have one last question and i would open it up to four.

your book ends with a very passionate call to action. youth urged the students to remain hopeful for accountability i was one if you could maybe give some concrete suggestions about actions for some a sincere whom i want to pursue this further. >> well, i'm going to say first, read the book so you can be armed with the facts. secondly, i would go and see a representative in congress and say why aren't things happening? why can't we have accountability? i would join together with other groups. i would try to keep myself informed. some groups are doing a lot of work on not necessary governmental accountability, but trying to do with issues of torture or this treatment of detainees and so forth. i think we talk about changing some of the laws. for example, enacting a special prosecutor law that would make it possible for special prosecutor to have

investigation. one thing i didn't mention was the statute of limitations is running out on some of these crimes, particularly the crimes related to defrauding the congress about the war, the crime of illegal wiretapping. these are crimes that the statute of limitations will run out on. and, in fact, some of the torture crimes will become subject to a statute of limitations in the not-too-distant future. luckily, under the patriot act, the one good thing it did was to create come to abolish the statute of limitations for certain kinds of torture that create a risk of serious bodily injury or death and waterboarding, accordance the cia itself, creates a risk of drowning, i do believe that there is no statute of limitations with respect to waterboarding. but other kinds of enhanced interrogation. may be subject to the statute of

limitation. so we have to be alert. and i think to call on the president, right to the president, right to the attorney general and call on your representatives and are centers to ask, what are they doing about getting accountability, and why not? so those are things i would definitely urge that you do. >> thank you very much. if you could please come up to the microphone and ask your question so that everyone can hear it. >> are we still torturing, this administration? >> i don't know the answer to that. i don't know the answer to that. >> please come up to the microphone. >> i think the president has said that it is to be no torture, but i don't know the we know everything that's going on in the secret prisons around the world that we still have. >> my question draws somewhat on this question but i know other people who are unaware of the

enhanced interrogations that were occurring. i think former speaker pelosi, what would be your litmus test for a criminal investigation for somebody who knew or participated in? what would be your litmus test for an investigation? >> well, you have to ask what the statute required in terms of did they authorize, could they have stopped, with a conspiring, for example, those of kind of defined standards under the criminal law, probably being in a situation where you could not have stopped it. you didn't authorize it. i don't know that they would be criminal liability. i'm talking, we didn't, we didn't look at anybody other than the president and the vice president and the people closest to them who were not trying to

base liability, we just focus on them. we didn't expand -- show to be a friday people who could be included but we really focused on the main people who admitted that they authorize. i do want to get into a situation where what are the disputes about factory nancy pelosi said she did ask. other people said she did why. that is a factual dispute. we want to focus on -- there is a factual dispute. president bush himself said i said damn right when they asked me if i was going to authorize waterboarding of khalid sheikh mohammed. just a question about that. so now the question is, if he admitted it, what do we do about it? so i think your point is interesting but we didn't focus on it in the book. >> i really want to thank you so much for this book at least provocative words. the center for constitutional rights has many of the

guantánamo cases, and today they had a big session on what is going on and that kind of failure to not only failed to close guantánamo but failure to release 89 of the folks in guantánamo who, everybody agrees, should be released, when they have a place to go. so what is torture? is it still going on? of course it is. then there are these super max prisons where folks are in isolation. and for me, things are happening so quickly, the passage and signing of the national defense organization act, what does that do? and given who voted for it, our own senators, our own good new york centers for it, barbara mikulski voted for it. what does that do to him she

should be indicted? and what does this new law do to the structure? >> well, those are very important questions. i'm not talking about whether people should pass law, shouldn't pass law. i'm talking about the laws that are already on the books, and these laws have been on the books, the anti-torture act, wiretapping law, the defrauding congress. by the way, defrauding congress issues in the prosecution of people in watergate, top aides to nixon, and it was used in connection with the iran-contra prosecution. so that the statute that is well-established that i'm not talking about should they have passed an act, should they have not passed this act. we don't have to go there. i'm just talking about the laws that are on the books right now. and why aren't they being in force when it comes to the president of the united states? the our books, there are laws on the books right now about bank

fraud. and they weren't being enforced. and the american people were very upset about that. we're not talking about any new laws. we don't have to go the. i'm not saying we shouldn't go there. i'm just talking about what message is sent in the future if the laws we had that prohibit torture, that prohibit illegal wiretapping, that prohibit a president from defrauding the congress into going into war, and not enforced. what does it say to another president? what's the next war we're going to go into on the basis of fraud? or the next wiretapping, or the next torture. and maybe the torture won't be again, maybe will be of us next time. they said that, a very famous statement about how, you know, in germany, a pastor said first they came for the labor union,

talking about the nazis, no one said anything, i didn't same thing, then they came for the religious people and the ministers, no reset anything. then they came for the catholics and nobody said anything. then they came for the jews and no reset anything. then they came for me. so are we going to be the me's down the road? that's what is at stake you. those are very important questions but they really are on a different point, which is we have laws on the books right now that are not being enforced, because we're talking about enforcing them against the president of the united states. and if we want to create exemptions for presidents from our law, are we going down the road to tyranny and dictatorship? how can we preserve ourselves of democracy if a president could

say i don't have to obey the law. i'm president. where does that line and? where do you draw that line? so that is great, great danger but and also i think it's a family to look at this and to prosecute torture come is also a wave condoning it in the future. people don't really understand can you talk about, you know, we are not, what is torture? people don't really understand what happened to people who are giving enhanced interrogation. if you read the cia's manual about this, they took somebody, i may, and they did it repeatedly. they took somebody, they smashed them into the wall, they took his clothes off, they host them with water, they kept him in freezing temperature, they didn't feed him, they kept him

in stretched decision. he was in a diaper. they stopped that after about a half hour or 40 minutes. then they would do it all over again. smashing into the wall, dousing with cold water. coming, this is no joke, what happened. and it's pretty horrific. and some of these people are no longer the same as a result, this long-term mental damage as a result of the waterboarding. one of the people's whose lawyer said he had 200 seizures. i don't know. so it's really, i think the american people have to be educated. that's what the important things that happen and i think this is a good answer also to how we can change the minds or the understanding of the american people. watergate was a critical learning experience to the american people. it was a way of getting back in touch with the constitution

said, and about single standard of law and upholding president accountable and about abuse of power and how we can correct it. it was, everybody called, said a teachable moment. but there has been no teachable moment about the it years of the bush abuses. and effort, whether it is prosecution or even a truth commission would bring up to the american people and would educate them about the dangers of this. i mean, the amazing thing, just with respect to a truth commission as another alternative way of accountability on it's not as satisfactory in my view of someone to determine whether crimes were committed, but in england they have a commission that is sitting right now on determining what happened in terms of going into the iraq war. they called tony blair to testify. they called all the top figures

to testify. they had public hearings, and they're going to issue a report. in holland, they've appointed a former supreme court justice who issued a report by the way, part of it is in english and you can access it online, and he found that the war was illegal under international law. and he also found, by the way, that the dutch prime minister -- hello, he is seeing the same thing here. so these are things that we have failed to do that other countries have done and it is just inexcusable. we have done this in our own past, but why are we stopping now? i think it's very dangerous to continue going forward without accountability. >> i was wondering if the administration is prosecuted under domestic or international

law, like which carries more weight, in your viewpoint? >> that's also an interesting question. there are some efforts to hold american officials accountable. in italy, there was a prosecution of some 23, 21 cia officials. they were found guilty in absentia. the our investigations now going on in spain, under spanish law, and there's an investigation, it's not clear what is really going on, but it started in poland where there was a secret prison and people were tortured. my view is in those countries entitled to act, but it's a shameful thing if other countries have to watch our linen, if other countries have to hold our people accountable, if other countries are the ones who tell the truth, and that we can do it. we're not big enough, not strong

enough, we don't have the courage, we don't have the commitment to the rule of law to do it ourselves. to me it would be very shameful to the united states. yes, it would bring some more truth to light. they would show people that crimes have been committed, but we need to do it ourselves. not to say they can't and shouldn't, but we need to do it ourselves. >> we have the history of american exceptionalism. we have always set the standards. i would say over the last 20 or 30 years there is this sense that we are not as powerful as we used to be. we are not the leaders of the free world. so given the historical reluctance to follow others, i'm just wondering if you can think of any internal role where we can be more respected, and still

feel that we count for something in the world. i think they create this vacuum in which the bush administration was able -- america strong, we can do whatever we want. it's been a disaster but i think the deeper cultural -- if we make the changes you're asking for, the enforcement, it's very, very difficult. i agree with you that we do look like we're not doing well, but given the level of information we have of what's going on, there just seems to be a retreat from law, a retreat from the standards you are talking about, in the name of we are very strong, and its networking. >> well, i think we felt, i mean, i think america felt strong. during the nixon time. it's true that we just lost the war in the non, but maybe it was the laying of the vietnam war,

anger that the public had about that, that made people feel that they had to be accounted for and they were going to let anybody not be accountable. i don't really study that, enough of that history. but i don't know that it is a question of feeling strong, vis-à-vis, other countries. i think our own view of the rule of law here, and i think it's a very -- if we expect people to obey the law, then that will make us weak abroad. and, of course, that's nonsense, but britain doesn't seem to be concerned about that in terms of their inquiry. and we shouldn't either how can we be afraid of the truth? how can we be afraid of justice? what are the? if we are that's a very, very sad sign. and you know, our moral standing in the world will depend on our ability to deal with abuses of

power and criminal conduct by our leaders. and the failure to deal with it will have a very bad emphasis. the fact that there's been no accountability for torture has not helped us in the eyes of the world. has not enhanced our power. has diminished our power. so, but i don't know that that's what people are responding to. maybe that's the case or not. i just don't know. >> i just hope that, and this is a question, do you think this will bring, by alyssa track, by having this, to bring justice, it's going to attract it

passionate will attract harmony with the rest of the world or will it attract divisiveness? >> well, i don't see how accountability, done in the right way, fair and professional way, creates divisiveness. i go back to watergate. i hate to harp on it, but that's a very concrete experience. and people said when we saw in the impeachment process, that the country could never stand it, that it would divide this, destroyers. but it didn't get it strengthened us because we learned from the process that we were, as americans, committed to the rule of law. that was the most important thing. that strengthened us as a country, as a people. we took tremendous pride in the our president did very bad things, we took tremendous pride in the institution that were able to respond to those bad

things. well, you know, so i think that the idea that justice will be divisive, i don't agree with that. i think that when you have fair and effective prosecution, people have confidence in the institutions, instead of lack of confidence in the institutions. and that's a real critical factor. our institutions working or are they biased to protect the rich and powerful? politically powerful, politically rich. actually rich, that is we can't have institutions that do that because then the american people lose confidence. >> are there any further questions? spent okay, i will be available to sign any books if you want. >> one more question. >> you are bringing up a very, very important moment in american history, and we don't seem to be that concerned about

it. i know what kind of talk about, we've heard this before, but i mean, the fact that there are these people it seems like there should be hundreds of people here listening to this. i was bothered by it personally. didn't do anything about it. what is it about our american psyche right now, about americans, where we are in own heads? look at the campaign that is going on now and the enormous hatred within parties, between parties. what's going on and how do we get out of this funk? >> well, i think of course america is very stressed economically now. and many of them are consumer their own survival come with keeping a job if they have one, getting a job if they don't. i mean, this is a depressed time for this country, and maybe people think that enforcing the law is a luxury, when it's

really essential. it is as essential as bread. we can't -- this country created the prosperity that we enjoyed up until very recently, because we had a rule of law that function. yes, it didn't function always, whether it was against minorities, particularly african-americans, women, indians, native americans and so forth. but, you know, over all we were getting better. we were making progress. and without the democracy what's going to happen to economic growth in the society? what's going to happen to our society? so i would say probably now most people are worried turning inward because they're very worried about their economic circumstances. but that doesn't mean that we can't be terribly worried about our democracy. and the president addressed that. why would people care about prosecuting bankers? because they don't want a country in which the rich and

powerful escape justice, even though they are hurting they still believe in the idea of justice. well, we need to have an idea of justice for people who did what president bush and vice president cheney did. if you look at this war in iraq that it took us into on the basis of lies in d.c., on the basis of a parent criminal misconduct, what did it cost us? i saw a recent estimate, $3 trillion, 3 trillion. can you imagine what we could do with $3 trillion today? not to mention the tens of thousands of americans injured, not to mention the thousands of americans killed, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of iraqis killed, not to mention the people -- up evil and chaos that was a result of our misconduct. the terrible consequences of this.

and if people understood that, and almost more people have the awareness have the power to make a difference, then i think you'll see some change. they did have the power. maybe it was occupy wall street, that created the feeling that something had to be done about the banks. maybe we need a occupy wall street or the equivalent to give the american people the sense that we have to have people, people and top book physicians who engage in criminal misconduct to be held accountable. that i'd have to be put out there. and maybe all of us in this room, if we go forth from here, contact elected officials, talk to our friends, write letters to the editor, do stuff on the internet, maybe we can begin to make a difference. anyway, if we don't do anything, sure, we will. i guess it's up to each of us.

thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you everyone. spent we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback on twitter.com/booktv. spent richard brookhiser, when we talk about the foundingrs, at fathers, what's the air we are talking about? >> gue what are the events we're talking about? >> we're talking about the american revolution and theg writing of the constitution. and those are the tiki events.da and everybody who played a major role in those events can claim to be a founding father.lder now obviously some of the older ones had careers he younger onest careers that went on quite a few years after the signing of the constitution. >> host: who were the older ones and younger ones. >> guest: benjamin franklin, the

oldest, born in 1706. he knows cotton mather and the died in 1790. he signs both the declaration of independence and the constitution. the last to die was james madison. he is born in 1751, and then he do is in 1836. 85 years old. so, he has seen the fight over missouri being admitted to the union. he sees nullification crisis but he is the last one. aaron byrd. but that's the other side. the dark side. >> host: in 2006, you wrote wow what would the founders do," wwfd, and in that book you write: the founders invite our questions now because they invited discussion when they lived. they were dry in public

speeches and in journalism. >> guest: that's right. they set up a republic and they're very proud of doing that, and this is unique -- virtually unique in the world. there were -- holland had been kind of a republic but that was going down the tubes so this was a unique form of government, and compared to all the competitors, month no, okays and whatnot, it's open. it's based on popular rule and, yes, of course, the franchise was restricted but still there is a franchise. so, voters, the electorate, has to be appealed to, has to be brought long and instructed, and they do this constantly. a lot of them are journalists. they write for the newspapers. some of them are professional

journalists, alexander hamilton founds a newspaper that is still going on, the new york post. he founded it. was the first publisher. benjamin franklin was a great publisher, sam adam was a publisher. it's hard to think of founders who didn't write journalism. george washington didn't. but that is very rare. even someone like james madison who didn't like or was great at it, he screwed himself up and wrote 29 federalist papers which were op-ed pieces in newspapers. so these guys, these men, know that they have to put themselves out there for the american public, which is their con constitute tune si. >> host: no it alls. >> guest: well, know it alls. they were well educated.

it's a little country. the colleges we have -- he have a handful of colleges. they're tiny. harvard or kings college, which becomes columbia, or yale or princeton, they have a few dozen students. unlike the thousands that they have today. but most of these men were college graduates. those who weren't made sure they read all their lives. they felt they had to be up on both the news of the day and the political theory of the day. they all knew their -- if you listen to their debates you would have thought that moscue the celebrate.

and the knew their english history, their recent english history and they're ancient history. the history of the classical world. the history of rome and greece. the didn't always admire what they read. in hamilton and the federalist papers he says the history of the little greek city states is disgusting because they all -- they go through cycles of tyranny and chaos and whatnot and that's what he hopes america can avoid. but that's a negative example. so you have to know the negative examples as well. >> host: you say -- tell me if i'm paraphrasing this wong -- our founding fathers were less well-traveled, perhaps even less sophisticated, than high school seniors today or veterans from iraq and afghanistan. >> guest: well, sure. it's harder to get around the world. and a crossing of the atlantic ocean takes 20 davis