governments can really open and learn and not just to try to control them but trying to use that knowledge of the people to improve government action? >> well there are several cases going on. basically the question is how do you use this thing and democracy to help the government? so first to give a lesson depending on what you want to achieve. basically it's the same. people bring revolutions to the oppressive regime but there is a need as much as there was. this is the eternal debate and when you are working with the people coming from a press countries they say oh bless you. you don't have this media censorship and you can communicate. you can gather in the square and you won't get arrested in them when you talk to the people from

otpor campaigns drop the globe they say you have this evil government which automatically unites people around so we all know what we want. we want an end to this government. but when you look at the battlefield they are facing, they are using the same tools with a very similar enemies. the fear is the main factor. in democracies they are facing opposition so the tools for breaking out the fear are very similar. you need unity and a vision the vision of tomorrow. you need humor for example. basically people power is getting more interesting in the modern world because you have a huge bankruptcy and the political elite. when you look at the arrests in these countries you can see the rise of very unlikely players.

this is the consequence of people losing confidence in their established political elite. so one way to deal with this in a country like serbia, and you are talking about a transitional country, you are talking about a country which reasonably -- has reasonably free and fair elections freedom of speech, first of all you mobilize people around the tangible problem. this is not something in the aig about peace in the world by talking about better organize traffic or bigger salaries. it's not something they can touch. yes, education is one little thing and then when you are making it important to the people you use the same tools for modernization as you do in the nonviolent struggle. what you want to achieve is when you look at this mechanism you want to achieve a little irritation. you want to irritate the government because without being

irritated they don't operate. the way the politicians work in democracy is that they take pr really seriously. if they think they will lose the vote they will do something with it. so in places like that to come out with a little initiative and then you also find an example and find the good example in the bad example so you were selling your good example but at the same time labeling someone who is doing something wrong. for some reason south americans and serbs are very much alike as most of the people have mediterranean blood. it's far easier to gather up against something than for something. it's an unexplainable phenomenon. i was working with serbs and i was working with arabs and people from the mediterranean and people from latin america. if you can find the common enemr together immediately. you need to do this for your own self, education and better life.

don't say oh somebody else would do it, it's so boring. you need this little trip together people and at the same time you need to find a tangible victory and proclaimed a the victory and get the hell out of there. if the politicians understand that it will cost them votes than they will act. i know that. i have spent 12 years in a revolution in three years in the and the parliament in three years and a government. this is the way the politicians operate. they are sensitive to votes. if they think they're losing votes they will go out there. >> i have a question. you mentioned humor as a very important tool and i was wondering if you could just give some examples of that especially as humor varies probably.

>> basically we work very much on understanding the role of humor in the struggle. you can watch my telex talk about this. we try to examine how this thing works and why is humor such a powerful tool in many struggles regardless of culture, history and the way the people do. when you look at these examples from paris directive for example, funny posters of gorbachev and all the way through solidarity you can see the croom or -- humor has three big effects. the first effect humor melts fear. if it looks like one big party the people will feel good and second people join things which are cool and in. we were just a bunch of students with 50 bucks in our pockets and we came out in the main shopping

district. there was a baseball bat attached to it so you will come in and put a coin and this is how you buy yourself a -- a right to hit the guy in the face. people make long lines and wait for their own chance to express their love to their leaders. but this is not the funniest part. the funniest part was in the police arrived. we even designed them and the class. what is this little thing that if he or she takes it gets there and arrest you you will regret. so what happens at the end of the day the police will arrest us and we are nowhere to be seen. arrests shoppers for having fun with the -- makes no sense. the picture of the two policemen driving to the police card was of course the cover page of the union's papers. needless to say it's happening

as we speak around the world even in the most oppressed society. you can google this thing called called -- and you will find a very cool video of assad and it's produced in syria or of the cold war looking very much like a speaking image or i don't know what the american version as of this. you can look in russia. it was fantastic. people would protest in moscow because putin was taking care of his international good guy look. elsewhere the protests were bad so that people from a small place in siberia came to this fantastic idea. okay we can protest so they brought a bunch of toys from their kids and i bought a little lego town in the downtown center. you had the soldiers protesting

with a little sign, stolen elections, 142% vote for putin and you can see everybody having fun. there is someone on the youtube and then tomorrow somebody sees this in the kremlin and calls the chief of police and they say we need to stop this. this is not going to happen again so the next day they applied and i get a written ban from the local police chief saying 10 toy cars is banned because the toys are not the citizens of russia. they are made in china. so humor like political satire is very old but at the same time the way you want to use the humor is humor is political activism. this is about the time that somebody with a ph.d. helps us coin this new term. so we have the hactivist amend

the collectivism but we need to have intentional framing of the situation where you are open and and look stupid at the end of the day. so humor helps your movement looking cool land in but most of all the people who spend too much time in power, we talk about people in democracies. they start believing their image they are getting on the tv and in newspapers and they really start taking themselves really seriously. if you mock them they are very likely to do something stupid. we use it as a platform for mocking them even more. see you were talking about different battles that you are in. in north korea i feel like it's clearly there is no unity because you can't express any opinion so i guess a twofold question. what would you do if you had the

opportunity to start sort of a movement there kind of like you were talking about songs. what would you do if you had the opportunity and is do you see any kind of hope for a successful movement there? >> i mean we work with some exiled north koreans and seoul and we don't know much about their struggle but first of all if you want to win you are not winning on a tactical level. to pick the battles he can win our red and butter issues. the real trouble is people are starving there so when you look at what you will use to coin the movement you will start with a small group of people and you will pick bread and utter issues. second they are getting information about what's happening around very vastly.

10 years ago people didn't have phones. now we have information about the millions of phones basically smuggled from china. when you look at the homes they all have a dvd player. what are they looking at? the movies from south korea or whatever they are called in south korea. this type of sitcoms and things like that. they crave more food and they crave to behave like the people who live in south korea. so when you look at their cravings you start building movements around issues. the ideology is cool but can the ideology be successful next this is where the possibility for modernization is and then you will look at the communication tools. now with the cell phones there

you would probably look at some kind of on line communication but you will also look at the history like in south africa and see whether this will be the music or something else. who knows that there is always a space for this. the real problem with north korea is that you are facing a system with a very weak leader on top of a very old military system so probably be eternal breaks are there. starting a bread and butter movement there and talking about things like you know most of these cases you really are not talking about a political issue. there's a group of women and the second biggest town called women of zimbabwe arise. in the process they have demonstrated they demonstrated

protest and occupy buildings and get arrested. then they start educating people to build around nonpolitical issues so this village will protest because they don't have access. so what the government will do, we want access to clean water. the government comes and beats her because she wants access to clean water for the kids and this is going to outrage people. if they get any positive response from the government for example access to clean water they will encourage others to build around this issue. this is very much like the 2008 protest against corrupt politicians.

thinking about bread and butter and nonpolitical issues and using the same tools for mobilization but you are not talking about a bad government. you are talking about people to have a sewer system as opposed to having their waste on the streets and you will find a lot of people ready to deal with this stuff. you will find that the problem is the most totalitarian government and what i recommend in the book, i think kim jong un of this world are dying because basically these harsh dictatorships are not delivering. so the reason why this is not a viable system is because 30% of the people are starving. so the more they can squeeze the people and the political ideology in the social space, the the same in iran. for example the country has a lot of oil but the roads are bad

so the common people are having a little bit of a political space where they can build their movement about a tangible bread and butter issue. i will remind you the whole thing was started by a vendor setting himself on fire because he couldn't sell fruit. and because his dignity was destroyed by being eaten in the public place by a policeman. the whole arab spring started as a bread and butter issue. you couldn't modernize people on this thing but 25% of the people are unemployed and then you can grow numbers tremendously and once you grow grow numbers you by, movement and once you become a movement you can either go to the government or negotiate to the government. it depends on what your strategy is.

start small and think about if you can win and focus on the bread and butter issues. build around local nonpolitical issues where you learn the technology of the nonviolent struggle and then you achieve a little victory and then the people start joining. people join things which are successful and if you are branded well in know-how to communicate you are in a good way to have a movement and then see how the government will deal with it. because the more oppressive government is the last space for use of this oppression because they are already using every single way of censorship. after 30 years i don't find it very flexible in dealing with the new waves of protesting. the more closed the system for more oppression of regime. really flexible regimes -- when you look at the flexible

regimes like the one in venezuela were the one in russia, the real problem with north korea is once they are there they are cemented. whatever they do the people consider it will be a weakness. whatever small victory there is it's bigger in a place like north korea. [applause] >> if you have any interest in anything surrounding people power this is my e-mail. i will be happy to deal with you. thank you so much for listening and being patient for almost an hour and a half. thank you once again for bringing me here. [inaudible conversations]

>> the media are the most powerful institutions on earth. more powerful than any on, more powerful than any missile. it's an idea that explodes onto the scene but it doesn't happen when it is contained in that locks, that tv screen that we all need -- gaze at first so many hours a week. we need to hear people speaking for themselves outside the box.

we can't afford the status quo anymore from global war into global warming. this was part of the u.s. chamber of commerce mediation summit held last week in washington d.c.. it's 45 minutes. >> it's great to be here and to finally make it here. we thank you very much for having so everybody stays but i think there is another reason or all of you to stay which is this

terrific group of people that chamber has assembled for me to be on this panel and it's a great group. you can read their bios. i'm not going to do that for you but today we have heard quite a bit from our airline partners about the economic impact of the airline business. 5% of gdp and the numbers etc.. what is sometimes left out of this discussion is that the airports are a very large part of that impact on the economy. it's a little bit of the chicken and egg here but you need both to have a successful national aviation policy and we would argue not airline policy. today we are going to go right into our discussion and i will probably start with dave on this economists have just produced an updated economic impact of the system and the numbers are

really astounding. our airport support nearly 450,000 jobs and make $28.8 billion in wages. that is just in the new york city metropolitan area. david as the numbers nationally are far greater in the story behind those numbers that airports have few rivals as drivers of regional national and global economics sometimes you get lost in this discussion on the importance of airports. can you talk a little bit about how much airports mean to the economy and in your role, your role and you are doing a terrific job act as the chair of api this year to talk a little bit about how api is starting to frame that discussion. >> well i will try to wrap my worm -- arms around this a little arms around this a little bit and thank you for having me here today. i don't think there's any question we have heard a lot today about the economic impact

of aviation. we also also live in the globe limbermalimberma n today and they say you build two miles of road and two miles of railroad, you build two miles of runway and you get around the world and that's extremely important as we look at this global environment we are in. during the last year to we have reached out and done some of its own surveys from an economic impact standpoint and we looked at the 490 commercial airports around the u.s.. we identified roughly 10.5 million jobs associated with those airports in the activity that surrounds them. $365 million or billion dollars a year excuse me in payroll and $1.2 trillion in economic impact just huge numbers, 8% of gdp that represents so when we really talk about the effects and the impacts of airports and aviation and i think it's important while we have heard a lot about airlines and i think

ed talk a little bit about this on his panel we really need to be talking about aviation. we are partners in this and we need to be partners going forward. we can't solve any of the monumental issues in front of us unless we work together in order to do that. we need to collectively come together to deal with those items.

i have a project going on right now and it's a modernization project of our terminal, about a 115 million-dollar project. the total economic impact of $160 million so again when we look at the things that go on and airports him and we look at the impact that airlines have in providing service to and from our communities and enable us to get global air around the world i think people really don't understand the overall impact that aviation has on our gdp and if we are going to be successful in the future we have got to make sure we can compete.

>> thank you. how about tulinda you taking the spotlight here for a second. you are the veritable plane of airports and airline data. your company studies data for more than 72,000 worldwide flights a day. this information should come in really handy in taking a look at what was discussed a little bit on the last panel, the effect of furloughs beginning to take effect over the next few weeks. we have been watching it obviously very closely because we are coming off of a number of cbp delays and so we can only imagine how bad it could get as delays escalate. based on what you have learned about the way the industry operates today and the challenges that we already face, what are you expecting or what do you predicting in the weeks

and months to come as these furloughs materialize? >> thank you very much for that question and based on putting this panel together a study released today on the quantification of sequestration. there are lots of concepts being kicked around and it certainly is a moving target is the staffing levels but it's very clear that sequestration definitely has an impact on airports of all sizes and at all levels in the united states. there were three impacts. the first one was the 149 airports we have been talking about. the second is the custom in border patrol proposals that cut back on overtime which potentially could impact overnight flights in the third tsa is saying that they are going to -- though they won't be replacing positions and they are

looking at all different kinds of options for their cut backs. that could potentially lead to looking at overnight flights being impacted by not having tsa therefore the departures. our analysis, looking at the 149 airports of those 149 airports 55 of them receive scheduled transportation now from 16 airlines. and those airlines and airports, of them 14 are essential airports. of course in airport closure doesn't necessarily mean the airport goes away. it just means that there are additional procedures for the pilots to follow in order to as they would say one in, one out for takeoff. that is the schedule side of the business. on the business aviation side that ed was talking about those

same 149 airports had more than 10,000 departures every week and of those, 6500 r. 91:125 departures and 4100 r. 135, 121 departures. so you can say it's not going to have a lot of impact that is an awful lot of traffic. in some of these airports in their peak times like naples have very high peak hours of 28 plus flights coming and going so it can be handled and it will be addressed, the facts are it will lead to a slowdown. it's not an insignificant volume and also as the previous panel said it was arbitrarily decided that it was just pulled out of the air. the second point impacting aviation and sequestration is looking at custom in border control -- patrol.

in the united states their 27 airports that have international rivals between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. and your jfk tops the list as one of them impacted. as those 27 airports there are 10,000 international flights through the united states between these hours of 10:00 and 6:00 a.m.. so of those flights that are coming in quarterly its 1.8 million seats so you can make the assumption that it's about 1.5 million passengers who quarterly are going to be impacted if customs and border patrol decides to somehow cut overtime and reduced services in the overnight hours. what it will mean is either flights will have to be rescheduled or passengers will have to wait until customs and border patrol. and then the third is with tsa. if tsa intentionally starts

looking at overnight flights and looking at cutting back services and the slow period of the day from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. based on january flight schedules there were 26,000 passenger flights in january in the united states that arrived overnight. and 12,000 cargo flights and 6000 business aviation flights. so, closing down towers absolutely will have an impact. it will slow down the system. cutting back on customs and border patrol is definitely going to impact our international arrivals and since cut backs with tsa are going to impact the delays at the airport's that are very difficult to manage with having reduced capacity to be able to get the passengers from the curb to the aircraft so sequestratioy

quantify the numbers of potential impacted flights and passengers but how is it all going to play out is definitely going to be interesting to say the least and it will not be an insignificant impact. that just brings us to sequestration is set up to be a nine year exercise. so there will be continuing cut backs so look to us to keep revising the report until this is decided. >> thank you, thank you. jack potter gets a two-part question because one he comes from the bronx and he can handle it and two, you have the postal service for 10 years so we know you can handle it. last year at our airports we set an all-time record for our airport with almost 110 million passengers and i know you had an incredible year as well with more than 40 million customers. i know dave mentioned the

southwest effect first-hand with a 38% growth. is that the right number? that was from 2010 to 2011 at 6% last year so with more people flying than ever and the demands on our facility or greater are r than ever and the capital constraints -- constraints limit what we can do, we we are fallig behind airports around the world. many of whom unlike us have the benefit of receiving significant funding from the government. so part one, what are the biggest needs for airports today in the increasing demand both here and international passengers while we have the capital constraints and how do we compete with airports around the world in this same scenario? >> well thank you for that question and i hope you don't have too much confidence in me. first of all let me just say that i think we are all aware of

the facts and i was a little surprised when i came into this industry to find out that how highly leveraged all of our airports are and when i talk about that, folks have made investments in facilities in the last decade or so and you look at one of the sources for revenue, the funds to pay for assessments and infrastructure at airports and the bottom line is at least at my airport and airports across the country they are promised out for 20 or 30 or so when you look at the airports there are very little flexibility in terms of something that we can use other then to go to our partners in the airlines and to seek funding to pay for infrastructure changes. i think earlier today you heard some comments and i think jeff smisek said don't build more concrete at airports but the

fact of the matter is we heard the president talk about his experience overseas and when he came back to this country he said you know which is the third world country? is it us or is it them when he looked at the quality of the airports we have. i think there is some myth that right now you know domestic passenger traffic is somewhat flat. we heard earlier today that it's definitely going to grow on the next 15 years. the question is and we know international travel has grown. they have put a lot of pressure on those 27 airports that we talked about. the international traffic is concentrated in a few airports around the country. those global entry points and so there are demands. we all know those demands and we simply have too traveled to different airports around the country and the real question is who is going to pay for them? we's airports s. airports are looking at that and obviously the demands are there on the airlines. they are going to as we are today, they are very much

focused on their business in their bottom line right now. we are talking about a new dynamic. they are going to run airlines as businesses. well, who makes the decisions and going forward about investment in infrastructure and i think it's something that needs to be addressed. supporting the fact that we revisit passenger facility charges. why? because $4.50 the cap they have lost 50% of their buying power so you can't, we are not going to buy that type event the structure that we need going forward. so we are talking about looking at revisiting that similar to what folks are doing with the gasoline taxes. how do you create them pay for the infrastructure that we need going forward? so that is a big issue. the fact is the demand is there you know. you simply go to different airports around the united states and you recognize that there is a need for investment.

at the end of the day what we want to do is you want to attract people to this country. i think it's great that the state department is looking to accelerate the number of visas that are given out and concentrate on a few countries, brazil and china. it is working. we are getting additional passengers. what is not working is how we react to it. you just heard about the customs and border protection. the fact of the matter is we are cutting staffing their. it's like you know it's unpredictable about how long it's going to take to get through the airport when it comes to arriving in the united states and you can't predict what the staffing is going to be on any given day. likewise when it comes to infrastructure there is a definite need. we are going to go over the next 15 years. we are definitely growing right now out of our taxis at the international airports and there's a need to step up and make the investment. one of the concepts is the user pays.

a beautiful part about a passenger facility charge is that he will pay at the airport that you use, not in an airport that you don't use and we can make decisions going forward on a local basis. that is what we are advocating for that there be a mechanism to make an investment and get out of what has been at loggerheads in terms of how you invest. it's a very complicated issue but i believe it's one if we are going to grow you know the economy through visitors from foreign countries the only way we are going to do it is by making the experience a good one so we have to have customs and border protection agents and we have to have facilities that can accommodate the growth. >> i have a couple of third world terminals myself. sherry you and i are fellow travelers on the nextgen advisory committee and we talked a lot about nextgen and you hear a lot about nextgen today. maybe you could talk a little

bit about the airline perspective, sorry, not from the airline perspective unless you would like to of course -- from the aircraft manufacturing perspective what you are doing to meet the needs for the nextgen that will come at some point, at some point in our future which is not yet quite determined and maybe the other thing is an talked talked about a little bit about greener skies and seattle was so impressed so many of us. i know boeing is infinitely involved in that so maybe you could give us a little perspective as well. >> i would like to build on what jack said from a macro perspective. just to set the stage the world's fleet today for a commercial airplane, there are 20,000 airplanes flying in a world's fleet and we have knowing are forecasting over the next 20 years that fleet is going to double to 40,000 airplanes. now you bring that to the united

states, 20,000 airplanes flying today in the united states, 30% are here. 6600 airplanes. this is the largest in-service fleet in the united states and then by comparison we talk a lot about china. it's actually the second largest in-service fleet with 9% of the total fleet. so you know you look at the united states, 6600 airplanes that the airports are having to deal with today. we are forecasting that number is going to grow to 8800 airplanes over the next 20 years so from an airport perspective you have to be able to accommodate 2200 new airplanes over the next 20 years. at that is just really one piece of the puzzle. what i think is actually more important is that we are forecasting 7300 new airplanes to be delivered into the u.s. airspace so what does that mean? that means there's a huge replacement cycle underway here are the airlines are replacing their older less fuel-efficient

airplanes like the 737 classic, the older a320's are being replaced with these new airplanes. these new airplanes that have advanced technology that are sophisticated, that are smart and that have integrated systems and frankly they have an update of operating procedures to go with them. so from an airports perspective the airports have to be as smart as the airplanes that we are delivering. and you know we have talked a lot about the 87 and 887 is a very intelligent airplane and continual and providing updates to the airline on its positioning and how it's doing. so for an airline and the airline up center they are able to make these decisions on when the airplane is going to arrive than what their gate capacity needs to needs to be your from and ground services perspective

when the fuel trucks need to be there for just-in-time service and catering. as i talked about it has airplane health monitoring. sensors on the airplane that tell the airline how it's doing so that in-flight if a part is looking like it's getting ready to fail or needs to be replaced able pass that information to the airline up center on the ground so that the mechanic or the engineer can go and get that part and have it ready for when the airplane lands. so again going back to the capabilities and airplanes are there. we need to have the capabilities of the airports as well. i was really pleased today on two different occasions we talked about the aviation ecosystem because it is an ecosystem so we have to have the airlines, the airplanes, the airspace and the airports providing seamless integrated service so that we can have that u.s. airspace that has economic growth and prosperity, and not

have to worry about the rest of the world leapfrogging and getting -- then we are. >> we actually talked a lot about greener skies today which is wonderful. for those who aren't familiar with greener skies alaska airlines a few years ago implemented a project and they partnered with the port of seattle with the faa and with owing and it goes back to 100% of alaska airplanes are fully rnp required navigation performance capable. so what they were trying to do is utilize the capabilities that they paid for in the airplane and find ways to reduce their fuel burn and improved carbon emissions and better serve their passengers. and so they have been implementing these operations in the state of alaska for years. what they found is going into the difficult airports that we have heard about by kodiak and juno that hath weather issues or

better to reign challenged, alaska has seen significant improvement on the number of aviation -- not deviations, there is a word like that. the number of cancellations they have seen and it saved them a lot of money and provided better service to their customers so what we are trying to do is bring that same level of service to seattle and it's also a challenged airport with the weather and terrain so we have been working really hard on the procedures and we talked about today. the optimized profile dissent where an airline can go into a light mode all the way down to the runway threshold and area navigation that takes advantage of satellite capabilities to provide more precision approach capabilities and then finally rnp which is just a higher-level advanced precision approach for the airline saving them time and money in better serving the airlines as well as the passengers. so that is what we are after and

i heard the frustration because it's not moving fast so we need to celebrate the little successes. we are making progress. the the state of alaska's doing bond we are making progress in seattle and i want to give a shout-out. a couple of weeks ago denver international airport was approved for area navigation and r&b procedures. public procedures to be used by airlines and airplanes that are approved to fly accusing those procedures. i think that's a step in the right direction. we have owing would love to see rnp procedures approved at the top 30 airports in the united states. just small plans and low-hanging fruit and allowing the airlines to take advantage of equipment on the airplane. >> thank you. suppose there was sort of a magic way to get the funding to make improvements in airports. what would you spend a large

windfall of capital on at your airports and the rest of you what would you suggest the airport due? >> personally i think one of the big problems that when i'm with a mixed group within the industry and when you sit down and have a dialogue about it i think there's some suspicion that you know the airports if they were given total latitude would squander whatever monies came their way and it's almost like build it and somebody will come so build a monument of wherever the manager is. really when it comes to investment in infrastructure, issued a demand-driven. across-the-board and so where are the needs and i think you can look at every airport around the country and say there are certain specific areas where there needs so if you look at ronald reagan national airport, we have a terminal in d.c. and

we have a terminal that literally is third world antiquated and really needs replacement and we have a recent developments with the swap that occurred between delta and u.s. air where we have seen a demand for services at reagan jump over 10% in the last year and a half. so there are some infrastructure demands. you heard earlier usair is using our airport as a hub. suddenly there is a need-based on the way the airlines user airports to invest in the abilities of people to move between tiers so if someone is transferring from one plane to another they don't have to go out of security and then come back through security to make the transfer. so there are a lot of pent-up demands i think that exist at existed every airport and i do think that the investment that

needs to be made should be demand driven and not replacing something for replacement sake but i think there are those needs all across the country. >> if you go back and you look at a recent capital needs survey that was conducted we have identified the period from 2132 i think 2017 that airports make about $7 billion in capital investment, roughly $14 billion a year. so the airport improvement program about 3.5 alien dollars a year it still means we need 10 or $11 billion a year invested nationwide in the infrastructure standpoint. in addition if you look a little deeper into that about 50 to 55% of that is related to nampa structure and the other 45% thereabouts is related to replacement infrastructure are aging infrastructure so i think

there is a lot of need out there. if there's a windfall i'm sure we have a lot of happy airports around the country. i'm kind of a bad example at gsp because i mentioned we were doing 150 million-dollar cap and we are in the fortunate position of having an airport system that has been run very well for 50 years that it's been in existence so we are going to deliver all cash. we are not borrowing any money to do our program and when we we end up and are finished here in 2016 will have a brand-new terminal. i think is an industry on the airport side we need to take ownership about how we deliver some of our capital projects and i think as jack is indicated it needs to be demand-driven. i think for the most part we do that around country. we cannot point to specific instances where maybe expenditures and funds haven't been done as well as they should have been done and i just think we need to make sure that we are using our resources extremely effectively as we can to need to

move forward. >> thank you. tulinda? >> i would -- both have excellent points. you need to have good business intelligence so i would see an investment in the information structure to get the data out of the silos. get the data out of the silos within the airport and get the data out of the silos between the airport in the faa and get the data out of the silos between the airports in the airlines so that you have true business intelligence when you are looking at the demand to respond to. >> how shall we spend their money at airports? >> our mythical money. >> i will just reinforce we are in an ecosystem so the more we can invest in the integrated system so we talk to each other and we make more efficient decisions we are better off than i also think again if airports to play a major part in helping introduce things like rnp

operations which will enable the airlines to be more efficient and make more money and better serve their passengers it's just a multiplier effect. then we all grow and do better. >> thanks. before i ask more questions, does anyone out there have a question they would like to ask our panel? anyone back there? do we still have the microphone going around? >> hi. john, a4a. this goes back to the last panel but i would be curious on your perspective based on your management experience and being kind of at the receiving end, and we hear a lot of the debate and all the discussion about nextgen. it tends to be about what we heard today especially technology procedure and funding what we didn't hear much about it all was governance. we heard it a little bit from

the organization and push preliminary form of a user board, user input and so assuming at least for the next century and we are still talking about a government controlled entity, would you advocate a better way to organize so that at least speaking really with respect to the airport traffic and not the airport piece but how we resource and how revenues are raised -- you know the board today is, the afa board is not really -- >> do you want to tackle that? go ahead. >> i will just jump in at the risk of falling on my face on this subject. i'm not a subject matter expert but i think if we look at atc and we look at some things that we might be able to do going forward as models, you know we can look across our border up in

canada and i think in a way the canadian model works from an air traffic control system standpoint. it is at the panacea at the end of the day and this is although the issues? no. i don't think it's actually just in a tc. i think it really runs on a broader perspective across the delivery of governmental related services to the aviation industry that cuts across the atc and cuts across airline regulation, cuts across airport regulation and whether or not we need some other body put in place to really look at the impacts on a holistic basis of the things that the government is putting out and imposing on all of us today that impacts our ability to do business in an efficient, effective way that again enables us to complete and compete in this local marketplace. that really is what this comes back to. it really is about being efficient and effective in the use of the resources, whether

it's with the atc system itself from an airspace dam point or the construction of an air traffic control towers versus refurbishing and replacing the old towers. i think we need to become better stewards across the board with the resources we have as we know they are limited and i think some type of the more overarching board that really can look into that across the entire spectrum of aviation would be something that we should look at. >> i will just add a little bit to what dave said about the way our government is organized with lots of silos and what you are talking about is the way to some extent to work between them and set some priorities. he goes right now the funding for nextgen competes for tower closure if you will. there is not a national, and i think that is part of it, it's

not a national setting up priorities. so you see decisions being made by the cdc that are very political. a number of us have spent a great deal of time on the facilitation issues because staffing has been cut yet for our local economy tourism is critical. half of the tour is coming to the new york region art coming internationally. it's so important in being able to handle them but the decision to pull staffing and send it elsewhere etc., there is not one place where the priority is being said that tourism is critical to our economy and therefore we need to support it in the following way. changes to the atc system are critical to our economy. you have to set some kind of hierarchy to ensure that they have it so that when the furlough happens like it did last time or if it does you can

cut the nextgen staff to the point that was made on the last panel. those folks feel really good about their jobs and their commitment to the effort and they have to organize a team and reorganize the team to move forward. so this is a lot of issues around what do we want? we have grown a lot of things but they are not talking. i was on the future of aviation panel and there was a whole discussion. i don't know how much progress has been made. we are not talking among the transportation mode. while there is one person in charge of that i am not sure that the various silos are just talking and i'm sure actually priorities are being set that you know for making decisions about high-speed rail and is that a better use of funds than

aviation for example? i think that is the kind of thing that i would like to see more of in that kind of discussion. i think i cut you off. >> but john you raise an excellent point on governance and the points being made here that they are just so many silos we need to infuse more private enterprise so therefore i would say we need to find and explore as many opportunities so we can do public-private partnerships and get more into the planning and execution. >> dave's point about the canadian model is something i think and australia, worth looking at as a way that we might see our way forward. jack. >> i think for a lot of what we are talking about here we have kind of the interplay between public service and business. so when you look at the business of international travel as an

example, okay we have a situation where people who are coming into this country pay a fee to go through customs. it exceeds the cost of that customs operation. some of those funds go to probably protect the border down in mexico or whatever and so really what i think needs to happen is there needs to be a linkage between you and no fees that are received by in this case the government to provide a business service which is getting people through customs and there needs to be some protection of those funds capped with you know the service that is being provided. and so in similar ways people pay tolls for the construction of a road or a rail or whatever it happens to be and so there has to be a linkage to where the funds are going and how do we get to the point where in my mind it's more about the user

pays. if you think about operating at business within a government function, here we are trapped in a budget world where the budget is not linked to demand. in the sense that if we were to have a 50% increase in the number of people who are flying and internationally and needed customs service as services there is no way for them to react in a government setting. and so if we are going to take business in this space of air travel and we are going to make it part of the government and we get to the point where there is this notion that the user pays ,-com,-com ma there has to be leveraged for the oaks that are running it to grow and shrink based on the demand for that service. and it's this interplay between public service and the operation of a business where those two just don't work together. >> do you have a question? >> on the general subject of

airports and airport authorities role in community outreach we have seen a few instances in certain communities so you are familiar with what is going on with the departures out of look wordier right now and some of the resistance and the community to noise issues and we have seen challenges in minneapolis as well on performance-based navigation procedures. we discussed this at the last meeting. it's highlighted that we need to have a change in management strategy that might need to be detailed at the local community and with the faa thinks about nextgen. they tend to be focused on the hill. and i would just be interested in your thoughts on the airports roll in shaping that message to the community in terms of implementing a performance-based navigation procedure. ..

>> and at teeter borrow, aviation advisory committees. you don't call them noise because you want to talk about other issues, and they're representatives from electives, etc., community activists. and we need to, i think -- and i'm talking for the new york airports, but i think all of us, we've all done pieces of in this. but we tend to be reactive because let me tell you, it is among the world's more

unpleasant experiences to go out there and get screamed at til midnight on a regular basis. by people who don't want to listen to anything logical, but do want cheap flights to orlando whenever they want to go. but they don't want any planes. and so there's not a lot of logic in it, and it's not fun. but i think part of our success and the panel, but part of our success is that when we make ourselves do it regularly even when things aren't happening, you develop -- and that's what we've found, certainly -- you develop the relationship so that when something does happen or changes are implemented, you at least have some trust and confidence. so i think all of us, it is a hard thing if -- to make yourself do, but it's important we do it. and one of the things i am now going to do is get the airlines who are benefiting from this as part of the discussion. it also tends to be that the

airport operate exercise the faa go out there, and there's not an airline person to be seen. and while there's lots of jobs, the airport -- airlines give out jobs. they can talk about that economic impact. so that's one of the things we're going to reconstitute for us. specifically because of the -- [inaudible] anyway, you guys? >> steve, we don't have any problems. [laughter] blame the flights -- bring the flights on in, we're happy to have them. we welcome everyone. [laughter] no, i think it is about, i think it really is on a community-by-community basis on how you have to address this. because many our particular -- in our particular community we're very business driven. they get it at the end of the day, they understand the importance of the airport for the community. a lot of people don't know much about the upstate, but it has the highest number of international businesses per capita of anywhere in the u.s. for a city and a community that not a lot of people know about. when you look at michelin and bmw and bosch and mitsubishi,

and i can go on and on. for us the important piece was getting the business community onboard, having them fully supportive of the airport to we're not the only ones talking about it at the end of day. the chamber's talking about it, economic development agencies are talking about it, you know in and that's filtering out to the rest of the community, and that's worked very well for us. >> yeah. and the only thing i would add to what's been said is that i think what i've seen is working with the local governments and making them your partner, and us, we're an authority, so we have to reach out those local governments. but i think we've been very fortunate that the counties in particular in virginia that surround our airport recognize the economic benefits that they receive from the traffic at the airport. and they've been very good partners. in one case i have an airport in re began national that is -- reagan national that is in a

very tight geographic area, so we've dealt with those kind of issues. we have development that is taking place all along, you know, our airport property north and south. and so we work very closely with those counties on that development and the developers as well to make sure that they understand, you know, where the flight patterns are. and in some cases they've modified their construction to, you know, modify noise inside their facilities. and at dulles i have to tell you there's been a lot of long-term planning. and so there are a lot of zoning, you know, the zoning that's been adopted by the counties is reflective of where our runways are and very careful since it was a green field not to put residential, you know, developments if flight paths. and so -- in flight paths. and so i just add that. you know, we do have to work with the communities. i think that it is important to

send that economic message, but fission to that -- in addition to that i think it's very important to work with local governments and get their support as well. >> sue, i think that's a good point to end on. i want you to give this panel a great round of applause for a super job. [applause] thank you so much. we are ending almost on time, but i have a few remarks to make, and that's why i say almost on time. i want to thank all of you once again. all of our panelists, all of our moderators, thank each one of you for coming. there are two or three people that i particularly want to thank. and i don't know whether they're here in the room or not. but they are alyssa henley and ben askin. and a lot of you have been in touch with them talking about where you would sit, when you would come, who would speak,

what was going on. this would not have happened today had it not been for the two of them. and i want you to give them a round of applause even if they're not in here. [applause] every year they work harder and harder, and i think this was the best yet. so we can be very grateful to them. but i also want to thank our av people. they have done a financial -- phenomenal job. you could never have heard any of us had it not been for them and what they have done. certainly all of our media folks and what they did putting this together, our art people and the wonderful job today did on this program. i could go on and on, but there are two others. anna and the diplomatic courier, they were our partners, our media partners on in this along with the arrow club of washington d.c. they got the word out, and this was a real partnership with

them, and we're most, most appreciative. and so, my friends, the hour has arrived. and before i say that we are concluding our 12th annual aviation summit, i will simply say maybe the best is yet to come. the libation will be almost as good as the tickets and the ipads. we may have to spill over into this room because, good heavens, i never dreamed that at 5:15 there would still be so many of you here. but we did have a hook, didn't we? so i would like to say that it was certainly this panel and the other two panels that we had between three and now. thank you, thank you, and until next year at about this time, this session is concluded. thank you very much. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> we're seeing here what's happening live right now on c-span. elijiah cummings, the top democrat on the house oversight and government reform committee, will speak shortly about bipartisan gun legislation. that bill calls for gun trafficking to be a federal offense and seeks stronger penalties for straw purchasers. again, you can see e high ya cummings' remarks live over on c-span. and continuing with the topic of guns, the national rifle association this morning is releasing a report on preventing gun violence in schools. a former congressman and u.s. attorney, asa hutchison, will announce the findings. that's live on c-span at 11 eastern. and at noon, also on c-span, a discussion about privacy concerns raised by the tsa's body-scanning machines and

enhanced patdowns at airports. that's hosted by the cato institute. and we also have live coverage here on c-span2 this afternoon. at 4:30 eastern, we'll bring you remarks by former treasury secretary hank paulson. he's speaking about u.s./china economic and environmental policy changes at george washington university. again, that's live at 4:30 here on c-span2. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events. and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our web site, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> investigative reporter seymour hersh spoke to journalism students at indiana university in february about his experiences chasing stories, ethical standards and the use of

anonymous sources. this is 90 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. good evening. thank you for joining us. investigative journalists are described by the scholars james and theodore glasser as custodians of conscious. investigative reporting, the craft of revealing important but hidden truths as thought by many to be the highest form of journalistic practice. and in the practice of investigative reporting, there are few more prominent figures than seymour hersh. e started in journalism in 1959 at city news bower row in chicago, the news cooperative known for its hard-boiled reporters summed up in the famous advice: if your mother says she loves you, check it out. [laughter] mr. hersh's subsequent career led to important exposes; the killing of civilians and the military cover-up in my lai massacre, an illegal cia

domestic spying program and the abuse of prisoners at abu ghraib prison in iraq among many other things. hersh's my lai revelations won him the pulitzer prize for international report, and there have been numerous and regular national award recognitions since. those journalists who have so much as dabbled in investigative reporting, trafficking in stories that traveled narratives and make mincemeat out of sacred cows know that the work invites criticism, and mr. hersh has received some. one memorable jab came from a former defense official who called him the closest thing american journalism has to a terrorist. [laughter] the nixon administration snooped through his tax forms, and even some journalist joined the attacks. in the domestic spying scandal, for instance, some prominent news organization questioned his work until it was borne out by later official investigations. mr. hersh has just kept reporting. one thing that makes that notable, i think, is that some of the best work has been done as an independent journalist, not backed by the clout,

resources or heel defenses of -- legal defenses of a big media organization. lynn downey called him the scoop artist. a recent history of investigative reporting described him as a reporter known for his brains, brashness and badgering of sources until they gave him the information he wanted. and tonight the indiana university school of journalism is delighted to welcome mr. seymour hersh. [applause] >> hi. you won't be laughing so much or smiling when we're done, but anyway. here's what i'm going to do. i'm here for the journalism department, so i'm going to talk about chasing a story ask just sort of do a narrative about it, try and make it interactive. i've got some students, i'm going to make you do something. and try and talk a little bit about that oxymoron, journalistic ethics. [laughter] but then, also, you know, there's a world going to hell

right today just as it was ten years ago. i don't think we're really out of the woods yet in this whole sunni/shia/muslim, who are they, what's going on, why are we bombing them, and why do we think bombing works when history shows it never does? anyway, we can talk about that. i'll answer all your questions. but what i'm going to do first is tell a little bit about journalism. i'll go back to the my lai story, and i'm going to make sure i don't go on for a decade. i know you want to get to your parties later tonight. [laughter] swinging bloomington. anyway -- [laughter] okay. so, um, what we're going to do is i'll put you back in '69. a prix lance kid -- freelance kid. as you heard, i started at city news. i basically 401(k)ed -- i went to law school, i hated it. say what you will, i didn't like it. and i went there at the university of chicago. i had gone to college there, and i bummed around a little bit and

got a job as a police reporter at the city news bureau where you, basically, covered crime because there was so much in chicago. but i worked with people like michael roy coe and other guys, so i really got a taste of some of the good journalists that were around. i went in the army, did the army stuff which is boring. and -- it was before any war, and you just sort of played toy soldier. but it was okay. and i went back, and i eventually got to upi as a reporter and covering legislature in. [laughter] -- in south dakota. [laughter] >> well, that's okay. you learn something about cynicism because i spent a lot of time with the ogallala sioux, the sioux tribe, because i was interested in tribal lands just sort of because nobody was writing about it. and mcgovern, the great liberal, george mcgovern, who was a very decent guy, but he wasn't doing much either. he was the congressman, the only one from the state, so i ended

up writing a lot of stories about them that got the chicago tribune. you know, the wire service is great, because you never know where a story's going to bounce. that got me to washington, chicago first and then washington covering the vietnam war be about, oh, early '65. and it was like on the job training for why to learn to hate a war. because going there, not that much, but mostly working in washington as a correspondent for the ap, and the ap has a lot of juice because, you know, every story you write is on every editor's desk theoretically, or could be if it's a good one, in a few minutes around the world. and the other thing was you get to know military guys. and i was saying earlier at dinner -- although i'm very critical of my government, i really am. one thing that you find in the

cia and all these agencies and particularly in the military what i, what makes the world work for me anyways as a journalist, you find people that are not loyal to the two-star or the three-star or to the chief of staff of the army or to the president, but you're loyal to the constitution. that's something that's drifting away more and more particularly as you see the erosion of congress in its oversight capacity, the growth of the executive. you all see those things. but there are still people deep inside. so i as a young reporter covering the building going and having line up. with officers who had been in vietnam, i would learn firsthand about what was going on. everybody you killed was counted as an enemy. the body count business, some of you people know about it. some people here don't know anything about vietnam, and if you're young, don't worry about it pause that's okay. i remember growing up in chicago as a young kid in the '40s, and for me world war i was, oh,

you know, flanders fields and hemingway and fields of poppies. i didn't know much about it. so it's not impossible for students now to worry about a war. the thing that ought to be worrying about that war that's interesting to me always is that we fought a war in a country about which we knew very little, we didn't know the history. i'm talking about at the top. the civilian top in the white house. we didn't know the history. we didn't know the culture. of we didn't know the society. we saw them as potential commie adversaries, part of the cold war business. so we ended up fighting a war in a culture we never understood. and one of the things that was always so horrifying to me as i got into the my lai story was our soldiers would go over there totally unprepared for the primitive society, but it had been a society for 2,000 year, and there was certain ways they behaved. the crucial thing was if you ever moved -- we were relocating

people at some point. they were in bad lands, areas controlled by the communists, and in order to bomb at will, we wanted to relocate villages. we built little hamlets in a safe place, and we'd try to relocate people who had been on the same land. and mothers always cross the threshold first before the children, absolutely. they will not cross into a strange threshold. that's just a cultural thing. so our boys would gather the people up, and can we're going to relocate a village. we had ten choppers, we're going to fly them out, and the mothers would insist -- and, of course, american boys, we put you kids on the plane first. and the mothers would fight like hell to be there first, and the kids would think how horrible these mothers are x they'd all talk about beating them bloody until they could get the kids in first. it's just amazing stuff. so the only thing that's

important about the war now is that we end up a couple decades later going into another culture in iraq about which we know little fighting a war against people we don't really understand. and then we go into afghanistan, and now the french have gone into mali, and i assure you, that's not going to end well. that will not end well. and so it's this tab larosa that's always sort of breathtaking how we can just stagger from one colossal destructive mechanism to another. and so in some way being america, and a lot of good things. anyway, it's 19 -- so i was, worked for the ap, i became very disillusioned about the war, more than disillusioned, i began -- i'd get too edgy in my reporting. the ap was on my case about my negative attitude. that is, i saw it, of course, my attitudes was towards the truth. that was my virtuous way of looking at it. and eventually, i was pretty much pushed out.

i was reassigned to an education beat. and i resigned and went to work for eugene mccarthy who was running against johnson for the democratic nomination. mccarthy was a benedictine, brilliant sort of philosopher king from minnesota. didn't know much about african-americans. there were a lot of things he didn't know push about. had played hockey in college and baseball and was -- but a really amazingly bright guy who would talk about the vietnam war as immoral. i mean, what? a politician making the notion that something is immoral that we do, talking about it, you know, is iraq immoral, the way we left it? is afghanistan going to be immoral? it was very breathtaking to see the hopeful period. and so i moved on from that. the politics is awful. [laughter] after -- it is, it's just awful. it's a terrible way to spend your life. [laughter] and it knocks me out. i read today that axlerod is joining nbc, and robert gibbs --

the obama adviser -- and robert gibbs, former press secretary, is joining nbc, and we know george stephanopoulos is now at abc. it's sort of amazing how -- and you wonder why the press really doesn't get going. myway -- [laughter] my attitude towards cable television and all these reporters going on cable television is real simple. be you took away all these guys that are interviewed all the time, if you took away this clause, "i think," money the of them -- none of them could stay anything. how are you going to foe what's going on in the white house? anyway, so i'm there in '68, i'm freelancing, i'm out of the ap, i resigned. mccarthy, i do four or five months there. i did speeches. it was fun to do, but i would never go back, and i'm freelancing at '69. nixon's in. if you remember, nixon campaigned on the great slogan, you know, he had a plan to end the war? it turned out, as we all learned later, his plan to end the war was to win it, but we didn't

know that. [laughter] anyway, so i'm minding my business. i'd done a book on chemical and biological warfare. i was a busy little beaver. i was married, had a kid. but my wife was working, she was of a social worker. gas, i was saying at lunch, dinner just now, i think was $4 a gallon i could get gas. four gones for a -- gallons for a buck, rather. and heating oil was 18 cents. that was a lot of money then. and so you could live. so in late '69 i've got a contract from random house who published my first book to do something on pentagon waste. boring, boring, boring, but i'm doing it. you know, it's pun in the wang. and -- it's money in the bank. and i get a call one day from somebody -- his name is jeffrey cowan, he became head of voice of america for bill clinton. he was chairman of the department of journalism at the

university of southern california, usc. but at that time he was an anti-war lawyer. and somehow he had picked up -- to this day he won't tell me. for 30 years i couldn't mention his name, who actually gave me the tip. but he called me one day and said there's an amazing story going on. some guy, some g.i. has shot up a lot of people, a lot of people. it's a huge scandal, and the pentagon's trying to suppress it. and i couldn't say, he wouldn't tell me who told him. i only knew him through his brother who was a journalist for the village voice then, paul cowan, and i really didn't know him. but i had read all of these, i was saying it, you know, the advice i give journalists always, the simple advice is read before you write. i had read all of the various books that had been published by the american friends committee the anti-war people would come back from vietnam, and there was a series of hearings in 1968 in detroit, a bunch of guys stood up and talked about the atrocities they witnessed. i read that stuff and paid attention to it.

and so i knew, and i also knew from talking to the young generals i met in the pentagon when i was there for a couple years, you know, you meet young generals, and you -- i like babble football, we'd talk about the redskins, and you get to learn that, basically, a lot of them thought they were in the business of mass murder, absolutely. the good ones. other ones liked it. the good ones -- so i knew there was something to this story, and i started working it. don't know why, probably because i was bored with my book. so what do you do? you're confronted with a rumor. and so the first thing i did is, because i spent time at the pentagon, we keep very good records of any criminal activity. my, the tip was that he was being prosecuted. so i went to the legal office of the pentagon, judge advocates corps, and into the bowels of the bureaucracy, and i just started reading all the files looking for a murder indictment or investigation. i found nothing that met any

criteria that suggested, you know, there were the usual a rape here, a murder there, this and that. and nothing, nothing that smacked of anything of improper or that grotesque as i heard. and this is instinct, and is you just do it. and i'm going to tell the this story both a good way and a bad way, and i want some of you journalists to be, or maybe not to be if you think about it, where's the jobs? you'll find something. [laughter] there's always, you know, there's always the 7/eleven. anyway, it's a tough business right now. and so, and mind you, i don't have a lot of economic worries, you know? you didn't have that much money, you could live on, you know, we rented a little house for $200. you couldn't do that today in washington proper. and so anyway, i kept on poking. and i didn't go anywhere really

for a couple weeks. about ten days later or so, i'd read newspapers, i went back. most of the major things you learn about if you go back and read the papers, they're there, but you just don't see it because you don't know the context in which to read the paper. that's always what's so fascinating about being a journalist. you go pack, and you can see what's there. after i did my lai, if you read the detroit account, there were so many accounts of what kids did many that war crimes -- they had a war crimes tribunal that nobody paid attention to in the straight press. underground press did all right. if you read that, you'd see the by hai story was written 50 times. it was a day in march of 1968 when a group of american boys who had no idea why they were there or what they were there for in a subliminal really sort of -- they were in a unit made up of people largely who were accepted, the standards had been lowered by robert mcnamara

because, essentially, he wanted to get away -- he lowered the standards to bring more, if you will, hispanics, rural americans. a kid who played a big role from indiana. the underclass, african-americans. he wanted to change, if you will, the color of the corpses, get rid of all the white corpses and try and get a little more color in the mix, because that would maybe help out on the public relations aspect of the war. and so he lowered the standards, and all of these kids were packed into a unit. most of them didn't have a high school or ged equivalence, and they didn't know much, and they weren't being told much and on march 16th they went into a village. and they were told the night before that they were going to meet the enemy for the first time. they'd been in country for about 10 or 12 weeks, and they'd lost about 15%, about 15 people of the 100-man company to

occasional bullet. they would fall under booby traps with sticks with poison on 'em, and you'd get somebody wounded that way. the viet cong, seat ma please communists -- we call them viet cong, i call them nationalists because they were just against the government, and against us. but in any waist, so they'd lost enough, and they'd gotten brutalized in 12 weeks. oh, these people don't have refrigerators, they don't know how to cross a threshold, all these things that made them convinced they were dealing with subhuman -- which is part of the way you get people to kill people in war. you obviously have to dehumanize them. the big memory was, you know, kill, kill, kill and don't think, think, think. anyway, and so they went into a village, and they were told they were going to meet the bad boys for the first time, a north vietnamese battalion, the 418th. i used to remember those numbers. 480th. and they did what kids did in that war then. the officers and enlisted men drank. the officers and sergeants

drank, and the enlisted men coked it up, and they got stoned. but 4:00, 5:00 in the morning came, they went and took their weapons and got on choppers to go kill for america. they did do that. you've got to give them their due. they found nothing but women and children and old men, and for some reason in the next six hours they executed them slowly, just killing them randomly with bullet after bullet. they raped many of the women before killing them. they killed the children too. there were horrible, horrific scenes. and it was all seen by senior officers and all covered up. and that's, basically -- they exhumed 535 bodies, the vietnamese did later, subsequently. they came back a few weeks later and buried the bodies properly. there's a we moral there. it was probably, i can imagine bad days for america, so this was a pretty bad day. so i'm into this story. i grew up in world war ii. the movies i saw, john wayne, van johnson and errol flynn

would fly around in airs. and i remember the movies about the nips. the movies about the nips were always, they'd always start with the night before the american officers were in a bar, and they were all chasing some nurse, and there was a fight about the nurse, and two guys got in a terrible fight, van johnson and errol flynn, for example, got in a terrible fight, and the next morning they were all flying together. and the nips, there was an air battle, and the nips always flew with the cockpit, the canopy closed, and they had these little hats your mother used to make you wear that you tied under your chin, ugly little things. they all had big, squinty glasses and buck teeth. and our guys had, the canopy was open, no helmet, scarves going like in this to each other. [laughter] and flynn and whoever it was, flynn and van johnson or whoever had been fighting before, van johnson saw flynn was going to be attacked, and he runs to his

rescue at the last minute and pours a lot of bullets into the cockpit of the japanese plane. you'd see the plane suddenly go like this. it was pretty crude stuff by the graphics we have now, but i remember them as if i was watching star wars 18, you know? it was just as effective for me, which says something about how old i am. if hiway. -- anyway, the plane would start going down, that would be the noise, and just before it hit the water, a trickle of blood would come out of the nip's corner of his mouth, and we'd all start or or cheering like mad. and that was world war ii for most of us. i don't know if you've read a classic book about the censorship of world war ii, and i know a lot -- i know marines now whose fathers were at iwo jima and a three-day war in which they lost something like 1600 guys. unbelievable bloodshed. the ma reaps would just pile in -- marines would just pile in

in world war ii, and we never got a sense of how bad it was of and how stupid some of the operations were just in terms of everything going wrong and not being needed. anyway, that's another story. that's always war. so -- a digression. so i'm in '69. and so i'm checking. and so i covered the building, and there was a guy, one of the guys i liked a lot had gone to vietnam. he was a colonel, and in vietnam he'd caught a bullet, and he'd been frocked when he was back. i happened to bump into him in the hall. this was just about a week or two after i get the tip, i check all the indexes and obvious places. i don't want to start asking too many questions because if it's real, i don't want to get them even -- that nobody should know what i'm looking at at in this point. i told nobody what i was doing. there was nobody to tell. my wife? she had her own problems. [laughter] anyway -- you know, after my lai, it's pretty tough to be married to a guy who did my lai.

take out the garbage. i'm sorry, honey, i'm saving the world right now. [laughter] you guys put up with a lot, you ladies. it's probably true, what i just said. anyway, and so in this guy had been one of the guys i clowned around with, you know? and we all have fun in america, you know? that's the thing about -- we always, you know, people like us, and we are likable. so i'm having a good time with this guy. we'd go to line up. occasionally. and he comes up, and i see him in the hall, and he's limping. he'd been nominated to be a general, it's called frocking. and so i jump on him, and i grab him and start saying, oh, man, look at you, shot yourself in the knee to get a star, all that stuff. giving him a real hard time. we're laughing and walking down the hall, and i said what's your assignment? he was wounded badly. he got, you know, he'd lost part of his leg. and he said, well, i'm working for the chief of staff, for general westmoreland. i said, no kidding?

so i said, so what about this guy that shot up everybody? he said you mean cally? i said, well, you know, i slunked. i probably didn't -- shrugged, i probably didn't say anything. then he goes like this. he said, sigh, he hits his bad knee, and he says cally didn't shoot -- he didn't kill anybody higher than that. not worth worrying about. and, okay, here we get to a little journalism ethics. do i say, oh, man, you've just delivered the package? i now have a name, i now have an idea that it's at chief of staff's office and, basically, everybody is saying, you know, when you say that, that's just a way of dismissing it in a way. good guy that he is, but he's working for the chief, and that gives me a point of view that they're aware, you know, it didn't take two and two. they're not anxious for this story to get out. and so did i say to him, general, you just made a mistake because you put me in the big story? hell no. should i have? probably journalistically, no.

but it'll get more interesting, the question of what you should do and shouldn't do. so then i go to the library, and i do different spelling. just as the judge advocates corps, it's called the jag corps, and i go and find, god damn, there's in late 1968, a year earlier, there's a first lieutenant named william l. cally jr. that was held on allegation of killing an unspecified number of civilians. and that's all. and he's down, it's at one of the -- not fort jackson -- yeah, fort jackson. he's out in south carolina. he's down there at fort jackson. and so i've got something. there is something here. so i call up, i just innocently call up the public affairs office for the army public affairs at fort jackson, and i say -- i get some major on the phone, and i say, major, what have you got on this guy cally? very quickly he said, oh, yeah, we know about that.

yeah, he shot up a bar, got drunk and shot up a bar. he wasn't lying, that was just what he was told. but he did it so quickly, i know i have something. so at that point i go back to my original source who clearly knew more, and i say, okay, it's william cally jr., who's his lawyer? because i can't find any evidence that he has a lawyer. there's no records, and there's nothing. there's just a little -- and, actually, there was also a story in "the new york times," september the 18th, 1968, a paragraph about him. and i did the checking on him. he'd been a 19-year-old kid that was, went to junior college, didn't do well, went to work for a railroad, one of the southern railroads, and was fired after three weeks on the job because he forgot to throw a switch, and two freight trains collided. there was a clip on him in "the miami herald". that's the only time he ever made news. so he was one of the 90-day wonders they were putting out to run troops. if any of you read the novels of

vietnam, you know the contempt be many of the soldiers had for their junior officers, rightly or wrongly. kim what's his name, who am i talking about? yes, right. he's, he's amazing. he's actually described killing officers in novel form. i mean, as a, as a fictional short story with that collection he did. anyway, one of the things that i learned about my lai is after i did the story about what happened in my lai, doctors in japan, american doctors in japan, i mentioned this earlier at dipper, today began -- at dinner, they began writing me. i don't know how i got these letters. i was doing it as a freelance writer for an anti-war dispatch.

it wasn't anti-war, it was just not pro-war. which makes it anti-war in those days. and young doctors, surgeons in japan were treating just nothing more than first and second lieu tempts with bullet holes from americans in the back because, you know, if you had a young officer that said you're not going to coke it up, or you're not going to smoke it up or toke it up, or they wanted to work harder in going on patrols, they would get it. there was a lot more than that that went on to those, it seems to me anecdotally anyway. so he comes back with a name, latimer. george latimer. george latimer turned out to be cally's lawyer, indeed. and i went back in the army, and i found -- once i got latimer, i found out latimer had been a judge on the court of military appeals. and so i spent, he lives in salt lake city, and i spent the day in the library reading a bunch of his cases. and, you know, army courts of military appeals it's complicated because you don't

ever have bodies. you have an allegation that somebody killed somebody, and you've got four guys saying it, and when it comes to the appeals section, judges like latimer would say we don't really know what happened, we just have anecdotal stuff, so he was reversing a lot of the decisions. i'm sure he felt he had no choice, but there was a lot of really disheartening decisions. so i call him up, and i say my name is hersh, and i'm here, i want to talk to you about the cally matter. and he says, oh, yes. i say, well, your honor, i'm coming to the west coast next week, and i'm on a plane that flies in salt lake -- i think the next day -- do you mind if i take time and come and see you? he said, no, come in. you know, that wasn't true. i just wanted to be casual about it. i was going to see him, but i didn't want him to think i was making a big deal. okay, that's -- i don't have to say that last sentence to you, but that's the reality. you don't always, you're not always totally wonderfully up front with everybody.

in fact, it's called lying. [laughter] or misrepresenting. and so which may not always be part of the investigative reporting game, but you have to understand there's always, again, let me just say this, again, something i said at dinner -- i speak too much -- in 50 years of being a reporter, i've not only done war crime, political crimes, i did stuff on organize toed crime. the most scary stuff i had came from noriega, i wrote about him as a murderer once for "the new york times"es, and there was all sorts of hell to pay. and i did all these stories in 50 years of being, writing about nasty things, and i've never met anybody, anybody who ever thought he did anything wrong. you've got to remember this. that's just not where we're usually at. so most people think they're doing the right thing. so that always makes it a little more complicated. and i'm sure this poor guy in new jersey that "the new york times" is riddling, he possibly thinks what did he do wrong?

he just helped out a guy that was giving him money down in the dominican republic. anyway -- not that i feel or sorry for him, but there's a lot of this stuff that goes on in congress and probably everywhere. so, so at this point i fly to see him the next day. he's a partner in a law firm, a mormon. he's a mormon, he's a mormon -- he's an elder or deacon, what you will. maybe deacon's the right word, is it? anyway, a deacon. big boss. and i go see him, and he's a very nice guy. and i sit down, and the first thing i do is before i ask him anything else, i say, well, let's talk about your decision in such and such, and we go over some of his cases, you know, that i've read and sort of briefed. i took my crim law in law school, and he thinks i'm, obviously, the nicest guy in the world coming in here, and we're kicking around why he had to decide what he wanted, and i'm going at him a little bit, and he's making the case and telling me about the difficulty.

he was on the court of military appeals for about 15 years after being a jag and then retires and goes into a practice. and, um, finally he thinks i'm the nicest man, i'm sure, that he's ever run into. what a nice reporter i am. so then i say, so let's talk about cally. and he said, oh, this is a real mess. he said, oh, i can't believe what the army's doing to in this guy. and he goes into his desk, and he pulls out a -- he's obviously prepared it -- he pulls out one of those, you know, vanilla folders, you know, cardboard folder that you -- and he opens it up, and there's this series of documents. and we start talking for a minute, and then he says, excuse me, mr. hersh, he gets a phone call, one of those -- my father-in-law was a corporate lawyer, one of those partner calls when they're always discussing a bill or fee. those painful calls that, you know? [laughter] and i remember hearing him do it. same sort of tone of voice.

talking about money. but, you know, that's what makes the world go around. so he's having this conversation with a partner, and he hangs up sort of angry, and he says, look, i've got to go talk with one of my associates for five minutes, and he leaves. [laughter] okay. i want the reporters here. what do you do? let's go. what do you do? come on. what? yeah, go ahead. i want the students only. no grown-ups because you're wiser or dumber. wiser or dumber, i don't know. what do you do, students? >> [inaudible] >> you go what? you do what? >> [inaudible] >> you go through it. why? >> [inaudible] >> what? yeah, but how do i rationalize it? why do i think it's okay? anybody got an idea? say it. what do you think? what makes you think it's okay? he didn't put it in the desk, did he, right? why? what do you think? some of you have to talk. [laughter]

what? loud. >> be. [inaudible] >> what? >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> you know, you know what's interesting about that? what she said is, you know, he obviously left it there because you wanted to see it. i'll tell you something amazing, there was a great oriental rug there. and suppose i'd rolled up that rug and thrown it out a window. was that the same reasoning? would that work? and there was a couple of some artifacts from the various wars he did, you know, some ashtrays and stuff like that. come on. but keep on going, i mean, that's easy. he wanted me to do it. he left it for me, right? anybody think i shouldn't do it? no grown-ups, no lawyers. [laughter] what about students? anybody think i'd be crazy not to do it? by the way, if i was working for

the "chicago sun-times" which i was trying to get on at that point and i'd not looked at it and he'd said i gotta go, and i'd called my editor and said, oh, my god, it was on the desk and i didn't open it, my editor wouldn't say you stupid -- he'd say, come back, you're going to go on rewrite or obits, you're done, you know what i mean? [laughter] so it's okay if it's on his desk, right? anybody bothered by it? >> yes. >> who? >> me. >> you're too old. [laughter] gotta be young. you students gotta do it. anybody bothered? there's no right or wrong, as it turns out. there's only wrong. [laughter] okay. let's go back to it. phone call rings, phone call rings. he looked pained, he had has the conversation. he puts down the phone, he takes the envelope, puts it in, doesn't lock the desk drawer and

leaves. what do we do then? come on, students. let me give you, let me give you the big three fs that are rolling through my mind. if you think i'm thinking at time, oh, this is going to really hurt the war issue, as much as i was against the war, i'm thinking of the three fs, fame, fortune, glory -- two fs and a g. [laughter] fame, fortune and glory. i'm like, oh, my god, what a story. i'm not thinking i'm going to hurt the war, this is about me and the great story which is the way it works. so he puts it in the desk drawer. what do we do, guys? >> don't open it. >> who says that? how old are you? no nonstudents. how about students? what do you do? come on, be honest. what do you do? oh, come on, you're all cowards. [laughter] where do you draw the line? suppose he'd taken that folder and instead of putting it in the desk drawer, he'd gotten up, and he'd walked to a file cabinet, opened it but left the drawer

open? suppose he closed drawer, suppose he left it unlocked. where do you draw the line? why? what's the difference between looking at it on the top of the desk and looking at it in the drawer? is there a difference? what? >> [inaudible] >> what? >> [inaudible] >> with is that a movie that somebody saw? [laughter] you know, if we only dealt with what's in plain sight, we wouldn't get much in our business. so what do you do? i mean, here you go. you're -- the big jump. i'm 30, 31, maybe 30, i'm the big jump. i'm going to make the big jump right there, boom, into the major leagues. right there in front of me. okay. so -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> no, you're too old to say that. [laughter] and don't forget, i'm coming at you, that was 1969. we're talking about 40 some odd years later, so the morality i have today i may not have had then. i was hungrier and, you know,

there was a war to stop. we had to stop that war. so we could put it in that way. so, come on, where do you draw the line? do you draw the line? if you thought it's okay to get it in the top of the desk, why isn't it okay to get it inside the desk? what's the difference? >> [inaudible] >> what? if you were rolling the rug up, but you could do this quick. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> you what? >> [inaudible] >> tag it, what? >> [inaudible] >> not because i wanted it? are you going to make some -- you're going to make this virtuous? [laughter] you're going to make it a virtue? no, i wanted it, man. okay, look. it turns out you can't do any of those. you can't look at it. turns out, first of all, cally has first amendment rights. he has the right to a trial. he has some rights, too, as a

citizen. all the various amendments, not only the first amendment, obviously. but he has the right. you know, i don't have the right to go into it. that doesn't mean i wouldn't have. i'll tell you what happened, you can just see how floating it is. if this was a smaller classroom, i haven't done this often, but i've done it, in particular i like to do it in journalism schools, sometimes even in graduate schools because it seems the older you -- more lessons you learn in journalism, the more committed you are to let's go for it, man, let's go. i mean, you know, you'd be amazed in graduate schools, 90% say go, man, yeah, go, just do it quick. bring a camera. we didn't have those kind of cameras we have now, you know? and we didn't have tape recorders. i didn't want carry -- i could have read -- i didn't carry, i could have read the file. what happened, actually, was that he did have a phone call, and there was a few minutes there when we weren't chatting, and he'd opened up the front page, and, um, i read it upside

down. you don't remember if you're young kids, parents remember when kids are 4, 5, 6 learning to read, it didn't matter which way it was, if you were babysitters or little brothers or sisters, and it's harder when you're older, but i sat there and read it, and the first sentence read -- it was classified. it was an army charge sheet, william l. cally jr. is found to be stand trial for the premeditated murder of 109 oriental human beings. that was the initial charge as if, let's see, ten whites equal one oriental, eight blacks, seven -- what's the number? how do you figure out what an oriental's worth? clearly not worth the same as a white or african-american or hispanic-american. i copied enough of it, you know, and then i had insane conversation with him when i copied most of the page. i never asked him for it. because he wouldn't give it to me. he was a man of the law, and i

knew -- and the only thing i asked when i left, and i was very nice, and he was very nice, i didn't -- he didn't realize i wasn't taking notes, but copying it. how would you describe that in terms of honorable behavior? probably necessary. but we're, you know, this is a very tricky business you guys are getting into, you investigative reporters. and i'll tell you, i was saying to the young lady who prestaged my introduction, whatever her name is -- [laughter] that when she starts, if the campus newspaper starts doing investigations, they're headed for the obvious place to investigate, athletics, money b, who gets in, who gets in why, how long do they get carried, and they're going to be all kicked out of school, every professor's going to lose tenure. that's the track path you have on that. but anyway -- because if you start doing stuff at a major

university in sports which is the only real story to do pause it's always pretty horrible, and you know little -- anyway, so the point is, so what happened is i then, the only thing i said, i said this proceeding took place at fort jackson. i said, your honor, is he at fort jackson? is he said, you know, i can't say anything. i said, your honor, i'm going to fort jackson tonight. i'm going to leave on a plane and to there, and all you have to do is say i'm wasting my time. and he said nothing. and that was something. and i went off to fort jackson, and i eventually found cally. the long story, it's just about digging. i'll take a minute and just tell you i went, being in the army i thought that cally's -- he's not in the phonebook. i checked the phonebook. he's not there. and the phonebook's change there, but the current phonebook didn't have him. so i start going to -- first i went to every prison. there were five prisons in this big, it's a big training base. rangers, special forces, regular paratroopers. i with end to they call them --

i don't know what they call them, the prisons, they had a different word for them. but i went to three or four of the regional little jails, and i put on my little crappy suit and a tie, and i walked in. i looked like a lawyerment i carried a briefcase, and i say i want bill cally out here now, and they'd say, who? after a little while, that didn't work out. [laughter] and then i went, i went to, i went to all the clubs. i went to the, every sports club, the hockey, any sport club, the swimming, i went to every place. there was um swing, and i went to the garages, there were a couple of private garages on base. hi, you ever service a car by a guy named cally? and i ran out of luck. and what i did was i was about, i got to that -- i flew all night, and i rented a car in columbia, south carolina, and i went on pace. it's only -- base. it's only a few miles away. it's continuous with the fort, the base.

columbia, south carolina, nice city. about noon i was starving, and i went to a px, and i got a hamburger, and i'm sitting there. suddenly, i remembered something. this was september. and what i remembered from what i read in the lawyer's office upside down, he'd been charged if august, the previous august or july. he came in july, maybe the official charging -- they have of a version of a grand jury, it's called an article 32 proceeding, and they held him to make sure there was enough justification to prosecute him. 109 deaths, man, we're looking at a big story, and i'd seen the document marked secret or top secret, whatever it was marked. just secret. so i realized from my days in the pentagon that the military in its great efficiency changes phonebooks every three or four months. and cally arrived in may, and he wasn't charged until august or late july. so when he arrived in the may and registered coming back from vietnam, even though he's being sent back, he wasn't charged with anything. he came pack as a first lieutenant -- came back as a

first lieutenant. he might be, he wasn't in the book published in june, but maybe he would be listed in the new listings for the earlier book. so i call up the operator. i go to the base phone. and this is the days before homogenized voices. you can still get some southerns accents, but mostly we're sort of one big, you know, one big anglo-saxon combine. and so i got this operator, and i said, operator, i want you to do me a favor. i want you to get the old phonebook, the april phonebook, and i want the last new listings. and she said, well, she checked with her boss and came back and said, okay, i've got it. i'm looking for cally, william j.. oh, i've got him. yeah, he came in the last week before we published the new directory, and she rattled off the unit he was at and then hung up, and it was in this very deep southern accent, and i couldn't understand a word she said.

i found her, he was assigned to a unit that, a construction unit, engineer battalion. and he was an infantryman. perfect place to hide him. i'd been looking for him all over, but i couldn't find him. and so i went to the unit. i finally called back another operator who read it for me carefully. it was at another camp, and i went about 20 miles away, and i drive there. now it's about three in the afternoon. it's one of these new modern -- then modern army buildings. it was three barracks, a three-story building on two, separated by a one-story passageway where the officers, where the company commander had his office. and then there were three rows of barracks. so i parked a couple blocks away, and i go into a side door. and i figure i got him, he's here. and i go up and down one side, and all the beds are made beautifully like we used to make 'em. i mean, you could drop a -- we were good at making beds.

we all had to be. they were all made perfectly. and so then i had to go down, and in order to get to the other side, i had to go down through a little passageway, and the office was one of those doors where there was a bottom and a front top open, and the front top was open, so i crawled underneath. i didn't want to be seen. and sure enough, on the second floor on the other side what we're talking about here is making your luck. that's what it's all about. i mean, it was how rational what i was doing. i was doing something just to -- i don't know, i was just doing it. i was just chasing everything. and the third floor is empty, the second floor there's some kids sleeping on a bunk. it's now 3:15, middle of the workday, what the hell's going on? i got him. it's cally. so i go and give a big whack on the bunk, and this blond kid goes like this, and he's got about a, oh, 16-letter last name. and i said -- he's not cally. and i said, oh, my god, i said,

so because we are curious, we journalists, i said will you explain to me what you're doing sleeping here at 3:30? and he was of from ottumwa, iowa, and this is the fall. this is now october of 1969, a year and a half after the incident. most of the soldiers are back by then, but i didn't know that. and he says to me, oh, man, i'm supposed to get out for the harvest, dad's got the wheat going, we've got everything going. it wasn't wheat, it was corn probably in iowa. big farming area. i got a postcard for a couple years. and so he tells me this sad story about how they lost his records, that he's being held over even though he did his year in nam, he wants to go back, bad he's waiting for them to clear it. i said, what do you do? he said, yeah, i'm the mail clerk. oh, you're the mail clerk, for the battalion? [laughter] he said, yeah, i do the mail in the morning, but i'm done by

1:00. i said did you ever hear of a guy named cally? he said do you mean that kid that shot up everybody? i'm trying to suppress my -- [laughter] and i said, yeah. and he said, well, yeah. he never was here, but we used to get his mail, and i'd deliver it to smitty all the time over -- i would save his mail for a week, and i'd wrap it up and go over to see smitty at battalion -- this was a company, battalion headquarters. smitty was at the headquarters of a company, company, you know how it goes, company, battalion, division, whatever it is, you know, la, la, la. the next higher level. and i said so smitty, you delivered it to smitty? yeah, that's all -- my job was giving cally's mail to smitty but, boy, he's sure in some trouble. i said where is battalion headquarters? he said, well, you know, it's pretty far away. i said, okay, check your watch, what time is it? 3:42. okay, in seven, eight minutes, i

think i said, i'm going to pull up in a gray ford on the other side in a car. you come out exactly in eight minutes and take me over there. yeah, sure. action, he wanted action. no hesitation. i run and get the car, sneak out. don't go out the side door. get the car, he's right there. we jump in, he drives me to battalion headquarters which is about 10, 15 minutes away. insisted, get this, modern american kid, i had to drive him back. but at least i knew the route. ..

i park in there and i go up and i figure playing via such -- authoritarian and i say sergeant ahmad smitty out here right now. he starts laughing, what is smitty done now? i said get in the car smitty. i'm sad i didn't mean to scare you but i'm just looking for calley. he said well he's on base somewhere. i said what you have on him? i have his violin there. it's inside? [laughter] he said yeah. i said get it. [laughter] and he said okay. he goes in and takes it and puts it in his wallet and gives it to me. i opened up in the first page was the same page as the day before in the judge's office. anyway, it's all about making your logic and i eventually found calley. i eventually got a straight

story from him. captain medina who was in charge and i wrote the first of what were five stories as a freelancer and by the way once i saw calley it took me a week or two to get the money to buy it even though i've been press secretary for a guy running for president and two weeks before i had the lead story of the new york times magazine who is on assignment. doing another piece for life magazine so i've been making it as a freelancer not making a lot of money by getting tracks and in the press secretary in which i met i became friendly with walter cronkite. i used to play tennis with walter cronkite for years after that. my son used to always say he was a watchmaker with his white hair. and so i met all these guys and nobody would touch the story. i had to take it and sell it as an independent journalist which is amazing but it happened. that is the virtue of of the press.

one day 40 newspapers collected the story and we talked to the editors and they took it and about 35 that made it the lead story headline banner chicago philadelphia to new york post in a week after that "the new york times" wanted the story and then i wrote five stories in five weeks. i just kept on going. i found some kids in the company and i found this one kid who killed everybody in new goshen indiana and that is the famous line. i went to see this kid. once i found kids in the company there were a lot of repressed memories. once you find one you can find others mostly on the west coast. they had been in the company and they knew it happen. they were worried about being charged with some talked and i got a company. i saw the company roster and then they told me about paul the kid from new goshen who had been doing all the shooting. the entire clip of 30 bullet clip into a ditch.

a woman and children and there was this horrific moment and this was the repressed memory. finally somebody told me about it and i went back to others. he had been -- though they have put the 500 or so people into three ditches and somehow or other just shot into the ditches and an m-1 if you hold the trigger down it gets to be a semiautomatic and you don't have to pull it. he shot six or seven clips and most of the african-american guys, no way. this is not our war. we are not doing this. some of the hispanics shot that they shot high. nobody wanted to call out the farm boys who did it. nobody wanted to call them out because they were afraid they would get hit later. that is the way it was. when people did bad things they didn't want anybody to talk about it and the next day a minority group who wore black arm bands, i wrote a second book about the cover-up that nobody

cared about but that's way it goes. they knew everything right away but covered it up so it was then and the war that i talked to my friend a year later was named chief of staff because i guess he was so successful at killing innocent people. that gets you promoted. i don't know. the point that of this is he did all the shooting at in a certain moment they were being their kp rations next to the ditch. there are famous photographs and you have seen some of the photographs of the ditches. an army photographer started seeing what was happening and he shot for the army stars & stripes. he shot locke and white but then he shot a whole bunch of pictures from his personal camera that he later sold to "life" "life" magazine after you get the stories because he had amazing photographs. but he didn't tell the army about those photographs. the one he shot in black-and-white had nothing to do with what really happened. talking about visual evidence. anyway while they were shooting

they heard a noise and it turns out one of the mothers as mothers will do talked a 2-year-old lloyd under her stomach and he survived the slaughter. they were shooting in the ditch and he was crawling his way and screaming more and more as he got to the top. he was all full of luck and he began to run across the rice paddies or or the field in the tenant calley who had ordered the killing infamously the lieutenant calley, lieutenant calley said to paul who do the most acquiescence of the soldiers and some turned away after little bit but 16 years old kept on firing and calley said -- and he could not do it. it was like seen one. it's like why you can drop arms from on high that you can't go down low sort of the great

philosophical if you will issue of what is acceptable. future the line so calley have a smaller rifle called the carbine. calley ran up behind a kid and shot him in the back of the head so triumphantly and the next day he he stepped on a landmine and blew off his leg at the knee. while he was medevaced he was chanting god has punished me with tenant calley and god will punish you. one that everybody remembered was this chilling curse and they were saying get him out of here. they got him out of here and a year and a half later i am looking for him. i find him in a salt lake city payphone. i knew he was somewhere in southern indiana. he lives below annapolis and i was calling every phone company. you didn't have google search. we didn't have it. so finally i knew the spelling

so i finally find a spelling of that name in new goshen of outside this terre haute and i call up and a white southern voz voz -- voice answers and it's his mother. i say hi i'm just wondering how paul is like ecstasy back? who are you? i'm a reporter. i want to talk to him. i don't know if he wants to talk to you. is this is about the war? can i come? she said come on down. i never know what is going to do and she hung up so i took a plane that night wherever it was and i go to new goshen indiana and i drive up and i have a hard time finding the house because it's just a ramshackle wooden collection of dilapidated holdings all wooden shacks a little bit like you would see in the picture of the plantation life in louisiana in the middle

1900s. at least my fictional memory of what they look like and there was a chicken farm and the cages were in disarray and you knew there was no man around. the chickens were all over and the wire mesh had roped in. i pull up in front and she comes out and she's about a 55-year-old lady who looks about 75, hard scramble life. this is not the norm in rock well version of rural life. she says he is in there and i said is that our right quick she said i don't know and then she says, this little old lady. this little old lady that didn't know much about anything so i thought. she says, i sent them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer. you can go a long career and not have a line like that.

so did the stories, fame, fortune and glory. it probably hurt nixon in the way. he could no longer rally what he called middle america after that calley was prosecuted and found guilty of 21 deaths and nixon of course commuted his sentence. just in justin time he was sequestered in court. calley just was one of six officers killing people. that is the story. most of visit pretty good but you can say all along the way there were a lot of times i wasn't particularly straight with latimer. i will tell you something amazing about latimer. i had a friend from law school in chicago who was a wonderful great lawyer and had a fancy practice in washington. he and my wife knew him way back and we were dear friends. when i wrote the first story he

was obviously nervous about it and i went to see him. he was at a common at law firm and i have to be able to write. i am sending this to newspapers and they don't know who i am and they have to have some idea but they don't really know me. i have to say this is reviewed by so-and-so fancy law firm and verified for not only attack received that it's libel free. whether you are in montana or new york 100 bucks is what we charge. you had to pay the wire feed. and he said you know you should call latimer the judge. i was quoting calley. i found calley and he talked to me all night and he said something else. he pretended, this is a combat war but at some point i was in his quarters and i saw him. the kid -- i got his address. it was hard but i found it. he was tucked away in the

quarters for generals but that's okay, count him. at one point during our conversation and all my conversation he went to the bathroom and he said he had to go he said that i saw him throw up arterial blood, dark blood and he had an ulcer. i mean he was suffering but he was masking it. he threw up blood. and so clearly he was suffering so i quoted about what he said which turned out to be something different than he had said and the proceedings in the army and my lawyer said suppose, he said you were coding him but how do you know you are not going to put him in jail? maybe you should so i called latimer up and the last time i talked to george latimer and i read what i said. he said oh my god is he write the story that way he is not going to get a trial. he said i think you ought to have a trial and i said so the way. he said i will make a deal with

you hersh. read me his story and i will check it for accuracy and i will go through it very carefully. just say instead of staying calley, just say according to what calley is known to believe or has said and according to what sources say just mask the fact that use on directly. i made the deal. i said okay i don't have to quote him but i have seen the charge sheet and i can write that. he corrected the story down to things like that date, whenever i've been with the official charge was to the point where later i didn't do it because i don't do that stuff. the army concluded from that first story that i had access to the inner workings of the pentagon. it was so completely accurate that they could understand the maybe the judge made it accurate for me and never talk to me again. editors from the newspaper they were going to publish it called him and he said i can say to you right now that story is okay. it was great. somehow not always been tough i

walked away from an interview with him and i never wrote about the interview because i said i wouldn't but it was all right. it would turn out to be okay. look, we have talked now for three hours. and i think some of you students ought to mull about the fact that a lot of critical places i was more than -- less than candid about what i did. that is part of the business. i would like to thank i probabld it the way i should. and the big question for me is, i do this fantastic game of what would happen if we were not in the desk? if he had locked this saves someone would say blow torch it open, do you know what i mean? the first couple of times in the desk, out of the desk and i think more of you would have done it initially if you figured out that wasn't the way to go. the older and the whites are no

better. but, that is one of the perils of what we do. we do get close to the edge and it's not always wonderful. some of the things we do are less than marvelous but that is what we do and i don't think you should misrepresent yourself. and you are not compelled to tell everything. and the truth was and the question i always have is what i hope is. [inaudible] and i guess i would have. now why wouldn't that i have got my my medals. i'm like general petraeus. he had about 64 medals. i don't know how he walked. he must feel liberated now he doesn't have to wear all those medals. let's do some questions about anything but the story, about the real world and i will be glad to get myself in real trouble on this stuff. i think right now what you see and what i'm seeing is i am

seeing jihad is sunnis whether al qaeda or not. i don't necessarily believe there is an overriding al qaeda. i see sunni fundamentalist from africa, from north africa to the middle east out of south asian pakistan going after she had. i see more violence in the last year than we have seen in many years and i'm not saying it's due to obama's policy or lack of policy. we don't know but something is going on and it's getting very ugly. my own guess is that we are going to see a big explosion in iraq this year. american intelligence, a lot of very good american intelligence that the saudi's who don't forget our fundamentalist, wahhabi sunnis, radical hardline sunnis who have no use for the shia and this is a serious place in the middle east right now and always has been.

it is really a cute gal but certainly they have funding. some of the old pro-saddam guys the baftas in a war against the maliki government in iraq with the shia. there is going to be maybe a set piece over there. i don't think they will win but there will be a lot more blood. iraq is not done with the torture we put it through so there is a cheerful little theme. >> please go to the mic and you are free to get your -- its way past the time. as far as i know. [applause] i will do certainly 20 or so minutes so feel free. there is no plane out of here tonight is there? okay so i'm here. speeding mr. hersh my name is david and i would like to express my tremendous admiration for the work you continue to do.

>> do you know what i think of people when they say that? i learned a great joke in the new yorker. it's a cockroach talking to a mouse and the cockroach says i love your work. [laughter] so it's all relative. some people won't agree but let's get on with it. what is your question? >> the question is you have written extensively about war plans against iran and chuck hagel was excoriated for using the word containment in hearings the president has said all options are on the table. prime minister netanyahu says in a more threatening way. what can you tell us about what those options are and what the consequences of the u.s. or israelis strike on iran would be? >> i will tell you actually as you know i spend a lot of time in 2005 and 2006 writing about iran and about the threat and the serious conversation in the white house. i've been doing a book on the cheney white house which is

fascinating because it has led me back into ronald reagan's white house back to the church committee which led me back to obama and in a minute i will just say, a question about assassination used to be what did the president know and when did he know it and now we have obama saying on tuesdays i go to meetings and we pick the guys and that is what it evolved to if you will. i actually think, use the word think, here is what i know. i know that there is a deal on the table. my guess is obama is going to israel among other places and he is going to make the deal. it's a good deal. the iranians are getting sanctions and the problem with sanctions is of course is that sanctions always, the economic sanctions we impose always afflicts, they start from the bottom up in the elite don't get it. as far as i know fidel castro has been sanctioned economically

for 62 years and i don't see it going anywhere so i'm a skeptic about sanctions. people survive in their a lot of ways to settle oil. we are making it harder for the iranians to settle oil to china. they have had some courtesy deals where they are playing games with the turks with the leader of and cutting back. incorporated some complicated banking ways to squeeze them. the deal has always been on the table because let me say again and again, there is no evidence the american, british, swedish, german empirically no evidence that they are intelligent -- the iranians have done anything to weaponized. we can't find it. we would like to say that maybe it's because they are hiding it well but you can't believe how good we are looking. it's an all court press. we have done amazing stuff and i've written about some of it. once bush was out of office i

felt free to write about the stuff i know, but so we are sanctioning them to stop them from making a weapon for which we have no intelligence which is always a complicated situation. a deal is on the table and i would bet by june there will be a very serious talk and i think one reason he is going to seek bebe certainly the most rational he is going to cbv and israel in late march. i would guess that one of the issues is going to be to help them climb down off the ladder and i also think the most serious issue we have going on now is syria. and i will give you another guess. who is going to end up bailing out bashar? the israelis and i will tell you hawaii. has the last thing they want our crazies on their border. if you remember in 1982 in the

note something you don't remember but there was terrible stuff stuff that happened when it looked like the plo was going to take over southern lebanon which is on the border of israel. the israelis went to the camp and there was bombing like crazy. they went with the prospect of having a radical plo under border. they misread the plo and they misread arafat. there was more chance for a serious agreement so the last thing the israelis want and something very interesting little things that you see recently 17 wounded officers of the syrian army were admitted to israel for treatment and also at the border the israelis on the border in the golan heights, the last thing the israelis want is a wahhabi salafist muslim brotherhood radical running stuff in syria and to his credit everything i know and i think i know about obama i do know that

obama is very very skeptical of putting in arms into syria. that is because our cia which still has a lot of smart people in it and don't underestimate us. i am critical of my government that we can do a lot of very smart things along with an awful lot of things that we do smart things too. we pretty much know and we have known for a couple of years that there is trouble in syria and it's not simply legitimate -- there are legitimate grievances against him because he was putting people in jail for saying bad things about him. he was better than his father that he hasn't moved nearly enough so i think we are going to see israel being much more passive. the one guy that sticks it where the sun don't shine is putin. we have a real problem with russia because russia has more anti-americanism than ever. it's a reflection of the growing

anti-americanism in russia and that we should stop because that is very dangerous for everybody. i think obama, if obama is free enough to play golf with tiger he can do anything he wants now. let's do some more of. somebody else. if this is all you have got i'm going to go home so come on. yes maam. >> hi mr. hersh. i'm sorry that you missed our class because we all had and have questions to ask you. >> do you want to know my defense? your 4:00 class? i was never told about it. >> i am sorry about that. >> so in my because you are waiting for me and i didn't know it. i was busy napping. [laughter] >> okay. my question is, do you think the fall of david petraeus -- >> petraeus. >> petraeus, sorry.

do you think it reflects the declining culture of u.s. army? >> no, it's a one off and away. petraeus is actually, he left because he left what he that he was actually interviewing at the time. he was interviewing a -- as he told everybody constantly. king david they called him in the army. he wasn't popular in the army and he was pretty much done. my understanding is he was told he would not be chairman of the joint chiefs and he was not going to be chief of staff of the army so they cia was a bad thing for him. and if every senior officer in america were to be fired because he had an affair we would be fighting the army with

sergeants. [laughter] so clearly there is more to it than that. there is more to it than that. the same with general allen. i don't know the whole story but let me assure you he was going to go but he wanted to go on his terms and he is smart. i always thought, he was tremendous but the one thing you really have to be good at if you want to be a successful person in washington. he moved the press. he would always go to lunches with people. i used to be asked all the time to go to lunch with him and i said i don't do that you know. i don't socialize with people i am reporting on. >> who do you think if you believe it's true, who do you think would have been targeted assassination by what came out with supposedly by cheney in the illegal ops that were paid for with all that cash --

>> what is the assessment and you are talking about? >> supposedly cheney ran an associate -- assassination team. >> what happened is there was a general named mcchrystal who is running something called the joint special operations command one of the things about america that is sort of interesting is the way we have devolved is it's really cool and away you do it is you have your own army, you pressure on money. you don't bother with congress. there is no oversight and to hell with congress. and you don't tell anybody what you are doing. it's a pretty cool deal. and we see this pattern, cheney was not the first to do it. he was sort of a copycat. but cheney was doing is they would find what they considered to be bad guys and they would authorize executive action and they would just, mcchrystal in the early days he needed okays

and later he just didn't need of case. it was just title field executions and what you will. what they called these black persons which i'm sorry to tell you still exist more than you believe and you beat the hell out of them and let them die. so it's an ugly stuff that we tell a lot about but not everything about it. so it wasn't like the targets we were talking about were people that we believed to be al qaeda or guys against us and also we pay for the information which is really strange. most of the early guys that went to guantánamo, good prison, am i right? the single biggest black market we have. that and the drones and predator killings. if we ever come out of this war against terror in some reasonable way until we figure out some other way of dealing with the problems we have other than trying to snuff everybody or put them in jail, not that

they do it anymore and get mouth but the longer they people -- keep the people there -- though this is america is america. anyway there is nothing specific i have to say to you about that. i just don't know. there was certainly cheney believed he had the authority and the notion of the unitary president. the president of the united states has executive power and he doesn't have to deal with the justice department. there are certain bad people that they identified that have the power to deal with them and that is what he was doing. that is in cheney's mantra to the congress even so but i don't know anything about -- it's not like cheney said i just got a lot of money from a poker game last night although with the phoenix program targeted assassinations often we would get names from someone who did lose two cards to somebody. it was really strange but know what he did as far as he was concerned it was all for the

good of america. .. >> it was not dripping the down the way it should have or how we envisioned it, but a lot of money we held, and it was some of the oil money in the treasury. we have billions of dollars of their money, and that's the money you're talking about.

there's no -- you know, remember one thing. 9/11 happened, and november, about two months after 9/11, congress authorized get this figure -- $11.8 billion for the war on terror. $11.8 # billion, it's there in the books. took me four years to get omb to get an accounting and to get aning thing -- an accounting and foreign aid, finally got a listing, like project k, $600 million. i mean you didn't have to worry about going to congress for money. you had it all over the place. you could do anything you wanted. it was a dream. it was a dream.

john brennan started having fun with the cia. no tough questions. maybe in camera they did better than they did in public, but tuesdays, he's sitting with the president picking who lives and dies. you'd think they would have asked more questions about it. we've gone a long way. these four, and i'll let everybody go to their parties. >> just the one more question here. >> what's that? >> one more question here. >> well, we have two. i give everyone the freedom to go home. you can go home. >> two more questions. >> yes, ma'am? >> i guess the question is a little bit private. >> was i supposed to be in your class too? [laughter] >> yes, the same thing. as a reporter, i know, i'm sure you certainly have heard enough bad things, but i wonder have

you changed your religious belief -- >> my what? >> religious belief before and after you became a journalist? >> you know, i'm not big on psychoanalyzing myself. [laughter] i don't -- i have a family. i don't ever write or talk about them, and i don't think my personal views are particularly -- i am what i am, and so i think -- don't be -- i'm not offended. that's a reasonable question. if you asked me if i changed my belief in philosophy, i might have a go at it, but not about personal stuff, you know? only because -- actually, for some practical reasons. the less people know about who i live with, where i do, the better off for everybody for a

lot of reasons. >> would you comment on america's increasing use of drones and countries where we are not at war and the -- >> i did. [laughter] i did. every study ever been done about the use of air power shows it's counterproductive. after world war ii there was a study of bombing of the germans that concluded our massive constant bombing, eradication of drones, civilian targeted increased. capacity to produce weapons increased and intensity and support for the government in connection withed. counterproductive. no reason to think otherwise unless there's something specific you want to know. most run by the joint operations command. there's a patina with cia with some involvement, but most operations done by the military on this stuff, and guys now get medals for sitting in nevada

dropping bombs by remote control. it's pretty good, pretty cool. great powers don't like to lose people, so it's a perfect way to fight a war against the little yellow people -- i always say when we bombed yugoslavia, the first president since world war ii to bomb white people. what's that mean. you figure out. i don't know. last question. speak. >> okay. can you hear me better? >> go ahead. >> in investigative journalism, you run into situations where you choose a-- anonymous sources -- >> you're muzzled. >> anonymous sources? >> oh, yeah, of course. >> where do you draw the line?

>> i criticize myself on anonymous sources. i'd love to name everybody, but they would be in jail. [laughter] >> when you're in a situation, what interviews do you use the anonymous sources for, and where do you draw the line? >> i'll tell yo you what they do at the new yorker. it's an amazing place. the final person, when you close the piece, the time person is a grammarian, and we talk about comma faculties. seriously. when's the last time anyone talked about parallelism. seriously. anybody who deals with me inside knows they have to talk independently and separately to a new yorker fact checker. the people i deal with are known to my editor and new yorker fact checkers. you probably read something, going the new yorker fact checkers. john mcgehee wrote a wonderful

piece on fact checkers because the good ones are really good, checking things you always miss, but they talk to the people directly, and i often it's complicated. i -- some of the people, big life right now is in the face of the american people have fact checkers, and there's never been a leak or an abuse. they are anonymous, but they are known to editors. believe me, my editors are skeptical of anything i say, think, or do -- [laughter] particularly, in speeches, and so that for me mitigates the issue. i'm doing a book now that lawyers can talk to anybody they want to, and, also, i've hired independent fact checkers so i don't make dumb mistakes in middle initials, dates, and times. mistakes are inevitable. i feel better about it, but i'm

always amazed, for example, the "new york times," i worked there for nine years, so -- eight years, so i know. "new york times" every day leads a story with the chinese are behind all the cyber spying according to highly informed government officials. every day they do it. most of the time at the "new york times" the problem they have is they have to cozy up to people, and can't be antagonistic to the national security adviser or president privately. if they want to leak you something, about how the president picked targets with the brennan on tuesdays, i'm sure he rationalized that one. i don't know how, but he probably did, some hard line mythology somewhere. anyway, and so that's leaked to the "new york times," anonymous sources, before the election,

the president is eager to play for that independence, that 5% that make or break the election, and, by the way, what a society we are. here's an election for the presidency, and the target area are the 5% of the people independents who don't know whether they are democrats or republicans, and in most cases, sometimes, most cases, they are independent, give them their due, but many don't know because they don't know what the issues are, and they who they play to. he did that all anonymous. the whole issue of ano , -- ano , ma'am anymorety is difficult. i fact check it. i have sources. i will tell you that it's also a system of enormous abuse because you could pretend, the anonymous source is a high level source, and i know for a fact at the "new york times" because some reporters, if they named the person they talked to, which they could have, they rather

used an anonymous official. the one who called me a terrorist, was derek pearl, and i wrote a piece about how he used his position in the head of the major defense policy board under nixon, under bush and cheney, a powerful group because he's a powerfully bright guy. this man, spent much of the career as being very antisaudi and pro-israel, i wrote was in serious negotiations using his credentials as an insider, on this board, the defense policy board, you have to get clearances for it, ect., to get access to anything to try to strike a deal for a huge billion dollar project to build a fence between yemen and saudi arabia with the saudis, and that's when he called me a terrorist, and i take that as a compliment. he was not spoken 20 -- to me since, by the way, but he's very, very smart. he's engaging.

i kind of miss him, but that's the way it goes. the answer to yes -- to your question, yes, that's the way it goes. not for me, but for everybody else it is. good-bye. [applause] >> president obama is in washington today with meeting and events at the white house. this morning, he unvailed a hundred million dollar initiative to treat, cure, and prevent drain disorders alzheimer's and traumatic brain injury. his ri marks now on c-span.org. later, a meeting with the prime minister of singapore. one of the issues likely to come up, the threats from north korea. we'll hear more about that issue at today's white house briefing.

other topics could include immigration legislation, reducing gun violence, and the president's budget proposal expected to be released next week. the briefing live on c-span2 in less than an hour from now. we'll have more live coverage here on c-span2. at 4:30 eastern, remarks from hank paulson, speaking about u.s.-china economic and environmental challenges at george washington university. at noon, a discussion about privacy concerns raised by the tsa's body scanning machines and enhanced patdowns at airports. >> we have to take back media, independent media is what will save us. the media are the most powerful institutions on earth, more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any missile. it's an idea that explodes on to the scene, but it doesn't happen

when it is contained by a box, that tv screen we all stare at for so many hours a week. we need to be able to hear people speaking for themselves outside the box. we can't afford the status quo anymore from global warming to global warming. >> author, host, and executive producer of "democracy now" taking calls, e-mails, facebook comments issue and tweets live sunday on booktv on c-span2. now, a discussion of infotainment, a hollywood reporter, tmz, and an l.a. times writer. an arizona state university's

cronkite school of journalism hosted this event in los angeles. we'll show you as much as we can until today's white house briefing. [applause] >> thanks so much for being here. thanks to my colleagues at asu, especially the cronkite school, and this is a terrific panel of three incredible journalists with incredibly different backgrounds, and let's get into it. i must confess the first time i was told i was monitoring the pam, i felt great physical pain, and it was a flashback, actually, for me to a moment of real physical pain. in 2003, outside the county office buildings in norwalk, in l.a. county, where a candidates must go to file papers when they run for office. the recall election had been

scheduled, and people were going to run for governor, and i was there sort of staking it out, covering it for "the l.a. times," when arnold schwarzenegger walked up the stairs to go file papers, trailed closely by huffington who wanted to get the full benefit of arnold's press crowd that assembled, and i was sitting there at a respectful distance trying to get a question, arnold ignored me. next i knew, my head hit the ground, and i had been mowed over turned out, bulled over, by teams of reporters, crews from access hollywood and inside edition, who i stood at my l.a. times respectful distance, when they wonnerred right up, got answers to questions, and were undetoured by security and various rope lines and things, and i have to say once i determined i did not need medical attention, i sort of, you know, had to question in my mind, you know, should i be

angry at these people who hasn't managed to follow, you know, journalistic decorum among us political reporters who cover california politics, or should i learn from them and figure out what kind of marshall arts training they gave people at access, and so that's kind of the question of tonight. you know, we -- the entertainment culture is what it is. it's here. even if you are just standing there, it can knock you over. if you're a journalist or consumer journalism, i mean, the question becomes how do we get the journalism we need to particularly around politics and government, the mayor of democracy, you know, in our country, how do we get that in that culture? how do journalists negotiate the culture? do you fight it, or can you cleverly use it to your advance? i'll enter -- introduce the panelists. first, charles, there's actually

a ning on youtube that tells you how to pronounce his name. i don't recommend it. it's wrong. [laughter] he launched the freshman season of tmz, co-executive producer, and prior to tmz, spent eight years at extra, the magazine produced by telepicture productions, produced 2500 episodes there. >> exactly. [laughter] >> and before extra, he worked at tv k, a tv in phoenix, the abc affiliate, producing nightly 10 p.m. newscast. went to asu, majored in broadcast journalism. now, tmz can be a punching bag for a lot of people. you've been blamed for the decline of civilization. i've seen that in clips. [laughter] i want to give you the opportunity to turn tables a little bit. you're consumer -- >> all of civilization? turned on us? [laughter] all right. >> on journalism. when you consume, when you read,

when you see networks, newspapers, do political coverage, do coverage for government, how do you look at the stories? are there things you know from the work done at tmz that thinks this or that could be done better? >> okay. i'm going to take down civilization now. no, listen, i mean, tmz just dabbles in politics at this point, and i don't think what we do, what we do, i think, is part of the menu at this point. the way people need to learn about politicians. what we try to do is make politicians personalities, try to get people interested, and when we do politics, it's more, i guess, on the surface. we're not talking about policy. we're not talking about how this senator voted on a particular bill. we're just talking more about the personality of that person

because i do think that there's become -- there's a new interest now in finding out about these politicians, but if you talk about the person aside from politics. we've -- some of our most trafficked political stories and the congressman showing his abs, he was ripped. who knew. the representative, i hate to use the word "shocked" at the interest he got when we put that photo up. he had constituents reaching out to him that never, ever -- they didn't even know -- [laughter] they didn't even know he was their representative. they go, wait a second, this is interesting. you know, it's funny because it

is like, wow, it's a photo of a guy's abs for them to pay attention. you could say that's bad, and, personally, i think it's sad, but people should be interested anyway, but if that is what it takes to get them in the church, as they say, then that's what it takes, and now aaron has people in his -- his constituents are now paying attention to how he votes on things whether they like or dislike it, but r you know, something he's got to deal with, but, now, at least they are interested, and they know who aaron shock is. >> the -- pushing you a little more, maybe just to give you a window on how the sausage is made at tmz. you've been praised, and we had an essay just the other day from an author named bridget harrison, books on american politics, arguing that tmz, you can talk about the subject matter, but that as a news organization, it's a lot more

vigilant than major news organizations, and there's reporting phone calls and a lot of the checks that other places don't do. is that true? i mean, -- >> like basic journalism? [laughter] >> well, -- >> people say that a lot, now, how do you guys know all the stories? well, it's not really -- there's no magic formula other than, like you said, making phone calls, making, you know, three dozen phone calls, whatever it is. we had a conversation about people hanging up on you that you get used to that if you're doing actual reporting. you get used to people hanging up on you because they're going to. that's the only way -- and you got to -- when they hang up, say, all right, now who do i call? you call the next person. you call the next person. we always tell new employees when we have pa's who want to be producers at tmz to say, you know, how many phone calls did

you make? if there's a story you're working onment well, i called this person, and they said they would call me back. okay, what are you doing? why are you waiting to call them back? you'll lose the story to the other person who is making another phone call and trying to find out what you're trying to find out. there's always more than one way to skin a cat. don't wait. our thing is always make as many phone calls as it takes in a sthort a period of time necessary and get the information when you have it. when we confirmed it with multiple sources, then we publish, but you can't wait. that's the new environment of journalism is you wait, you lose. >> let me bring aaron into the conversation, the inaugural walter cronkite professor here at asu, turned tv news history, remembered well for reporting on 9/11, right there in the attacks on the world trade center, you

know, won emmys, awards, anchor of abc's world news now, and before that, had a long successful career in television in seattle. it was in this town, kicked around this town for a decade when you were really young. you know, in this -- i'm curious what you think. you know, this moment where people get their information. they are more likely to, you know, if you cover a campaign, you're, you know, you're more likely to see the candidate, you know, on an entertainment show, on a daily show than in front of you, you know, asking, answering detailed questions in an open-ended interview about policy, you know, websites, you know, popular websites about pop culture, news drives political coverage. how should journalists negotiate this, you know, if you're trying to bring news about government, politics into this world, do you

want to play these games? be all over social media? do you want to be embedded in these, you know, be a character on tchtion just as the people you cover? >> first of all, i was struck by the -- because cnn did the same, took a picture of me without my shirt on. [laughter] who knew -- but you didn't have it first. [laughter] first of all, these guys didn't invent that kind of television or that kind of insertion. whatever -- honestly, i don't mean this pa seniortively, but gossip and celebrity stuff has been around forever, so they just do it in a different way in

a different medium and level. i don't find it threatening to journalism at all. if you listen to what he said, we make calls, check it out, verify it, and then we publish it. that's pretty much what journalism is. you know? that's pretty much what it is. if arnold schwarzenegger was an actor, a hollywood guy, you would have had that story to your lonesome as candidates felt lonesome here last week. [laughter] he's a celebrity. i don't feel ungreatful, and

what we need to do is quit pandering so much, get back to the individual businesses, and i'm not interested in changing his stories, but i'm glad he's not changing my stories because they have a discipline about the way they work that would be scary to me, and i just want to make sure that my guys are applying the same discipline to the stories that we're chasing that his folks are applying to the stories that they're chasing. >> you don't have any worry? i mean, you see -- >> it didn't get in silvers' way or it somehow didn't get in chuck's way. you can -- mark may be the most

prolific tweeter on the face of the planet -- >> also a correspondent -- >> also the most formidable white house correspondent there is. if you're looking for a reason to bitch and moan, go, well, i had to tweet today, and i couldn't get the story. honestly, it's 140 characters. be serious here. [laughter] >> how much time are you spending on a tweet? >> your question was 940 characters, so it can't be that hard. [laughter] >> fair enough. fair enough. [laughter] >> no offense. >> no, no, none taken. [laughter] so, tell me, what about the the pressure to be on the network? >> no, that's a -- look, i mean, -- >> how do they do it?

what -- >> well, they don't do it. i mean, how they do it is not good. i guess they figure out they cover cruise ships for a very long time. [laughter] equate a bad vacation with a natural disaster. [laughter] but what happened in cable is that fox and msnbc, whatever you may think of it, are more entertaining, okay? so cnn has been cnn, the public utility of use. you want to know what's going on, you fill your peal, trim the spigot, fill the pale with news, and them you want to be entertained so you have mud wrestling, o'reilly telling someone to shut up or rachel is snarky or abusing, and in the old days, just going on and on

and on and on, whatever it was. that is more entertaining. what cnn will -- is, yet, again, trying to figure out, and i clearly failed at it, it's a very hard thing to do is figure out how to make the day when the natural disaster doesn't happen, the planes don't hit the tower, the war doesn't start, to make those days as engaging at every other day, and, you know, it may be that you can't do that because it's not, and on those days, you hope that like anna nicole smith dies. [laughter] >> covering movie at the times,