>> into 2003, mount misery was bought by donald rumsfeld. the secretary of defense applauded. he lived there his close friend, dick cheney. i was really stunned when i read that, that donald rumsfeld vacation home was not misery. especially for young people, i read this online. i double checked it.

i triple checked it. of the internet can be a global rumor mill and you really have to check your sources. so denis moynihan and i headed down to saint michael to investigate. i should say i have this favorite coffee shop in new york which is an old red brick buildings downtown. and on the outside it has a plaque that says frederick douglass took refuge here, and david ruggles had his printing press. frederick douglass started a newspaper. these men saw the media as their form of liberation of emancipation. because information is power. as we drove and i realize i have no idea where secretary rumsfeld leaves. but then i see the coffee shop ahead of us and i think they will tell the truth. so i go inside and i say i would like to wear donald rumsfeld as. they said go down the street,

make a right, another right. you'll see that the end. i was very, we are onto something. so we go down the road. he don't go down mount pleasant. we make a right and another right. seems lik like you couldn't do t enough. [laughter] we go to the end and we see the black tinted windows of the secret service suv and we know we have arrived. i'm thinking that secretary rumsfeld notice the significance of this property? sure enough, i see a stake in the ground that says mount misery next to the driveway. we race off to this ancient black church. i'm speaking to an older woman who is a descendent of slaves and i say you live in such a historic place. i mean, here frederick douglass was born. he was in slate here. he was been tortured at mount misery and then you secretary

rumsfeld who owns mount misery who is known for misery. she says i can comment right now, we are in church. so from mount misery to mount hope, i was speaking in rochester, new york, at the university and the young woman came up to me after the talk that night and said, would you come with me to mount hope cemetery, i'd like to show you frederick douglass' tombstone. i would love to come but i'm leaving at 6 a.m. flying to denver. she said i will meet you at four. okay, okay. so ago to the cemetery. she's standing there and we make our way to frederick douglass' tombstone brushing away the snowflakes that was really something. then she said, would you come across the cemetery with me? he said there's another tombstone i'd like you to see. all my god, i can't -- okay, okay. so we go across the cemetery and there is the tombstone of susan b. anthony.

susan b. anthony is buried next to her sister. susan b. anthony was a great suffrage -- she also supported the abolition movement. frederick douglass was not on the greatest abolitionist, he was a great feminist. he seconded the resolution of 1848 seneca falls women's rights convention for women to have the right to vote. these people were not just allies. they were friends, and there's a statue near susan b. anthony's house of susan b. anthony and frederick douglass having tea together. these are the movements that have made this country great. and i raced off to the airport and missed my plane. [laughter] so i called up denis and i say quickly got to get in the next plane. they will kill me in denver. he brings up the blueprints of the rochester airport. he's an unbelievable researcher. without denis this book never would've been written, and i thank him for all he is done also for democracy now and building this remarkable

independent media network all over this country and around the world. [applause] and he brings up the blueprint. i sit denis, i just needed i just did it today. i don't need blueprints. he said no, i'm not kidding. i need to know, are you in the susan b. anthony trimble or the frederick douglas trumbull. oh, come on. and on. and i look and they see, this line says susan b. anthony and this would said frederick douglass. and once in a while you have to stop and smell the coffee. [laughter] but these movements, and that's where i really want to end this talk, on movement. that's the word to rosa parks. you might be thinking that's one story you don't have details because we all know what. the media gets the story wrong. just in a nutshell, rosa parks december 1, 95th i should sit down on the bus in montgomery, alabama, and refuses to give up her white passenger and gets arrested and goes and launches a

modern-day civil rights movement. the media tells that. four days later, december 5, she goes to court. they have their meeting, we need to bus boycott to choose a leader to do that, to desegregate the transportation system. and who do they choose as their leader, a young minister, dr. martin luther king. when she died, democracy now raised to washington. she was the first african-american woman to lay in state and the capitol rotunda, and then her body was brought to the washington church, thousands turned out. opera was inside. they had loudspeakers for people to hear outside. a woman who said when asked her what are you doing here, she said i e-mailed my professor since i won't be in class today, i'm going to get an education. [laughter] and this is where the -- media gets it wrong. they talk about the great rosa

parks. i remember one of the networks saying, rosa parks was a tired seamstress. she was no troublemaker. rosa parks was a first class troublemaker. she knew exactly what she was doing. [applause] she was the secretary of the local naacp. she worked with e.d. nixon. she worked with a. philip randolph to organize the brotherhood of sleeping called the black conductors on the pullman train, thousands of them, some of them had been enslaved or their fathers had been and they were all called george. not because of them mothers named him george but because of the owner, george pullman. e.d. nixon worked with him and he worked with rosa parks. they challenge the racist laws of the south. black and white together working to strategize to change this

country. the media denigrates activists, but what can be more noble than dedicating your life to making the world a better place? rosa parks had sat down on the bus before and refuse to get up, as head of the young women. you never know when the magic moment will come. but when it does, if you are involved with social change you will help to build the foundation that will make history, that will determine the future. and to show how brave rosa parks was, an incident that deeply affected her happened just a few months before. in the summer of 1955, the murder of emmett till, 14 year-old african-american boy, lived in chicago with his mother. and she wanted him out of the city for the summer. she sent him to be with his aunt

and uncles and cousins of mississippi. one night, a white mob dragged him out of bed. they said -- his mother had taught him, and he was a starter, but when he stuttered he should whistle. he ended up in the bottom of the tallahatchie river. when his body was dredged up and sent back to chicago, his mother did something incredibly courageous. she said she wanted the casket open for the wage and the funeral. she wanted the world to see the ravages of racism, the brutality of bigotry. thousands streamed by his casket and saw. and then jet magazine, another black publication, had a photograph of his mutilated head, and they were actually published and they were seared into the history and consciousness of this country. she had something very important

to teach the press of the day. show the pictures. show the images. could you imagine for just one week on this 11th anniversary of the invasion of afghanistan, the longest war in u.s. history, for just one week, perhaps starting now, we saw the images of war. above the fold of every surviving newspaper, a photograph of a baby dead on the ground and in articles about them. the top story of every radio and tv newscast talking about a soldier dead and dying. on everyone's facebook wall, every tweet, every e-mail telling the story of a woman whose legs were blown off by cluster bombs, or a wedding party that was blown up for a

family that was killed in a drone attack. for just one week, americans are a passionate people. they would say no, war is not the answer to conflict in the 21st century. democracy now. [cheers and applause] >> every weekend, booktv offers 48 hours of programming focus on nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span2. >> "500 days: secrets and lies in the terror wars" the author is kurt eichenwald who joined us here at the national press club. what are the 500 issue referred to? >> well, this is a book about the period of time between 9/11 and the beginning of the iraq war. the reason it is covering that, it's a period when all the major

decisions were made in terms of policy. international policy around the world, about how the west was going to respond to al qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. >> so when it comes to president bush, vice president cheney, how proactive with a? what did you discover? >> well, pre-9/11 there were some serious problems. those being the bush administration, the president received a lot of briefing about the coming attack, was told there was going to be mass casualties, was told there was a cell in the message. but, unfortunately, members of the pentagon said this was all a big deception being done by m. lawton to take everyone's eyes off saddam hussein. after that, after the attacks, they got very aggressive in terms of the policies they decided, the policies they took

on. and what you see in this book is what went into the decisions, how fast they were made. sometimes how badly they were made, but also some of them that came out clearly the right decisions. >> kurt eichenwald, you use the word secrets and lies. what is one of the lies you found? >> there are quite so many. some of them, when you get right down to it some have to do with the simple things, such as the knowledge they had within the government about the actual connections between al qaeda and saddam hussein. one of the most surprising things to me was, there was a defense intelligence agencies report, a classified report that came out in 2002 that specifically said our intelligence on weapons of mass destruction is terrible. we can't establish any of the things that we are saying to the

public. and i quote from the document pretty extensively. and that was disturbing on the level of, it really did seem like some things fit the preconception, it was accepted. if something didn't, it was tossed aside to conclude the people are doing the good work were the ones who were saying there was nothing there. >> how do you research a book like this? >> you willingly subject yourself to a great amount of agony. the reporting on the started in 2006, and here we are 2012. when i started i really thought i was doing a book about the eight years of the bush administration, and after many hundreds of hours of interviews i realized that i could write 10 volumes on that and really, let's say, part of the story was in a 500 day period. and i collected as many

documents as i could, you know, as anybody who sat down with me will say, i pretty much come here, i will say give me everything i want it now. i take documents even if i don't know what role they have. and andy and i put everything into a massive timeline. this one was 3000 pages. that is also an index to all the information i have, and from that able to reconstruct the history of what happened. >> did you have to make foia requests, and did the president or former vice president speak with you about this book is? >> the only thing i will never do is talk about who did or didn't speak with me. in fact, nowhere in the book do i disclose that. i disclose every document i used by adult talk about who speaks. i tend to find that foia requests are not a lot of fun. in one of my books i put in a