rebuild and repair for the next time because some day we will be the gateway to israel and the lebanese will come and we will have dinner together. that is the goal. it is all about rebuilding and planting and trees are a big deal in israel the only country in the world that has more trees at the turn of the 21st century than at the beginning of the 20th and every by a plan street is so the first thing they do is plant trees more than our berndt it is said to finance the people were sorry the war ended when it did and people innuit ended badly because it was cut short of success but they just wanted to live their

lives again. >> i.m. pleased to welcome you all and to introduce our guest this evening and how is it you may ask yourself a constitutional law scholar and nobel peace prize winner can choose to have individuals killed that he and his personal advisers deemed threatening to u.s. security? this is made in your name but in his new book "dirty

wars", jeremy scahill tells a story how obama came to wield the power in covert government forces carried out the killing in with these secret operations mean for in our democracy. he is the best selling author of blackwater and twice won the coveted award for reporting and the national security correspondent for the nation magazine. he is also a bright teen fellow from afghanistan and iraq and somalia and the former yugoslavia and the screenwriter and voice of the word winning documentary "dirty wars" the world is a battlefield" which comes out in philadelphia on june june 21st and anticipation we will run the trailer of the event right now. and i mean movie. [laughter]

>> i got a strange phone call someone wasn't reaching out close to the heart of the in the force spee there are hundreds of covert operations. multiple causes. >> it is hard to say when the story began. this was supposed to be the front line of the war on tear. but i knew i was missing the story. there was another war hidden in the shadows. a nightmare. >> the two men in the guest house were the first people killed? use of u.s. forces take the bullets out of the bodies? who were these men that stormed in and why would they go to horrifying links to cover up their actions?

how would takeover unit takeover largest war on the planet? >> why are you still alive? are you paranoid? list of trade it read like a map thailand, thailand, jordan, indonesia, . >> we have created for the rest of our generation they will continue a search for the next. >> would never conspiratorial theory there is nothing to end. if they're dangerous, if they're too strong. >> is important to know when the president can show the american citizen what they can't.

♪ >> please welcome jeremy scahill. [cheers and applause] >> thank you very much. it is an honor to be back here in philadelphia and for to carry an honor to be here at the free library of philadelphia. what a great institution this is. i and a stand the drone issue has a very serious local connection here in pennsylvania with the decommissioned air force

base will be converted it -- converted into a drone command and control center i know guys who are drone violence when you say they are unmanned aircraft but as a people understand i'm sure you have been working but individuals who are in trailers or command centers one is in the southwest of the united states they drive to work every day in and get into the box with it operate these half a world away into the skies of pakistan and they engaged in warfare where the where they play a video game in their command center but the people that are targeted are real people killed and at this particular base a drone pilot told me that when he gets into his car and drives off the base after having been involved as operations where there is a sign that

says buckle up this is the most dangerous part of your day meaning he is a greater likelihood of getting hit in a car accident than being killed even though he is involved as bombing countries around the world and drones have been a central component of what the obama administration calls the counter terrorism strategy and escalation of the drone strike not just pakistan that in yemen, somalia, and the u.s. under obama is building up the covert action capabilities on the african continent when i was in the airport iran into a young guy who said he was going for deployment in he said am going to a place called to duty and of course, the u.s. has taken over an old french military base and their they are under the auspices of africom but also see a

paramilitary and the elite commandos from the command use it as a staging ground to run operation into somalia and train forces from ethiopia, uganda and the u.s. is contemplating building another drone bass or they will target a group and you also have a base in in ethiopia and across the water on the arabian peninsula and we will see an intensification of covert u.s. actions certainly in africa we have already seen it happen and yemen and we are living in a moment for we have a popular democratic president who is a lawyer by trade and training who won the nobel peace prize and campaigned on multiple pledges to reverse the excess and abuse of the bush era and said he would close

guantanamo, and torture and shut down the cia black sites around the world but what has happened under this president is that many of the most egregious aspects of the apparatus built by bush and cheney have been intensified or continued some have been branded to legitimize policies that many would have opposed the because it is obama he gets a free pass we have anything vaguely resembling incredible challenge because the democrats check their conscience at the door and they're sitting at these terms when asking key question is how far we have come since then 11. in the week after september 11 congress passed

a bill for the opposition -- authorization of military force eight gate a blank check to wage a war and authorized the u.s. to send forces into any country that it deemed had a connection to hunt down and the individuals that were connected to the 9/11 attack that is still the law that obama and this administration site when they bombed people in yemen to bomb those who were toddlers in an 11 howe was a toddler response will power they still use? it was a blank check still used to this day been no talk about making a permanent obama said in the second inaugural address he developed the u.s. to live in the state of perpetual

war is policies indicate he was the opposite he was the u.s. to be in a perpetual state of war there is only one member that voted we remember when it was like the fear and hysteria gripping that country and one member of congress from california who stood up and then people in particular should watch that speech to find an online because she was trembling imagine the courage that chuck and what she said was we cannot use these attacks to engage in retaliation and actions to undermine our democratic principles and they cannot wage a war without an end game she was so prophetic

just like wes fine gold saw something that they were too blind to notice or chose to embrace of rollback of the civil liberties to have the courage to ask tough questions takes real backbone and courage janvier in one of those moments today where we have a popular democratic president it is easy to oppose policies with dick cheney in a to imagine him in his later waiting for however in stocks to go up. only slightly kidding but when you have the actual courage to stand and to say the same principles that applied when obama was in

power that is where the principals are tested so we have an expansion of the drone strikes in this secret prison not run by the cia but other governments and shipping prisoners ought to be tortured in countries like somalia and i documented this so here is change under president obama. we close the black site and poland and thailand but then use the somalia gulag where we interrogate prisoners with operatives some of them have been snatched off the streets of third countries to document a young man from kenya who was matched that of his home, take into wilson airport, shackled and hooded then flown to somalia to put in a bet bug infested underground prison with no

access to light, outside world, employer, and cannot tell his family were he had been taken that happened under president obama and when i called the u.s. government for, and they said that sounds right. why would we do that? is natural we would cooperate with the somalian authorities in the fight against terrorism. most americans are under the impression when obama issued the three executive orders the he would be dismantling not be branding and recasting as a more legitimate form of running the same program but that is what has happened. renditions continue under president obama and assassination is normalized as a central component not is if we haven't had that history but it has been normalized as what is called the national security policy. many liberals would have been up in arms if john mccain tried to assert

their right to kill american citizens without charging them with the crime but when president obama.it with three u.s. citizens killed in it too weak period there were two responses silence or enthusiastic support. hillary clinton satellite john mccain 70% of sulfur identified liberals said they support drone strike sandoz support dropped on the negative be when the target question was an american citizen. here at a moment where we cross the line and it will be difficult to roll back when there is no credible opposition or questioners of the policy on capitol hill and the reason they had hearings on drone strike san targeted killing and there was a young yemeni, i know

this guy he is impressive and invited to testify in front of the senate and six days before that his family's village was bombed in a drone strike and he treated those messages then came in front of the u.s. congress we had an opportunity to have someone explain firsthand the impact of those strikes and what they would be what happens to people when their family members get killed and who do we kill a group of teenagers because they are categorized as military age males? then for the next two hours instead of asking questions questions, a democratic republican senators alike ask three academics who could have walked to congress see radical question spent endless minutes if we should refer to it as a drone or uap and

a yemeni whose village was on to to answered many questions to talk about the impact so i don't put all of this on president obama and a lot of this is on congress. also a culture in washington when military figures go to capitol hill they want to know are we winning? that is a false question then they want to have metrics and a body count how many terrorists have we killed? we're doing something now calls signatures strikes. one is a personality strike with a known individual that you will take him out. with the nominal head of the al qaeda, he is a personality strike so one of

the pakistan a taliban but they're also doing signature strikes that certain regions of pakistan and yemen are determined to be hostile and any military age male in that area that had a remote connection that someone has lied as a potential terrorist, maybe this samos, delivered food to the same house, if that individual is in a group of other military age males the policy is to assume they are a terrorist tim preemptively kill them like a grotesque form of pre-crime like a minority report we are killing people intentionally. listen to this teetwo we are killing people intentionally. whose identities we do not know and against whom we not even have intelligence they are involved in any plot. think about what that means.

that is murder. when you say we will say that this group and, of young men of their age and with a live then somebody has been on the phone we will say they are terrorists price has been on the ground examining the aftermath of the cruise missile strikes and i have come to the firm belief fact the united states is now creating more new enemies than killing actual terrorist. there will be billed back for these poll -- policies. there will be. we're giving people a legitimate reason to attack the united states to avenge the death of their loved ones or the destruction of their livelihood. that is sobering to say as an american to realize about your own country because after i heard for the 15th or 20th time someone in a different country

yemen, afghanistan, somalia, someone say i used to think differently of the united states but now your the terrorist. we want less of you and your drones and we encourage people to adopt the mentality the enemy of my enemy is my friend but ignore the impact of our policy and our own peril and it is shameful the only people that have to pay attention of what is going on in our military families. who have loved ones deployed rethink about every single day and then they pay attention and whenever they are drinking that is reality television than the baghdad is an afterthought maybe if

they mentioned in the newspapers. [applause] we destroy aid iraq and we created a reality were suicide bombings are a normal part of daily life. we built the largest of the sea in the history of civilization. a massive colonial fortress the cia is ratcheting up activities special operations teams are returning in that has landed except the added reality there is sectarian violence in a constant state of civil war in the u.s. doing hunting operations and said the country but in afghanistan as we drive down ulysses' the intensification of the operations that will continue to kill their way down the list. we don't know who we're

killing any more in afghanistan we have killed so many senior commanders of the taliban wonder how the organization still existed you believe the u.s. press release. , * every killed the number three man? [laughter] i know the number two man in al qaeda has been killed 11 times this year and was killed a couple of weeks ago before he issued an audiotape referencing current defense. when you don't know the were killing then you are so far down that the people you're targeting carl local farmers to organize an uprising because you are in their valley it is time to rethink your doing remaining in these countries. it is not that obama is a more militaristic president them bush. be clearer bush and cheney were doing unlawful actions every moment of their time and office. [applause]

but that is easy. what is it that obama is doing he is a hawkish democrat doubling down on a lot of those policies and what is most damaging it seems to have staff as a good idea in the minds of many liberals people will look back and ask how were we so silent in the face of a legitimization of policies we oppose republicans are doing them a few years earlier? [applause] for me, we cross the serious line september 30, 2011 with how far we have come since the 9/11 attacks when obama was faced with a decision of whether or not to execute a u.s. citizen who was not charged with a crime and no public evidence was presented and this man was a

u.s. citizen born in new mexico and obama had decided he wanted him taken down and it was only a matter of choosing the time of day and he did not waver and served as the prosecutor said trial happen and never in a court room and served as prosecutor judge, jury, and executioner. also the other senses and that was with him. i don't have any love for him a thing he said things that were reprehensible his fascination of a cartoon jar in seattle he printed an article saying someone should go kill her and she had to go underground to change your name and he praised the massacre in texas when a dozen fellow soldiers were shot up and paralyzed himself and he

called on other muslims in the military to engage in similar action. he met with the underwear bomber the young deranged nigerian kid who tried to set his underpants on fire christmas day 2009 even for the sake of argument, i would concede everything that every wild allegation is true about on a mark of what the hell they did is i will concede that to make the point* it is not about who he was or what he did but who are we as a society? no society is judged how you treat the popular and the powerful but how you judge the least of your citizens, the poorest and most reprehensible that is what test how strong your judicial system is. the story is what is happening to us but i will tell you that it speaks to

where we are. born in new mexico i remember seeing him on television after 9/11 and i tried to book him i was a producer for democracy now because he was speaking in a way his voice was an important part of the dialogue on the one hand is a religious leader he was condemning the 9/11 attack said al qaeda had perverted the religion of islam in that had a right to go into afghanistan to bring the perpetrators to justice. of but also to denounce the hated tax against muslims and this is his and taxi drivers and rounding up for questioning for the guantanamo prison in cuba and was a media celebrity hoping the elements and was

on top of the nation as an expert and was so accepted as a part of that discussion he was invited by the pentagon to give a lecture inside the pentagon at a luncheon about the state of is dawn in the world among the sandwiches had bacon and invited that yvonne to come then served bacon? no wonder did you empty when so swimmingly. [laughter] tel lot can go with a guy who did not come from a radical family his parents are upstanding in amazing people and still are and his dad is one of the most respected academics in yemen and came to the united states on a scholarship with usaid and officials and spend his life trying to

solve the water crisis they did not raise him to be the guy you saw in the two videos to call for a jihad against united states but he was a guy who was radicalized by the u.s. or abroad and at home and eventually leaves united states windows to yemen and starts recording sermons and they become a very popular around the world then pop up with a tear investigation and they are concerned it would in sight terrorism some of the united states colludes with the regime to arrest him that he has jumped of charges and is put in prison 18 months of those

17 in solitary confinement. the united nations said it was extra legal and it was clear the united states played a role in his imprisonment that i've learned it was negroponte at the time did director of national intelligence that knows a lot about his time is it of "dirty wars" when he was feeling the contra war hunter is the he had a meeting in washington while he was an present with a yemeni official that was pressing them to have to be released because he was such a problem for them and negroponte tells this official that the u.s. wants him kept in prison for five years of people forget about him that is where he remained in prison he comes out of jail change man completely radicalized and he starts to block to jake dawn and discussions if it

is acceptable in u.s. puts pressure to a rest and then he goes underground and the head of the intelligence says if you go get your son tear a comeback americans will kill him in a drone strike before the underwear bomber they told his family if you don't get him back in prison they will kill him in a drone strike so his father says tell them this and he says a you an american agent? i will be born free i will die free. . .

>> he was off a couple days later and blew up more people, and the u.s. would have never taken credit for that strike, but for a drive journalist in yemen who went to the scene and exposed that it was an american strike. he took pictures of the missile parts, sent them to amnesty international, other group, and they said it was u.s. missiles, not u.s. missiles provided to another government, but only owned by the united states. what had happened on the aftermath of the strike is that the yes , yemen government took

responsibility saying the yes , ma'amny air force attacked an al-qaeda base and killed 34 terrorists, and u.s. sent congratulations to yes , yemen. we know that general david petraeus, the commander, had gone to yemen and hatched a conspiracy with the president of yes , yemen to bomb that country and have the government take responsibility for the strikes, and at one point in one of the meetings, the depp pi prime minister of yemen jokes with petraeus, i joust lied to the parliament saying it was our attack, and they laugh about it. the president of yemen says continue to bomb as long as we can say the bombs are ours and not yours, and so president obama initiates this intense bombing campaign, at times, cruise missiles, drone strikes, at times using special operations teams on the ground to unilaterally go and hunt people down, and one of the main targets was alawaki, and they

tried to run the deck to intensify the drone strikes and narrowly miss killing alawaki and later find him in northern yemen when i started by story, and september 30th, 2011, they have a choice a make. they find him, and while he's there, his eldest son who has not seen him in years, raised as a normal teenager by his grandparents, want to send him to the united states for college. he just turned 16 years old, he's into hip hop, comic books, hung out in chain square in the arab spring with the uprising against their dictator, and the kid turns 16 deciding he wants to see his father, who he had not seen for years, feels he's 16, crossing a line in life, and he sneaks into his mother's bedroom one morning, and he goes into the purse and steals $40, packs a bag, and goes to the bus

stop, and he takes a bus to the province where their family's roots are, and the scene of repeated strikes attempts to kill his father, and waits and hopes his father will find him. while he's waiting, his father is killed north in yemen, where the u.s. had never done a strike before, and it was a surprise he was there. he gets kill. after the killing, as i was said, there was celebration in washington. one republican congressman said if he was not also a targts, then it was a bonus, it was a two-for. these are two u.s. citizens, neither charged with a crime, killed in assassination in a direct hit, and you have lawmakers celebrating that as a triumph, all who said opposition in this were the usual suspects, the only two who said anything about it. [applause] alawaki gets killed, and then his son is stuck in this village, and there's the

uprising going on in the country and the roads are blocked, and his grandparents are calling himming saying your father's dead, it's over. you have to come back. they were raising him. he said, i'll come as soon as the roads clear, but i have to wait for that to happen. it takes a couple weeks. he's out having dinner with his cousin who was 17 and some other young people from the tribe in an outdoor restaurant when the drone comes and fires a hell fire missile and blows the kids up. the obama administration has never ever explained why that kid was killed. was he killed because his last anytime was alawaki? because no one's ever provided any evidence that that kid had anything to do with terrorism. you know, if you look at his facebook and see what the interests were up to the moment he died, this was a perfectly normal teenager who had nothing in common with his father. this kid is killed with his teenage cousins, and after he's killed, a u.s. military official

leaks that he was 21 years old, that the family produces his colorado birth certificate saying he turned 16 years old. well, he was at the al-qaeda meeting, and they showed the list of the dead showing they were all teenagers. well, he was meeting with a propagandaist. that map is still alive to this day. who was the target in the strike? why was the kid killed? when harry reid was on cnn, the majority leader, the seen your your -- senior, and he's on cnn, and he's asked about the killing of these three american citizens, and he said i'm not talking about classified intelligence, but if there were three americans that deserved to be killed, it was those three americans, and so i went after harry reeds office demanding

they explain what he did. why did he deserve to be killed? this 16-year-old kid? robert gibbs, the former white house press secretary, when he was receiverring -- serving as the senior surrogate for obama in the 2012 reelection campaign, he was the chief spokesperson, he was asked by a young reporter about the killing, and she said he was killed with no duh process, and american teenager. he said, he should have had a more responsible father. there's few things i can think of more shameful in life than blaming the killing of 5 child on who their parents are or who their father was, and robert gibbs should be ashamed of himselfs and shouldn't be in public without being asked why he made that statement. [applause] i don't hang out with powerful officials, and i don't get invited to the white house correspondence dinners and laugh

about the jokes about drones, and that's the only time he talks about it, and i am not invited to the supersoaker parties, but i happened to run into a former senior official recently, and i chased him across the parking lot, and -- [laughter] true story. i was trying to ask questions about this. this was someone deeply involved with the kill program and overseeing these things, and he agreed to talk to me saying, you know, i don't make agreements with powerful officials, but i want to understand what happened here, and he said i'll talk to you if my name is not in your article. i don't like the agreement, but i will. i can't tell you who it was, but a senior obama official, and when he was told the kid was killed, he was extremely upset, and the president was told by the cia and joint operations command that this guy mentioned before was alone, and that was the target, but what was interesting is john brennan, now the cia director, at the time was the senior adviser on

homeland security and counterterrorism, that brennan believed it was an intentional hit, that they intensally killed the kid, could be false intelligence, and didn't believe it could be be a coincidence that you kill the father and two weeks later kill the son. brennan ordered the review. what happened? he said, i don't know, i never saw the review. i called the white house and national security council, and they would not comment or confirm or deny there was any review done, and if there was, they would not share the findings of the review. the official assured me, no, no, it's a misunderstanding, a mistake, the kid was collateral damage. i said, if that's your assertion, and that's the line that they didn't mean to kill the kid, why not say it then? why not just come forward and say it? what it looks like to most people is you killed the guy's kid because he was his kid, and it's hard to wrap our heads around how that is a coincidence, and he said, look at it this way, we had just

killedded three u.s. citizens in a two-week period, two of whom were not targets. it didn't look good. it was embarrassing. that was a direct quote. the reason they did not explain it is because it was politically embarrassing for them. what planet are we living on? i don't care if someone's an american or pakistani, there's no difference in outrage with innocent people are killed. it doesn't matter what citizenship. [applause] for me, the principle is this, if we're willing to do this to our own citizens, cross the line and deprive our citizens of the most basic liberties, of the right to respond to your accusers, to see the evidence against you, have a trial and be judged be by a jury of your peers, snatch that away and say for certain people, the mob can grab the pitch forks and torches and deliver citizen's justice, stop saying we are the shining city on the hill and example for everyone else to follow. say we're a country that at times wants, in fact, encourages

mob violence or extrajudicial killings. that's what this is. if we do it to our citizens, how do we treat pakistanis or afghans or mexicans? you know, these are serious questions that need to be asked of the administration, and the democrats are not asking them, and it's been left to people like rand paul to ask the questions. my gosh, i can't -- i have tried so hard to find something else i agree with rand paul on, and i can't find it, but i think paul deserves credit for actually asking those questions that day on the senate floor. i didn't do the whole thing i stand with rand because i don't stand with rand. i think it's embarrassing that that's who asked the questions, and for a third of a day, for about, you know, a third of that 12-14 hour fill filibuster, some of the most famed discussion happened on the floor of the reporting where the reporting

was ran into the record. the names said multiple times for the first time, you know, on c-span and on the floor of the u.s. senate. yesterday, the carnival of crazies, michele bachmann inspired craziness with theories about how james bond was killed in a cafe in berkley for supporting the verks ietkong and offices bombed in montana. pure craziness. you have the people on the right, the black scarry man president will drone us, and if someone makes the horrid mistake of letting her into power, she will be a major lover of drones. it's because it's obama's drones, if obama loves drones, they hate drones. we don't have serious people asking serious questions in congress, so this stuff goes on

unchallenged, and these look back someday when they try to challenge this stuff, if jeb bush is president or marco rubio is president, where were you when you guys were doing it, and i imagine cheney fly fishing with a chuckle about the obama presidency saying thank god he cleaned it up because we can continue the next time we come into office. i want to wrap up so that we can have some discussion and questions and interaction here, but i want to end by saying what i've seen in the course of my investigation around the world over these years is a healthscape with somalia war lords on the payroll paid to hundred hunt down people who may or may not be attached to a militant organization, increased use of drone strikes, working with mercenaries, the blackwater

academy, rebranded, still on the payroll, and you have represent-a-armies operating under president obama, back door youth of secret prisons, continued use of rendition, gautham guantanamo is open, hunger strikers force fed, obama pledged six years ago would be shut down in the first year of the administration, and how much is actually changed when it comes to counterterrorism operations? how much is changed when it comes to the position of the u.s. in the world? you know, the u.s. engaged in regime change in libya and opened the door for radical groups that i guarantee you someday are going to come back around to hit the united states. it's a total repeat of what happened in afghanistan in the 80s where you have the short-sided goal of unseeding the soviets and the long term consequences of agents of terrorism from the people you supported at a different point because it supported your short term interest. should the u.s. intervene in syria?

we're the least credible broker second to israel. how do we intervene where we destroyeded iraq? we are helping the saudis, fueling a sectarian war in syria. we have intervened. we intervened on the side of instability in syria. we are the problem in syria now. it's not that -- assad is a brutal thug, and he's a thug as a convenient ally of the united states when they sent torture chambers on behalf of the united states, a thug then and now, but some -- so are the opposition groups we're covertly supporting. we already intervened. stop the intervention in the middle east. final thing is this, we watched, all of us watched these school shootings with sense of utter horror. i mean, i certainly did, you know, the "new york times" ran the list of the kids killed in

the newtown shooting, and you see the ages, six, six, seven, six, six, seven, and i mean, it's just crushing you, guts you as a person, and the reason it does, i mean, is because journalists did their job and told us the stories of heroism, teachers who tried to save the kids' lives, and i mean, the story sticks with me of the three kids in the closet, and all of us i remember, i'm sure, a story from it or the boston marathon bombing, watching carlos who lost his son in iraq, run towards the blast, and there's the picture of him. if you don't know the name, you have seen the face, he had the cowboy hat on carrying the double am amputee, tied a clothe around the leg to stop the bleeding, and the adorable 8-year-old kid that went viral on facebook that the kid drawn before being killed that day calling for peace and a graduate student killed in the bombing and another one from china, and

recently, when i was in boston with a friend who is chinese, and she was telling me that she said, you know, that president obama said that woman's name, and it was a big story in china. i said, oh, really. she said there was a blog post viral in china, and the tie l was "where you die matters," and the point is the most powerful man in the world would have never mentioned that name if she died in a factory making american products, but now her life mattered because of where she died. there's lessons to be drawn from this, and if we as journalists did our job and stopped referring to people as collateral damage oar casualties and knew the stories of the

killed, and if we saw artwork of them before their were taken away, and stories of families destroyed in our drone strikes, livelihoods wiped out, it's harder to sort of dehumanize the other and say, oh, well, there's only a few civilians being killed or these are surgical, a cleaner way of waging war. it's not possible. we can be an incredibly empathetic society as americans, and we show our best side in crisis, and it's true. it really is true. in those school shootings, there is a sense of community, and we walk around, and we all share the common experience because it's our own, but we have a moral obligation as residents or citizens as the most powerful nation on earth to own a part what happens on the other side of the missiles because it's done in our name, done with our money, and it's ultimately going to effect our stability, so our challenge is actually quite a simple one, but a bold move to make in life, and it's to have

empathy to those who don't live next door, or are not on the newscast, make the mission to know a name of someone who lost something in the war so when they use collateral damage praise or casual sighs, you have a real story to tell them, and that's our challenge, thank you very much. [applause] thank you for that. [applause] there are microphones here. [applause] thank you. [applause] there are microphones here, and i think the policy is if people come up or -- you play phil donohue? yeah, okay. let's get this young man over here. we can have gender balance too. men always raise hands first. >> okay.

30 seconds, real quick. over the past week, we learned that two news networks have succumbed to mounting pressures that are politically powerful and financially wealthy, and al jazeera had an op-ed by a professor who writes frequently about palestinian issues and pbs affiliate to air a documentary that was critical of the coch brother, and while media companies bowing to political pressures is not new knews, what concerns me about these cases is these are networks that are traditionally thought of as independent and fearless in the coverage they provide, and if these pressures mount against them, are they also mounting against journalists who are truely independent in every sense of the word, journalists such as yourself and amy goodman, and if so, that have you -- or what can we do to help you maintain independence? the work that you do is truly is a gem, and we should help you.

>> yeah, thank you for raising that. i think it's reprehenceble, and the targeting of the associated press and the see sure of the phone records, a wide sweep there saying it's about a story they did about divulging classified information about an alleged underwear bomb plot in yemen a year ago, and it is a part of a story, and they are topnotch -- or major powerful news outlet, topnotch reporters, and i think they were targeted because they were getting too close because the whoas did not want out in the public domain, and what they were doing is what they were supposed to do,

there's wikileaks and white house leeks, and white house leaks is what you want you to be told. john brennan is a major leaker, responsible for so much bs floated after the bin laden raid he had to retract everything that man said because it was false, but journalists are taken for a ride every day by this white house, and those independent and ask questions, their e-mails are intercepted, their internet service providers are served with national security letters, phone records are seized, and, you know, i don't have love in my heart for fox news, but what they did to the reporter, you know, james rosen, is shameful trying to crflize the process of being an actual reporter. this sent a chill through the journalism community and relatively small world of reporters that cover the national security issues, and it used to be the case that i would use encrypted e-mail and otr software to have encrypted chats with sources. no one touches that anymore. i'm talking about sources within government. incringes is broken. not safe. won't do it.

we have to be ludites now to communicate because no one wants it leave a digital foot print. they used to have to break into the office of a reporter, but now they just hack your e-mail or they'll get a warrant and go and take it, and you may or may not find out until years later. take that, combine that were war on whistle blowers ark people like thomas drake, an nsa official who blew the whistle on criminality, the administration went after him and ruined his career. he works at apple now. he was the top perp at the nsa, but he's working at apple. there's nothing wrong with that to make a living, but his career was ruined because he stood up and blew the whistle and provided information to the press that he believed the american people had a right to know because he thought it was criminal. when you take the war offend journalism and the war on whistle blowers put that together and look at how the former cia operative is in prison right now in part for blowing the whistle on torture

while jose rodriguez an architect of torture is on a book tour, that says a lot about the country. oh, officer, i'll look forward, not back ward, but it's chilling what you are saying, and there's self-censorship, and in the case of the coch brothers, money talks, they are incredibly powerful nefarious force in our society right now involved with all sorts of badness and plots going on in this country. give it to a young woman, or not young, could be any woman. [laughter] >> that's all right, you can call me young, it's all right. it's all right. >> you qualify, it's all right. i'm not trying to be ageist here. >> thank you. [laughter] my question was, as i listen to your talk and listen to everything that you're talking

about and everything we've seen happen with our constitutional continuing these terrible bush policies -- >> i got that from a song. >> well done. >> just kidding. [laughter] >> it's very easy to be filled with a since of dispair because i mean, our political leaders, political leadership in the country is bought and sold, and the military industrial complex is completely off the rails, and we have a population that just happily handed over our civil rights for the patriot act, starting there and continuing, and so my question to you is in your work and in your research, have you. able to draw any conclusions -- i mean, are there any points of vulnerability left in this -- this system, this machine where it can be attacked because i don't feel like we can go to our legislators and argue for change anymore. i'm curious to hear what you think. >> yeah, i get you. >> what the soft points are. >> yeah, thank you for that.

yeah, i don't think anything will ever fundamentally change in the society unless we confront and expel corporations from the electoral process, from -- [applause] from dominating -- [applause] , you know, members of congress serve two more year terms spending 18-20 months of those two-year terms raising funds, and who are the donors. there's a study when you look at the way the defense industry spends dollars, they assume they give the money to republicans, no, no, no, when winds blow to the democratic direction, they give more to the democrats than the republicans, and so you have a situation where they literally are bought. you know, i was talking to a friend from another country lately at a gathering from nancy pelosi, but he said i want pelosi to see your movie. i said, she will not see it. he goes, raise a hundred thousand dollars and paid her to

watch the movie. [laughter] he goes we can do that in my country, we can get the president to do that. the corruption here is formalized. you know, it's -- we can give it to her campaign, but we can't pay her. we could actually do that, because in thinking about it, you know, i could give a hundred thousand dollars to pelosi to watch the money, and donate to the pac. that's the point, that's how the system is set up. when politicians are bankrolled by defense contractors or big oil arian energy, what incentive do they have to have a conscious? they represent their pay masters, not the constituents. the best chance was mccain-feingold, and it was not perfect, but a step towards it. when obama opted out of public funding and went nuclear with the private cash, it basically destroyed it, and then mccain was forced to then go toe-to he

toe with the private money fundraising gebs obama which crushed it. i do think that some segment of our society has to make it their business to try to change that aspect of how politics are done because all the rest of it is just speeches giving and pressure because writing letters to members of congress on the issues seldom tilts them in any way. it's money that talks and money runs the system, and so it is a beak jut look, and i don't mean to pass out razor blades, but it's a bleak situation. go ahead, whenever. >> you toxed about the military drones, but there's also legal drones used against our men in this country, like the -- probably one of the most egregious cases of the 500 muslim men in prison now, where

they use undercover agent provocateurs, using a lot of legal or secret testimony, and these are kangaroo courts here in the united states. in new jersey, it was the person who is now governor of new jersey who was the district attorney that prosecuted 465. there's been many articles written about how all these cases are unjust and they harken back to the imprisoning of the japanese during world war ii. >> is there a question? i'm familiar with the cases. >> don't you think it's also up just, as unjust as using drones overseas, also unjust what they are doing. >> yeah, the fbi shown adept of breaking up its own terror

plots. it's happened repeatedly. no, i'm saying that seriously, there's a pattern here where, you know, and sometimes they target mentally, really unstable individuals and tap into that instability and there's a number of cases where the individuals who are going to prison for a long time actually are people who have serious mental challenges, and the fbi will infiltrate, and in the cases, they are the ones encouraging them to plot the bomb attack. maybe it was people who were thinking about an action or becoming radicalized, and you have an fbi informant on scene, and then there's a plot underway, and they set people up, and part is they are creating the climate of fear, a demand for results, but absolutely, what's happening at home is deeply connected to what's going on at broad, and there have been so many muslims railroaded in the country and demonized and set up that there

are not active terror plots, there are. i hope we do bust them up, but we shouldn't be breaking up our own terror plots. that says something dark about what's going on with law enforcement. i also tangentially relates to what you are saying. i'm very concerned about the paramilitaryization of law enforcement in the u.s.. it's a serious concern where you have, you know, part of the issue is about domestic use of drones and a number of mew municipalities, citizens get together to ban the use of drones issue but it's deeper than that. police are becoming military forces, and you have the wars in iraq and afghanistan are coming home, and everything is moving towards swat-style tactics. in boston, hunting down dorner out in los angeles, and, i mean, this looks like special operation raids happening, and, you know, certainly in poor communities and communities of color across this country, people are facing this reality

for years and years where urban areas in the united states are effectively war zones and night raids are a part of daily life like they are in kandahar, afghanistan, and, you know, we -- when you combine that with the privatization of certain law enforcement functions and par amilitarization of the u.s.-mexican border, everything is militarized. this tamerlan tsarnaev kid in boston in custody for the bombing, they wanted him sent to guantanamo despite the fact he's a u.s. citizen. there's a knee-jerk military reaction to things to crisis, and that's something we really have to confront in our society, but it's threatening our democratic existence, i think, when everything becomes a paramilitary solution. it's a very, very serious problem. >> yeah? go to the other side, yeah. you pick because i can't see with the lights on. make an effort to get to the

back too. >> thank you, for speaking today, and i was wondering -- i heard a report that the cia said they would transfer drone programs to the pentagon, and i heard this this morning, and i worchedder the lack of a public explanation, that obama says he will give about the obama program, to what extent that's covering up struggles in turf wars between the cia and the pentagon and the white house, and to what extent as other questioners have said, a war machine that no longer considers itself bound by the rule of law. >> right, what you were referring to has been talked to for some time. this is a dog and pony show talking to brennan like he's a priest, like st. augustine. look into it later. it's incredible with articles talking about how he and obama are like these monks, you know,

running the drone program, and brennan, you know, brennan, part of the dog and pony show, of course, brennan could not be cia director when he was first nominated because democrats stood up and said we don't want a guy who praised torture to be obama's director of cia, and years later, it's rand paul and the crazy parade opposing him, showing you how far we've come, and brennan said, well, we'll move the drone program to the military because there's greater transparency. the military is running a parallel drone program for the duration of, you know, what's called the war on terror. in pakistan, jsoc operates drones, in yemen, they operate drones. it's intend to give the perception something's done, listening to the public, but in reality, it's going to continue business as usual. some people are under the missed perception that the military cannot do covert actions, only the cia, but jsoc does it every

day around the globe. it doesn't make no difference whatsoever, and i think it makes it worse, less oversight. there's actual tough questioners on the intelligence committee in the house. the senate arms services committee, they have been a rubber stamp operation for covert actions, and i think, really, it's propaganda, meant to look like something's happened when in reality it's an old wipe in the new bottle. in the back. >> thanks for coming, i respect you a lot, listening to your work and reading your articles, but i wouldn't do my job as a human being if i didn't correct you on your work because i didn't bomb alawaki, send the drones over to pakistan, so respectfully, i'd like to correct you on that. [applause] >> you're a tax resister? >> i'm certainly an aggressive

military resister. >> so you don't pay taxes? >> i'm working on it. >> if you confront my use of the word "we" because if we don't realize we're come police sit in this, we go past the grave yard and deeply come police sit on this. >> i respect that. [applause] >> i respect that. >> more importantly -- >> i admire the spirit, man. what woke you up to this? >> his t-shirt says "not a terrorist," and thank you for clarifying that for the record. now, can someone remove him for a tough question. plaintiff -- [laughter] i love when they do that, the exit's right there. look, i, you said what woke me up to this? you know, i remember hearing amy goodman on the radio for the first time, and i wanted to be a teacher. that's what i was studying.

i never took a journalism class, and i heard amy on the radio, and i said, i wanted to do that. i started stalking her. [laughter] in a non-creepy way, you know, but i wrote her letters and asking if she had a cat, i'll feed her cat, walk the dog, or wash the windowings. she had to decide whether to get a restraining order or let me volunteer, and i learned it, like, as a trade, like an apprentice the way a plumber or electrician, and my early work, what i did, you know, one of the first trips taken was to iraq in the 1990s, going with a group call voices in the wilderness, and they were breaking sanctions on iraq bringing in medical supplies banned by the u.s., you know, from bringing into iraq, and it just opened my eyes. i couldn't believe what was done in our name, and i was not in the investigative reporter, but a kid with a tape recorder, and i asked people to tell me their stories, trying to edit it into

narratives saying here's a person, this mother in a hospital, and she's just given birth to a baby that has a gaping hole that stretches from nose to the throat, and it's a result of the ammunitions used in the gulf war with uranium in them. it was about the people on the other side of the gun. that's what i wanted to do. i felt it was so important for people in the country to have names and faces, and there's so many people i think about every day that i met along the way who humble me, and those who exposed the strike, he's in prison in yes , ma'am men right now in part because president obama's keeping him in there. he was clintoned on trumped up charges r being a member of al-qaeda in a court set up by the dictator of yemen to prosecute journalists as crimes against the state, and when he

was going to be pardoned, news leaked this would happen, and president obama called the dictator of yemen, personally called him, saying the u.s. wants him to remain in prison. that journalist has been in prison for three years, and he was a well-known journalist who did work for the washington post, abc news, al jazeera, independent guy critical of al-qaeda and did tough interviews. he was a real journalist, in prison because of our constitutional law professor president. look at my book, it's dedicated to journalists imprisoned for telling the truth and those who die in pursuit of the truth, and the last line of the book is that this yemen journalist should be set free, and so i try to do my work in the spirit of unfamous journalist who don't get invited to give speeches broadcast on c-span or get to go on the shows, whatever, those are my heros, the people that keep me going. [applause]

>> i have a question that is probably a long answer. do you have israel's involvement in dirty wars, drone wars, either as a model or as, you know, a producer of drones and so on. >> yeah, i mean, israel was a trend setter with this for the u.s.. the israelis model, you know, with these assassination ops really is what the u.s. based its program on, and, you know, israel and the united states are deep in bed together in all sorts of covert actions around the world, and, of course, the u.s. yowrks know, gives tremendous military support to the israelis. i recommend people watch the film, if you have not seen it, called "the gate keepers," a flawed movie, but important and worth seeing where the guys describe the people that were

running the kill program in israel describing how they saw it playing out and what the actual, you know, end result has been, and there's sobering remarks in that, but israel and the fact is possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons that, you know, no wombing's allowed to talk about, when a scientist blew the whistle, they put him in prison and drove him insane, and the united states will not talk about israel's nuclear program. there's a reason why other countries want nuclear weapons to be a deterrence against israel. if there's an attack on iran, it's an israeli-led attack. there's reason to suspect israel is involved in the assassination of the iranian nuclear scientists. i don't know anything is definitivety proven, but someone is killing iranian nuclear scientists, and israel has taken the most belligerent stance towards iran, so israel is engaged in its own dirty wars

and doesn't need the united states to tell it what to do. they are deep into its own actions. let me say i'm happy, even if people don't want to buy a book, when i doo the book signings, i'll talk to people, get in line, and if you didn't get a chance, get in line and do it. i don't know where my phil and donohue are, but -- [laughter] >> i feel the people here today are equal outraged, but sense that no many are surprised because we have reports as someone else mentioned earlier, the military, industrial complex, abusing the powers, and expensions of that, so my question to you is in looking on the legty of oliver stone and others before you who tried to

blow the whistle, do you feel it's informs not getting out, or do we just need experts for you to run for political office to make change? [laughter] >> not on your life, brother. [laughter] i appreciate the question. i have way too many skeletons in my closet. [laughter] no, i mean, look, to take your question seriously, i think unless we break the dualopoy and have a multiparty system in the country, we will not get anywhere with the democratic and republican parties who has the agenda to support big business, and to keep sort of the idea that america is the exception in the world. that's a requirement to be president of the united states, and so i admire people, particularly on the local level who try to organize third party challenges to democrats and republicans because it's the

most democratic thing to do is to try to fight, actually, to break the strangle hold that the two parties have, particularly with the national security state. there are differences in domestic policy between democrats and republicans. when it comes to the gnarl security state, they are the war party, period, and i'm glad you raised it, and main there's young people in the room who try to run for those offices and get involved in the school board level, city council level because i think you can have change there, that and confronting corporate money are not the issues that i cover, but those are the issues i care about personally as someone in the country and in my perm life, i work on these issues as well as trying to end the death penalty. thank you all very much for coming. thank you for your questions, and i'm happy to answer questions as we go upstairs. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> now on booktv, recounting immigration through the united states, and their entry into the medical profession here, and the differences between eastern and western medicine. this is about an hour and 15. [applause] >> thank you very much, and before we get startedded, i wanted to tell everybody a quick story. as you know, you could only come to the society as a guest. we have a golden rule one time. and today, beepak is breaking his record, for the fourth time, and we make an exception for him each time for the amount of people come out and how great he is at the society, and we're delighted to learn of the incredible book coming out, ad